Babysitting in Kentucky!

DH and I traveled across Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana and reached the top tip of Kentucky to babysit our not quite two year old grandson while his folks took a business trip to Puerto Rico. Since she has just learned of a new pregnancy, this will probably the last trip for a while, and it was too good for her to miss. The days were busy and tiring for us and boy were we exhausted at night, but it was worth every aching joint and loss of energy to be with this little guy. Such fun! On Wednesday we kept him all to ourselves, but on Thursday and Friday we took him to his day care for a few hours. It kept him close to his regular schedule and frankly, it gave us a break too. Mason never stopped moving, investigating, hammering, jumping, or eating otherwise. Pardon me while I show a few Grammie pictures!

Who? Me?

Grandpa had made a complete set of wooden toys, but we only took one truck and trailer loaded with blocks because we knew he was a little young yet. But we wanted to give one truck to him personally rather shipping them all later. At first Grandpa was a little disappointed because Mason was interested but not squealing with joy over the truck. After all, most of his hard plastic toys sang songs, screamed letters, flashed lights. By golly, that truck just sat there unless you pushed it! Not long though until Mr. Mason figured out to push and moan like a big rig motor. He even figured out how to connect the small peg for truck and trailer.

On Monday when started the trip, we headed out early and stopped in Rolla to pick up cherry raspberry pie at Slice of Pie. Our friends, Jim and Elaine, had a light lunch ready for us, and we wanted to contribute. Elaine had a yummy chicken and noodle soup, fruit, and grilled cheese sandwiches. We all knew we had little time, but they live in Sunset Hills, only a sneeze away right off the main highway we were taking smack dab through St. Louis. We had been driving four hours and needed a break anyway. We ate, visited, and ran right on which we all hated but knew was necessary. By leaving in less than two hours, driving those St. Louis bridges downtown were a breeze with light traffic. We got as far as Corydon, Indiana before stopping for the night.

This was a different time of year for us to pass the tobacco fields in that area. Wow, were they unusual looking. We got out to feel the plants; they have rather smooth leaves and no smell at all. Some fields were ready for picking, while others had been cleared. Many tobacco barns were loaded with crops hanging out to dry.

 The next morning we were up and got through Louisville fine but lost our turn on the east side of city. It turned out well as we found a secondary road that was just delightful. We passed the Claudia Sanders Restaurant where the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain was born. It would have been fun to eat there. We had plenty of time to meander in little bergs and even stop at a few flea markets. Then we made it in to Independence and Florence, part of the urban sprawl of Covington, Kentucky, where our kids live. We began to get our instructions for one baby boy, two dogs, and two yowling cats. It was like living at Dr. Doolittle’s for a week!!!

In our free time while Mason was in his daycare playtime we made some nice stops in the area that I will save for another post.

Tea Cup Tuesday #23 Tea Pictures

I have been three states away for a week taking care of a two year old grandson. As we headed home, we got call 91 year old mother-in-law is in hosptial 80 miles the other direction from our home. We are exhasted and mentally depleted here, but I wanted to try and get back on some target, to feel like things were returning to some normalcy. I had this post in files, so I will use it today for Teacup Tuesday, as it is tea cup related at least!

Pictures with tea cups and tea pots are numerous in my home as well as the real cups and pots!

This picture was painted for me by a friend. She put ME in the picture by using an apron, a hat, a book, lace, and a cup of tea...all things which I use daily.

  

This living room picture was painted my my mother-in-law.

This is a print that I used many times as a prompt  in my writing classes. It has produced many creatives takes, but I don't remember any relating to the cup of tea sitting on the table! It hangs in my office now.

Another picture in my office.

Two Weak Spots!

Kansas prairie near Beaumont. A picture can not contain the beauty of this land, nor can it show the rich earth that grows plush grasses loaded with nutrients to feed cattle nautrally.






I admit that I am having a 1950’s cowboy relapse. I loved westerns, all of them. I waited for Wagon Train, never missed Bonanza, had a love affair with Michael Anasara who played Cochise. Every Saturday night even when visiting our grandparents, the whole family stopped everything and watched Gunsmoke, admiring Marshall Dillon, loving Miss Kitty, and snickering at Chester’s antics. And who can forget Sal Mineo in Comanche? I have the Walt Disney video and have seen the horse “in the flesh” many times at the museum on the campus of University of Kansas.

After reading the Dusty Richards book and thumbing through some borrowed Baxter Black poetry, I still did not have enough. So this weekend I pulled out to read more in Flint Hills Cowboys: Tales of the Tallgrass Prairie by Jim Hoy. Hoy is an English professor at Emporia State University and written several books on cowboy history. This book details snippets of history about fences, rodeos, cattle, and outlaws even, in the Flint Hills. It is not a book that would interest most women, but I do love this period of time, the late 1800s and early 1900’s of Kansas. I am not getting much writing done, but maybe I am planting some seed for future cowboy poetry!

I doubt if I get much writing done for the rest of the month because DH and I will travel to Kentucky to babysit our not yet two year old grandson (even though he looks like he is four!). It is a long drive and we fear so many days with a tot full of energy. But maybe we will be miraculously energized to keep up with this guy. Too far away to do much bonding before, maybe now we all will get to know each other well while his parents take a long business trip. Always said we would never talk about our children or grandchildren to others, but I fear there will be many tales to tell after this trip. Get ready, Mason, here comes Grandma!

Saturday Centus #16, My Summer Vacation

WEEK 16 ASSIGNMENT


Do you remember how during the first week back at school the teacher would make you write an essay about what you did over your summer vacation? Your story must be written in first person AND must be exactly 100 words long. It can be fact or fiction.

For complete details:http://jennymatlock.blogspot.com/2010/08/saturday-centus-week-16.html




My Summer Vacation, 1964

Freshman summer was not much different for best friend Dory and me. Waking in humid Kansas air, we helped our moms freeze strawberries, can tomatoes, or make jam before tanning on blankets or straddling bikes. We bowled bikes down gravel roads, munched chocolate in the cemetery, pulled romantic novels from cool library shelves and stopped at the Rexall for nickel cokes. There we lowered kick stands, tugged our madras shorts out of cracks, smoothed pony tails, and sauntered through the smacking screen door, catching sight of sweaty guys in plaid shirts, sleeves ripped out revealing hay bale-built biceps…um, good summer!

Remembering Cowboys

Born near the ranch of Will Roger’s parents and in a time before Oklahoma was a state, my Grandpa was a wanna be cowboy. He stood like John Wayne, and the two men in their youths did resemble each other in looks. He saw to it that I had fringed vests, double holsters with toy six shooters, cow girl hats, and he wanted me to be rodeo princess and lead the parade someday. (I never did.)He and my Gran belonged to a Saddle Club, wore matching shirts, had matching saddle blankets with brown and sage pom poms, road in parades and lived in the home town of the 100 year old Inter-State Rodeo (Coffeyville, Kansas).



One of my mother’s biggest arguments with her dad was when I was in eighth grade. Grandpa wanted to buy me a pair of $100 cowboy boots for my birthday when I needed so many other things plus she wanted me to put the cowboy stuff aside. My heart still aches for those boots, and my body now aches for the good legs to wear them!


It was hard not to adore boots and hats and the squeak of a good leather saddle when the favorite TV shows then were The Virginian, Bonanza, and Wagon Train. Why, even one of the most popular after-shaves, called English Leather, smelled rugged and earthy like a pair of well used leather work gloves. Every night I went to bed dreaming of straddling a broad-backed horse and racing across the plains. In my dreams, the horse never hit a prairie dog hole, came upon a rattler, or even threw me on my behind.

When I learned western writer Dusty Richards had a new book out called Writing the West, I wondered why I never wanted to write a western, although I had read a few. Did I need another book on writing? No, but something about this book appealed to me. I ordered it, and I haven’t been sorry. It is both an entertaining and informative read whether you are wanting to write a western or not.


Richards’s tone is casual and easy, but he knows his stuff. He has published 65 or so books in 20 years and won the Golden Spur award, an award for western fiction that ranks up there with the Oscars for actors. While his writing tips are aimed at western writing, any writer will benefit from the lessons Richards teaches in this book. He tackles dialogue, writing scenes, plot, internalization, sense of place and other nuts and bolts of writing. Richards gives very specific examples that are easy to follow; he shows samples of poor writing and then turns around to show exactly how it can be improved. Strewn among the facts and lessons are tiny tidbits like when the tumbleweed came to Kansas, ethic background of the cowboys of the West, the demise of the redheaded green parrot, and why trees of the plains lean a certain direction.


Richards doesn’t leave the reader with only his own words for reference either. The second part of the book calls in experts like Jory Sherman, Jodi Thomas and others to toss out pointers for writing the romantic western, young adult western, and stories about the mountain men who broke open the West. By the time I had finished reading Writing the West, I began to think maybe I had better return to my yesteryears, gather up some tack, shoulder a saddle, don a pair of Wranglers or Levis and head out to the plains…figuratively speaking, of course! Is that Tumbling Tumbleweed I hear on my Sons of the Pioneers CD right now?


Readers can find this great book at amazon.com or order it from the publisher High Hill Press at www.highhillpress.com. I guarantee that neither readers nor writers will be disappointed in this impressive book by a skillful storyteller.






Another Dusty


A few years ago we visited the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum in Branson. DH thought it sounded hokey. While I never ask to do much in Branson, I really wanted to see this! It was worth every dime. Seeing those pictures and memorabilia, the jeep Nelly Belle, Dale’s favorite skirts all spiced up with ric rac, and things like Roy Rogers lunch boxes from my childhood was a trip down memory lane for sure. Then after seeing the museum, we went into a small theater to hear Dusty, Roy and Dale’s son, sing old favorite western songs. I cried when I heard Cool Water and Back in the Saddle Again.


I just recently learned this museum is no longer open, although I don’t know why. However Dusty Rogers and his son Dustin Roy Rogers have a new show in another theater in Branson. I hope they still sing Happy Trails—and I bet they do!

Saturday Centus#15 Going Fishing

This is Saturday Centus # 15. The prompt must be used word for word somewhere in the story on not more than 100 words.The prompt is highlighted. For complete rules see:http://jennymatlock.blogspot.com.

Going Fishing

Our neighborhood took a jolt to residential complacency when Dilworth and Sarah moved in. Delightful people and thoughtful neighbors normally, once in a while Dilworth went on a harmless bender we all tolerated.


It was near dawn one morning when I heard Sarah’s voice and Dilworth’s slurring nonsense. I slipped out of bed and opened the front door to see Dilworth clad in his Mickey Mouse underwear and dumping Sarah’s prize goldfish into my bird bath.


“Idiot, come home,” niggled Sarah from her lawn.


“Not before this old gal gets some purty in this dang dinky pond,”


I listened to them from my perch on the top step and didn't know whether to laugh or to cry...

Friday the 13th

Today has been quiet of sorts. The air is so hot that even the dark side of a superstitious day lays low!

When you are just beginning to leave the moutains, the rocky scenery stays the same, but somehow you know  you are beginning to go back to the flat lands. The jagged edges, some in snow, still surround you; the air is still thin, but you know you have begun the descent and are headed towards home. That is the way the last two mornigns have felt around 7 am. The air is too warm and the scorching day is on the way to burning you by noon. But you notice that the birds are not as thick. The wrens no longer trill; robins are reduced in number. Leaves fall off the trees because they are too hot and dry to wait for autumn hues. Young acorns plop on roof tops, roll down to the deck to bruise your summer barefoot feet. It is still hot and the sun still shines, but you know the angle of the light has tipped ever so slightly and autumn’s pointer finger has stretched trying to reach you.



I gave up yesterday and dusted my living room. I don’t think it has been touched since Memorial Day because we have been living in our outdoor living room, the deck. I put away the tulips, the forsythia, the other silk flwoers that were so appreciated in May. I dragged out some orange silk lilies, lots of sun flowers and a even a few pumpkins knowing that we are on that downhill spiral to a new season.


This week’s heat has finally driven us inside for more hours than we have been out. I think today is the hottest day yet even though the temperature has been hovering at a mere 101 or so. Still, I carried my tea out this morning about 7 trying to absorb some of the summer air. I watered, I dumped some pots of plants that can no longer face the heat and are crispy despite watering. I read some in Dusty Richeards new book…about writing the western. Later I ran a couple of errands and found even an air conditioned car stifling. Then I came home to hover at my desk where I made seven submissions this afternoon, all contests though—Missouri contests! The Sringfield Writers’ Guild is having a contest that is open for about six more weeks. There are lots of categories. Check it out here: http://swgsite.org/


Tomorrow there might be rain and what they are calling a cold front, which I think is a misnomer since the temps might get down to a slight 95! Already I am looking forward to Jenny’s Saturday Centus and the writing assignment. Nothing else worth discussing on the docket …but on with the weekend just the same!