Sunday, July 13, 2014

My current desktop photo is a swallow tail on butterfly weed. I love how the orange of the flower is reflected in the spots on his wings. There were three butterflies on this bush, but I couldn’t get a good shot of them together.

“Why not?” you ask.

Well I am so glad you asked! That beautiful orange bush was behind this!

“Are those blackberries?” you ask.

Yes they are! Look how loaded the bush is and the blackberries are a good size too, some almost as big as my thumb!

“How did you ever see the butterfly weed?” you wonder.

Simple, I was picking blackberries when I looked up and saw the butterflies. As carefully as I could, I made my way to where I could get a good shot of them, but by then only one butterfly had hung around.

I’ll tell you what, picking blackberries in a wild bush is not for the faint of heart! It also isn’t for anyone dressed in shorts either!

Yeah, yeah, I hear you laughing at me. I guess you would have had sense enough to put on blue jeans before you went blackberry picking, right? Well, as they say, live and learn. It has been so many years since I’ve picked blackberries that I hadn’t really thought it out very good. But since the blackberries are just now getting ripe, I will have another crack at it.

I have learned something else too. Something besides don’t wear shorts.

“What’s that Peg?”

I learned that if a bramble grabs hold of you, don’t pull away! Those thorns are wicked! They just set harder if you pull back. Oh, and I learned to make sure there isn’t a whip in front of your camera before you reach down and grab for it too. Ouch!

Last time I wrote, I told you all about our fire and Macchiato peeing on me.

“Any updates?” you ask.

As far as the fire goes, our tenants insurance will take care of everything, up to his limit, that is.

As far as Macchiato goes, we found out that she’s a he, about three years old, neutered and does have a UTI.

“I think we’ve had her for about three years now,” Mike says, unable to accept the fact that she’s a he.

“It’s only a guess, he could be four or maybe even five.” So we will call Macchiato a four year old.

One of the best cats I ever had was a male Siamese named Simon, named after another great Siamese named Simon-a cat we had when I was growing up. When my Simon was hit on the road, I cried for two weeks!

You should show them a picture of Simon, I think to myself. I just recently saw a photo of him as I was flipping through photos in Pennsylvania, held in the arms of my beautiful daughter when she was a young girl. I either gave the photo away or it’s still in PA. Either way, I don’t need a photo, he still lives in my heart.

I love writing.

I used to write just on Sundays, but it seems it’s all I want to do right now. I have a lot of stories I want to commit to paper before I lose them, a lot of memories. I want-no, that’s not quite right-I would like to be paid for making these stories. But if I never earn a cent from writing, I will still write. It’s like photos, you know. At least it’s how I feel about photos. I can’t help but make them.

Okay, so here’s something you may not know.

“What’s that?” you ask.

Last week was an awesome week with my awesome man, Mike. We worked together in the mornings and he left me to my story making in the afternoons. Before the fire, I had already had a seven page story written on my computer for you.

Seven pages!

I hadn’t counted on the drama of the fire.

Despite having seven pages already written, I felt like I should tell you about the fire. Then as long as I was telling you about the fire, I might just as well tell you about my awesome grandson Andrew. It’s not bragging when it’s crucial to the story, don’t you know. After all, those were events that led up to the fire. Before I knew it I had a ten page letter written!

I texted Kevin, “I already had most of a letter written-7 pgs before last night. Now Im off on my favorite subject...Andrew! How do you guys feel about a 10 pge letter?”

“It does not matter if there is 1 page or 50. We love them,” he texted back. I had to smile at that.

So I continued to write and before I knew it, it was 15 pages long and I hadn’t even finished the last story on the first seven pages! I was going to try to wrap it up and contain it to eight pages, but who knows about these things. It could have run over then I would have a different decision to make.

I can’t send fifteen pages, I thought to myself. It’s unprecedented!

So I chopped the letter off on why Macchiato was outside when he normally spends nights in the apartment with us! It’s why I didn’t tell the fireman that we had three cats upstairs, instead of two, when he asked.

So this time I want to pick up my story as I had written it mid-week two weeks ago.

If you remember...

I had started to tell you how sad it will make me to not be involved in our grandson Andrew’s life. Before I knew it, I was off on a tangent called A Day With Andrew. It was not the story I had set down to write, but sometimes stories have a life of their own. And that one certainly did. Afterwards, when I read the story in it’s entirety, I realized what I had written wasn’t what I had intended to write about at all!

Can we start again?

“If your place in Missouri sells, will you be happy living in Pennsylvania?” This is a question we get asked every once in a while. Most recently while we were talking to our friends and neighbors The Robinson’s.

We were telling Steph that we have had some interest in our Missouri property recently with new businesses moving in, other businesses remodeling, renovating and expanding.

“Yes, and no,” I always answer. “I love the mountains of Pennsylvania, it is the place my heart calls home, but Andrew is in Missouri!”

That beautiful neighbor lady listened patiently as she always does. “I understand what you’re saying,” Steph said. “But do you know that I grew up only getting to see my grandmother in the summertime?”

“Nu-uh,” I said.

“She made summers special! I have sooo many wonderful memories of her. Summers were the best! ” Thinking about it brought many great memories to her mind and Steph’s face lit up as she recalled going to the cabin at the lake, canning peaches, learning to bake and even just working in the garden with her grandmother. All were warm and special memories for her.

It gave me hope and made me feel better.

If I can’t spend a lot of time with Andrew, I can make the time we spend together special. Maybe he’ll remember it too, like Stephanie does, and smile fondly with memories when he is old.

Our trip to Pennsylvania was riddled with close calls and near misses. Okay, that is a slight exaggeration, because Mike is a really good driver and it wasn’t all that close. But we hadn’t gone but a few miles up the road when a tractor trailer pulls across the highway in front of us and has to stop in the median to clear traffic before completing his turn. Guess where that left his trailer?

Yep! In our lane. Mike had to hit his brakes.

A little later we see a car down in the ditch--

“Look at that!”

And we kept on going.

Soon, some jerk passes us, cuts in front of us and hits his brake to slow down enough to turn right off the highway. No de-acceleration lane here. Mike had to hit his brakes again. He was a champ though and took it all in stride as he grumbled that he should be given a special ray gun so he can rid the highways of these jerks FOREVER! He makes a gun of his index finger and thumb and makes shooting sounds to emphasize his point, replete with explosions.

“Now don’t forget sweetheart,” I say. “Sometimes we’re that jerk.”

But the scariest moment came as Mike and I were going through one of the cities and this SUV passes us on the left, like he is supposed to, and cuts back in front of us.

“Boy! He sure didn’t give us much room, did he?” I asked indignantly.

“No he didn’t,” Mike said not upset at all. He didn’t even pull out his ray gun this time!

Traffic is moving along and all of a sudden the back of the SUV drops down as the wheel comes off and bounces down the road at us!

Mike is on high alert by this time, boy let me tell you! I bet my mouth was hanging open and my eyes were big as saucers! I was scared.

We watched in silence as driver after driver misses the bouncing, rolling tire and the driver of the SUV fights to retain control of his vehicle and make his way off the road-narrowly missing a car in the slow lane. It was only then that I thought about getting a picture for you.

“Peg! What happened to the tire?” I hear you ask.

You know, it was surreal. The tire rolled down the highway for what seemed like miles before gently cutting across the lanes of traffic and falling over when it hit the grass on the side of the road.

Mike has this gorgeous big red truck that we call....

What else?

Big Red.

It’s a 2000 Ford F-550 that has a Centurion Conversion package and a pickup bed.

“Don’t all trucks come with a bed on them?” I hear you ask.

And the answer is no. F-550’s in 2000 did not come with a bed on them. They were considered commercial work trucks. You bought the truck and added a working man’s tool box bed, or a tank or something to it yourself! Pick-up beds don’t fit the frame so we had to have a spacer made and put between the cab and the bed. It’s a beautiful truck.

“Yeah, yeah, Peg!” I hear you say. “Where is this truck?”

Well, until recently, the truck was stored in one of the barns at our mountain home. Now it’s here in Missouri with us.

The second day we were in Pennsylvania, Mike went down to get the truck and it wouldn’t start. After two years of sitting, we were not surprised. Mike put the battery charger on it and waited a while. I went back to the house and before long I hear the truck pull up to the house.

“Peg!” Mike yells. “Come and see this.”

I went out to see what was going on. “What?”

“Go behind the truck,” he says.

I walk behind the truck looking high and looking low as I go and at first I don’t see it, then I looked up and saw the back window of the topper was shattered.

“What happened?” you may be wondering.

We suspect our neighbor across the road shot our barn, shooting out the window in the process.

This neighbor proudly and gleefully told us of his adventures in harassing the trucking company and the saw mill operators, previous owners of our property, when we first met him. Nails in the road, that kind of malicious stuff. Then we weren’t friends anymore. A couple of years or maybe three years gone by now, we noticed there were bullet holes in the side of our barn. The barn that sits near the road, directly across from Bad Neighbors house. We called the State Troopers so we had documentation of Bad Neighbors suspected vandalism.

“Can’t do nothing ’bout it, you can’t prove it was him,” we were told. And it’s true. But I didn’t know until recently that the officer went across the road and talked to Bad Neighbor. I imagine that just pissed him off because sometime during our two year absence, someone shot through our barn again, this time taking out the truck topper window.

Sigh.

Have you ever tried to replace the window of your truck topper? Not an easy feat, let me tell you!

“An auto glass place should be able to do it,” you say.

I know right! That’s what we thought too!

“Can’t do it,” they told us. We finally located a truck cap company in Tunkhannock and after crawling around inside the bed of the truck to locate serial numbers, the replacement glass was ordered.

“How far is Tunkhannock from here?” Mike asked our neighbor Stephanie.
“Twenty five minutes,” Stephanie says.

“No, in miles,” Mike says.

“I don’t measure in miles, I measure in minutes!” she exclaimed.

I laughed.

Two weeks later we go back to Tunkhannock to have the glass replaced. We check in, give them the truck keys and go find a place to sit. I pull out my Nook to help pass the time but Mike was restless. “Let’s go outside,” he says.

“Okay,” I agree. “It’s kind of chilly in here anyway.” I stuff my Nook back in my bag and with my camera around my neck-where it usually is-we walk outside. There are chairs, right there in the front of the business, but they are in the sun.

“I don’t want to sit in the sun,” Mike says. “I’ll get too hot.”

So we walk across the front to see what’s down the side of the building, but there is no place on the shady side to sit. Across the parking lot an old bus and a smoker sit. “Do you think they have food?” Mike asks.

“I think so. I’ve been watching people pull up and leave with bags.”

As we wander in that direction we see a lot of activity under one of those garage awnings. You know the kind I mean? You see them sitting beside the road with for sale signs on them. “Just $695!” they declare.

Under this awning were several picnic tables, and people and a TV camera!

“I wonder what’s going on,” I said.

“I don’t know.”

Mike and I reached the tables and this guy comes running over to us. “Can I help you with something?”

“Is this where we get the barbeque?” Mike asked him.

“Over at the window,” he said indicating the old bus.

Mike and I walked right past it and didn’t realize it was the order window.

“Okay, thanks,” Mike said and we went over and ordered a barbeque sandwich.

“What’s going on over there?” I asked the lady taking our order.

“I think they’re doing an interview about the Marcellus Shale,” she said.

We got our sandwiches and went back over to the tables. We thought we could sit at the end-out of their way-and eat our sandwich.

As we approached with our sandwich, this same guy came running over to us. “There’s a table over there where you can sit.” He said and pointed behind the bus. We turned and looked and sure enough!--there was a table there. How were we supposed to have known that?

“Okay, thanks,” we say once again and making a 90 degree turn, we head for the table.

“Oh and no taking pictures here!” he yells at me. I didn’t have a clue what he was referring to, so I just smile and keep walking. “NO! I’M SERIOUS!” he states rather firmly. “My smokers are all homemade and I don’t allow no one to take pictures of them! You can just take that camera and put it right back in your car!”

I am confused and dumbfounded. “I am not interested in taking pictures of your stuff,” was all I could think to say.

“Then what are you doing with that camera?” he demanded.

“Our truck is being worked on next door and I didn’t want to leave it in the truck!”

“Oh,” he says, and we walk away.

We sat and ate our sandwich then walked back across the 300 foot parking lot to the business where our truck was being worked on.

I headed for the chairs to wait assuming that Mike was right behind me, but he wasn’t. I thought maybe he was looking around the showroom floor. The two chairs in the waiting area are in the same room with this guy right here. Believe it or not, his name is Mike too. Still stinging from my exchange with the neighbor, I decided to tell Mike about it.

“You’re neighbor was really rude to me,” I told him. Catching Mike’s interest, he asked what happened and I told him.

“I’ve known him for a long time and I’ve never known him to be rude to anyone. He just came back from a cook-off in Texas and he took 27^th place for his sauce. I don’t remember what place his barbeque took, but it was under 100 and there were over 400 entries.” Mike explained. Then he went on to say that there’s a lot of money to be made in these contests and those guys get very protective of their equipment.

“So he thinks his homemade smokers are the reason his barbeque is so good?” I ventured to guess.

“I don’t know,” Mike said.

I wandered away to find my Mike and he was talking with this gal, Lisa. Mike had told her what happened and Lisa said she was speechless. She never knew him to be unkind or rude to anyone, ever.

“Maybe he just didn’t like the way we look,” I said. Sometimes that happens, you know? You take an instant dislike to someone from the second you see them.

“Well, I didn’t have any interest in taking pictures of his smokers before, but guess what I’m going to do now?” I said, and everyone laughed.

It wasn’t long until the owner of the cap company came out with some bad news. The replacement glass doesn’t fit. It wasn’t the right one. Doggone it! We waited two weeks for that one and we didn’t have two more weeks to wait for another one.

“I’ll have to put a piece of plywood over it or something,” Mike said.

“Maybe that glass place down the road can cut you a piece of Plexiglas or something,” she suggested. “Lisa, call down there and see.”

Lisa called and the guy said he’d check it out and see what he could do.

They kindly refunded our deposit and as we left, Mike drove past the roadside barbeque stand where I took this photo. This is a photo of the order window (who knew?) and his homemade smoker. If anyone cares, I have other views of the smoker too.

We stopped at the glass place and the man was swamped replacing bus windows someone had vandalized. But he took the frame out of the truck cap and said he would cut a piece of Lexan to put in there. He said it is way better than Plexiglas because it was unbreakable. But we would have to come back in a couple of days.

Another trip to Tunkhannock.

Sigh.

I have discovered-and I am very surprised to learn-that I am afraid of dogs. I have never been afraid of dogs before. Now that I’ve been bitten, I’m afraid. It doesn’t even make sense to me because I knew this was a mean a dog, why should I transfer that fear to all dogs?

When Mike and I got back from Pennsylvania we found out that the dog who bit Ginger and me, Fred, had not been put down. The judge ordered a $500 fine and a years probation. The dog has been sent to live in the country with someone who knows this dog and was willing to take him.

Mike is angry. “He’s just going to wait until it quiets down and bring the dog back,” he says. I hope he’s wrong.

Look what I found the other day. A balloon. A green balloon. And it had writing all over it!

I love you

1. uncle

2. my moms mom

3. God!

And the exclamation point on God was dotted with a heart.

On the other side of the balloon it said:

NOTE

You will Always BE My Rock

Under that it was signed:

From Favian Vineyard!

and Sadie Vineyard!

I wonder who sent it and from where it was sent and was it a special occasion? All questions I will probably never get an answer to.

Look what else I found!

Death by ice cream! What a way to go!

And this.

I’m snapping a photo of this pretty little alcove and look who wants his picture taken.

See him?

Let’s call this one done.

Lots and lots of love,

Peg and Mike