A Spark of Crazy

You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it.
Robin Williams

Listen to this while you read.


One of my mottos is Everyone is crazy. Especially me.
I don't remember when I decided this, but it was a long time ago.
It was right up there with Never put Neosporin on your lips.
(The kind with the painkiller in it.
If you've ever done it, you'll know why.)

I was lying in bed this morning, not wanting to get up as usual, and feeling bad for my Mum. In our family, in case you haven't noticed, we have kind of beatified my Dad. Don't get me wrong, he was the best man I have ever known, but he did have the advantage of dying young. My Mum, on the other hand, has always been a little on the crazy side, and it hasn't gotten any better as she has aged. So I tend to dwell on her craziness, when, in fact, she taught me many good things. So, here is the list of things I learned from my Mum:

Stand by your man.
Take care of your man.
Be grateful.
Think of the needs of others.
Keep a tidy house.
Cook dinner every night.
Appreciate beauty in nature, like sunsets and trees.
Sing. All the time.
Eat lots of chocolate.
Be generous with your time, talents, and possessions.
Shop for bargains.
Always check your store receipts.
Appreciate quality, whether it's in a person or a fabric.
Buy stuff for your grandkids.
Adore your grandkids.
If in doubt, bake a cake.

And I thought to myself, that's a pretty good list for a crazy person!

The wisdom of a father, added upon

My Dad often reduced life to a few pithy sayings.
I was thinking about some of them this morning.

If millions believe a lie, does it make it truth?
A bad workman blames his tools.
Measure twice, cut once.
Never show a fool a half-finished job.

He also taught me, by example more than words, principles which have guided my life:

Pay off debt early.
Live within your means.
Be kind to animals.
Make your garden beautiful AND productive.
Follow your dreams.
Be happy.
Be good and do good.
Work hard.
Play hard.
Show your beliefs in the way you live your life.
Be honest.
A bunch of freshly picked flowers from the garden is worth more than any florist's bouquet.
Seek knowledge.
Search for adventures.
Take care of people in need.
Gather food storage.
Compost is good.
Own a gun for protection.
Do your best.
Look on the bright side.
If you play the piano, you'll always be popular.
Have fun, no matter what.

My Dad died young, but I think he died without regret, except for perhaps having to leave Mum alone for so long. He was not a complicated man and he enjoyed simple pleasures. I wish my kids and Jeff could have known him.
I hope that in knowing me they have known a small part of him.

Mr. Entomology

Twenty eight years ago, with a little help from Jeff and a good midwife, I gave birth.
To this boy.

He's a little bit (!) nerdy and weird, but we love him to pieces.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JON!

Readiness and Rabblerousers

Jeff is our town's co-ordinator for ResistNet, one of the sponsoring groups for the September 12th rally in Washington DC. We had our first meeting of the minds last night in our living room. I decided to make cookies. Oatmeal chocolate chip sounded mildly healthy.
When I pulled my chocolate chip jar out of the pantry, it occurred to me how ridiculous my food storage priorities have become.

To give you an idea of the scale of that great big jar:

Before everyone went home, I took a picture, a la neo-neocon. Just to make sure that the nameless remain so.

If you are interested in preparedness-type topics, I recommend that you check out the Preparedness Pro blog that is new to my blog roll. This woman is the Queen of All Things Related to Preparedness. I am very excited because she is coming to our area to present her classes in February. Look for related future posts.

This kakapo is maybe a bit too tame...

A little hilarity on the weekend never hurt anyone.
Did it?

"The time has come," the walrus said...

..."to speak of many things;
of ships and shoes and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings."
And today, that behemoth of controversy, global warming.
Now, you all know that I love this earth and I try to live as lightly upon its beautiful surface as I can. I think it behooves all of us to produce as little waste as we can and to live efficiently. But I have to say, and I hope none of my lovely readers will be offended, that this global warming crap is making me grumpy.
Jeff is a statistician. He has spent many hours poring over his computer, entering climate data into charts. He understands, as does any statistician worth his scatter plot, that numbers can be skewed in infinite ways to "prove" the story you choose to tell. Growing numbers of scientists are speaking out on the subject of climate change, not denying that it exists but showing scientifically that is not new and corresponds more to solar events than to anything man-made. Not that I want to downplay the effects of our behavior on the larger picture.
But....
I have a couple of websites that I want you to look at.
Icecap.us and CO2Science are two very sensible (no hysteria) and informative sites that are chock full of fascinating material.


Icecap has some great satellite photos of the UK, which is currently in the grip of an unprecedented cold snap. The whole country is white. It also has an FAQ and Myths' page which is well worth the read. The videos above are representative of those found on CO2.
I personally will be spending too much time on these websites in the next few days.
Meanwhile, I will still be recycling and conserving as if my life depended on it.
I suggest you do both of the same.

Silver and Gold

Make new friends and keep the old,
One is silver and the other's gold.

It takes a long time to grow an old friend.

I have a friend. My oldest friend, in that she has been my friend longer than anyone else on earth, apart from my Mum and my sister.

This is my friend Janet.

This is me.

I have been working on this post in my head for a long time. I wanted to tell you about Janet. About how remarkable it is that, although we have only seen each other once in the last 42 years, we still call each other "friend."

But especially, about how remarkable I think she is as a person.

I have mentioned a couple of times that as a girl I really only wanted two things: to be a ballerina and to own a horse. I didn't get either, although Annie managed to "kind of" fulfill both aspirations. My friend Janet was an avid horse rider when she was young and I was ever-so-slightly jealous. We were pretty good friends at school, but didn't spend any time at each other's homes because we lived in different villages. We attended a little village school in Middle Littleton, which was where Janet lived. My family lived in North Littleton. There was also a South Littleton. You get the idea! I could spend pages telling you about that school and my teachers, but maybe some other time. This post is about my friend.

Janet used to call me occasionally from the phone box by her house. We got a phone, with the number Badsey 733, which I had to recite when I answered the phone because my Dad had his own plumbing business. It was an exciting event when Janet called me. No one else ever did, you see. Call me, I mean. I was sad to leave Janet when we moved to New Zealand, but we promised to write. I was eleven at the time. And write we did. For some reason, we started this thing where each time we wrote, we would beat the last letter's page total. I think we were up to over 30 pages by the time we got to be into our teens and, I assume, too busy for such time-consuming pastimes.

The years passed by and pretty soon we were all grown up. Jan went to university and graduated and got married. I notably DIDN'T go to university (sore point with my parents), although I did some traveling and served a mission and then got married shortly after Jan and Steve. We didn't see each other again until we were in our mid 30's. My sister and I had planned a trip to England with our daughters. Anne wasn't able to go in the end, so Bethany and I went alone. After spending a week with my aunties and uncles in Birmingham, we went to the Cotswolds to stay with Janet and her family. Jan was the proud Mum of a toddler and a baby when Bethany and I visited. I must admit, I was very surprised to discover that Jan was profoundly deaf. Not only had she shown no signs of it (that I knew) when we were children, but she had never mentioned it since. She was pretty awesome at coping with it, using a combination of hearing aids and lip reading. It was a bit nerve-wracking when she was driving though, because she would be looking in the rear-view mirror all the time to watch her son talking. I never told her that before, sorry Jan! We had a fun week and then went home. Since then, it has mostly been Christmas letters and the occasional email.

Several years ago, Jan got a cochlear implant. I was interested in this because I had done extensive research on the deaf community while studying for my music therapy degree. Jan's surgery was rather groundbreaking, something to do with new robotic techniques, and she was featured in a TV programme. Since then, she has become an advocate and support for potential and actual cochlear implant recipients. She also volunteers for a local charity teaching life skills to people who have mental illnesses or learning deficiencies. Not only that, but Jan is an avid biker. This girl thinks nothing of going out on a Saturday and churning out 100 miles. She rode Le Jog a few years ago, the ultimate act of hard-core biking. Well, maybe not THE ultimate, I suppose Lance might have something to say about that. But Le Jog is the route from Land's End to John O'Groats, the entire length of the British isles. It's rugged by any standard. I keep trying to talk her into coming and riding the Seattle-to-Portland, but only because I want to see her again. I suppose it might seem a bit tame after Le Jog. Jan is also a wife, Mum of two, and a businesswoman.

There, in a nutshell, is almost 50 years of a friendship.You may wonder, what makes two people hang on to a relationship where their paths cross so infrequently? Especially when, in retrospect, we only knew each other for four years and didn't ever play together outside of school. I think maybe it's because we are like-minded without even knowing it. Jan reads my blog faithfully; all of the UK entries in the sidebar are her. (Apparently her ISP wanders!) She wrote in her last email, in which she told me about her volunteer work, that a lot of the things I say and do echo her life and thoughts very accurately. So we are, as it turns out, and in the words of Anne Shirley, kindred spirits. Maybe that's the answer.

Oh, I'm sorry, did you forget the question?

P.S. I just added "visiting Jan" to my bucket list. I will take photos of us together, looking fierce on our bikes.