Happily Half.....

We missed Earth Day but yesterday Dave and I went over to Port's south beach to do a "clean up". I try to do this every year....just a small effort but it makes me feel like I've done something. I always amazes me that people toss so much stuff just out the car window, or along a beach....sometimes within steps of a community garbage can. 

It was a nice day....and we walked quite aways along the beach. Then we went around the circle that is the small nature preserve behind the electric company. We had three bags to fill....two small and one big black one.

We were happily surprised to find that we couldn't even fill one! Now maybe someone had already made the rounds on Earth Day....but it made us feel good to see there just wasn't that much trash in this one outdoor public space. 

Maybe I'll walk over to north beach sometime this coming week and see what's gathering over there.

Just A Burger Please......

I just started reading a new book, The Girl Who Lived Twice: A Lisbeth Salander Novel by David Lagercrantz. Dave and I have read most of the series (the original author died and Lagercrantz is continuing with the characters.) These are sort of detective/mystery/crime stories.....not necessarily ones that would touch my heart.

And then I read a sentence on page 43: "A whole new broken Stockholm had emerged, and in no time at all everyone had got used to it. That was the sad truth." I finished this page and our local news came on. A seven year old girl was going through the drive through with her father at a McDonald's in Chicago. Two men jumped out of another car and started shooting.....over and over and over. She was hit six or seven times and died. Her father is in the hospital.

Indianapolis, Indiana - eight dead

Bryan, Texas - one dead and five wounded

Boulder, Colorado - ten dead

Acworth and Atlanta, Georgia - eight dead

Buffalo, Minnesota - 1 dead and four wounded

Chicago and Evanston, Illinois - five killed and two injured

These are just a few of the shootings/deaths in America since we turned the calendar over to start a new year. Welcome to our reality. I wish I could say this is a "new America"....but it's not and we are all just "used to it".

I don't care about this little girl's father.....if he was a gangster, or did drugs, or was a criminal. I don't give a shit about his back story.

His daughter was seven and now she is dead.

I wonder if she was going to order a Happy Meal.

Something Missing.....

Yesterday I got up and made some potato salad....Dave was planning on brats for dinner and that was my contribution. Obviously this is not a difficult task, wash, cut up and cook the potatoes then add some mayo and honey mustard, celery and hard boiled egg and sprinkle paprika on top. My part of the meal was done by 9:30.

The day was a sort of now normal busy day, errands, dog walks, reading, a visit to downtown Cedarburg, listening to a podcast and some quilting while Dave was in and out doing his own stuff.

Dinner was served about 6:30 and it was good. Our first brats for the "season". 

Just before bed I walked back into the TV room and asked Dave "Did we have potato salad with dinner?" A stunned look on his face and then a small laugh...."Nope!" He completely forgot to put any on our plates.

So tonight is really easy....left over brats and potato salad. I love it when I don't have to cook at all!

Crane Spotting......

Mid April.....our neighborhood is starting to green-up and some days are very spring-y. But then, at least along the lakefront, the wind picks up and temperatures drop. Mother Nature reminding me that, in Wisconsin at least, spring comes on a Wednesday.

The last few weeks we've seen so much bird activity as some pass through on their migration route north, others come to find their partners and set up house keeping for the summer. Red wing black birds, robins, goldfinch, so many different kinds of ducks. I'm not too good at identifying most of them but I do enjoy the activity and color as I walk Fenway.

Driving the country roads to do errands my eyes sweep left and right.....tom turkeys on full display in front of five or six females. The peregrine falcon nest at our local electric company's nesting box now boasts one egg. I spot hawks sitting on fenceposts and telephone wires.

But my favorite "gotcha" is when I spot a pair of sandhill cranes. They're back!

This is not my photo, but the fields along our back roads are still pretty "dead", the corn isn't up yet, so spotting these tall birds as they move around is not too difficult. It won't be much longer until each twosome will be shepherding a few babies and teaching them the rules of the road. 

Growing up we were always told that seeing your first robin meant spring had arrived. Since moving back to Wisconsin and learning just what to look for, it's now the sandhill cranes in March/April that tell me we've made it through another Midwest winter.

Yea! Crane spotting!

Old Enough.....

I remember when the first issue of our AARP monthly magazine showed up in the mail. It was a "show stopper" as I realized Dave and I had crossed another "bridge". We were old enough to read AARP and get some of the benefits of membership.

The magazine is now a familiar once-a-month find in our mailbox and I am often "amused" to see the smiling face of the "elder" on the cover.....a celebrity of some kind that has aged along with me. I don't usually read every page, but I do look through it to find articles or advice that seems interesting to me.

When March 2021 showed up I did give it more than my usual cursory attention. 

Hello!!! George Clooney!!! I have to admit he is one of my "heart throbs". I certainly don't know him but I've enjoyed his movies, I like what I read about his concern for the less fortunate, for our planet, I like the fact that he is married to an accomplished woman on her own right and seems to be enjoying his somewhat late-in-life fatherhood. I like that he says he's always cut his own hair with a Flowbee. I like that he seems to genuinely love his family and is a loyal friend to many. I like that he prefers a big round table for meals so that conversation is easy and no one is at the "end" of the long table. I like that he pulls practical jokes and seems to laugh easily. I love his big smile. He just seems like a really good guy who has not let Hollywood fame steer his ship.

And then I got to the end of the article (yes I read every word....some words more than once). George was talking about riding a scooter with a friend in Sardinia in 2018 and suffering an accident that could have killed him. People who witnessed his fall pulled out their cameras to take pictures.... no one immediately calling for help. (Sound familiar?)

That accident and his recovery time gave him pause and made him think more about his life and mortality and his family..... not an unexpected process. The part of the article that really made me stop and re-read was as follows: "I'm not a particularly religious guy. So I have to be skeptical about an afterlife.  But as you get older, you start thinking, Well wait a minute.....Once you're finished with this chassis that we're in, you're just done. My version of it is that you're taking that one one-hundredth of a pound of energy that disappears when you die and you're jamming it right into the hearts of all the other people you've been close to."

I love that image. Maybe because I've been thinking about "heart strings" for years..... strings that stretch from a person you love right to your heart, even after death. So my "heart strings" and George's  "energy" jamming into his loved ones hearts just seem to sort of compliment each other. When I die I hope my one one-hundredth of a pound of energy jams into hearts and my heartstrings reach out so that those I love will always "feel" me and know that they were "mine".