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Grandma Takes on Daycare

Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-coloring-art-with-crayons-159579/ Who Would Have Thunk It!!’ For many reasons, I recently came off a stint as a dog-walking volunteer at our local shelter, which didn’t fit my mojo. The dogs were not one of them. In the meantime, I’d been visiting my granddaughter at her daycare center and one day, one of the teachers in her baby room asked…

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Pigeons as Pets

It’s no surprise that pigeons get a bad rap. They are called dirty, the rats of the sky, disease spreaders, and more. The truth is that these are lovely, sociable, and highly intelligent creatures! I once had a pet pigeon that I named Oroville. We determined that he was indeed a “he,” as we never found any errant eggs hiding in his cage. He was given to me by a man who raced pigeons, and about…

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Proud Women

Happy after the 4th of July day! We went to an enlightening party yesterday for a combined 4th and my son’s 40th birthday! They have a ton of friends, all with kids, so their beautiful backyard pool was filled with them, as well as with their moms. Now here comes the point of this little article. A good number of the moms were quite curvy and were clearly proud and confident in their voluptuous…

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Pope Paul Speaks

So the other day I got this text message that started with, “Hi. I’m Gemini,” that went on to briefly introduce itself as a way to automatically generate and respond to my text messages. Gemini is an artificial intelligence tool offered by none other than Google! Since it’s a Google product, it can infiltrate and work with all Google products: Gemini comes in both free and paid versions. The free…

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The Tanks

This is a long one, but a story that is based on truth and one I feel compelled to tell now that summer is here. I hope you enjoy it. Empty behemoths, arising in the middle of the woods, hidden from the city below. Today, they are useless, serving only as a quasi-canvas for local Andy Warhol and Picasso-wanna-bes and a refuge for the occasional homeless person. I hike to them exactly 3 times…

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An Ode to Spring (not...)

It’s spring — Really?Someone forgot to tell The drooping, budless forsythia, dogwood, and cherry trees,The lackluster trees and sadly slumping tulipsBlame the weatherperson, Who promised something betterThan the inches of rain flooding my basement.And tomorrow? Back to the snow we didn’t have all winter.Such is the world,A backward, forward, upside down messThat makes no sense,Just like spring…

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Birds of a Feather

Oh for the joys of a lazy Sunday morning after a night of big booming storms. Now we relish the calm – and the coolness. So do my beloved cockatiels who are at last settled after a week of being shuttled here and there as we rearranged the household while moving my 27-year-old daughter out (at last!!) and re-converted her room back into my study. My tiels stopped eating for a few days and my…

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Ducks in the Pool

They’re back! And when they arrive, it’s with a big splash!  Who is “they”? One of the true and delightful rites of early spring in my life is the arrival of the male and female ducks who unfailingly land and plop down in the water-filled cover of our neighbor’s above-ground pool. It’s going on 10 years that I’ve “experienced” them. Sadly, the average lifespan of a duck is less than 10 years,…

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A View From 1970

As rain pelted on our windows, the temperature also plummeted and brought with it a deluge of gropple that coated the grass. This is spring. Ha!! In other words, it was indoor time. Feeling bored and restless, I dug through some old files and stuff, and came across this little piece I wrote back in 1970! It’s certainly not as appropriate today, but I thought I’d share its raw simplicity with…

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Meditating with my Horse in Spring

I went to see my 30-year-old horse yesterday. His name is Buzzy; he’s a retired Standardbred racehorse, and I’ve had him since he was 8. Yesterday was a lovely April Fools Day with the temperatures in the mid-50s under a sunny sky in a part of the country where 10 inches of snow have been known to fall in May. Today I joined Buzzy in the small lean-to in his also small corral, picking my way…

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Losing a Beloved Fur Friend

Toys, untouched now, scattered across the floor.Bowl, crusty with dried, uneaten food.Leash hangs, unused — yesterday, today, tomorrow.A deathlike grip on silence fills this place that is no longer a home.The little life I fed, walked, played and cuddled with for 12 yearsTook a different path, a journey where life is forever snuffed. This goodbye is the worst — the pain is excruciating, much…

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10 posts!

[finjasbone]

When You Were a Kid

Remember when you were a kid and all the old people in your life said, “Back when I was a kid…”? Back When I swore I would never say that, but here goes – I believe my childhood was about as good as it gets and far better than that of today’s kids – for myriad reasons, I was a child in the latter 1950s and the 1960s. Life was simple compared to life today. Phones back then had no dials or…

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Plastic Hazards for Pets

You know those little plastic things you have to pull off of milk and other cartons to open them? Everytime I pull off one of those things, I get angry thinking of all the harm just that little piece of plastic can potentially do to both domestic pets and wildlife. And then there are the myriad other plastic hazards that are part of our everyday life! I feel guilty that I do not stop using the…

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To Cell or Not to Cell

I had a disturbing “thing” happen the other day. Now, first, a caveat. I have a smartphone, I use it, but I really don’t like it. My digital dinosaur preference is my laptop. The smartphone is a necessity, I admit, but when it comes to long text conversations, or other cellphone input requirements, I’m off to my laptop. Now, a few notes about me. I have trouble keeping my fingers from “dancing”…