The Frogs are Singing for Me and My Guy

This is incredibly beautiful!

To my left is a pasture, green as the emerald city, immaculately kept, complete with six llamas, cream and brown, heads bent to the short mossy green grass they are nibbling. The matriarch, cream with brown spots like a giraffe’s, occasionally lifts her head to stare at the person staring at her.  To my right are acres of grass green as heaven and ahead is a strip of firs and deciduous trees which probably line a stream.  I toddled down a country road not far from husband’s place of business and took advantage of a perfect day here on our second week in Oregon.

I won’t tell you about the afternoon, only that it involved getting the internet connection and three trips to the AT&T store to get a Hot Spot that worked intermittently and drove us batty, back to store to disconnect same spot, reconnect our data card, that didn’t work either, back to store to get everything straightened out.  Now we have a data card that will hold us until Friday when we get an in-house connection.  But then I said I wouldn’t regale you with this story, but I didn’t want to sound all sweetness and light.

 I love where we live here in a little Scandinavian town outside Eugene Oregon. We live on a beautiful quiet street lined with lovely homes, and words can’t describe how we are so grateful we are for our house.  Most of the homes here are owned, but to our great advantage the owner of this house is out of town and renting—TO US! I’m afraid to put nails in the walls to hang pictures, although the property manager said it was all right.

AND, guess what. Frogs! We have frogs. Open the door at night and there they are singing their little hearts out. One must be careful walking out the front door, though, lest they step on a squishy little skin-bag disguised as a frog. It reminded me of the anole I inadvertently painted into a porch step of our Hawaiian house—painting in the dusk I didn’t see him until morning when I discovered a relief, all gray -blue of an anole on a riser.

“The frog calls the rain that settles the dust for our journey.”

My long-time readers will know that long ago I published a journal called The Frog’s Song, for one day I drew the Frog Medicine Card twice. I figured that was significant and used the frog card’s mission statement.  Frogs are significant to an eco-system as well—rather like canaries in a mine I suppose.

We had Coqui frogs in Hawaii that made jungle sounds and lulled us to sleep at night. And here we are in Oregon, once again with frogs singing. There is a pond kitty-catty-cornered about 100 yards from the house. And not far away are the wet-lands outside Eugene where the ducks fly in at night and other water fowl nest and land for a reprieve in their migration. When we lived in Eugene years ago I heard that flock of wild swans settled in for a sleep-over one night on Fern Lake.

As I said on the last blog there is something here in the Eugene area for everybody, from up-scale to down -scale. There are more second-hand stores than you can shake a stick at—although I never understood why anyone would shake a stick at anything—it was a Mom-ism. While I sang the virtues of Eugene, someone helped themselves to a nice wicker basket I took to the Laundromat. Then somehow I ended up with a strange pair of jeans from I don’t know where, that fit me—sort of.

The Universe takes and then it gives back.

I Have Seen the Elephant!

Okay, first morning on the road. The truck is packed. The animals are loaded. The U-Haul trailer is filled to the max. Daughter, Little Boy Darling, and I are headed for Oregon. We leave a clean house and it’s 1 am.

The following morning both daughter and I awakened with clubs for hands. I thought I had been cursed like the servant in Beauty and the Beast who was turned into a candelabrum with enormous blocks that shot flames for hands. We had loaded the 6 U-Haul boxes, yes 6, 5 wasn’t enough, but then we overloaded them and had to take out some of the weight. Thus the over-worked hands, and thus the trailer to catch the over-flow.

And yes, husband dear, your airplane engine is in there, although it was only by the grace of God, or rather my grace that it didn’t end up in shreds. And regarding the other portion of the plane, Daughter Dear said, “Please can I roll this gyrocopter down the hill? Please, please.”

We got it in.

You see, we were not only loading furnishings, we were loading a shop.

Never mind, all that is behind us. I have seen the elephant.

There is a story about a farmer who had never seen an elephant. When he heard that a circus was coming to town he was ecstatic. He packed up his produce and aimed for town. Along the way he had an accident and all his wares were destroyed. Back home his fellow villagers sympathized with him that he lost his produce and thus his profit. “Never mind,” he said, “I have seen the elephant.”

My elephant was in the Swahili shop at 5^th Street market in Eugene, Oregon. He was about 2 feet high and as colorful as a native dancer . The elephant and his counterpart, a lion, were made out of flip-flops that were gleaned from the beaches of Africa. The flip-flops were heated, softened, then shaped and carved. The lion with its colorful mane of rubber/plastic strips was quite exquisite. Ingenious creative people just tickle the heck out of me.

And traveling around Eugene gave me new appreciation. There is something for everybody. From the exquisite  5^th street Market with its gourmet food, a new upscale hotel ( The Inn at 5^th) complete with a Maserati  parked at the entrance,  to the Performing Arts Center, the University, the numerous and excellent eateries, the second hand stores, the Natural food groceries that grow up around the city like the grasses this area is known for, the Vitamin and supplement stores that sell what in other places one can only get online. Going into Market of Choice, a gourmet grocery store,  will break your budget if you let it, for almost everything tries to jump into your cart. And I haven’t yet hit Saturday Market where I know creativity is spread out like cake icing.

And now for the most amazing and wonderful thing: WE GOT A HOUSE! A tremendous  Rental Manager lady trusted us with Bear, Daughter’s  rug of a dog, and let us have Little Boy Darling’s kitty, Obi Kitty Kenobi. I love her. You can bet we're going to take good care of that house.

 I can sleep again.