It's My Birthday!

I am 68 years old today. It's a sobering thought. I have officially lived longer than my mother or my father did. Mum lived to be 67 and five months before cancer won out over her strong spirit.

I have not, however, lived longer than my grandmothers. My mother's mother lived to be 75 and was quite vigorous until about a week before pneumonia did her in. The pneumonia hit her when she was cleaning the basement, fell and hit her head, and lay on the cold floor for several hours before she was found.

My father's mother lived to be 96, and was in a nursing home, blind, diabetic and crippled for 23 years. She had a hard life, born in a Conestoga wagon in which she and her family lived for many years. The first time she slept in a house was when at the age of 14, she was sent to work in the home of a grocer.

My great grandmother, her mother, lived to be 97. One would think that she probably passed away in a rocking chair. No, not her! She was out in her garden, wedding curcumbers when she tripped over a cucumber vine, broke her hip and died of shock.

That would be my preferred way of going. So I am working on the next 29 years, writing, quilting, gardening and going to church, hoping for the best and taking what life doles out.

Busy Autumn

This is a busy time of year here. We've torn out the vegetable garden, a little disappointed that we didn't get more out of it -- than many lessons learned, of course. We are going to move the garden next year, to a place where it will get the morning sun for about six hours, then dappled afternoon sun. Maybe I won't have to haul water so much.

One of the small victories from the greenhouse was a batch of purple millet seedlings. Their purple seed heads were a very pleasant surprise. We transplanted them to garden on the other side of the driveway, down by the purple butterfly bush. I can see them down there in several years, growing and spreading, their reddish-purple plumes waving in the breeze.

Then the walnuts began to drop off the trees. And limbs began to fall. And we have had to pick up nuts and limbs. I had a fleeting thought that I try to teach Cat to pick them up or roll them toward the pile we build every year. Alas, Cat is not trainable.

I've been working very happily on another book. This one is a little edgier than I usually write, but I'm probably the only one who can see that. I'm usually about as edgy as a down pillow.
I have two other books percolating in my mind, the sequels to CRICKET'S MOON, which will be published late next year, about the same time as the unrelated short book THAT SPECIAL SOMEONE.

I wish I were too busy to worry, but there is so much exterior tension at the moment, I guess there is no way to avoid worrying about the economy, the election, and winter coming on. I knew a woman once who used to say that she refused to worry. "I do think about things, though," she would say.

. . .'Takes a Computer

Okay, you know what I'm referring to -- to really mess up takes a computer. Well, Son and I have taken two days of our lives (and an unexpected chunk of money) to take care of glitches in his computer.

Yesterday, we had to take Son's computer into Knoxville to the guy we use as a guru because "The RAM has burnt out." (You know I'm a lousy cook -- I have no recipe for lamb, let alone RAM. Then the guru decided that we needed to clean something out. That took up a very boring hour.

When we got back home, all anxious to see how the computer would do -- the modem was dead. Son had to search through he room to find the disk for it, but it still wouldn't work.

We went back to Knoxville today, back to the guru to have a sub-guru fix it. Luckily it didn't take long. We spent more time talking about wireless and other goodies we'd like to have -- and I sneaked a couple long peeks at laptops. This time, we could easily do the West Town Mall and still avoid school buses.

I love computers -- except when they have little glitches that end us as charges on the charge card. But then again, if nothing ever happened, I'd never get to go to Knoxville.