Wasting Time

Way back in November, I wrote a blog about my future retirement entitled "Butt Sitting" and what I expected to be doing (or not) in my upcoming months once we officially retired. At the time, I was so wound up with work and obligations, any down time appeared to be a breath of fresh air. Since January, I have gotten very used to time, almost at times, an abundance of time and I sincerely hope I am not frittering away any of it. But it's given me a new perspective on time. (It wasn't that long ago that my friend Pam and I were commiserating with each other that the one thing we longed for was 'more time'!)

In the past two years, I have neglected my little shirt business SOMETHING FISHY just dreadfully. I let my inventory of tropical print shirts get down to something like six. Last year I think I only made five. And this was down from my 'good years' of the sideline business of close to a hundred and twenty a year. (Yeah, I was cranking them out in my 'spare time'!) With more time on my hands, I have returned to the peace and calmness of the sewing machine and have produced ten so far in the last month. I have set up a tiny little sewing nook in the basement, right next to the macaws' cages, and set myself in there for a few hours every few days and voila! SOMETHING FISHY's inventory is growing. I wanted to explore the possibilities of selling on EBay so last night I listed my first shirt. It took me close to two hours to figure out how to do it (properly) and get all my data correct. So, time well spent? We'll see.

And then, of course, I've been trying to blog a lot more than I was while I was working but that takes time too. Sometimes, I worry that I'm not blogging enough. I know there are a few you faithful readers that check on me daily and I regret to say I am only blogging not even every other day. But some days... there's just nuthin' to say, is there? So I feel guilty if I'm not blogging enough, but also guilty if I'm sitting at the computer every night writing and not sitting and socializing with Bill. (Hmmm, cloning might be good....)

Today on the news there was another story about the Virtual Lives websites on the Internet. I know (virtually) nothing about these, save what I hear. But it do sound disturbing! Folks create a character for themselves (like writing a novel) and then interact somehow with other folks who are also re-creating virtual lives for themselves. They end up marrying (so do they have virtual children???!!) or messing around and it sounds like a great deal of gratuitous sex is involved too. They pay each other real money for weddings and sex and whatever else they dish up. Do they have to spend real money for groceries too? And does their gas cost $3.00 or more a gallon? Or don't they worry about those sorts of things? I'm curious, however, not that curious that I want to log in to see what's going on. From the person they interviewed on the tv this morning, it sounds like the real world problem of folding laundry and washing the dinner dishes, in fact, even making dinner, has fallen into the cracks while the person was busy with their virtual life.

Now, I don't know about you, but my own life in both the before and after retirement phase has been busy enough and full enough that I certainly don't need a made-up one. But maybe some folks just have more 'time' than the rest of us!

P.S. The picture I posted is of the emergence of the wildflowers in the desert. Yesterday, we made time and and took a drive into the boonies and found these bluffs liberally sprinkled with golden yellow California poppies. I couldn't resist! Wait until the lupine (bluebonnets) join them in a few weeks. Just gorgeous!

Tribute

His name was Cody. He was eighteen years old. He lived in the neighboring community of Globe, another small mining town deep in the Superstition Wilderness. He was a high school senior. He had a job at the local Wendy's drive-in. He had a girl friend and the rest of his life ahead of him. He drove a small car and lost control of it on top of the mountain one Saturday night returning from Phoenix. His car swerved across the road and hit a semi-tractor truck and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

It's not a new story. It's a story that unfortunately gets retold each year in our communities across this land and fills us with sorrow. Cody's story, however, was still unfolding two weeks after the accident that took his life.

On Saturday afternoon, his friends and co-workers got together to honor his memory by holding a car wash and bake sale at the Wendy's where he was the cook. They wore bright red tee shirts with his picture emblazoned across the front, along with his name and his birth date and date he passed. High school kids manned buckets and hoses to wash cars against one wall of the Wendy's. Smaller kids held posters and signs on Highway 60 letting passersby know a car wash benefit was in progress. A teenaged boy sold nachos and hotdogs at the entrance to Wendy's. Someone's mother sat at a long table inside which was covered with homemade baked goods for sale. Another poster inside the Wendy's told Cody's story and there was a picture on the wall with him smiling down at his friends. A small donation jar stood on the counter where folks gave their orders.

The feeling in that place was alive with their love of the boy. Bill and I stopped in for a mid-afternoon lunch and were overwhelmed with the depth of humanity coming from all those red tee shirted clad folks. I read the poster and felt like bursting into tears. Sombody had done a great job summing up the life of this young man and sharing it with total strangers. While we stood and waited for our sandwiches to be made, the lights in the dining room shut off. Bill and I looked at each other, but said nothing. The electricity in the kitchen still hummed and workers went about their business. In less than a minute, the dining room lights flicked back on. We waited a few more minutes. Once again, the dining room lights flicked off. A manager, standing at the counter, turned and muttered something and went to the backroom. A few seconds later, the lights came back on.

Bill turned to me and raised his eyebrows. "You think he's here?"

I nodded. "He sure appears to be."

Our sandwiches came and we took them into the dining room and sat down. Midway through them, the lights went off again. The mother who was selling the bake goods looked up at another red shirted "Cody" volunteer lady who just entered. "That da fourth time dim lights go off!" she shouted. Then she nodded emphatically and crossed herself.

I met Bill's eyes. "Others know he's here too, don't they? They're not afraid to acknowledge it, are they?"

"He sure is. He must be real impressed with how many people turned out for the benefit."

"When he was alive, I wonder if he knew how many people loved him?" I asked. "This is pretty impressive."

We finished our meal and went outside. A young boy stood at one end of the Wendy's, wagging his sign about the car wash. We nodded that we were going to get in line to get one. His face burst into a jubilant grin. We parked and walked over to a girl and young man collecting money for the car wash. As Bill jammed a twenty into the donation jar, I asked them, "You folks must have loved your friend a great deal."

The girl nodded. "We sure did. He was just the Best!"

I turned away, my eyes tearing up once again. I think he knew. I'm fairly sure he was there in spirit and just tickled by the outpouring of affection shown by his friends and co-workers. I hope he knew, before he passed, how important he was in his community. But if he didn't know it then, he surely knows it now, after the tribute his friends put on for him in Globe on Saturday.

The Back of Beyond

We journeyed into nowhere...desolation...a landscape of natural delights and spiraling jagged mountains and hillsides of slippery stone today. No place we traveled was the same on one side of the mountain as it was on the other. There were white rocks in one gully; ruby red rocks glistening from a cliffside on the next turn; full sandstone yellowy formations in a further valley; slope after slope of regimented saguaro forests; and one burbling stream after another to ford with the intrepid Cruiser. We had ourselves "A Day!"

Glo and Al came up from Casa Grande for this foray into the desert outback and Chuy accompanied us, of course. We told Bill to lead us where he wanted to go, we were glad to follow. Bill thought the back side of Picket Post would be a good place to try. He was thinking of a road he'd seen disappear in that direction but never got to follow, so that's where we headed It turned out to the Best of the Best! (so far, at least!) We stopped first at some lichen rocks erupting from the earth into big crumbling sections. They looked like big loaves of bread that hadn't been kneaded well and turned into crumbs when taken out of the pan. They were sturdier than just crumbs, however, and allowed themselves to be climbed and Bill got all the way to the top of the highest peak and took some wide angle shots of the mountains looking back toward Superior. We picked up chunks of rose quartz that was hiding under the brown crusty outside of the rocks (again, like good white bread hiding under an overbacked crust... was I hungry or what?), and we ended up picking up a surprisingly good assortment of rocks. But then Bill could see the road went farther west, so we piled into the Cruiser and continued on.

We traveled up one mountain and skittered and chattered our way down the other side, then ford streams and lumph over boulders and rocks in the streambed. Then we'd start winding our way up the next mountain. On one of those ascents, we moved aside for four ATV's to come past. We asked the leader about the road they'd taken and he said at the next fork, they'd gone left and run out of road. He thought the way to the right was clear. Then he looked longingly at Bill's Cruiser. "I've got one just like yours," he grinned abashed. "But my wife won't let me take it off road." Bill smiled back sympathetically, "That's what they're made for."

At the top of the next mountain, we stopped to take more pictures. We could have been perched on top of the world, we had the whole Superstition Wilderness scattered out before us. You could even see the Weaver's Needle twenty or thirty miles away standing sentinel. As we gathered back into the car, Bill's phone rang. It was startling to get a phone call in the so-called "middle of nowhere". It was our friend, Pam, calling from Dillon Beach. We started jabbering away to her, trying to tell her how gorgeous the view was right from there. And it was equally hard to try and remember that it's still winter and raining in Dillon Beach when it was sunny (though chilly, yes it was!) in Arizona. I couldn't help but feel the wee bit apologetic for having things be so lovely for us.

So that's why I wanted to send this picture today and tell you folks, whereever you are!, that it's just Ducky here in Arizona. And we're having a really lovely time even if we miss you folks at home. And if I haven't met you yet, then you'd better book yourselves a trip to Arizona, for this is just the best place I've had fun in for a coon's age! Look at what you're missing!

Chuy Finds His Beach

Well, it took some doing. Ever since we removed the puppy from his natural beach environment six weeks ago, Chuy has been bereft of his beach. We told him he'd find it again in the summer when we returned. But he kept looking for his old familiar places and yesterday, he appeared to find it. There was no seaweed and no little boys to play with but Chuy was in his element.

On the southeast side of Picket Post Mountain we found a burbling mountain stream, shooting up over boulders and creating raceways and calm ponds. It was surrounded with sheer rock walls on the canyons and here and there were scattered just enough yucca and desert spoon that it looked like a movie setting. Chuy plunged right in!

He began biting at the mini-rapids that swooped past his mouth, trying to capture the rushing water. He picked up sticks with his mouth and watched them float down the stream. Several times he stuck his nose completely underwater and began digging furiously. I told Bill maybe he was trying his own version of panning for gold. Within twenty minutes, we had ourselves a thoroughly wet, thoroughly exhausted desert puppy.

I have never had the opportunity to see this much water in such an arid place. Everywhere we go up here in the mountains there are streams and rivulets and running water everywhere. I thoroughly expect it to be one of the best wildflower seasons ever. Guess I'd better get the I.D. books to classify them. But as for Chuy, he's finding out the desert may be the second best place to find a good beach. If only the little boys were here for him to play with...!

The Subject is Dogs

This is my new town. It's new to me even though it's officially a hundred and thirty years old. So it's my new town. I shot this picture of it today from way off west in the desert looking east toward the town. That's Picket Post Mountain to your right and Apache Leap way back in the rear and if you squint real hard you can see the white roofs of the town just in front of Apache Leap.



The reason for taking this picture that far away is because tonight I'm going to expose a nasty little secret of this new town of mine. And it's not especially a nice thing to tell folks about so that's why I'm showing the town at a distance, not close up and in love like I have been showing. Our town has an animal control officer. He's hired by the town apparently and doesn't have anything to do with the county. He does things his way. Which is, round up all the loose cats and dogs that bother the town. And it's a fact: this little town has way more barky dogs than it needs. I'm quite sure it has more than its share of cats too. But when this guy 'rounds up' the critters, according to the stories I've heard, he doesn't bother to take them to any shelter to be cared for, he disposes of them promptly. (That's right: you do the math.)

Now I got this information from a group of dedicated, horrified ladies who are working to get a proper animal shelter started here in town. Where dogs and cats can be spayed or neutered and then suitable families can be found for them. A much more humane solution than a quick dispatching of them. They are working their collective buns off to round up as many strays as they can and get them cared for with help from far more humane shelters 'down in the Valley'. They had their hands full last week when it rained hard all day and the animal control officer collected seventeen animals and even he found it too difficult to "off" them all so he called the ladies up and deposited all seventeen with them. (Yes, THOSE were cared for, carted off down to the Valley and hopefully homes can be found for them.)

But I had my own little scare today after we returned home from shooting this picture. Our beloved puppy, Chuy, (I must remember to include his picture on this blog soon, being's he's the Cutest Puppy In The World currently) was put into his outside pen under the deck to get used to being shut up in a pen when Mom and Dad aren't around. We hope to start Harley riding soon and Chuy hasn't learned to ride on the bike yet. So we found a nice shady spot in the dirt and set his pen enclosure up there. Bill was afraid Chuy might dig out from under it but I assured him Chuy would be much happier in the dirt rather than on the cement slab behind the house. Bill went about his chores. I starting cutting out fabric on the sunroom floor. Occasionally, we'd hear Chuy bark. But finally, after about an hour there was silence, so I figured he was sleeping.

Wrong. Chuy dug under his enclosure and came zipping up the back steps. Bill went out the back door and found the eager puppy waiting at the door for us. We let him in, I snatched him up and covered him with kisses. What a good puppy not to have run away! For even with his dog tags and micro-chip, if the Evil Dog Catcher had caught my puppy, would he have been dispatched summarily? Whew!

So we breathed some big sighs of relief and realized it was our Lucky Day after all. And we've moved Chuy's pen out from under the deck and it's now sitting on hard cold cement. But the puppy won't be digging out no more! As far as the Evil Dog Catcher and this town's Sinister Secret, well, I'll keep you posted. I know there'll be more to come!

Valentine Potpourri

We celebrated Valentine's Day a little differently and there were so many parts to it, I want to share. Overall, it was a good day. The weather was a little cooler but felt soft and that's the way Valentine's Day should feel I think. But here's what I learned on my first Valentine's Day in Superior, Arizona:

I had a phone call from a friend who lives 'in the Valley' and he reported a pretty young woman had offered herself to him for 'two fifty'. Would that be two dollars and fifty cents, I inquired. No, it was two hundred and fifty dollars. Hmmmm, I know the price of groceries has gone up but she must have a pretty high opinion of herself.

Bill put the rock and dirt tires back on the Cruiser so this afternoon he and Chuy and I rode out into the desert to try and find Mattie Blaylock's grave once again. We made the trek this time last year on my visit here to try and find the elusive grave that could be on a number of hills overlooking Apache Leap and Picket Post mountain to the west of town. But due to vandals and grave robbers, maybe nobody will ever really know where the poor woman lies. We did find a dandy wash from the winter's rain and I spent half an hour loading up on flat red and pink rocks only, just because it was Valentine's Day. Then we got back in the Cruiser and resumed our search for the grave. I find it odd that we've put this much energy into trying find this woman's grave. She's been gone a hundred and thirty years come this July. I think dead, she's probably vastly more interesting than the poor woman ever was alive. (Ain't that a legacy!!!!) She was Wyatt Earp's second 'wife', commonlaw at least, and lived with him from her early twenties until her mid thirties. When Earp went and married his third wife, Mattie was just devastated and it didn't take too many years of drink and drugs to overdose and die at the age of thirty eight. She died in the defunct town of Pinal City, just a few months before the town itself died and was buried in the old Pinal City Cemetary. Stories say there's a stone there depicting Mattie's grave but that vandals and grave robbers have messed things up pretty badly. Some say she's been 'reburied' on a hill looking back at Apache Leap. That's where we thought we'd found it last year. It sure 'felt' like Mattie was there. But today we were in search of the old cemetary. And except for some rings of stones in one place, we probably didn't find it. It might have some campers fire ring, or it might have been some elaborate ruse somebody set up to make folks think they had found Mattie's old grave. Guess we'll keep looking....

And then, on one of our walks, we glimpsed this young woman who when we offered a cordial "Good afternoon" averted her eyes and kept on walking. What in the world? A neighbor said she's one of the crackheads who inhabit one of the abandoned buildings down the street and that 'he heard' she had a small child living with her and she hustles out in the early morning bumming change from the folks who buy their gas and coffee at the Circle K. Imagine that: a modern day Mattie Blaylock, only one not fortunate enough to have been a lawman's Lady and probably destined for an early demise from overdosing of drugs too. Makes you wonder what might have changed in this corner of the desert in the last hundred and thirty years, huh?

But the topper of this semi-sweet Valentine's Day was a lovely green beaded necklace with a carved bone feather on it from Bill. And we shared a plate of frosted heart shaped cookies I baked (with Chuy, of course!) And then, the best of all: I received via email this Valentine from my sweet grandson. So what couldn't be better? I'll take it all thank you, the good, the sweet and the bittersweet too.

Happy Valentine's Day!

A Royal Visit

No, no, my grandsons didn't arrive for a visit. But we did have a visit from a Royal Visitor. Prince Andrew flew over the Apache Leap mountain this morning in a heliocopter to get a look at where the proposed land swap for the Resolution Copper Mine is going to be. If you stare real hard right in the center of the picture, right above the mountain, that's him there.

I reckon there must be some pressure being exerted by the Royals of England onto the Ditherers in the Senate over the slowness in approving or vetoing this bill that would make the copper company the biggest in the state of Arizona and possibly one of the biggest in the U.S. I don't know precisely what kind of pressure the senators might be getting but it must be coming from the environmentalists and the Native Americans who are opposed to it. I can't help but think there must be others, maybe some Influential Others who have some reason to prevent Resolution Copper from having their big mine back up there. But when you talk about Influential Others, that's usually another company who would like to have that land for themselves. They're usually the only ones that can exert that kind of pressure on politicians. It's not because the lawmakers are worried about Doing The Right Thing. (Whatever that might be!)

Anyway, I just wanted to share. I thought this was kind of a SCOOP and again, it didn't make the news tonight on tv. All they stated that Prince Andrew spent the day touring area businesses. (Yeah! You betcha he did!) And don't you think there's some Goodies in it for the British government if this Land Swap bill is enacted and the British copper conglomerate moves in to reap its rewards. The prince has to do what he's gotta do too. That's his job.

Oops, sorry, if my tone has slipped tonight. I'll try to keep it lighter next time!