Who Was That Masked Man?

I got up this morning stumbled into the kitchen, warmed a cup of coffee in the microwave, reached above it into the cupboard for a pinch of fish food—meant to put it in the aquarium before me. Instead I put it in my coffee.

Good morning.

I’m awake now.

I’m lusting for my office, but feel I ought to do a bit of house maintenance. So I take clothing out of the dryer—I try to do it fast—not possible. Something always falls on the floor. I stack the clean clothing on top of the dryer, pull out tee-shirts to straighten before then wrinkle—everyone is inside out—my habit. Fold clothes, a ton of towels, socks that don’t match, static electricity—oh man. I am not complaining, I'm so happy to have a washer and dryer in the house. In Hawaii we went to the Laundromat, and it was basically an all-day affair. (Remember the Hawaiian lady who told us, “Living as you are will make you appreciate everything.”) What a wise woman.

Finally after a bit of tidying up, I tell myself “Get thee to the office. That’s where you want to be anyway, and when the three-year-old gets up you won’t get the chance." Not complaining, just saying. While I am waiting for the computer to warm up I change the light bulb in the walk-in closet of the office--I'd been putting that off. It required getting a ladder, and a pliers. The set-screws of the glass cover were so stiff I couldn't loosen them with my fingers. Okay bulb replaced, cover mounted. I'm computing dum-de-dum. About an hour later I go to the kitchen to reheat my coffee. Crash! What the heck?!

The closet glass light cover is splattered all over the closet floor...

“Strange thing, time. It weighs most on those who have it lest. Nothing is lighter than being young with the world on your shoulders; it gives you a feeling of possibility so seductive, you know there must be something more important you could be doing than studying for exams.”

Great first paragraph in the book, Rule of Four. Don’t know if I like the book yet. The authors are smart, they have made sure I know that.

The other day I was rearranging my husband’s sock drawer and found a receipt from the Red Lobster restaurant dated 12/29/2010. At the top the waitress had written “Good luck on your book!”

I know she meant it for me. I must have been talking about my book, I don’t remember. The note, however, warmed me to my toes.

P.S. I'll clean up the glass eventually...

The Eclipse--Dancing Crescents

The garage behind the house took on a dance of shadows. Breeze blew the tree, it blew the shadows, and dancing within those shadows were tiny glowing crescents. We were having an eclipse. It was Sunday, May 20, 2012.

Why the glowing crescents? “Well,” explained Husband Dear, “it’s like a pin-hole camera.” Remember those from your school days? A hole in a box will project light from an image onto the back of the box—that is what was happening on our garage. Nature did it. (Rats! No picture.)

Husband Dear had rigged up the binoculars, using one side only, it that an ocular, not a binocular? Anyway that one lens projected an image of the sun onto a white plastic board. As Daughter Darling and I worked on a project on the back deck and Baby Darling played in water and with a bowl of ice cubes—it was a hot day—we watched the movie in the yard.

“It looks like Pac Man,” daughter said. The moon moved across the face of the sun until it had formed a crescent. Observing the sun behave in an uncommon fashion gave me a moment of fear, silly, I knew  I was observing a natural phenomenon, but guess we are used to nature behaving in prescribed ways—not taking on an eerie glow in the middle of an otherwise sunny afternoon. But then came the dancing shadows on the garage, and what fun.

By now the sun was setting behind the house so Husband Dear moved his apparatus to the driveway, and there we watched the sun slide behind Big Rock Candy Mountain. A silhouette of that mountain was also projected within the ball of the sun, only upside down—a phemononon of lenses.

Faster than a comet—well not that fast, the sun slid behind that mountain, we watched the two shadows—the mountain and the moon—come together until the sun set.

Cool, really cool. Husband Dear had the foresight to get one photo.

Sing, Sing a Song

A visiting friend said she had never seen a Meryl Streep movie—imagine! We happened to have Julie & Julia on rent from Netflick and so she saw her first Streep movie, and I saw Julie & Julia for a second time.

And then I went into total tilt—Julie Powel, played by Amy Adams, with a dead end job and a frustrating new 900 square foot apartment in Queens New York, turned to one on her favorite activities—cooking, and her chosen avocation writing, and to her hero, Julia Childs. She had a goal: to make every one of Julia Child’s 524 recipes from her book Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in 365 days.

She worked in her cubicle at the office every day, cooked every day, and blogged every day. As you can imagine, she had melt-downs, made exquisite food, husband felt left out, she became obsessed. The result? A family crisis. All in all the making of a good story, and a good read. Her blog was so clever, she wrote well, she put her life and heart into it, and achieved her goal of 524 recipes in 365 days.

I went into total tilt. What in the hell am I doing blogging? I’m talking about my experiences, yes, but who cares…

Then I thought of the quote by John Fuhrman. In his book, Reject Me, I Love It. Fuhrman writes, “If you compare yourself with others, the best you can hope for is second place in their dream.” Value judging will injure your self-esteem, and your ability to give and receive. Without those, you can’t really succeed.

Okay I stand corrected.

Instead follow Kermit the Frog’s advice: “Sing Sing a Song.” (written by Joe Raposo)
Sing, sing a song
Sing out loud
Sing out strong
Sing of good things not bad
Sing of happy not sad….
Don't worry that it's not
Good enough for anyone
Else to hear
Just sing, sing a song.

Knock my Socks Off

On the way out of the library the other day, after not finding a book that grabbed me, I saw on the “Newly released” shelf a first novel by Wiley Cash entitled a land more kind than home. (Title in all small letters.)

I picked up the book because the blurb on the cover said it would “Knock my socks off.” Agents and publishers say that ad nauseam, “Knock my socks off.”  Well, I read that book in a couple of days and it did as advertised. It knocked my sock off.  I try to keep a novel going all the time, as  I want beautiful words singing in my head, but alas, now I have none—no socks either. I’m going to watch and see if a land more kind than home becomes a best-seller.  It will. I predict.

Later in the week Daughter Darling, Baby Darling and I walked down the middle of a street with no danger of being hit by a car, well maybe a 1928 fire engine. We might be run over by a Belgian Draft horse pulling an enormous wagon, come to think of it the real danger was being run over by a stroller or a wheel chair pushed by a distracted caretaker, or an electric scooter-chair driven by a sugar crazed sight-seer.  You might have guessed we were at Disneyland again.

The Matterhorn that had scaffolding and netting the last time we visited the park is now clean with freshly driven snow (not enough snow, though, it looks like summer). The bobsleds are being refurbished, so nothing visible is happening on the mountain. Walt Disney spent a week in Switzerland during the filming of his movie Third Man on the Mountain, and while there fell in love with the real Matterhorn. He sent a picture of it to his team of Imagineers, with the note: “Build this.” Imagine!

Baby Darling has taken many trips down Splash Mountain and trips down the Nile on the Jungle Cruise ride, but only in his head, and in a box down our two steps into the living room. He has been on the Jungle Cruise once, but declined another trip. Watching the people on Splash Mountain was adventurous enough, watching them fall screaming over a precipice, slide at lightning speed down a waterfall and then at the bottom hit a berm of water that courses over the log-boat and drenches the entire boat-load of people. Oh, one of my readers said they wanted to follow Fred the mouse’s adventures in Disneyland. I saw him on the back of a log on Splash Mountain, standing at the pentacle of the plunge pretending to be the Red Baron. He waved, then yelled, "Curse you Red Baron."

The Lego store on Main Street has been re-modeled, and sitting on the roof is an impressive life-sized black dragon made of Legos. It knocked my socks off. I had no camera, but got a snap on my phone, now if I can get it downloaded…Nope I can’t.

Here, I can get Tasha's pictures though--more of her wearing her "Thunder Shirt." See letter at right.

Fred Who Lives Over by Winnie the Pooh

I just discovered that Tom Hanks is going to play Walt Disney—see http://notesfromthetreehouserevisited.blogspot.com.  *

How cool is that?

Regarding Disney, as it stands now Daughter Darling, Baby Darling and I are going to Disneyland this coming Friday. We have season tickets and come June and July most of the park days will be off-limits for us, so we have to get our time in before then.  Daughter gave me an assignment—write a page about something I see there, or an impression or whatever. Hum. She thought I was driving myself cuckoo with editing my Hawaii book, and needed to have some fun—recharge my brain, halt it from becoming oatmeal.

Already with baby Darling we have played with a story about a little mouse that lives at Disneyland. Previously that little mouse was chased out of homes, chased by cats, generally not appreciated until WHAT? At Disneyland mice are revered. Disneyland all started with a mouse. Living at Disneyland the little mouse—what is his name? Fred? Okay, Fred, the mouse, found innumerable little houses where mice could set up housekeeping. He could watch people screaming on Splash Mountain, and eat popcorn and hot dogs and pickles. And Fred found a lady mouse, and moved from the little house on Storybook Lane to a bigger house by the creek over by Winnie the Pooh’s place, and there Fred and Pretty Lady, and their kids, Fredrina, and Oliver and Sadie, lived by a creek bank—where I have said all kids ought to be raised, but then the park existed right outside their doorstep—as the world exists for us.

* (Formerly thefrog'ssong. I had to put revisited there as notesfromthetreehouse was taken.)