Women Over Fifty

I know how to do this task, it’s just been a long time since I’ve done it.  The task is to prepare Easter dinner.  When the kids were small, it was a problem just getting them to eat something after having gorged on their Easter treats all day.  It didn’t matter what I fixed.  They didn’t want to eat it.  My husband and I were hungry, and being parents, we knew we needed to get some real food into them that day.

Those days are gone and tomorrow we are expected our granddaughter, who lives nearby, and A FRIEND for dinner.  I want to make it a good meal for all of us.

By the time I bought a ham, there were no little pieces in sight - except for ham slices.  Does the butcher do that on purpose?  He knows I’ll buy a 10-pound ham to feed four people because it’s the best looking piece of ham left.  Butchers can be very clever at selling their meats.

Then there’s the potato salad.  I chose that, not only because it goes well with ham, but also because my husband will sometimes take that task over and make it himself.  It can also be made the day before and be better for it.

I’ve been making lists of what needs to be done.  This blog isn’t on it. So, it’s time to quit writing and become grandmotherly and housewifey.

Marilynne

When is it too much advertising?  That’s a big question, isn’t it?  I’ve been watching Today.com growing and adding the ads.  Ads are beginning to be all over our blogs.  We add ads, they add ads.  When is it enough?  When does your blog become one of those places where your eye doesn’t know where to rest.  When you are too impatient to stop and find the blog itself and read it?  I think Today.com is approaching that point.

For a while every time I logged in a huge ugly popup appeared in my face.  I couldn’t wait to get rid of it.  I was annoyed.  Did this happen to you too? I hope no one responded positively to it.  Eventually I came to know that they want to sell us advertising.

If I understand this right, we are not only the lure for people to come to Today.com, but we ourselves are also seen as potential customers.  If I come and buy something from your site, then maybe you’ll come and buy something from my site - is that how it’s supposed to work?  I can’t see it happening.

Of all the hundreds of people who read my site daily, how many of them stop and make a comment?  Only a few, and most of the comments come from family or bloggers whose sites I visit (and leave comments at).

Early in the game I threatened to stop blogging if Today.com didn’t get the ads for Asian women (complete with pictures) off my blog.  They say they have no control over it.  Other people collect the ads for our blogs.  Today.com just allows them to advertise here.   Makes you want to squirm, doesn’t it?

Then they let us choose our own ads.  We can choose our own Product Affiliate Links.  I don’t mind that so much.  I choose one that fits with the topic of the day.  Sometimes, like today, I lard my blog with them, just to break up the words.

So, for free blogging I put up with the ads.  I even put suggestive tags on each post so I can lure certain types of advertisers to my site.

I really dislike the photo ads that are on the blogs sometimes.  The ones that keep catching your eye while you try to read.  I don’t go to a blog so I can read the ads.  I go to read the blog and I don’t like to be distracted.  They usually are mildly offensive to me, such as offering a dating service.  I don’t need a dating service, thank you so get off my blog.

My blog, that’s the kick.  I feel possessive about my blog.  I forget that Today.com has to pay the bills, mine included.

Marilynne

P.S.  I think I overloaded the poor link.  Still, I think you get the point.

My first picture shows my usual self:  play clothes, braids, nothing special as a kid.  I always think this picture looks like the My Gang kids - revised.  From left to right:  Elaine, me, my brother, and Norma.  Elaine and Norma’s father ran the pub/restaurant on the corner.  Since the kids weren’t allowed in the bar and the mother ran the restaurant, Elaine and Norma were at our house a lot.

I once went inside their three-story home - the house was over the bar and restaurant.  It was spotlessly clean.  We walked carefully and quietly through the house to Elaine’s room.  In a large trunk she showed me her dolls:  each perfection in its original box, its clothes without dirt or rips.  I took on out of the box.  Elaine said “Careful, don’t get it dirty.”

The next photos are of me dressed up for Easter.  You can see why Easter was a lot different from every day.  It must have been a tradition to take our pictures on Easter.  My hair is naturally fine and straight.  My Mom would put it up in curlers fashioned from the wire strips that closed coffee bags.  It hurt when she pulled them out.

Marilynne

I love our National Parks, our State Parks, any park, especially the ones that are full of trees.  Like the California Redwoods.  I love trees.  I love being in a forest.

Part of the reason we chose our current house  was the trees.  Between the house and the road there was a thick stand of eucalyptus.  They were young trees, but growing thickly together.  Rumor has it that the previous owner got some cheap mulch and it sprouted eucalyptus trees.  It doesn’t matter.  I loved that thick screen of trees.

In the southeast corner of the next door property there were 6 or 7 mature eucalyptus trees.  They weren’t our trees, but they crowded our property so they felt like our trees.

In the northeast corner, next to the neighbor’s house there was another thick stand of young eucalyptus trees - probably from the same mulch.

When you entered our driveway, you drove through these trees to the surprise of lawn and the house.  From the house you couldn’t see the road.  Delivery trucks had a very difficult time finding us.

One by one our trees have fallen to disease or the ministrations of the gas and electric company.  When the gas and electric company took down the young eucaluptus because they threatened their power lines, I counted 47 stumps.  In return for my loss, the gas and electric company gave me three trees, nearly as tall as me, not threatening the power lines.  We had to plant them.  They have not thrived.

The gas and electric company also has its eye on an old ash tree.  Understand, that in Southern California, almost any tree is valued.  I value this old ash.  It’s trunk is thick.  Its branches are many and they stand tall.  When the tree trimmers come, I have to watch them or they’ll put a huge bite mark in the tree.  They just carve out space for the lines.  I am not fond of bite marks in my trees so I watch them carefully until they do a more graceful trim.

Today, the gas and electric company was here to take down two trees: one an ugly olive tree that stood at the entrance to our drive, the other the last of our eucalyptus trees.  The eucalyptus trees had been hit by a bug infestation and died - except for this one.  However, it now has a crack going maybe fifteen feet up the middle of the tree.  I can’t have it in my yard while I wait for it to fall.  Thankfully, for the budget at least, it could endanger the power lines if it fell.  They will cut it down.

The olive tree is now interesting-looking wood for the fireplace.  They began to take down the eucaluptus tree and quit.  It would seem that there is a birds nest in the top of the tree with eggs or baby birds in it.  The tree trimmer won’t take it down until the birds leave the nest.   He has trimmed the tree so it’s fairly safe, but I wouldn’t say it’s attractive.

I think the birds are crows - he calls them ravens - and I don’t think the world will miss a few crows growing up.  In our neighborhood with its many crows we might actually appreciate a few less crows.  It’s not just the tree trimmer’s personal  feelings though.  He says there’s a $25,000 fine for taking down a bird nest that has eggs or baby birds in it.  So we wait.

To my secret glee, his mulcher broke down and he won’t be back until it’s fixed.  Maybe I can convince the neighborhood hawks that there’s good eating in the top of that tree.   They can’t fine hawks, can they?

Marilynne

I’ve never been sure how many sailing boats Annie has at any one time.  I know the number was around five (including a motor boat) when she was offered the Fury.  The picture is of Annie, taken in Queensland.  She just loves boats, whether sailing around in Precious or scooting around in the bay with Megan her Australian Shepherd in the little dinghy she named the Hot Yot, she is a happy lady.  She is called the Scuz Mum of the ScuzBums and editor of their newsletter.  The ScuzBums are a group of people who build, and/or admire small boats.

Annie is also a plein-air painter, specializing in painting small boats at wooden boat festivals and other marine scenes.  So, she was no stranger to wooden boats when a man in Oregon wrote to her via the ScuzBum Newsletter inquiring if anyone would like to own an old wooden skiff.

Here she is with her husband sailing her boat Precious in San Diego Bay.  If she isn’t out sailing, she’s probably sitting on one of her boats with one of her Aussie dogs.

Annie called the man about the skiff, thinking she wanted to tell a little more about the boat before she placed the ad in the newsletter.

They hit it off and the man decided that Annie should have the skiff.  The man was getting older and he was not able to take the skiff out on the water any longer.  It had been in storage for 20 years.  He wanted to give it to someone who would love and care for as much as he did.

He decided to give the boat to Annie.  Annie insisted she had plenty of boats but he insisted that she was the one.  It wasn’t just a matter of giving it to her.  There was the matter of driving from San Diego to Oregon to get the boat, trailer it home,  and find a place to park it when she got it here.  You will remember she was living in a town-house-complex with two parking spaces for each house and no hanging out into the road.

Though the man assured Annie that the skiff was in good shape, she could imagine what she’d find - a once wonderful skiff that had been sitting around in storage for twenty years with rot and neglect all over.  Annie wasn’t sure she wanted to take it on.  But - by now you should know how Annie feels about sail boats.  She says she felt a strange compulsion - like the boat wanted her to own it and to take it out in the water again.

After gaining her husband’s approval (How ever did she do that?) Annie set out for Oregon with her dog Meggie for company, driving the more than a thousand miles up the Pacific Coast to Oregon.

Here’s a picture of Annie and Meggie in the Hot Yot.  Annie painted the boat herself.

So Annie and Meggie headed north along the coast sometimes visiting with friends, sometimes stopping to explore the beaches, and eventually arriving in Oregon, a little nervous about seeing the skiff.

Annie loved the skiff on sight.  It had an unusual construction and it was in exceptional condition.  This old man, named Elmer, had certainly loved and cared for it.  He showed her how to get it ready for sailing while Annie tried hard to memorize everything.  It was a fine boat - an exceptional boat to just have given to you.  Annie didn’t take it home right away.  She had to learn how to sail it.

More tomorrow.

Marilynne

Thanks for Roz of Life in Australia for awarding me with the Life is Grand Award.  Does she feel bad because I lost my credit cards in Australia?  Think of all the shopping I missed.

I am supposed to list five reasons why I think life is grand:

1. Life is grand because I have a loving family and many friends.
2. Life is grand because I blog with people who aren’t trying to cut me off at the knees and therefore be the best in the competition.  The people I blog with are interesting, supportive, genuinely nice people.  Life is grand because we know each other.
3. Life is grand because the sun is shining and the weeds are growing so fast the bunnies can’t keep up with them.  (Our wild bunnies just love the broad bladed weeds.)
4. Life is grand because my computer takes me out into the world every day and I love it.
5. Life is grand because I love my readers, and apparently they like what I write enough to stop by often.

Now I need to award the Life is Grand symbol to the following people.  I’m going to list some blogs you might not know because I think you might like them.

1. The Skiff Song Web site because Annie has such a great story to tell and you’d like to hear it.
2. The Mysterious Galaxy online because independent book stores cater to your tastes and this book store caters to mine.  This award is for all the independent book stores out there.
3. Yahoo News for their article “Can Web site offer homeless man hope?” for great reporting on a problem none of us understand.  Look at the videos to get the full effect.
4. To Animation vs Animator for a fine sense of fun that he shares with us all.
5. To Peace Love and Happiness who just puts out a good blog.

I hope you enjoy visiting these blogs and web sites.  I know it’s unusual to include web sites, but it’s what I wanted to do today.

Marilynne

Annie herself has agreed to tell us the story about her boat:  how she came to own it and what she did with it.  You’ll enjoy the adventure, but today she needs to celebrate her husband’s birthday.

I met Annie when I was living in a townhouse in San Diego.  She and her husband lived in the unit on the end just two houses down.  People liked living in this place and many had bought their townhome new and still lived there.  Annie and her husband had been the new ones until we arrived.

Annie loves Australian shepherds.  Her dog Meggie was so charming that I absolutely fell in love with her.  Meggie has passed on, but she has owned many Australian shepherd dogs, some of which she rescued from the pound.

Annie loves boats.  She spent many hours on her little boat Precious, a small wooden sailboat, painting, polishing, and enjoying just being on the water.   The boat above is the Fury, the boat that’s featured in her story.  Let’s just let Annie tell her story to us - sorry, it will have to be tomorrow.

Marilynne

I didn’t take a lot of pictures in Melbourne because I was upset.  We were in a hotel in Melbourne and I couldn’t pay the bill.  I had lost our Visa Card - probably in Cairns.   My husband had a Visa Card, but he wasn’t there at the moment.  I had agreed to register us at the motel and he was elsewhere taking care of other business.

The hotel kindly let us have our room and I sat on the bed taking apart first my purse, then our luggage, one piece at a time.  No matter how many times I went through it, the little case with my plastic cards wasn’t there.

I was devastated!  I just don’t make mistakes like that.  Ever.  Also missing were my drivers license, my ATM cards, and my phone cards.  What a disaster!

Facing my husband and telling him I’d made a stupid mistake was really hard.  Instead of joining my self-flagellation, he just searched for himself, then helped me decide what to do.

First we called Visa.  They had an office in Melbourne for which I was grateful, but it was Friday evening and they were closed until Monday.  Still, there was a person there to talk to me.  “Do you have enough cash to last until Monday.” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, “but we have to pay the hotel bill and I’ve only got my husband’s Visa card.  If you cancel it now, we won’t be able to use it for the hotel.”

“Go to the desk and pay for as many nights as you need.” she said while taking the hotel’s information.  I’ll allow that to go through.  Then your card will be canceled and you won’t be able to use it.”  She took a list of the places we knew we had used the card.  Then she told us a new card would be ready on Monday.

“We’re flying out on Monday.” I told her.  “We’ll probably be OK until we get home.”  So, it was agreed that they would send us a new Visa card once they knew we were home.  Each bill for a few months would contain charges that we knew we had made, and another list of charges they thought were probably fraudulent.  They were trusting us to be fair about what we had charged and what we had not.  What a relief!  I could tell we weren’t the first travelers who had lost a credit card.  And how nice!  We never saw an unauthorized charge on that card.

So, we knew we had enough money to eat on, the hotel bill would go on the Visa, and we could also charge meals in their restaurant to our hotel bill.  We were left with enough money, but not a lot extra.  The first thing we cut out was the tour we had booked to see the fairy penguins.  AWWWWW!!!  It hurt.

Our motel was downtown and on the downtown bus line.  The bus was free or a dollar, I don’t remember which.  So, we knew we could go around on the bus and see Melbourne’s downtown.  With a little walking, we also were able to see the Royal Botanical Gardens (not the proper title, but close).  Not having the credit card slowed us down and we saw things we wouldn’t have spent a lot of time on.  Like the Botanical Gardens.  They were lovely.  They were full of things Australian, and therefore interesting to a tourist’s eyes.  Somewhere in the center of the gardens was a tea house, of sorts, where I remember having a wonderful salad and, you’ve got it, Devonshire Tea.  It was a strange lunch, but we were leaving Australia soon and I granted myself this indulgence.

We were hearing a lot of noise in one part of the gardens and seeing birds fly up in great numbers.  What was going on there?  It was a very fragrant part of the gardens.  You can contribute that to the large number of fruit bats, not birds, that were trying to sleep through the afternoon.  The children would wait until the bats settled down, hanging upside down in the trees.  Then they would run through the trail making a great deal of noise.  The bats would fly up out of the trees where we could get a good look at them, then settle down again until the children wanted to wake them up.  You’d think the bats would just find another home, wouldn’t you, but apparently they liked living there.

Another time, I took the free bus and  just got off when I saw something coming up that I wanted to see.  That’s how I came to be inside the library.  It was starting to rain and I wanted to go somewhere inside.  A big library seemed like an ideal place.

It was flat out gorgeous.  The architecture, itself, was old English style with a lofty rotunda, lots of carvings, lots of books, and awe inspiring views from every perch.  It’s the kind of a library where you whisper and try to walk quietly.  I wasn’t allowed to take pictures there, so you’ll have to go see the library in downtown Melbourne if you have a chance.

As a part of the library, or close to it, there was a museum.  I paid my small fee and went in to look.  It was as wonderful as the library but in a different way.  I was drawn to an exhibit where aborigine elders had told their stories into tape recorders.  Their voices were there to hear for all generations.  I heard an aborigine version of the invasion of Australia by Japan.  I had no idea Japan had done this.  The story was mixed up with other happenings in this woman’s life and so the time line was non existent.  It was just how she remembered things.  The part of her story that I remember was a telling of how they had repelled the Japanese invaders by tricking them.  True?  I don’t know, but it was interesting to hear the stories.

Another stop on the bus line was at a great indoor shopping center that was built around an old building of some sort.  It was fun to go through the shops, and not so fun to be without my credit card and afraid to spend much money.  I finally saw Coogi sweaters in cotton instead of wool.  I really wanted that sweater, but I couldn’t spend the money.  I mourned that sweater for months, until I began seeing a cheap version in the US.  That cured me.

Soon we were back on our Quantas airplane  headed for home via New Zealand.  We had been visiting for a month and we were ready to go home.  It was frustrating to know that we had seen only a small part of Australia.  When I said this to a neighbor back home, she asked what took us so long.  She had “seen” Australia and New Zealand in two weeks on a tour.

Personally, I wish we could return as see more.

• I’d like to drive the road along the southern coast of Australia.
• If not the road, take the train across the southern part
• I’d like to see Darwin
• I’d like to see Perth
• I’d like to see Brisbane
• I’d like to see my friend Annie’s wooden boat in the maritime museum in Brisbane.  I know the story about that boat and I’ll tell you more about Annie’s boat tomorrow.

Marilynne

P.S.  The waterfall is the one we saw on our trip south of Cairns.  The sign we saw in Coober Pedy.

We rented a car and drove south from Cairns in search of the shy wild cassowaries.  Here’s a picture of one from the crocodile farm.  We were told we could see them on a certain highway about twilight.  So we took off driving on the left side of the road and getting hopelessly boggled on the traffic circles.  Fortunately there isn’t a lot of traffic on those roads, at least not on that day.

We had lots of time and decided to stretch our legs and have a look at a waterfall advertised in our tour book.  I should note here that even though we brought tour books with us, the ones we could pick up for free in the hotels were just as good and more up to date.

The waterfall was in rain forest and guess what?  It was raining.  Still, the greenery overhead offered us some shelter from the rain.  The path was deserted and there was nothing in the air but the sound of turkeys.  Turkeys?  Yes, there in the underbrush we saw any number of wild turkeys who seemed curious as to whether we would feed them, or maybe just curious.

We were pretty wet by time we found the waterfall, but it was worth it.  The waterfall was full and lovely and a good goal for two tourists looking for something not in the tour books.  Maybe we were in the mood to discover something about Australia for ourselves.

Back in the car and warm we decided to find something to eat.  Not that there was an eatery to be seen on most of that stretch of road.  We drove towards the ocean and found a little town and some food.  Then we went walking along the beach.  We saw the most extraordinary little creatures.  I never really saw more than a bit of them as they came up out of their hole and deposited a bit of sand outside, then disappeared again.  Their holes and little sand piles made circles in the sand.  They almost looked like aborigine drawings - the ones made of circles and spots.  You can see these in the header.

Soon it was time to look for cassowaries.  As night came on us, we searched the roadsides for the elusive cassowaries.  We just knew they would turn up, but they didn’t.  Not a one.  We were so disappointed.

I inserted the picture of the kangaroo just so you could see how big they can get.  That’s a small boy looking at him.

We drove back to Cairns in the dark.  Pitch black dark.  At one point my husband stopped the car, turned out the lights and told me to get out of the car.  Puzzled, I did so.  Then he pointed upwards.  There was the whole southern sky so bright and beautiful with jillions of stars I’d never seen before.  We discovered the southern cross, but we didn’t know the names of the others.   It was like being inside the Milky Way there were so many stars.

On the way back, we talked about how my husband, the land surveyor who never got lost anywhere, was always getting lost in Australia.  His sense of direction was awful.  It was pathetic.  I had always relied on him to know the way because he usually did.  He has lead me out into the bleak Mojave Desert until I could see no landmark, no building, no highway, nothing, and he would unfailingly direct us back to the road and our car.  I trust him to be able to do that.  His brain seems to work on different information than mine.

Now he was always getting lost in Australia and that bothered us both a good deal.   We wondered if he could sense magnetic north, and now it was magnetic south.  We wondered if it was because the ocean was east of us instead of west.  We wondered if the stars had something to do with it.  We had no answers.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about Melbourne.  It’s one of Australia’s English looking towns.

Marilynne

I must tell you that my most indulgent pleasure while traveling in Australia was having Devonshire Tea.  This simple delight is not available where I live, but it was available all over Australia.  It was often served as a quick food.  Well, I don’t know if you could go so far as to call it food.  Perhaps you could if you served it with fresh berries instead of jam.

This  delight is shortcake biscuit, berry jam (usually raspberry jam) and a cream over the top that I wonder might be clotted cream.  Perhaps Roz will tell us.  The cream is wonderfully rich and not at all sweet.

Devonshire Tea is served biscuit on the bottom, then a layer of jam, then the clotted cream on top.  You don’t have to eat it with tea.  You can have it with coffee if you like.  Anything else, and to me you haven’t got Devonshire Tea.

In the picture, I’m sitting in a boat, motoring around a lake on the tablelands above Cairns and having my Devonshire Tea.  It was so common for me to do this in Australia that my hubbie just had to take a picture.

Somewhere near Cairns we also came into contact with a crocodile farm.  In Australia, crocodiles are raised for meat.  However, they keep a few penned to entertain the tourists.

I stuck my camera lens through a hole in the fence so I wouldn’t have fencing in front of my picture.  It is a little unnerving to be so near to a croc and know he’s hungry.  You can see, the person feeding the croc is making certain that the croc understands that the chicken is his dinner, not the person feeding him.

After this death-defying feat we walked around the farm to see pens full of crocodiles in all sizes from babies on up.  (I’m surprised we didn’t also see a chicken ranch.)  We also saw emus, ostriches, and cassowaries as well as a few kangaroos.  I know the emus, ostriches and kangaroos are also raised as food, but I think the cassowaries were there just so we could admire them.  They are similar to an emu or an ostrich in that they’re a big gawky bird with gorgeous feathers and other parts so ugly you wonder how they get along.

Tomorrow we’ll see what else I remember about our trip.  I am amazed that I remember so much.  The pictures help.

Marilynne