Kentucky Nook of the Woods

Hello world!

apjo1 — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 18:53:15 +0000

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Warning: Blaze of Autumn Daze Ahead

apjo1 — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:16:59 +0000

As summer winds down , and the temps are still scorchers ,we are in the soccer swing of things up to four times a week .

Eddie’s coaching a u 10 team with his kids in it as well .

I’m there too as admin, water jug filler, team photog and helping to keep the kids on a schedule after they come home from school.

I was never a soccer mom, so who woulda thunk it could still happen at this ripe old age?

Anything Eddie and I do together works out well, it’s really strange in that way.

Our combined energies match almost seamlessly.

It’s great to see Eddie doing things he loves so much– teaching and soccer.

I feel really good that I am able to be a part of all of this , there are days when I feel a bit hectic, but it’s all good.

I’ve had days filled with boredom, pain, anxiety, sadness ( as lives so often contain), this is all good.

And the kids love doing this as a group effort.

My daughter should be coming down to see them play a game later next week.

I do miss her.Now it’s mostly a daily phone call, and seeing her once a month .

It’s been quite the adjustment.

This is another of life’s phases, baby birds that leave the nest.

It’s normal, and normally it’s younger.

In this family , we tend to walk to the beat of a different drum apparently…

Late September and all of October are my favorite part of the year.

I so look forward to the dwindling temps, pumpkins dotting the landscape and various festivals.

My injuries last Fall are not forgotten, they still haunt my every move , but all in all I am fairly mobile( I’m not saying I could run a marathon but then heck I couldn’t do that before the accident either) and am still working on strenghthening my endurance and lower muscles.

My cheesecake bars for the church dinner tonight need my immediate attention, so I’m outta here …for now…

Kentucky Wonder

apjo1 — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:04:00 +0000

Weather has been a bit wet and stormy but, umm, we are fine and my daughter lost power for a few hours up there in Looville.

Life in this part of Kentuck is busy, busy like a dang whatchamacallit –Bee.

I am about to ramble on a bit , so let me apologise in advance for my tangential thinking , and just say clicking away is always a valid option for you !

I have made one distinct observation since I came to live here .

These people eat green beans like crazy.

Could it be I have found a statewide pastime ?

I like green beans so it all works out, but still, I swear no meal is complete here without em .

It’s like 365 or then maybe corn instead, but mostly green beans.

I do shop at the local farmer’s market.

Where ,yes, I buy —
green beans– often.

We ambled down to the market this morning and got lots of lovely local produce .

Eddie likes to raise his eyebrow at my love of large proportioned zucchini.

Hey,what can I say, I love Italian style zucchini coins with a nice yogurty/garliccky dip. Gota shake thangs up at the dinnertable here and there .

This will all end soon , and then people frozen and canned beans will show up at meals the rest of the year.

My Dad use to tell my daughter when she was younger that if she didn’t eat veggies everyday –she’d wind up face down in ditch someday.

Interesting concept, but we got the greens way covered here nowadays!

So how come we still ended up in a ditch last nov??!

<—-the big sack on the righthand side of this pic is a mix of beans called Kentucky Wonder !

Babelfish Translator Strikes Again!

apjo1 — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:08:31 +0000

This cooking Italian newsletter always looks so , well, Italian / cosmopolitan when it arrives in my email.Always reminds me

of my summer visit to northwestern Italy ; the heat, gorgeous blue water , interesting people, and so much great food & wine.

Once the Babelfish Online Translator gets done with it though:

New Sul number in newspaper stand… August, month of plums. Allied of muscles and boneses, they are one of the fruits richer than anti-oxidants.

The sapete that freshest they are those a little opaque ones, to prefer to those lucid ones? “The cook and the nutrizionista” of the August number give to the answer to this and others many others because on plums and susine.

The ice cream appeals to you. And this summer you want procurarvi all what it serves in order to taste it in family or with the friends. In the rubrica “cose& August house” two pages of coppette, spoons, teaspoons and cannucce, till the gelatiera last model, leave the embarrassment you of the choice alone.

If of summer loved to resolve the lunch with “insalatona”, in the number in newspaper stand eccone you are like nourishing antidote to the sultriness. From that of escape, papaia, mango, avocado, cicoria and finocchio to that of pollo roast, capsicum, grain, lemon and maggiorana, to that of fish sword, tomatoes, almonds and olives of Gaeta…

What??!

Gone In The Dead Of Night

apjo1 — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:18:56 +0000

This past Friday morning sitting on the front porch with my coffee , I suddenly noticed with a start that a bunch of my solar lights were gone. I asked Eddie if he moved some to put batteries in, or out back and he said no.

Suddenly we realized after piecing the last few evenings together , that they must have been stolen the night before while we were sleeping.

He got mad, I got sad .

They come on at dusk with an array of colors that pleases the eye and lifts my spirit every night .

I discovered them orignally in those dark years after my husband’s unsolved murder .

They adorned the pool area in our back yard in Texas , I wrote poetry about the light play that was published .

Palm trees , water and dancing lights .

In Massachusetts the contrast with the snow was gorgeous.

They’ve been an essential in my yard decorating schemes anywhere I ‘ve lived for at least five to six years now.

The thief or thieves made away with thirteen lights in the dead of night.

I told my daughter and she asked with a worried tone .," Did they get the gnomes too ?"

I was like no hon , just the lights.

Tallied up the cost for their haul–round about 150 bucks.

They can’t be pawned , not all of them are new.Some of them didn’t come up with the stakes either so they can’t stand them up.

Don’t think there is an underground market for hot solar lights.

I think someone was entranced by the colors as I have always been , but unlike me , made a five finger discount decision .

Went in to the local police made a statement today , and the Bolo went out locally, the next county and the next town over as well.

They are not your usual run of the mill store bought lights and will be highly noticable if the person decides to display them..

Low crime area , so they take these thefts seriously.

I had a few left that needed some repairs, and now I am hesitant to put them out .

I do so miss them every night .

Keep On Trucking

apjo1 — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:19:16 +0000

as if …I ever intended to stop ??!

That was one of those 70′s sayings I use to laugh about over the years.

Yesterday I was bent over in the front yard pulling huge weeds out of the flower bed , and realized how just a few months earlier bending over was

a) initially impossible b) painful beyond any recollection of pain I had ever had even childbirth seemed like a walk in the park comparatively

c)just 3 months ago still needed an opiate to bend over comfortably.

And now I’m just bending over with rarely a hitch, smooth and pain free.

It’s the straightening up that’s really the trick again.

Here I am sitting on the curb at physical therapy waiting for my Eddie to pick me up sitting in the bright Spring Kentucky sun .

Getting up from this position is always filled with grunts and other cartoon -like sounds coupled with ungraceful moments including arm flailing sometimes …

I just keep on trucking , because that ‘s what it takes to make it baby.

Musings

apjo1 — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:56:53 +0000

Life keeps moving forward, with scarce a chance to look back too much.

I am trying to live life forward and not backward, does that make sense ?

The biggest change is that my daughter moved away about an hour away from me with her beau to a larger city nearby .

I do miss my daily life with her , and I must say ,we have been lucky to have gotten to spend a lot of time together over the years.

This is a normal turn of events with children leaving the nest.Her departure was just delayed by several years.

We’ve had our share of life drama over the past 7 years , and have become a little worse for the wear.

Still we both held up to what has been tossed at us as well as we could.

We’ve had some help along the way with those hard lessons.

I sometimes see flashes of life that I have experienced , and wonder how I got through them, or I remember great times that seemed to have ended way too soon.

It’s all made me who I am today, and I can live with that .

a caricature my daughter made of me as a fairy when she came by and visited me earlier this week.

Sweet Sun

apjo1 — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 20:42:23 +0000

The sweet Spring sun caressed my skin and warmed my aching bones this afternoon while the lilac scent hung on the breeze and drifted my way as I sat on the stoop waiting for the kids to come home.

I so yearned for healing rays on those cold ,gray days in rehab right after my accident in November and then with Winter dragging

on mercilessly while recuperating at home .

That frigid ice storm that had it’s grip on Kentucky making it feel more like my time in Massachusetts didn’t help , and more recently Spring weather taunted us here and there and suddenly *poof * everything went back down to 40 or 50 F again.

My circulation isn’t what it should be yet and so my body really wavers between way too cold and then too hot with blankets on.

It sounds like a few days of warmer weather are beckoning us over the next weekend and hopefully a trend I can easily follow of more weather to come.

Life is hectic these days with Eddie’s kids activities and schedule , friends visiting, and my daughter moving an hour away closer to her work now.

This will be the first time she’s ever been that far away from me.It’s going to be strange. In my family, having a military background , we were not always close to my parents geographically depending on the assignment.

My parents are still in Texas , the last time I saw them was when they came down after my accident.It was good to see them , I know that they were pretty scared for me.

I am still going to physical therapy twice a week and getting stronger, but still not up to snuff yet.

Most days I am tired at the end of the evening , but look forward to another day , because I was allowed more after Nov. 16 , 2008.

Every moment now has a special flavor, appreciation and wonder at what is and can still be .

My daughter in the pink, then our friends, Sharon , Juanita, Doug and Susanne plus my Eddie pictured above .

Gone Way Too Soon

apjo1 — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 15:13:59 +0000

Zel Cat died last Wednesday.

He was suddenly quite ill , and we got him in to see the vet as soon as we could , but he was already very bad off.

It seems the poor little guy had a fatal corona virus called FIP , and we had to make a quick decision to help him to the rainbow bridge.

He wasn’t even a year old.

Tears still come every time I think of the choice we had to make.

He didn’t need to suffer anymore, and this was the kindest thing I think we could do for Steff’s fur baby.

He was a cuddlesome fellow that I didn’t get to spend a whole lot of time with , between my busy schedule ,being laid up in the hospital and my subsequent lack of mobility up until the second week of February .

This was Steff’s first cat, the one she always wanted.

He was her baby.

We’ve had so many changes over the last year ,a very mixed bag to say the least .

On a beautiful sunny spring day like today , I think about all the hard times we’ve all endured, the joy we’ve felt , and then the who -knows- what- lies- ahead truth of living in this world .

I know she adored him, and that while he was around , he had a nice kitty life.

We’ll miss you , Zel .

Back When Michael Looked ,ah, Pretty Much Normal

apjo1 — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:33:17 +0000

…and dancing songs held (cough)*great advice* to live by.

Off the Wall ( Michael Jackson)

When the world is on your shoulder
Gotta straighten up your act and boogie down
If you cant hang with the feeling
Then there aint no room for you this part of town
cause were the party people night and day
Livin crazy thats the only way

Chorus
So tonight gotta leave that nine to five upon the shelf
And just enjoy yourself
Groove, let the madness in the music get to you
Life aint so bad at all
If you live it off the wall
Life aint so bad at all (live life off the wall)
Live your life off the wall (live it off the wall)

2nd verse
You can shout out all you want to
cause there aint no sin in folks all getting loud
If you take the chance and do it
Then there aint no one whos gonna put you down
cause were the party people night and day
Livin crazy thats the only way

Chorus
So tonight gotta leave that nine to five upon the shelf
And just enjoy yourself
Cmon and groove, and let the madness in the music get to you
Life aint so bad at all
If you live it off the wall
Life aint so bad at all (live life off the wall)
Live your life off the wall (live it off the wall)

Bridge
Do what you want to do
There aint no rules its up to you (aint no rules its all up to you)
Its time to come alive
And party on right through the night (all right)

3rd verse
Gotta hide your inhibitions
Gotta let that fool loose deep inside your soul
Want to see an exhibition
Better do it now before you get too old
cause were the party people night and day
Livin crazy thats the only way

Chorus
So tonight gotta leave that nine to five upon the shelf and just enjoy yourself
Cmon and groove (yeah) let the madness in the music get to you
Life aint so bad at all if you live it off the wall
Life aint so bad at all (live life off the wall)
Live your life off the wall (live it off the wall)

Today this song came on the radio and I started to sing along and sway a bit …

Hey–when I was 15 years old, no problem was too large that I couldn’t boogie it away ,because the funk wouldn’t leave me alone ( that lyric ,er ,sage sentiment was expressed by the Brothers Johnson in the song "Stomp") .

Yeah I was into disco. I’ve mentioned that here before.

I’m standing firm to it, so castigate me all you want.

If it makes me wiggle ,I’m not gonna deny the power it unleashes in me.

Not saying that I can’t still feel a groove , but yanno, it doesn’t quite make everything alright anymore.

Thirty years ago …life was indeed simpler .