sunday we had a visitor. he just didn't want to leave for some reason. i named him "little buddy" although he's not that little. he's a great egret.
well, my laptop is now fixed. i installed the new hard drive i bought online. it was quite a difficult procedure for me with my limited knowledge of such things. the install kept freezing halfway through so i took it to work to look up install freezing issues on the internet at my computer at work. i finally tried some of the techie advice such was disabling some of the bios stuff and whatever it is they said that i didn't really understand but i finally got it going. hurray for me. i was clapping and patting myself on the back since no one else was here.
it's sort of nice to have a new clean computer system although.....i lost all my thousands of pictures which are still hiding somewhere in my old broken hard drive. it's still in the freezer. maybe we can figure out how to get them out. for now i'm just glad to have my old gateway working again and it's very fast for a change.

went to the annual garden show yesterday with my friend, kim. it was held at the county fairgrounds and sponsored by the county extension service. there were lots and lots of local growers/gardeners... you know, people who grow stuff and actually know what they're doing. they talk about their plants as if they were part of their family. i find them facinating.

i can't think of any other hobby/livelihood as down to earth as growing and taking care of plants. as life goes, it's really all about the plants. we take them for granted way too much.

there was an amazing variety of ornamental plants, local and exotic, and plenty of the edibles. i managed to squeeze out enough money to buy myself a freakish looking carnivorous pitcher plant, an orchid and my favorite.. a florida blueberry. the blueberry is full of little green berries. they should be ripe in a week or so. the jamacian lady told me how to care for it and her husband gave me a hug for some reason. they grow all kinds of fruit bearing plants on their farm.

these shows always make me feel like i might explode from sensory overload. it's just too much beauty all at one time.

my laptop is still fried. it appears to be the hard drive. we took it out and tried to wake it up from it's stupor. i dropped it, kicked it and put it in the freezer for a while. it almost woke up for a bit but then died again so i finally ordered a new hard drive online. that should solve the problem. i guess these things just get worn out after a while.

monday my laptop decided to self destruct. i am now stuck with the blue screen of death.

it's not a good thing.

i am using john's laptop until "someone" figures out how to fix it, if it's even fixable. john thinks it's a hardware issue.

they always say to back up your files (which i was going to do but never got around to) in case your computer crashes and you have to dump everything and reformat... and in my case... well over 5000 jpgs of my incessant picture taking.

i'd hate to lose all those memories.

watched the sunrise on top of the clouds while flying home from austin yesterday. everyone else on the plane was sleeping. i can't sleep when there's something this beautiful outside my window.



this is the house where i stayed for 4 days, the house that josh shares with his friend, adrien, who is a carpenter/filmmaker something or other. i spent a lot of time sitting out here watching people and waiting for josh and laura to wake up.
we rode bikes all over austin. i do know why people ride bikes. it is a cleansing/exhillerating feeling and breathing that nice air is very good. we also rode a bit in josh's magic bus. people like to wave and point at this truck. it makes people smile.

we went to a place called the mean-eyed cat to see shearwater. i saw them last year too. they had free bbq and free beer, which was true of almost everywhere we went. all day and night. the lead singer of shearwater seems very quiet and reserved but during a performance he becomes so intense that i think his head might explode into a million pieces.

we saw a danish band under a tent next to someone's house. they made mention of the the hot texas sun.
we went to threadgills to see one of my favorite bands, winterpills. i guess not people know of them. it was a small crowd.
we ate lunch at this outdoorsy cafe. laura had to remove some bird doo from josh's shirt.


another day we went to the austin downtown green market and had breakfast tacos. i also had some homemade goat cheese and a fresh hot bagette.











it sure was a fine day and a fine mental vacation for a couple of days for me. there's nothing better for the soul than to get away, hang out, listen to great music, ride ride ride bikes.... and of course spend some precious time with the youngsters.
thank you josh and laura for hanging out with me and everything else and thank you josh once again for taking the time to escort me around sxsw 2009 and for all those great breakfast smoothies.
it was a blast and i really can ride a bike after all. not too bad for an old fart. smile.

after much discussion, i suppose, i was finally allowed to take possession of these paint brushes which belonged to pop pop.
i've stared at them for 6 days now and i've come to the conclusion that they are a lot more than a handful of old used brushes.
i have already become somewhat attached to them. i have very few things that i really treasure. i treasure music (which is not a thing) and my camera (which actually could be replaced). i also treasure the times that i spend alone, thinking, planning, daydreaming and making things...such as they are.
just like music and daydreaming.... these paintbrushes are much more than just what i see or hear or think....much more than that.
they reach into me and make me feel.

yeah for all things growing.
squash
tomatoes
mangoes
lemons
spinach & carrots
beans
pretty little hibiscus

























































































































the front porch has been re-colored to match my colorful mind. john says that the neighbors are going to start wondering. i say wondering about colors is a good thing.

these are my children.
they are my descendants; members of my tribe. i am very proud of my tribe. they fill my heart with love & kindness.

we will be together next week in austin for the big annual 4 day music festival, sxsw. josh is letting laura & i sleep on his bed and he is going to sleep on the floor in his sleeping bag. we will go the free day shows to see some bands i like and at night josh & laura will go out to the dance parties while i sleep. we will also go to cool places to window shop & eat and to the saturday farmer's market for fresh veggies and goat cheese. josh is getting some bicycles for us to ride around the city. i really like austin. it is all about progressiveness & creativity.

we're all in doubt....
after mom mom's visit here in florida i've had some interesting conversations with myself about life & the way people live their lives. then i started thinking about the many other people i know that seem frustrated with the way things are going in their lives. mom mom is obviously frustrated with the fact that pop pop left her and prays each day for the strength to carry on as if her life is just meaningless now. i guess it doesn't help that she is so sickly & disabled and on top of that has basically nothing meaningful to do all day. i actually know of other people, not even that old, that are frustrated with their lives, they're often sick or don't feel well and they really have no purpose or any particular interesting productive goals or plans. it seems more obvious everyday that mental health & physical health go hand in hand. i really don't know how some of these people even find a reason to get out of bed every morning.

i met a man at work last week who is looking for a boat to buy, a 38' trawler to be exact. he's had many boats in the past and has sailed all over... to many countries, down in panama and all around the islands. he looks on craigslist every morning and scours the websites for boats for sale. last week he drove over to ft. myers to look at one but he didn't like it. he's a tall thin agile man with rather nice looking face.. and he likes to flirt. he's very friendly and really likes to talk alot so he pretty much tells you everything about himself but in a sort of interesting and funny way. he said his wife died several years ago and he has several children. he said he doesn't believe in going to church because he doesn't need that sort of crutch in order to be a good person and enjoy his life on earth. he likes to walk every morning, he likes to swim, he really enjoys cooking and he's really into recycling and bluegrass music. actually he's very cute and i enjoy talking to him. he's full of beans and very upbeat about life. the best part is that he just turned 87 years old. he showed me his driver's license.
we all have choices to make as we grow up and grow older, i think. making the choices is often the most difficult part though.
to live in the present, to develop our own consciousness.... these are important.

i believe we should all try to live our lives more as a spiritual one than a physical one and do our best to feel good about how we use the time we have now and to always try to feel as if we did our best... and of course, to never stop trying to learn new things that could improve us and make our lives better.

"to adopt a context for living that even makes sense from the perspective of beyond the grave, to live here on earth as a timeless being instead of a mortal one."

the bottom line here is we all need to have our own individual lives, our own interests & hobbies, our own goals. we are the only one who can make a difference in the way we feel about ourselves. to live though others or to expect others to make us happy never really works out well. if we are someday ever so fortunate to find someone to share our lives with... that can be a good thing. we can cherish and love them. we can marry, raise families, have children and enjoy each other lives but we should never get to the point where we become so disinterested in our own lifes and so needy that they become our only reason for our daily existence.
we can always grow together and yet strive to never become so entwined that we choke each other and lose our own individual selves along the way.
"so many things that i see are just reveries".

here's cabana mom mom protected from the sun and wind and relaxing at the beach with toby, my fishing pole and john's leg.

she left this morning with john, flying back to philly. poor john hasn't figured out how he's going to pull 2 wheelie suitcases, carry his briefcase and push mom mom in the wheelchair through the airport, then, upon arrival in philly, push her down to baggage claim, get the bags, let her and the bags somewhere, go get a rental car and somehow get the bags and her in the wheelchair out to the rental car. it's really a 2 person job but i guess he'll figure it out when he gets there. no doubt he'll be quite stressed out about it all. hopefully mom mom won't fall along the way somewhere in the airport. we were thinking last night about just wrapping her up in bubble wrap from now on. she almost fell again last night just walking from the living room to the kitchen.

while john's in philly at his meetings and classes this week mom mom will be back at home all by herself all week long til late each night when john gets back over there from work. beth and karl are on a vacation all week in florida. after her visit with us and watching how difficult it is for her to get about it's worrisome to think of how dangerous it is for her to be there alone in the house like that. it's only a matter of time....

this is where mom mom has spent much of her time this past week... sitting on the porch reading. as you can see, my porch is extremely "colorful"and it's really nice to sit out here, listen to the birds and the wind chimes, listen to the boats coming down the river...listen to the wind blowing through the palm trees. actually i like to sleep out here at night on the porch bed with the fishy comforter that i found at a yard sale.

a couple of days ago i painted the old lobster buoys to match my fishy comforter while mom mom read. she also writes in her journal...the little daily events that go on and such, what she did, where she went and so on. she writes them as if she's writing a letter to pop pop.
back at work they're putting in my new desk. it's a 2 level counter desk and it's going to have a granite countertop with a corian desktop. these people spend too much money on all this but whatever. it's odd working around these people who have something like a 20 million $ budget to spend on this marina as if it's just some sort of pet project for them... all this overpriced designer stuff, fancy this & that and yet they have not once sat down with us to discuss the gut level marina operations or how they would like us to run the place. i can only assume that they just expect us to do what we've always done. i guess it could be worse..but it does seem odd that the new "owner/operators", as they call themselves, don't seem interested in having a more personal relationship with the very people who are the backbone of their fancy pants multi million $$ project.

as for mom mom, i've definitely noticed a change in her since pop pop died. she sits a lot.. sometimes just staring down with her eyes half closed. more often than not she seems to be out of touch with what's going on around her, unaware of her surroundings or who's in the same room with her. she has a difficult time just standing up from a sitting position and walks with a very slow and unsteady gait, head and neck hunched way over barely able to see what's in front of her. it's actually sort of scary to think that she still lives in her house by herself. most folks in her disabled condition would be in a nursing home of some sort or at least living with constant supervision.

her hearing aids don't seem to work very well and she rarely understands anything you say or else gets it confused with something else. conversations are difficult to say the least. even eating seems to be difficult because of the severe hunching which makes it hard for her to even raise her head up enough for her to put the food in her mouth. i imagine she's just very very weak from a lack of exercise and her muscles have just turned to jello. she does, however, remember to take her meds and she has a jolly good time calling people on her cell phone. she also likes to watch tv although here at the cottage of minimalism where we only get 2 channels she's sort of limited. sorry to say..we don't get cnn news all day long like she's used to at home.

yesterday beth & karl came down for the afternoon to visit with us and mom mom. they are staying at disneyworld campground in their rv for a week or so. john took them all out on the boat for a ride down the river. i had to work but i saw them as they passed the marina. later on as they returned and tied the boat back up, mom mom fell in the marina parking lot when no one was watching her. she didn't seem to hurt herself but later she began to complain that her neck and side hurt. i imagine this morning when she wakes up she's going to have a hard time getting out of bed. it's a serious miracle that she didn't break her hip or knock herself out. today i had planned to take her to the beach for a picnic under the new little portable cabana thing i bought for her. i guess i'll wait and see now how she feels when she wakes up. maybe i'll drag her down there anyway. it's got to be better than sitting in the house all day staring at the floor. plus..this is going to be a really good beach day finally and i hate to miss it since i have to work all day tomorrow.

oh well.. i really wish there was some way to get all her muscles working again somehow so she could get out and enjoy life..get out and smell the roses. it must be hard to be so weak and disabled and on top of that still so very depressed about having to be a widow.

i had hoped to hook her up with my cute little old lady neighbors. the one named pat who is 85, a widow also, lives alone, is very active and still full of beans. pat has actually been up on a ladder for the past several weeks painting her little cottage, which i think is very funny at her age. the other one, carol, is always doing something strange outside in her yard early in the morning, feeding the squirrels or trotting down to pat's house with a basket full of something or other. it's seems like everytime they're out though, mom mom is either still in bed or taking a nap. i should have tried a little harder to get them together. it would have been good for her, i think.

tomorrow mom mom leaves. i get the feeling that she will be glad to get back home for some reason. she just hasn't seemed very at ease here at all. i don't know...maybe it's just her sadness and the fact that she is so disabled. john is flying back to philly with her since he has one of those week long meeting events with his company up there starting monday.

tonight i think i'll make paella with my new paella pan.

best laid plans...

since thursday the itinerary for fun & recreation has pretty much gone by the wayside due to mom mom's various issues such as dizziness, upset stomach, diarrhea... sort of like the pepto bismol commercial. i did take her to the library to get something to read and that's pretty much all she's done for the past 3 days. she says she just wants to relax... which is fine. she can relax and read and take afternoon naps. in addition, it's been quite windy here and she doesn't like the wind so she's staying inside.. reading her book. later on this week, probably wednesday john wants to take her out for a boat ride in eleanor rigby. i imagine she'll probably get sea sick or something. just hope it's not too rough or too windy for her. of course i was going to take her to the beach, maybe tuesday but i guess that depends on how she feels and whether or not it's too windy for her. i guess she's just content to sit and read, watch tv and talk on the phone. i guess that's pretty much all anyone can do who's 87 years old. hopefully she'll start to feel a little better than she has in the last couple of days. john has been staying with her 24/7 while i worked this weekend, making sure she gets her breakfast and her lunch. he's been a very kind and dear good son.