I will not mention the Barn

I see no barn.

One of the things I resolved to do after I retired was to go through all the books in the house and get them listed on ABEbook.com to sell. It will surely take me quite a while to get them all entered in the database, but I started yesterday, after doing a quick troll around the bedroom. Just from there, 200+ books. I guess we probably have 2000 or more books, about half and half paperback and hardbound. They're squirreled away in every conceivable nook and cranny, lining the halls, in the attic. And at some point I thought WHY? Why do the four of us keep all the old books even when they are edging us out of our own house? Oh sure, there are favorites we read over and over, but honestly, I can't remember ever reading some of them, although I surely did. And we shared them with others, of course. I guess since I read about one book every day or so, I does add up, and we've been in this house 27 years this month. Anyway, lots of mystery, science fiction, fantasy, military history, humor, and on and on will be posted there, I'll put a link here as soon as I figure out how to do that.

The puppies are growing and growing. We took Maggie, who just turned 5 months old, to get her last shots, and she gained 13 pounds since last month and now weighs 56. Raven, the black Newfy, is now 10 months old and I would guess is 90 pounds or so. When they get to chasing each other in the yard, I must be sure I'm not in their path, because bumping into me knocks me over, as you might expect. But they are so sweet, and now that the awful housetraining is over, not much work. Maggie is still not good on going down stairs, but for now that isn't a problem since they go in and out at ground level. They both need a good brushing, rolling around in the yard has them full of tiny burrs. I may take them to be groomed, since they need baths too...

Part of this past weekend I spent dyeing. No, not my hair (Grey? who me?)but my underwear. Anymore I hate to buy bras - does anyone like that? - and what gets me is that even though the bra is totally intact, not stretched out, it will eventually look so bad you'd hate to have an accident and have anyone see! They seem to pick up color from jeans or whatever, and get dingy and discolored no matter how I bleach or treat them in the wash. Folks used to routinely dye things at home, but at least here I had to look high and low to find fabric dye, and didn't get much choice of color either. But I picked royal blue, and all the undies came out lovely, if not their original colors. It reminded me of tye-die days in the 60s, god it made a mess. And either the fabric content wasn't right, or the dye wasn't, because after all that work they faded really fast and had to be washed all by themselves. We didn't have a washer at home for most of my childhood, and never did get a dryer, so washing clothes was a fairly big undertaking, getting the right change, going to the laundromat, or hanging things out on the line and hoping you didn't forget them overnight or in the rain. Now my daughter thinks nothing of doing a load with a single shirt. And yes, I know, not energy wise. But as long as I'm not doing it...
I suppose those tie-dyed shirts are made in China now, and they don't worry about the toxic dyes, either for them or for us...

ARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Tonight the post here will be mercifully short.

If you've been following along, we have been relentlessly making progress on the new barn for our three spoiled horses since JULY.

The first thing we did after the exterior was finished was run the water lines--in late July.

The last thing we did yesterday was paint the cement floor of the tack room.

Tonight, in the house, we heard the water running..running..running...and we didn't have any water in the house turned on.

Ran to the barn to see water shooting like a geyser OUT of the cement floor where the frost free hydrant is connected.

OUT OF THE CEMENT

The water has been turned on down there for 10 weeks!

Whatever broke is somewhere UNDER THE FINISHED BARN.

Drugs. Need drugs.

Owww

WAIT!! I know this looks really rude, but truly I'm not giving you all the bird. I'm just showing you the BIG blood blister I have on the tip of my middle finger, proof of my unswerving devotion to the care of my equine family. Yes, I actually, for the first time in years, cleaned the three horse stalls all by myself! Not that it doesn't get done, but my strong handsome son has done all the shoveling since that fateful day back when he was 15 or so and asked his dad, within my hearing and while I was ankle deep in horse pucky, if there was something he could do to earn some money? I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. He had a firm grip on that pitchfork before he'd finished the question. He's 26 now and has been shoveling ever since. He also is staunch in his resolve to never have horses of his own, because they're "too much work". Imagine that! Anyway, what with all the recent barn building, the horses haven't been in their stalls much through this summer, but now we are back in the swing of things, and they spend days out and nights in, and thus, dirty stalls. I have been conscientiously picking the stalls out daily, partly because it's a new barn, and partly because we didn't have any sawdust/wood shavings bedding material to spare. So today I had planned on just tidying up the stalls, but we finally got bedding delivered and so I went ahead and stripped the stalls completely. The middle finger thing is a result of using a big shovel to scoop up the bedding. As I lifted the shovel, I put my hand at the juncture of the scoop part and the handle on the shovel; and at that moment, the tiny looseness in the fit between the two parts pinched my finger. Jeez that hurt! The entire tip of my finger is numb, and everyone here is telling me to poke a needle in the blister. My response? Uh, no? As it is at least it can't get infected, and it will doubtless break on its own. And isn't it cool that I get a legitimate reason to show everyone the bird??

Hereafter, gloves. And check out that manicure, huh?

Will try to post every day for November

I think doing this is going to be harder than I think, but what the hey. So far today my major accomplishment has been a trip to Wally World for dog food and bread. Guess which one costs more? It is a beautiful fall day here in WV, right now the sky has that golden tone which makes the fall foliage pop. I grew up in Miami FL, the land of perpetual sunshine and skin cancer, and never saw changing seasons until I left home in 1968. A good bit of time was spent in San Francisco, where the seasons are reversed, brown and dry in the spring, green and flowered in the fall. In between is fog season. I could always spot the tourists in downtown SF, they were the ones shivering on the corners in shorts while they waited for the cable car. Because after all, doesn't California = sunshine? But I'll take fog any day over eggs-frying-on-the-sidewalk weather.

You see? It's day two of NaBloPoMo and already I'm reduced to talking about the weather. Please bear with me, I promise to jump-start my brain before tomorrow.

Hello-ween

Last night was trick-or-treating here (you probably already knew that, huh?) and every single year since my kids got too old to go themselves (or when they hit 6 feet tall, whichever happened first) I have been In Charge of the Handing Out of the Candy. But last night I was in the middle of an intense part of the horror/thriller book I am reading (appropriate for the night, yes?) by Peter Straub called Mr. X. If you're not familiar with Straub, you will perhaps get my drift when I tell you that he and Stephen King co-wrote one or more books. Anyway, I wanted my DH to take over the candy duty. You'd have thought I'd asked him to go buy Tampax. He's all "Me? Me? But you always do it..." to which I replied only with a raised eyebrow. So the hour arrives, and he puts TWO chairs outside on the porch and wheedles me into lending moral support. Like maybe he'll do it WRONG, hand out a gummy bear to a kid with braces, I don't know. He actually stood BEHIND me and reached over me to drop the candy in the sticky little bags. When I pointed this out, he said he was "cold". But one little tyke noticed a difference this year. He looks at the proffered goody, squints suspiciously at the DH and proclaims loudly "SHE always gave us a HANDFUL of candy". I quickly pointed out these were bigger bars, so only one to a customer, and he nodded but looked skeptical. Alas, now our house is no longer rated "prime" in goody status. The shame.

When my kids were small, pre-pre-school, I convinced them that trick or treating was for Big Kids. (Later, when they got older, I planned to tell them it was only for Little Kids and thus avoid the whole deal). This was an easy sell in the beginning, since we lived at the end of a rural lane with no houses in sight and few kids of any age, thus no trick or treaters. Alas, when they began going to the sitter every day, her son let the (black) cat out of the bag by describing all the loot to be had for the asking, and so for several years they made the neighborhood rounds with him. The kid had a system, I'll give him that; all the meandering streets and cul de sacs he had mapped in his head so as to get the maximum number of houses in the 60 minutes allotted. I went with them, but was hopelessly turned around after the first street. My only real contribution to the effort was to tell my kids that if they forgot to say "Thank you" then *I* got the candy. They never forgot, tho it was a near thing a time or two.

Eventually, the sitter's boy, who was short and wiry, continued making the rounds even tho he was 13 or 14, he looked much younger, but my son, at 10 or 11, was closing in on 6 feet tall pretty fast. I told them that many people resent the big kids getting candy that should go to youngsters, and did they really want to go begging, or was it just getting the candy? And they said, Duh? So I said I'd buy the candy and they could save me from the months long quandry of figuring out What I Want To Be This Year, and then making same. That year, a good time was had by all.

And really, this year was OK too, all in all. Sixty seven treaters, the final tally.

A pink Dyson?

Now all I'll need is someone to use it.

UPDATE: I didn't win. Now it's back tp scrubbing on hands and knees with a brush and a bucket....(sob). As if.



Click on the above link to get your chance to win the pink Dyson, too.

OK so far

I really did have another post half written, which my computer ate. Really.

Anyway, times have moved on. The barn now has concrete flooring in the aisle and in front of the barn, and Monday starts the construction of the tack room inside so I can get all the horse stuff out of storage and back where I can actually find things again. In theory. While all of the above work has been done, I and daughter have gone and returned from the beach, vis., Rehoboth beach in Delaware. I had never been to Del. before, but had heard good things about the place and I am pleased to say they are all correct. It is by far the closest beach to here, being exactly east of here in a straight line, which of course the highways do not do. Not to worry, because even though the GPS was DOA for the entire trip, the printed directions from Yahoo travel worked fine. Don't you love how, if you enter your home address as the "starting point" that the directions include which way to turn out of your driveway, down to the corner, turn R toward...etc. Like they couldn't say, starting at where you get on the interstate....

So here is an actual photo which was taken by an utter stranger who offered to do so after seeing me taking a photo of daughter. Didn't she do a good job? Let's hear it for friendly people!!



If you click on the photo it will (I think) make it great big, so you will be able to see every inch of our pasty white skin which is currently more red than white. We ate a ton of great food, and walked miles and miles, and beachcombed and shopped 'til we dropped. There were no problems driving, everyone there was friendly and nice, I spent a lot of money and had a good time. Now back at home, things on arrival were a little bit of a shock, the day was rainy and grey and quite cool. We wanted to talk about the beach, but husband and son wanted to talk about the work on the barn, so we did, at the same time, making for a confusing conversation.

Now today is leaf raking and gutter cleaning and hay moving and other household chores, so onward, ever onward...

A little Humor

Here is a photo I found on the internet, sorry I lost the place so I could give credit. It didn't have a name, I call it ButtLite.

Gettin' better all the time...

NOT

I hate posting when I'm depressed, I know the post will read like 'whine whine whine' and most readers will go "Next!". But trying to be glib and funny and entertaining when I am really down makes me feel so phony to myself. You know, 'smile when your heart is aching, smile even though it's breaking" and so on.

Don't you hate it when you have an internet friend? or at least a contact, maybe from their blog, or a yahoo group, and you're back and forth like neighbors over the fence, until one day, they're gone. Their email address bounces. The blog is gone. You can't help but feel worried (did they die? Have a horrible tragedy in the family? Lose their job?) and YOU WILL NEVER KNOW. And you begin to think, maybe they weren't even who you thought they were, maybe they were some pimply faced teenager yucking it up at your expense until they got tired of it all and moved on. Maybe they only dropped you, you whiner, cause the gloom factor was 10+ and just reading your posts made them want to slit their wrists. You'll never know this either, but you'll wonder about it, late at night. Indeed you will.

Down time

I feel quite thoroughly overwhelmed. Between the costs of the new barn, the sweat equity, the new puppy getting sick, I'm done. I don't have the energy to do vacuuming, or grocery shopping, or, some days, get dressed. I hate it all. I wish we'd never started this. I wish someone would come by with a horse trailer and take all three horses away. I never want to smell puppy poop again. I never want to go to the vet again. I can't cope.

Barn

This is the completed EXTERIOR of the barn, taken from the back deck, with the pool at the very bottom. I took it using Photo Booth, where I sorta aim the Mac screen at the view (which I can't see) and hope for the best. It's a good thing the barn doesn't move around...The interior, alas, is one big cavernous space with a dirt floor.





And here is the new Landseer Newfoundland puppy, 2 months old, 14 pounds, her name is Magpie (or Maggie) to match her big sister Raven.





And to round it all up, here is Raven, 7 months old, 80 pounds.



We have let them have only limited visitations (hence the gate) because Raven is so rambunctious, she tends to bowl the little one over. And over. And step on her, in all the excitement. Once Maggie has gotten a little more size on her, they'll be a better match. Probably a month. Maggie's dad weighs 175 lb., her mom 140. I have never seen such huge dogs.

Meanwhile, the rest of the work on the inside of the barn is going very slowly. We rented a ditch witch to dig trenches for moving the water line from the old barn to the new location, and to dig trenches for drains from the floor sink and tack room out to the creek. I see where the word "witch" comes in. The worst of it is, even though we dug at 90 degrees across the the ground where the water line lies, we didn't cut the line. The only conclusion is that we didn't dig deep enough. In trying to go over the trench again with the digger, the front wheel dropped INTO in the ditch (during a tornado watch no less). And there it sat until the equipment rental guy came and winched it out this morning. Cost? $470 dollars for about 4 actual digging hours. And we still can't find the *%!# water line. Today the DH called a handyman guy to come look at what needs to be done, and I desperately hope he will come and agree to take it on, for something less than our entire life savings. At the rate we're going, it will be next summer before the horses have an indoor home. And the farrier comes Monday, and I am willing to bet we won't be able to catch all three beasts. Last time we tried to separate them, DH got kicked. I lay awake nights thinking of how awful things are, so that the next day I can feel tired AND depressed, the gift that keeps on giving....

two too tarred to tango

Of course this post has nothing to do with tango-ing and everything to do with being tired. The ( exterior of the ) barn will be finished by the end of the week. Right now it lacks trim, gutters, and oh yeah, a ROOF. And doors. Meanwhile the old barn demolishing goes on and on, since it seems to take us just as long to take the barn apart (so that we can re-use a fair amount of the lumber, to save $$) as it did to initially raise it. Except then, we were 20+ years younger. And I feel it in every aching joint. Never thought I'd miss my knees so much.

As a result of no roof, it has been necessary to move the hay yet again to get it under cover. I'm on a first name basis with some of it ("Hay there, you're looking a little tattered and pale, bale"). I feel guilty as hell for leaving the horses with no shelter during these daily downpours and thunderstorms, even though it's warm and the storms blow over in 15 minutes. I'm sure we will never get all the overlapping parts done, like: run the water and drain lines, then pour the concrete, THEN get a plumber to hook everything up, after we find a sink cabinet for the old sink, but the concrete will need to be painted in the tack room where the sink goes first, and the stalls can't be assembled until the floor mats are down, but first the stall floors have to be covered in crushed stone, and then tamped with a tamper which we will have to rent, after we get the crushed stone delivered and moved inside the barn after we rent a skidder, and after the floor mats are on, they have to be covered in coarse sand, which will also have to be ordered and spread, and before the horses can go in the stalls, we need to put wood shaving bedding in, which will have to be delivered, once the spot for it is concreted and a low cinder wall on three sides built. And a cover for it fabricated. And the tack room will have to be built so I can get all the tack out of the self-storage place (more $$) and don't even get me started with the electrical wiring, which must be done by a genuine electrician and inspected before the power company will run the line to the barn, once they put in a new pole. Madness, all of it, and at night I go over and over it all in my mind, trying to get it all straight chronologically. That's what the burning smell is. Fried brain.

And we get filthy on a daily basis, which means more dirty clothes, and towels, and who has time for laundry?

And we pick up the new puppy this weekend.

Anyway, that's my rant for today.

In a different vein, I have finished the Harry Potter book and found it quite satisfactory. I have a novel partly finished, and as the plot unfolds, if I need to put some twist in earlier, I go back and edit the earlier chapter. So I am in awe that J.K. Rowling figured the entire **series** out, covering 6 years and more, before book one was printed and thus beyond editing, so the continuity of the plot would be uncompromised. But you know what part made me cry? >>>>>>>>> Spoiler alert <<<<<<<<<<







It's when, all alone in the Forbidden Forest, all the battle done and friends lost, Harry held the Snitch to his lips and whispered, "I am about to die." This resonated with me in a way I couldn't have expected, and which moves me still. Because I too faced self-selected death, twice, all alone and lost in my pain. I didn't succeed, and have overcome some or most of my pain. And I am here and thus can lose myself in Hogwarts and Harry, and enjoy more and more of life. Touch wood.

Lesson Four

Here is the last lesson in the course, the topic was "light". The first is of Maybe (sis) and Willie (bro) in a rare moment of accord. In the next shot, she was bitting him.















This is a photo taken of a stained glass window in a local Morgantown house, built by W.E. Price in 1902. It is by Tiffany. I took this from the inside in the afternoon.
























I had a better shot compositionally, but the window itself was burned out. (Need a better camera, hint hint). Still this Sony Cybershot doesn't do badly for a point-and-shoot.

Lesson three

Here are the two photos I submitted for photo class lesson three, on "Framing". We were told to park the car, walk 100 steps, and take 6 photos without moving more than 5-6 steps. I went to Dorsey Knob overlook, parked and walked about 200 steps straight uphill; but it was only 100 steps going down (lol). Then I took one shot on the way out. They've been tidied in Photoshop a little to remove phone poles and a water tower. I think these two turned out well. And oh, the leafy green vine growing up so photogenically on the tree in the bottom one? Poison ivy.

In other news, the new barn is underway. Have you ever found, when you are talking to the lead man on any given project, that he explains everything, describes all the special details they take care of, etc. You think "wow I got a sharp outfit for this". This illusion lasts until the work crew shows up, and if you are so unwise as to watch them, they basically slop the thing together and split for the day. And you think, wait a minute, weren't they supposed to...? I am determined to not watch anymore. When the thing is all done, and before we sign off on the job, I'm going to go over the thing with a fine toothed comb and have them fix all those "details" before they get the final check. What do I care if they think I'm being a bit**? It's not like we'll ever see them again.

We pick up the new Newfoundland black and white puppy on Aug 4th in Ohio. Hopefully I won't break my ankle while this one is settling in and she'll bond to me instead of DH. I tried taking Raven to obedience class, but she just basically dragged me around and ignored me, so last week DH took her. The instructors actively promote the use of a "gentle leader", that's a collar that goes across the muzzle and high on the neck, the theory being that if you control the head, the body will follow. But you know what? It doesn't work all that well on big strong dogs, and we have returned to the chain collar. That is what we have used on our dogs for the last 35 years, and none of them suffered any Post Traumatic Stress, so I guess it wasn't that "cruel" but it did certainly prevent them from dragging you across the floor, on account of needing to breathe. So if it Ain't broke, don't Fix it. Oh yeah, and the "gentle leader" costs 4X what a chain collar does.

A wee bit Late

Happy Fourth of July!

This is a photo I took for the photo course lesson two, which was about "shapes". Nice for the Fourth, yes?

Puppy Update

The "puppy" will be 6 months old this week. Here are two photos of her getting some aquatic exercise.







This is easy exercise time for us, as she gets pooped pretty quickly and will take a nap as soon as we dry her off. Of course, the pool filter gets a little hairy. And you'd think she would smell better, but no. Her coat is so dense and oily that she isn't even completely wet when she is done swimming. Kinda like a duck, only bigger! Around 75 pounds. now.

And we pick up puppy #2 the first of August (what was I thinking??)

Summer nearly over

When I was a kid, to me, "summer" lasted from the day school was over to when school started again in September. So I can remember being puzzled when my grandmother would sigh and say, "Fourth of July already. Summer is nearly over." I'd think, What??? How silly! But in the fullness of time, I understand; it seems like it is the fourth, then Wham! it's Labor Day, time to cover the pool and rake leaves. Of course, *I* don't have grandchildren to impress with my wisdom. Phooey.

We are building a new barn for the horses. Our once-charming wooden barn, which we built ourselves with the help of friends and neighbors some 20+ years ago, now looks like a derelict slum-barn. Wood is weathered, chewed, or patched. Roof is bad, those adorable Dutch doors hang all crooked (because the horses beat on them when they are bored) and the entire thing is too small. So, we will soon have a 36' x 40' metal post building, pre-fab stalls with *sliding* doors and grillwork all around, and a heated tack room and workshop. Plus a much enlarged hay storage area, which will make for a smoother winter at the least. But it is very complicated. One guy to do the site prep and gravel the road to the barn (behind the house rather than beside, which will certainly thrill the neighbors across the road), the power company to install a new line and pole to the barn (for which we had to cut down 5 scraggly trees), an electrician for the wiring, a plumber for the water, a paving company to pour the cement in part of the barn, getting the stalls assembled (maybe we can do that), and at the very end, dismantling the old barn and hauling it away. We'll reuse some of the wood in it, but so much of it is horse-chewed, it can only be used if the bad parts are cut out. We are going to be busy. Besides cutting down the trees (and getting poison ivy, ick!), we rehung several gates and moved the fencing to accomodate them. The barn guy said, did we think he could get a tractor-trailer in there? We looked at each other and in one voice said "NO". Tiny little one lane road with a sharp bend has defeated many a modular home trying to squeeze past. You have only to look at the creases in the phone pole at the bend to believe.

Oh yeah, we also must assemble a storage shed for the mowers, etc. outside the fence.

On another topic, the on-line photo class has been fun so far. The first assignment involved making something inanimate appear alive. Here is the photo I submitted









and also this one








Both of them are of an alabaster statuette about 10 inches tall. Most of the light was supplied by flashlights.

Memorial Day

Well, I'm a few days late, but anyway...

We went put to flowers on the four graves in Braxton County the weekend before Memorial Day, and while we were there, we went out to the old farmhouse. I'm amazed it is still standing, it isn't safe to even enter now. Here is the "now" photo














and here is a photo taken in 1904 when the house had just been completed. The husband and wife are my greatgrandparents, and the tall boy is my grandfather.




It gives me a chill, to see how heavy the hand of Time has been, not only on the farmhouse, but on the family. Only two left of my mom's generation; the eight cousins of my generation, seven living since my sister died, mostly never see each other, except at funerals.

I'm feeling really blue tonight, I have other things to write, but not tonight.

Update

I feel really old right now. Bad enough that I broke my ankle 10 weeks ago, but around 4 weeks ago I messed up my knee trying to manouver my cam boot and foot into the car when the car parked next to us made fully opening my door impossible. Yesterday I went to the ortho doc who checked my knee, and found arthritic changes. He gave me a cortisone and novocaine shot behind the knee, and it actually feels pretty good now. At least I haven't had to go to bed at night with an ice pack strapped to my knee. However, last night my right elbow began an aching/numbing thingy, I guess I must resign myself to slowly falling apart, one joint at a time.

The hub was been bitten by the golf bug recently when he worked at a charity golf tournament. I tried to get him interested in golf 30+ years ago when we lived in San Fran, and got him a gift certificate for lessons, but for whatever reason it didn't ring his bell then. I think he'll enjoy it now that he has time to spare. I, personally, would rather watch grass grow, but to each his own.

I think #1 son has actually gotten a job, full time with benefits, yeah!! It isn't the greatest pay in the world, but at least he's not flipping burgers. I thought, when he was in school, that with a degree in geology a job would be pretty easy to find, but no. There were as many as 300 applicants for one entry-level position he applied for, and although he got an interview, of course they picked someone with 10 years of experience. You hear all the time about the jobless rate falling, but my guess is that most of them are in the "service" area (burger flipping, et al.) and not in professional jobs, where I suppose a lot of the jobs are now outsourced to India or wherever. Both son and daughter can at least still live at home, because for sure you can't support yourself around here for $8 / hour.

I've been doing some knitting, and it hasn't helped with the joint problems, let me tell you. Plus, I think I would do much better if I could actually see; at no position in the graduated bifocals are my hands in focus. Sigh. I think it's ironic that now that I have the time to do leisurely hobbies, I lack the physical wherewithall to do them. If I want to feel like a total blob I'll have to try riding again, that will certainly send a message to my bones that Elvis has left the building.

It's a short trip...

The Newfoundland puppy is driving me crazy. Her latest thing is the swimming pool. We fully intend letting her swim, because she clearly enjoys water...a lot. But our pool isn't open yet; we typically open it around Memorial Day. So right now it has the winter cover on it, replete with puddled water and leaf debris. We have a deck all the way around it, and several days ago Raven launched herself off the deck and into the icky water on the cover. The cover is not intended to support a cavorting dog weighing 50 pounds (at 17 weeks), and if she were to go through the cover she would surely drown before we could tear the cover off, and find her in the mucky water. So we stretched that orange "warning" plastic fencing across the deck to block the pool, but still allow her to go from the back porch out to the fenced yard. The orange fencing is also upheld by two sawhorses, besides being attached to the deck railing. So what did she do? She just launched herself at the fence and trampled it underfoot, then plunged once again into the pool. The barrier lasted about 2 hours. And then she is not only wet, but smells like The Swamp Thing. Again. So this weekend the plan is to add to the deck railing by building an extension all the way across the deck blocking the pool, with a gate. It will be made of wood to match the rest of the railing, and it will be a nuisance because it will cross the area where we hang the hammock, meaning it must be moved too.

The cats are really bent out of shape too, even though Raven just wants to play. If she catches one of them unaware, she polishes them with a big ole lick and lots of dog spit. It has been an ongoing challenge to put their dry food where they can go and she can't; worst of all are the water bowls, since Raven pretty much inhales all the water she can reach. One of the cats (I'm not certain which, although I have my suspicions) showed her extreme displeasure by peeing on the dining table!!!!! At the time, one of the cameras was on it, and it got christened too, which is how I found about it. And we wanted pets for what??

I have signed up for an on-line photography course starting June 6th. It is a composition class, and the students upload their photos for the instructor and the other enrolled students to critique. There are 4 lessons in all, and 11 days to complete each one. I now have a decent digital camera (a Sony Cybershot), and I'm looking forward to doing this. I'll share the assignments and maybe my photos here as i go. My daughter wants to take a beginning photo class, and checked with the local Vo-Tech and the journalism dept at WVU, but both of them have discarded their black-and-white darkroom work and changed to digital only. Most digital cameras cannot be used in a manual mode that allows you to control BOTH aperature and exposure, and even then focus is auto. This means basically, that if you want a very shallow depth-of-field, where your subject is in focus but everything behind is not, you pretty much can't do it unless the background is *very* distant indeed. And trying to take a panning shot of an object in motion is impossible, as it drives the autofocus nuts. It will all be blurry, instead of a sharp subject against a streaked background. And I don't know how you can gain an understanding of f-stop and depth-of-field when you can't control the aperature at all. Sigh. This is another instance where the old was better than the new, and where technology takes the place of actually knowing what you're doing.

Battery power low, must close! Photo soon.