Some same 'ol stuff and a first time something

 post #519

                Busy day. I heard that Joe Biden sprained his ankle today while playing with his dog.  I'm so sorry it happened. Who has time for that?  ( oh well, maybe Trump does since he hasn't been not doing much that's presidential lately. His service to this country continues to be peculiar. His legions of Republican enablers are also tragically hard to figure out .)                  note added on Monday: it seems Biden has hurt his foot in the very same way I did a year and a half ago!

            I didn't get out for a walk, BUT I did do something new -- painted the front of the front door!  It's the FIRST door I have ever painted. The door is no longer dirty white! It's blue!   I took a photo of this little miracle, and put the geraniums onto the photo since it may be their LAST night. I've had them for two years and there's not a good place for them in the house.  I've wanted to paint that door for at least five years.

           We are expecting 12 or so hours of rain before the next night when it will turn to snow.  In Kentucky, we usually get snow later. Hmmm, I don't know yet if from home learners get to have Zoom snow days!? 

        Yes, time for some photos:

The door color isn't really how it looks, but, hey, seeing is believing....that something happened!

a closer view of the two year geraniums -- thanks thanks thanks

     Another project made great headway today.  My friend Carolyn in town made a random comment a couple of months ago about needing another project while spending so much time at home. I replied in a joking manner that I had a task I would love to have her do, if she really wanted it. She said it sounded great, and today she reached the almost done stage -- working an hour or so most days she has typed out the 93 page journal from the notebook Frank and I kept every day -- while we traveled from California, going west, because our first stop was to visit his brother, who was in the Peace Corps in Western Samoa in the Pacific.  We were there for Christmas. We went on to Fiji, Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, India, and all the way around back to the USA. Six months. This was in 1970-71, when there were cheap airplane tickets available as long as we continued more or less in the same direction. We went where we knew someone or where someone back home knew someone. We each carried a back pack, stayed in youth hostels or cheap hotels when not in someone's home, and we kept track of every thing we spent -- averaging ten dollars a day.  To pull that off actually takes a lot of work, but that trip was the privilege of a lifetime.

        Carolyn also loves traveling and has done quite a bit of it after growing up on a farm in Kansas.  I think she has enjoyed our adventures, and I can't thank her enough. She and I are going to figure out a sheltered way soon to go over the pages and decipher words or even clarify here and there. I never expected anyone to be able help me with this, and I knew I'd never manage to do it. I wanted to be able to share the adventure without having it be hard to read.

        Here's a photo of the modest looking notebook (our constant companion.) I've not been to Africa or South America; a thin line around a globe shows how much we haven't seen, but it was a precious adventure all the same. I'd always wanted to know what was on the other side of the world.

 

Frank did much of the detail recording, and I could add, or visa versa.

    

         

             

     

            Then there's these two photos of T., posing as a hairbroom in the first one, and showing her hair from the back in the second.  I have a better photo of her sitting down, but it's a vertical shot, and I STILL have not figured out how to make the transfer of a vertical to the current posts with the newly revised secret rules.  The sun was making her hair sparkle, but I couldn't get that to show either.  But we had fun trying -- though I was constrained to my chair in the corner....The attempt to convince me I'm elderly -- and therefore virus vulnerable -- continues. 

             I hope everyone is safe, healthy, and ready for what the next two months will bring us. I wish the wall that Trump is determined to complete was instead a structure that was being taken down, as a symbol of how much more important it is instead to break through our current partisan divide. It's going to take a long time to come to our national senses.  I'm sad that we couldn't make the trip now that we made 50 years ago, plus the world has real problems to solve, like the air, the water, and the access to food for all.  We don't need to spend time on egotistic walls and unrelenting tantrums.  We need to return, at the least, to being able to hug each other.  I'm grateful for friends, family and others who are keeping their eyes and hearts focused on a future filled with healing for each of us.  Ann