Long after 50, my friend Dan is and always will be a kid!
And so will Laurie! Why I love them so!!!
Of course they’re a couple! What do you think keeps them so happy?
This crusty old bachelor, on the other hand . . .
http://ceenphotography.com/2015/07/16/cees-black-white-photo-challenge-older-than-50-years/
I’ve been saving this picture for over a month, hoping it will fit into some prompt category, but since none have arisen, I’m issuing my own challenge. Send me a picture or publish on your blog or Facebook something that drives you buggy! much as I love seeing grasshoppers–especially this huge one that jumped out at me while i was trying to photograph something else–I believe Little Bird–I don’t like what they do to my plants and my dad had horrible stories of clouds of grasshoppers miles wide descending and eating everything in sight when he was a boy in South Dakota. Devastating to farmers. I’ve had so many hit my windshield that it became impossible to see to drive and also times when I skidded off the road when there were so many grasshoppers on the road that the highways becae slippery. So please publish a picture of what drives you buggy and tell the story. Don’t forget to establish a link to my blog so we can share our stories and pictures!
Hibiscus
Called Obeliscos in Mexico, I have never seen so many varieties and colors of Hibiscus as in the nurseries in the little towns that surround where I live. I’m going to try to take pictures as the various colors bloom. I absolutely love the blooms. Although they do not last long, there is always a new one opening and if Pasiano doesn’t trip too often, dozens at a time popping open on one plant.
To see Cee’s flower of the day, go HERE.
On The Run!!!
If a grand slam is, as I think it is, a home run hit over the fence with the bases loaded that thereby also brings in three other runners, then I would say the equivalent in my life would be to find an agent who would find a publisher for all four of my children’s books! I am not a lazy writer, but I am a lazy marketer/promoter. I would love to find someone to turn that part of my life over to!!!
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Grand Slam.” In your own life, what would be the equivalent of a grand slam?
Best Pre-teen Memories
Please post your best ten memories of your life before 10 years old. Mine are:
Now…please post your ten favorite pre-ten memories to your blog with a link to mine. To form a link, go to that page in your blog and select and copy the URL. Then come to my blog and in the comment box, make a comment if you wish and paste your URL. Then you can see each other’s lists via the hyperlinks on my blog.
This is another of my friend Steve Frowine’s gorgeous orchids. I’m wondering if he was able to take them back with him when he moved back to the states.
To see Cee’s gorgeous hydrangea, go HERE.
Mum’s the Word
If you’ve read my posts on Africa, you already know more about me than my mom ever did. Once, years later, when I asked my mom if she would like to know the full story about why I stayed in Africa instead of traveling with my sister when she came to visit me and then coming back to the U.S. with her, my mother said, “I never told my mother anything that would make her feel bad.” Case closed.
There was a whole part of my life my mother never knew about by choice. She never knew that I was nearly killed twice while I was there, or that I initially stayed because I was in love with an Ethiopian man. My sister knew all because she was there when the shooting took place, and I had told her about the kidnapping, but she never told my mother. In many other ways, I am very like my mother, but there are some other genes surging through me, because I always want to know everything and I will almost always ask for the “rest” of the story.
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Dear Mom.”: Write a letter to your mom. Tell her something you’ve always wanted to say, but haven’t been able to.
It was 1965, my freshman year at the University of Wyoming, and once again I was venturing out into the world by going home for the first time with a college friend. On our first night in her hometown, we dressed up and drove to the “Halfway House,” halfway between Worland and Thermopolis, for three inch steaks and, even though we were all just 18, because her parents had called ahead with permission, for one Sloe Gin Fizz or Tom Collins each.
The next morning, we awoke with aching heads and fuzzy tongues to the smell of coffee–Pat’s mother at the kitchen table pouring a cup for each of us, refilling her own mug, refilling the pot with water and more coffee and setting it back on the burner to perk.
For the four days we were there, the pot was never turned off between the hours of 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., and it was never empty except for the minute between pouring the last cup and filling it up to perk a new one.
We were a caffeine society predating the caffeine craze of the 90’s. The later craze coincided, not coincidentally, with the formation of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers and stricter drunk driving laws; but in the 60’s and 70’s, we drank coffee as an antidote to hangovers, not as a replacement!
It was a shared vice for which we could imagine no drawbacks. No calories. No fat. Pretty cheap. Unlike the cigarettes we all lit up to accompany our coffee drinking and talks around the table, there was not the least whisper of any negative effects of coffee. It kept us awake during studying for finals and during long nighttime drives between towns in Dakota and Wyoming and helped us wash down our NoDoz. (more caffeine!)
It would be thirty-five years in our future before we turned from those endless cups of hot java sipped from between swirling curtains of cigarette smoke. Driven by morning coughs, short breath and nagging doctors and kids, we would give up first the cigarettes, then, encouraged by aching joints, insomnia or too many trips to the bathroom, we would give up the coffee.
But still, the biting smell of coffee brewing in a pot or urn conjures up memories of Mack’s cafe, where endless chipped white mugs of coffee marked our maturity from preteens to adults. Those first 100 cups choked down while holding our breaths had inured us–initiated us–led to our addiction to and lust for caffeine–until we loved the acrid taste. Black. No sugar. Aspartame was just a future gleam in some chemist’s eye and no one had heard of latte, mocha, jamocha or espresso. No one had ever heard the word cappuccino except in an occasional spelling bee where it was misspelled along with the rest of the obscure words. Although everyone drank coffee, no one had yet iced it, foamed it or whip creamed it. No one had thought to float chocolate curls or cinnamon in it. We just drank it, like truckers, black–from the ever-plenteous pot.
It is almost 10 a.m. and In the absence of a Daily Prompt, I am declaring my own prompt and inviting anyone who reads this to follow along and post on yesterday’s prompt page, as I am. The subject is Coffee!! Make of it what you will. And please link to this page as well. https://judydykstrabrown.com/2015/07/14/java-101/
Ah, finally, at noon. Here came the prompt, which is to write about something I did that I’d advise no one else to do. Well, first of all I’m posting the link to this post and then I’ll see about writing a new one. So instead of not doing as I did, please do do as I did and write an additional prompt today about Coffee and send a link to my blog through comments!
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 