Oh baby......

My cousin D out in Arizona is a new grandpa..... one of his three daughters gave birth to a baby boy yesterday. D's other two daughters also have children, so this isn't the first time D is a grandpa. I called him up this afternoon, to congratulate him on this latest grandson, and D said exactly what I had been thinking before I called him: How in the world did we get from playing Monopoly on Grandma's porch to here?!

Both D and I said that playing Monopoly on the porch in Queens happened just yesterday, didn't it? We both remember all the holidays at Grandma's house, with all the aunts in the kitchen fussing over the stove and the oven (except for Aunt Jaye, who never cooked, and still doesn't), and all the uncles playing cards with Grandpa in the dining room. The only thing that got the cards and the poker chips off of the dining room table was my grandmother poking her head through the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room. A woman of few words, she said "Time to eat! Now!" (In Italian, of course, which made it sound even more important and forceful.) While the uncles were putting their cards and poker chips away, my generation of cousins would be tucking our Monopoly money underneath the board, making sure everything was safe in our spots so we could resume the game after dinner.

So here we all are, fifty years later. As D said--- Where did the fifty years go? 50 isn't a small number! How come we didn't see the years disappearing?!

But we didn't. The days go, the weeks go, the months pass along, and the years disappear. And then one day (as my dear friend Frankie used to say)-- "You look into the mirror and you see this middle-aged person looking back at you.... and then if you're really lucky, you get to see an older person looking back at you and then you say to the mirror "Well, who the hell are you and what have you done with me!?"

D sent me a photo of the new baby today-- a tiny little postage-stamp sized photo on my cell phone. I have no idea how to re-send this phone-picture to my other cousins, so D is going to have to send the same photo to the rest of the family. When I was talking to D on the phone, he told me to look at the picture and let him know if the new baby boy looks like Mussolini or Churchill.

I eMailed D a little while ago. I told him I got the photo....... told him I looked at it very carefully..... and said that the baby doesn't look a bit like Mussolini or Churchill. What I told D was that his new grandson looks like part of the family.

Gatsby?

For the second day in a row, we woke up this morning to cooler temperatures. Early this morning, it was indeed cool enough for a sweater-- 68 degrees, I think it was. By noon-time yesterday, it was sunny and in the mid-80s, and the television weather wizards are predicting more of the same for today and the rest of week.

When I opened the back door this morning, our mostly-outside cat Gatsby wasn't sitting there on the doormat with his nose pressed up against the screen. Gatsby isn't one to ever miss a meal, so I was worried right away. He's usually right there, ready to dip his face into his food bowl as soon as I put it out there in the mornings.

I looked all around the house and the cottage, my husband looked into and around the barn. Not a sign of Gatsby, and not a sign of any sort of fight or disturbance, either. The first thing that crossed my mind was that a coyote got him, which has happened in these hills before to neighbors' cats, as well as countless chickens. Mostly, though, coyotes go hunting close around the houses only in the winter months if meals in the woods become scarce. We're barely out of September here, so why are the coyotes coming out of the woods already?

I'm hoping that Gatsby has just wandered off, but I can't honestly say that I believe that. He didn't really go much farther than the barn..... and he never even went down towards the pond. Gatsby was just content to be on the porch or under the cottage, watching the chickens, or watching Mickey and Sweet Pea chase the chickens.

We found Gatsby just last year..... alone and starving, walking in the courtyard behind the garage. One bowl of cat food was all it took for him to make himself at home here. For the most part, Gatsby was a very friendly cat until a few months ago when he decided that plowing his super-sized cat body into both Mickey and Sweet Pea was his sport-of-choice. Sweet Pea would fight back with him, but Mickey would just roll over and cry till I got there to rescue him. Gatsby had always slept in the TV room at night with Mickey and Sweet Pea, but once he started being too rough with them, I didn't keep him in there when I wasn't able to watch him.

So out on the porch Gatsby went, and he seemed quite happy there. I let him inside when the temperature got over 100 degrees, but I had to put him on the porch before we went to bed. Last night, I carried Gatsby from the TV room to his favorite chair on the back porch, and that was the last time I saw him.

And then......... just as I was typing that last sentence, my husband called me from downstairs........ he was out in the garage and came out and found Gatsby sitting by the back door. Sitting there looking into the screen door, his usual spot in the morning. He picked Gatsby up and carried him into the house. No marks on that cat, he seems just fine...... not a whisker out of place. As I type now, Gatsby is making his way to the bottom of his food bowl, quite content. In his little cat mind, he's probably thinking Well, this will make her think twice about leaving me out on the porch all night long.

Sunday stuff.

When I went into town before the weekend, at least half a dozen people said to me "So how are you liking the cooler weather? Isn't this just so nice?" I smiled and said it was wonderful, but inside I was just laughing. By cooler weather here, they were talking about temperatures in the mid to upper 80s, which I guess is cooler than the last five months of high 90s and low 100s. We are into what I call the Second Spring.... the mornings tend to be a little crisp. Not cool enough for a sweater, but cool enough to think you may have gotten out of bed in another part of the state further north.

The cats are indeed loving these cooler days..... both Mickey and Sweet Pea have been chasing the chickens again-- something they don't bother doing when it's so hot outside. Gatsby does not chase the hens.... either he's too lazy or he knows better. I would imagine that any of the cats would be able to catch the hens if they really wanted to, but I think it's more of a game with them. I don't know what they find most enjoyable with the hens-- the chasing, or the squawking.
We drove up to College Station yesterday....... my husband looked around his favorite hardware store up there, and I looked around the bookstore. Of course I found things... clearance items for just a dollar each. I could easily fill up a shopping bag with clearance-priced hardcovers, but I just don't buy the best-sellers that I know I will never read again, and won't be missing anything at all by not reading them the first time. The recent exception to that rule was "The Help," by Kathryn Stockett. I read a review of that book, which prompted me to search for it on Half.com (always clearance prices on that web-site). What a great book that was..... I had to stop myself from reading it too fast.

This week is the annual neighborhood get-together. All around the country, it's held in August. I think they call it "Neighbors Night Out," or some such thing. I don't much care for it, I have to say. We had that up in our old neighborhood..... and my husband and I went to it the first couple of years, then we quit. It was just too hot to hang out in the middle of the cul de sac for the block party on a summer's night in early August. Plus, the whole idea of this "Night Out" thing is to enable neighbors to get together. My husband and I got together with our neighbors all the time, what with all the lunches, dinners, and parties we used to give for every holiday we could think of, and some we made up on our own (like the Harry Potter Party when the last book in the series was released). We honestly didn't need a scheduled night to get together with friends.

Somewhere along the Texas lines here, the night in August was switched to a night in October... because the weather is cooler here in our "Second Spring." But the premise is the same..... get together with all of your neighbors, bring a pot-luck covered dish and a lawn chair, and make nice. Give me a blessed break. We don't host the huge parties here that we hosted in Clear Lake...... but we have invited new friends over for dinner, for cards, for dessert. We don't live in an area filled with couples who are going to want to dress up for a Halloween party, or enjoy a huge Charades party with 30 people. I just can't see that happening up here, which is why we haven't planned one of those parties. (I truly miss them, though.)

Last year when we went to our first Neighbor's Night Out, people were saying "See y'all next year!" as they left at the end of the night. What?! My husband and I laughed at that, but we soon learned that what was said was exactly what happened. Except for our close-by friends, we have not seen any of the further-away neighbors who said 'See you next year.' So of course, now that the Night Out thing is getting closer, I'm sitting here asking myself if I truly want to go to a get-together filled with people who I have not seen in a year's time and then won't see again in another year's time.

The answer is no, of course, but we'll go anyway. This year's event is being hosted by our friends J & J-- we see them all the time. We don't need a state-sanctioned specific night to get together with our friends. Give me a blessed break. I would guess, with the weather being so nice and pretty the way it is now, there's no way I could catch the flu between today and the date of this Night Out thing. I know that sounds so terrible, but I can't help it. I just have this thing about made-up events that have no meaning whatsoever with groups of people who don't normally choose to be social. And please-- don't even give me one of those stick-on paper name tags..... that's the first clue you will have for a bad party. When you're handed one of those at a front door, you may as well turn around and walk right out.

My friend Frankie used to always refuse those paper tags...... and if someone insisted that she have one (as happened at an office party that she had to attend), she took the stick-on tag and peeled off the backing and stuck it right on the backside of her dress. Frankie always said that when you give out name tags like that, you're taking away the opening line of a potentially good conversation between strangers. (As in "Hi! My name is...... I'm so happy to meet you!")

Oh well...... I told my husband that I don't intend to volunteer hosting one of these Night Out things. If we want to do a party, we'll do it with our own guest list of friends, on the night of our choosing. I swear, none of our friends have ever walked out of our house and said "See y'all next year!"

The end... or not the end?

The following quote is an anonymous one, sent to me by my friend F...... I just love it---

"Everything is always okay in the end; if it's not okay, then it's not the end."


It was the perfect quote to read after finishing the book I've been buried in for the last couple of days--- "Little Bee," by Chris Cleave. Wonderful, beautiful, amazing book about Nigeria, and the oil companies who discover unclaimed oil fields underneath remote villages there. What happens with the people, the land, the tourists, the officials, the soldiers.... most of it is unspeakable, unreasonable, unfathomable. All of it is heart-wrenching, but there are pages in this book where you just have to laugh out loud at the conversations of the characters.

I couldn't read this book fast enough, it was just that good. The story flips from Nigeria to England, where detention centers are set up to house the refugees who have fled from their country and the ruthless soldiers whose language does not recognize the word mercy.

I hadn't heard of this author before, but I saw a copy of his book in the Half-Price bookstore. I didn't buy it there because it was a paperback copy that had seen better days. The artwork on the cover is very dramatic, and that's what caught my eye. What was printed on the back cover is what got me: "We don't want to tell you what happens in this book. It is truly a special story and we don't want to spoil it."

When we got home from the bookstore, I checked the computer and found a hardcover on Half.com for just a couple of dollars. It arrived in as-new condition, and the dust-jacket had that same dramatic artwork as the paperback. I don't know why, but when I saw it, I knew it would be a book I'd want to read and then keep so I could read it again. My collection of books that I want to read again just keeps on multiplying, like rabbits.

As for the story of Little Bee........ "Everything is always okay in the end; if it's not okay, then it's not the end." Heaven help all the Little Bees out there.

Today's quote....

........ from my Webster's Dictionary of Quotations:

"The world must be coming to an end. Children no longer obey their parents, and every man wants to write a book."
.... Attributed to an Assyrian stone tablet of about 2800 B.C.

If I had a hammer....

This morning I sat on my front porch talking to my friend up in NY. I hadn't heard from her in a while, but I knew she was going through cancer treatments (again) and while the treatments are going on, she tends to just hibernate, relax, rest. But still, it had been a good long while since her last eMail to me and I couldn't stand not hearing, not knowing, so rather than send another eMail, I just got on the phone.

She talked, I talked..... we both laughed. Whenever we talk, it's as if we had seen each other just yesterday. While she told me about the treatments, my eyes focused on a group of nails on the boards of the front porch. The nail-heads were sticking up just the teeniest little bit from the wood planks. I have no idea why I noticed them. Mostly, I was looking out over the fields on our property while we talked, wishing that she could be there on the porch with me, hearing the barn swallows, watching the egrets at the edge of the pond, looking at the branches of the pecan trees growing heavier with nuts as each week passes.

We talked.... and talked.... she started coughing.... her voice sounded pained... the cough sounded coarse and sand-papery. This friend and I haven't been at a loss for words since 1972, but I thought it might be time to bring the phone call to an end so she could rest her voice, her throat, her mind. The birds were still up in the pecan trees, the egrets were still at the edge of the pond. The nail-heads were still sticking up just the teeniest bit from the planks of the front porch.

As always, when I talk to this friend of mine, the talking part is so easy, the good-bye part is very hard. I kept my eyes on the nail-heads, trying to keep my voice steady and my mind calm. It didn't work. She heard the catch in my voice, and I wondered if she knew that my hands were shaking as well. Take care of yourself. Please come visit when you can. Sit on the porch with me. I love you.

I closed up the cell phone after we said our good-byes. I watched the egrets at the pond. One of the barn swallows had captured a spider. I went in the house, into the kitchen and got the hammer out of the little basket of tools that are kept in the corner cabinet. Back out to the front porch I went, and I sat on the wood planks of the porch.

The hammer found the nail-heads that were sticking up just a tiny tiny bit..... I have never ever banged a hammer down on any nail so hard in all of my life. The sounds of that hammer probably echoed in all of the hills. I scared the barn swallows and I heard them flying away, out of the trees and on towards the pond. Along with each blow of that hammer, a tear rolled down my face and fell onto the boards, leaving a wet design of random polka-dots. I set the hammer down on the porch and sat there hugging my knees until the tears quit.

Nails going into a wood board. Easy.

Chemo going into a human body. Not easy.

My friend doesn't think what she's doing is brave. I disagree.

From Webster's Quotation Dictionary...

The thought for this morning...... and I found this quote just by opening up the book and letting my eyes rest on the first paragraph that came into focus---

"Were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginnings, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults." ---- Benjamin Franklin

"Do you have a friend at the Electric Company?"

I heard the voice of my grandmother this afternoon (my mother's mother)..... and that's what it was saying: Do you have a friend at the Electric Company?

That's what my grandmother always said when she walked into an empty room and someone had left a light on. She would leave the light on, go find the person who left it on, and ask them that question. Of course, the answer to the question would be No, I don't.... and then she would tell that person Well, go turn out that light you left burning because if you don't have a friend at the Electric Company, that means that I will have to pay the bill. (Mind you, all of that was said with a thick Italian accent.) Usually, in my grandmother's house, it was usually me leaving the lights on, and usually me going back into the room to shut them off.

It didn't take too many trips up and down the stairs of my grandmother's house for me to remember to shut off the lights when I left the room, and I've been part of the "light police" ever since..... because I still don't have a friend at the Electric Company.

The Electric Company.... I used to walk there with my grandmother when she paid the electric bill. The office for the Electric Company in her area was in Queens, north of Jamaica Avenue on one of the side-streets. I don't remember the street, I don't remember what the building looked like. But I do remember going there with her and she would take the bill out of her purse, along with the cash to pay it. My grandmother didn't know how to write a check, and she didn't even have a checking account. All utility bills were paid in cash, at offices in the neighborhood. There were separate offices for the Telephone Co., the Gas Co., the Electric Co., the Water Co. My grandmother would walk to all of them, pay them in cash, take the stamped receipt and put it away in a big brown folder when she got home.

I don't remember her asking me if I had friends at the Gas Co. or the Water Co., but if I talked on her phone too long with my friends, she would walk by and remind me that the telephone costs money, they don't give it to me for free. That was my hint that I'd been on the phone long enough. That phone in my grandmother's hallway was one of those old black bakelite phones.... heavy enough to use as a bookend for a set of encyclopedias.

The electric company. Black bakelite phones. A set of encyclopedias. In this age of technology, where bills are paid on-line, phones are the size of credit cards, and the encyclopedias have been replaced by Google....... does anyone even care if they have a friend at the Electric Company?

As for the electric company thing........ Our friend K was here on Thursday for dinner and stayed overnight, leaving yesterday for a meeting up in Austin. When K left, she turned off the air-conditioner in the guest cottage and brought me the sheets and towels. I did that laundry yesterday...... went into the cottage to re-make the bed, clean the bathroom, and get the cottage ready for whoever uses it next. It was blazing hot yesterday, so before I did all of that, I turned on the air-conditioner in there. When I was all done with the bed and the bathroom, I re-arranged a few things in the kitchenette..... then I looked through the books on the shelves in there..... and then I hung up a cute little mirror I'd found in one of the resale shops in town.

By the time I was done with all of the above yesterday, I forgot to turn off the air-conditioner. And.... I didn't realize that the air-conditioner was still on until dinner-time tonight when I went outside to put the chickens in the coop and I heard that unit running out there. Do you have a friend at the Electric Company? I have been hearing that question (in a thick Italian accent) over and over since I walked into that guest cottage and shut off the blessed air-conditioner a few hours ago.

"Any Old Books"

That's the name of the British bookshop that mailed me a copy of "Everybody's Pepys: The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 1660 - 1669." I have been interested in that series of diaries for a bunch of years, but haven't ever come across a readable copy. There are, I believe, eight or ten volumes in Mr. Pepys diaries.... a total of over one million words from start to finish. Surely, there must be a recognized abridged edition? (Which is what I had been searching for.)

Lo and behold..... yes there was, and I found it on the Internet, for sale from that very bookstore. The book arrived today, along with their invoice and a bookmark, giving their street address. It goes without saying that if we ever visit England, "Any Old Books" will have to be on our itinerary. This entire transaction reminds me of one of my all-time favorite books: "84, Charing Cross Road," in which the author befriends the employees of a London bookshop because they have been finding out-of-print books for her. The author (Helene Hanff) lived in NYC at the time (1949), and books were shipped across the Atlantic for her by the owner of Marks & Company Books-- whose address was 84, Charing Cross Road. Hollywood made a movie of the book, starring Anne Bancroft.... it was one of the few movies that actually followed the true story.

So here I am, with my 1963 edition of "Samuel Pepys Diary" and it is indeed a beautiful copy.... red cloth cover, gold gilt lettering, complete with a dust-cover filled with illustrations (as is the book) by Ernest H. Shepard. On the front and back end-papers of the book, there are maps of London, as it was in the 1600s. The book is in excellent condition, and was so securely wrapped for its journey across the ocean that only a nuclear explosion could have wrinkled its pages. (And let's not put that thought out into the universe, please.)

My very first book from a British bookshop. I don't know why I'm so excited about that, but I am. Most likely because of Miss Hanff's books, all of which I own, all of which I've read more than half a dozen times. Her love of British publishing houses was legend, and I can see why. This edition of Pepys Diary is such a handsome volume, very compact in its size, without being so small that the print can blind you, and without being so large that more trees than necessary were felled to print it.

One of these days, this book will go up in our third floor library.... my husband has been talking about that recently. When we first saw this house, my plan for the third floor was to turn that un-used space into a beautiful library. My husband said this house had more than enough rooms without adding one more. But the room is already here... we just have to give it a purpose! The previous owners used the third floor for storage... holiday items and bits and pieces of decorative items and furniture. I didn't want a third floor storage room..... my vision was a third floor library. Library! With a capital L.

And there we were last week, driving into nearby Caldwell, and my husband asked me if I had any thoughts about using the third floor as a reading room... and wouldn't it be a good idea for him and W (the handyman) to turn that space into a library.... (Isn't that what I said over a year ago?)

YES! YES! -- That was more or less my reply to my husband's question about the third floor. So.... when the outside painting is done..... when my husband and W have whittled down the to-do list somewhat, they will take a look-see upstairs on the third floor and see just what they will need to do to turn that wonderful space into an amazing library. And amazing it will be.... there are two stained glass windows up on the third floor, and I can picture bookshelves all around the perimeter of that large room, with comfy cozy chairs, and just the right lamps... and all of my books..... and my husband's books. I've already suggested that we each take half of the room's shelves, and that we each arrange our own books to our own liking. After all, I cannot have Samuel Pepys sitting on the same shelf with a computer data-mining textbook.

Smells like Summer..... and skunk.

We had the grass cut today... not the fields, but the lawns around the house, cottage and barn. I think the last time everything got mowed was about a month ago, when we were having regular rains. Without the rain, nothing was growing. Last week, we had two days of pouring rain, and everything just sprouted up really quickly. So today was the day...... the lawn guy came with his riding-mower and everything is now freshly cut and looking very nice.

There's nothing quite like the aroma of fresh-cut grass. It just smells like Spring and Summer, nice and green and good, fresh and new. When the grass is mowed in the morning and that just-cut smell is in the air, it seems to give the day endless possibilities.

I don't let the cats outside while the grass is being mowed. They don't like the noise, and I never know where they'll run to and where they will hide. It takes a good long while to cut all the grass here around the house and guest houses, and I don't want the lawn guy to have to be looking out for the cats as he's riding around the property. The chickens just stay out of his way, so they're not a problem.

The skunk........ my husband and W the handyman were off by the barn this morning, cleaning paintbrushes, and they both smelled skunk. It's an odor you can't miss, and there have been mornings when I've smelled that horrible odor as soon as I opened the kitchen door. Not a good smell, by any means. W told my husband that there are people who keep skunks as pets---- they have them de-scented. My first response is Why?! Both as in why have them as pets and why have them de-scented? Aren't there enough cats and dogs and chickens to go around for the pet-lovers? Skunks are wild, and meant to be wild. I'm wondering if the skunk people train their skunk-pets to use an indoor litter box.

Nearly 105 degrees today..... this morning started out so foggy that we could hardly see across the road to the neighbor's property. The fog burned off when the sun came out, and it's been a stifling day ever since. Summer is still here, and should be till the end of October or November. Then, hopefully, we will swing back into Spring weather..... with a few cold days of winter-y temperatures here and there. And, hopefully, the awful frigid temperatures of last year's December and January will remain just a distant entry in the Texas weather books.

Speaking of books....... I'm reading Edith Wharton's "The Glimpses of The Moon." Wonderful vintage hardcover that was on the one-dollar clearance shelf in Half-Price Books. I thought I had discovered all of Wharton's books, but somehow I missed this one along the way. Interesting story, as her books always are, and beautifully written. It's hard not to re-read certain sentences of hers and just study their composition. Wharton was such a gifted writer. Her books about turn-of-the-century society are so unlike the modern fiction of today. And I guess that should be society with a capital S.... Society (she wrote mainly of New York, New England, and European social circles).

My husband was talking about that Kindle thing... he asked me if I wanted one. No blessed way, thank you very much. I need to hold the book, feel the cover, turn the pages, admire its age and its vintage-ness. I guess if you're into reading all the latest and greatest best-sellers, then Kindle is the way to go. I have discovered that when you read only books that you want to keep and re-read, you're much more selective in your choices.

Re-reading books. I should hope to live long enough to re-read every book in this house that I would like to read over again. (As my dear friend Blanche would have said: From your lips to God's ears.)

A thought for Nine Eleven...

From my Webster's Book of Quotations.... a thought for this day of 9/11...

"The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the crops-- no, but the kind of man the country turns out." .... Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Nine Eleven.

Yes, I know that today is the 9th "anniversary" of 9/11. I hesitate to use that anniversary word because it conjures up a happy event.

I turned on CNN this morning, and listened to the reading of the names of the victims of that day. The eleventh of September. This day has become like December 7th..... etched into everyone's mind permanently.

I listened to some of the names...... I heard the sound of the large silver bell as it chimed.... there were family members in the crowd holding pictures of their dead and forever-missing.

On that day, nine years ago, I was on my way to the antique shop where I worked..... I almost never listen to the radio as I drive because I have Barry Manilow CDs in my car. That day, for whatever reason, I turned on the radio. As soon as I heard what had happened in NY, I turned my car around and headed home...... I was right near the Johnson Space Center when I made the U-turn.

My husband and I watched the TV news all day, in total disbelief. Nine years later, I still can hardly believe it happened, but of course it did. Here. How did that happen here?

Nine years later, they want to build a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center. I have heard the mayor of NY say they have a right to build their mosque wherever they want to, and of course they do. This country was built on its people having such rights. However.... in all of the cities in all of these fifty states, and in all of the countries and on all of the continents in this world, why on this blessed earth do they want to build a mosque there?

I didn't watch very much of the 9/11 coverage today. It took less than ten minutes of watching CNN early this morning before I was reaching for the box of tissues. I shut off the TV. My cousins in NY were (and probably still are) watching every minute of the coverage. If I were still living in NY, maybe I would be also.

As we were out driving today, from here to Caldwell, to College Station and back, every flag we saw was at half-staff. No matter where you live, you just cannot forget. You don't have to watch the coverage, the ceremonies, the name-reading, the bells, the moments of silence. For the rest of our days, as this particular day of September comes around each year, it will always be known as 9/11.

Kolache Festival

We drove into Caldwell this morning, for their annual Kolache Festival. Being that the Hill Country was founded by so many Germans and Czecks, the area is known for the delicious handmade kolaches. We had kolache bakeries in Clear Lake and Houston, but the dough there wasn't anything like what we tasted today. I told my husband it was like the difference between Wonder Bread (Clear Lake kolaches) and handmade European bread (the Hill Country).

We left home very early, thinking we'd get a head-start on the crowds there. No such luck. There were as many people walking the closed-to-traffic streets of Caldwell as we have seen at any number of festivals in Clear Lake and Houston. The town of Caldwell has less than 4,000 people in it..... surely there were all there early this morning, along with hundreds of others that had driven there just for the kolaches. (Kolaches are made from a sweet dough, either filled with fruits or meats and cheese..... they're palm-sized, about the size of a northern-made jelly doughnut.)

The streets were filled with vendors selling everything from soup to nuts, from flip-flops to western boots, from western-design onesies for babies to feathered hats for the ladies of the Red Hat Society. Food vendors were there also, with homemade sausages, funnel cakes, kettle corn (I resisted the temptation of that), and everything else that could be fried in oil and put on a stick or into a red & white checkered paper container. There was also a Kolache-Eating Contest..... but we got there early, and didn't want to wait around in the heat and sun to watch a bunch of people stuffing kolaches into their mouths. By the time we had walked around the town square just once, the temperature felt as if it was surely over 100 degrees.

The lines for the kolache vendors were very long, winding around the square like the lines at a DisneyLand ride. Every bakery had different fillings in their kolaches, all kinds of fruits, meats, cheeses. My husband tried one of the ham and cheese..... I had one filled with apple. Delicious.... and the dough..... a nice thick sweet dough that reminded me of the breads that my grandmother used to bake at Easter. We bought a dozen of the fruit-filled kolaches and they're already in the freezer downstairs so they don't call out my name every morning. We will save them for company....... just a minute or two in a hot oven and they will taste like they were just baked.

We didn't stay as long as we thought we would in Caldwell. It was just too blessed hot for walking around looking at what the vendors were selling when I knew we wouldn't be buying anything. No vendors selling old books, and nothing else appealed to either of us. We've lived in this state long enough to have seen every type of Texas craft imaginable.

Instead of coming back home, we drove up to College Station. My husband had two books to return to Half-Price Bookstore up there, so that's where we headed. Of course, we can't go in there just to return..... I had to look around, especially at their "Old and Interesting" shelves, which is my favorite spot in that store. I found two old volumes of Steinbeck, two that I didn't already have. Then I looked on the clearance shelves.... and there was a beautiful red-cloth covered copy of Wharton's "Age of Innocence." One of my all-time favorite books... I already have a hardcover, which I've read three times. But this little red book..... with a red ribbon bookmark, and gold edges to the pages.... so small that it fits in my hand..... small enough to tuck into my purse when we travel. I always bring along a book that I've already read when we travel, so if I don't get to finish it on the trip, it doesn't matter.... plus I always buy books from wherever we go anyway. That little red book called my name and came home with me. (A lot more satisfying than the kettle corn that was calling out to me at the Kolache Festival.)

Before we left College Station, we tried a new bookstore that our neighbor had told us about. We found it easily-- it was certainly big enough not to miss...... I think the building was once a grocery store, given its size and lay-out. My husband called this particular shop "the poor man's Barnes & Noble." They were playing music that was horrible...... the shelving was cheap and poorly set up.... they had a cardboard box (huge one) in front of the store with books just tossed into it, selling for $2.99 each. What book-loving person tosses books willy-nilly into a cardboard box? (And does anyone even say willy-nilly these days?)

The books at this store were all brand new. Totally without character. Punched out of printing presses like so many cheap sugar cookies that are counted by machine and flipped into a little box that says "Mother's Cookies" or some such nonsense. (No one's mother ever touched that kind of cookie, believe me.) They did have a clearance shelf in that store, and that's where I looked. They had used books on that shelf. And how did I know they were used? Because they put a huge green and white USED sticker on the spine of those books... and not the kind of sticker that you can easily peel off. Who in their right mind does that to a book?!

We spent about ten minutes in that bookstore, which was about nine minutes too long. As soon as we walked into that place, I knew it wasn't the bookstore for us, especially for me. When I walk into a bookshop, I want to be able to know right away that I'm in a bookstore, not a converted grocery store filled with horizontal shelves.

Older books are lovely to hold, heavier in your hands, and a good vintage hardcover will last the rest of your life, and then some. These cheap softcover books with the dab of glue on the spines will last for maybe three readings, and that's if you take care not to bend the spine back too much. The vintage hardcovers have much softer paper of a higher quality, and when you turn a page, you know you have turned a page.... it's not like a feather in the wind that has virtually little substance.

We probably won't go into that mega bookstore again. Our neighbor will probably ask if we tried it....... we'll think of something to say. We sure did...... they didn't have what we were looking for..... but thank you for mentioning it to us. I told my husband that this particular neighbor isn't a reader. I've been in their house...... the only books in sight were a few cookbooks in the kitchen. So I guess that's what we have to remember.... don't go to bookstores recommended by people who don't read.

The Three C's.

A line from a book I'm reading.......... "Don't control, don't criticize, don't complain."

That one line is more important to remember than everything else in the entire book.



And..... one of the standards of the Royal Family (still more C's)--- Keep calm and carry on.

Bellville

That's where we drove today for lunch...... to the little town of Bellville. I thought we'd be staying home today because of this morning's wind and pouring rain. But that didn't last too long, and we were left with just a drizzly day, so off we went. We had been to Bellville before, in the Spring of last year when we were driving around the Hill Country looking for old houses that had charm and character along with the modern conveniences.

Our destination today was a cafe called "Big Hats, Little Whispers." Such cute and quaint names for the little cafes in these tiny Hill Country towns. This particular cafe was originally a newspaper printing place, built in the late 1800s. Both the flooring and the walls were wide planks of the building's original wood. The cafe is known for home made breads, soups, and desserts. We each had a cup of soup and half a sandwich, then split a slice of strawberry-pineapple cake for dessert. Because of the rain, my husband and I were the only two people in the cafe, so the three ladies working there had our plates ready before my husband could put his wallet back into his pocket.

After lunch, we walked a little bit past the cafe, looking into shop windows-- the buildings in the town square (actually a wide circle, really) are very old, very vintage, and mostly all of them have wide awnings that cover most of the sidewalks.... a good way to stay dry on a drippy day. The shops close to the cafe were mostly gift shops, filled with new items probably bought at the wholesale markets up in Dallas or back in Houston. Those kinds of shops are usually so filled with potpourri that you can't hardly breathe, so we tend not to go into those. (Unless, of course, I see something in the window that is screaming out my name.)

There is a "Jail Museum" in Bellville.... and the building itself looks like a castle, or a fort. Must have been the town's original police department and jail. They didn't look like they were open, and we didn't stop because just the outside of the building was interesting enough..... neither one of us wanted to see the inside of the centuries-old jail. This fortress of a building was built up on a high point of the town, so the building was towering over most of the other buildings on the nearby streets... very impressive and intimidating, and most definitely jail-like.

We got into the car and drove around the main streets of the town, and found an antique/consignment shop called "Nothing Ordinary." I knew from looking at the displays in the front windows that it would be our kind of shop, so I told my husband to turn around and go back and park. The building itself was huge.... almost 8,000 square feet of space that used to be an automobile dealership in the early 1900s. And the shop..... filled with little rooms, big rooms, all sorts of nooks and crannies, each with wonderful displays of everything from salt and pepper shakers to vintage sets of china, from tiny stools to huge Victorian parlor sets, from books to clocks to tapestries and hand-hooked rugs. And vintage clothing, jewelry, hand-made boots and hats..... just about anything and everything you can think of, collected from all over the US and from the European flea markets. Nothing Ordinary about it, hence the name.

We walked around for over an hour...... I found lots of stuff that I liked, a few things that I loved, but my rule here--- one thing in, one thing out...... there's not a piece of furniture here that I would part with, so everything there stayed there. My rule does not apply to books, however, and I found a beautiful leather-bound book....... "A King's Story: The Memoirs of The Duke of Windsor," a vintage 1951 copy, printed in Great Britain. It was a steal at just $5, so that book came home with me. (Another book added to the "to be read" pile that seems to have a life of its own.

Still raining outside...... a drizzly warm drippy rain, which could have been a lot worse if the winds from this morning had kept up. We were under a tornado watch earlier today, but that didn't last long. They always give us tornado warnings..... I wonder if anyone takes them seriously anymore. You've heard of the little boy who cried wolf.... we have in this state the weathermen who cried tornado.

Labor Day weekend.

I say this every year, so I will say it again: Once Labor Day has come along, the holidays are here in a heart-beat.

We woke up today to an unusually cool morning... I would bet the temperature was no higher than 85. That's fairly cool for this time of the year, being that Texas weather is still on the Summer setting. The cats were running around the yard, the chickens weren't hiding in the shade of the barn, and it felt like the clock had been turned back to early Spring. It didn't last. After noon-time, the numbers on the thermometer were way up there again, close to the 100 mark.

Yesterday, we drove into College Station, for lunch at the Hullabaloo diner, which seems to be our lunch place of choice whenever we drive up there. (If it's good enough for "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives," then it's good enough for us.) I finally tried the pancakes there..... I kept seeing them being set down on other tables each time we've gone there..... two huge fluffy inch-high pancakes, as big around as the plate itself. I gave in and ordered them..... totally light and delicious. I ate less than a quarter of what was on the plate and brought home the rest. I ate a little bit more for dinner last night, my husband and I each had some for breakfast, and there's still more pancakes left in the fridge. (The trick was re-heating them carefully in the microwave so they'd heat through and still stay fluffy.)

The special yesterday at Hullabaloo was Breakfast Pizza, which my husband ordered. We were skeptical at first, but the waiter promised we wouldn't be disappointed. (And if you can't trust a waiter you've never before seen in your entire life, then who can you trust?) The pizza dough, first of all, was absolutely delicious. (Hullabaloo makes pizza all the time, but only after 5:00... we are now determined to go there one night for dinner.) On top of the dough, they spread southern-style sausage gravy (thick white sauce speckled with sausage bits and pepper). On top of the gravy was strips of bacon, two scrambled eggs, and melted cheddar cheese. The dough was rolled out into an oval, egg-shaped pizza, big enough for one huge man-sized serving, or two or three servings for the ladies. My husband brought about a third of it home and had the rest for dinner last night..... it was delicious, especially the dough itself, which can make or break the entire pizza.

I did taste the breakfast pizza that my husband ordered, but I wouldn't order it for myself with all that bacon. If it's on the menu the next time, I'd ask them to make one for me with peppers and onions in the scrambled eggs, and to go easy on the gravy..... it would taste like an Italian omelet. They've substituted menu items for me before in there, and the waitress we usually get must know that I don't eat meat, but she has refrained from belting out the usual "Y'all don't eat meat? Evah?!"

Today was a Round Top day..... we drove there to look at some of the antique and resale shops on the back roads. Although, up in Round Top (population 77), those two-lane roads are the main roads, not really the back roads. My husband is on a search for a weather vane, to put on the cupola on top of the garage. He and our handyman W have been scraping and priming and painting the entire garage and it looks wonderful..... so cute.... the garage now looks like a miniature house. To top off their hard work, they need the perfect weather vane. My husband found one with a Harley Davison motorcycle on it, but I told him it didn't quite go with the property. He's still looking.

While in Round Top today, we had lunch at Royer's Cafe. Grilled shrimp on top of a big salad for me, the Sunday special fried chicken dinner for my husband. I did take one bite of the fried chicken... it was very good, but I can't eat chicken anymore (not that I ate much of it before). How can I eat cooked chicken when I'm out there in my yard every day talking to my own chickens and picking Scarlett up and carrying Her Royal Hen-ness into the coop at night?


Thought for this beautiful day: (my husband read this on a website for a Houston bakery)--- "Help save the Earth.... it's the only planet that has chocolate."

Scared chickens and haunted houses.

Wonder of wonders, we had some rain today. Not much out here-- just enough to get everything wet a little bit -- but the rain just poured in town. I was on my way from town when I literally drove underneath a huge gray cloud and the sky opened up. Pouring down rain. Pouring so hard that I reduced my speed from 60 to 40 on the main road. I was hoping that hard rain would be falling into our pond, but no such luck. All Spring, and for half of the Summer, the ponds were filled nearly to the top here. Now, without rain for the past month, and temperatures over 100 degrees for about the same amount of time, the ponds are getting low.

As I drove down our road, I could see that it hadn't rained here yet. Nothing was wet, but the sky was getting darker and I could see lightning up in the sky. As soon as I got home, I went into the house to get some bread for the chickens, planning to get them to follow me into the coop so they would be safely in there before the dark clouds got to the hills here. The chickens, however, looked at me with those yellow eyes, and their heads cocked to one side, as if to say Well, just who are you and why should we follow you anywhere? I kept showing them the bread-- none of them would take it from my hands, which they always do.

I wasn't going to stand out there waiting for the chickens to realize that I was me, so I brought the grocery bags in, ran upstairs to get out of my "into town" clothes and back into my "around the house clothes." The sky was still gray.... no rain yet.... so before putting the groceries away, back I went outside with the bread, to see if the chickens had come to their senses. I had hardly walked down the porch steps and they were coming up the steps to meet me, clucking and cooing with all those sweet noises they make when I have bread for them.

It dawned on me that maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't come near me before because of the clothes I had on. Could chickens be that sensitive to color? I had been wearing a black top and white slacks when I came back from town--- the chickens have never seen me wearing anything black. I don't go into the coop in clothes that I wear into town, and all the "around the house" clothes for the summer are beige, white, light green, light blue. Could they really have been afraid of the black top that I was wearing? I have no idea, but it surely seemed that way.

The hills here never did get the pouring-down rain that fell in town today, but the little bit of rain that did fall was just enough to let the grass know that there's still water up in the sky. We just have to be a little patient, is all.

As for the haunted house....... one of my errands today was to get my hair trimmed. While the girl was cutting my hair, she was asking me about our house. She knows it's an old one that used to be a Bed & Breakfast for years, but she didn't know that the house had been moved here from another town by the previous owners. She got to talking about other old houses in the area, and she asked me about the home of one of our neighbor's... she wanted to know if it really was haunted.

I knew right away which house and which neighbor she was talking about, because that neighbor herself has told me that she's well aware of the ghost who lives in her house. She knew about it before she bought the house, and she didn't mind. We've heard stories about workmen who have run out of that house because they heard something strange or saw something unusual. We don't know if those same workmen ever went back. The hair-stylist asked me if I'd been inside that particular house, and I told her I had. "Did you see the ghost?" she wanted to know.

No ghost-sightings while I was there, but I was only on the first floor of the house, not the second floor, where that particular ghost has been known to make an appearance from time to time. The neighbor says it's a friendly, serene ghost, not a screaming, wild sort of spirit. I don't know whether I believe in ghosts or not, to be perfectly honest. It would make sense that the spirit of a deceased person would be quite comfortable to remain in the home where most of its life was spent. Unless that life ended horribly, I can imagine a "ghost" just quietly roaming the rooms, looking around, just sort of hanging out from day to day to see what's going on in the house that once was theirs.

However..... until I actually see or hear a ghost, I'm not going to swear to their existence. I would certainly like to see the second floor of that particular neighbor's house. It's an interesting house, to say the least--- built in the late 1800s, I believe, and the inside has been lovingly restored and preserved. If I were a ghost, I'd be quite happy there. Or right here, for that matter. Come to think of it, if I were indeed going to "haunt" a house after my time on this planet is over, then I'd be picking a house with the most books. I'd have the rest of eternity, and then some, to just read everything I could get my ghostly hands on.

Just a thought.......

I recently found a book of quotations and I've been paging through it from time to time-- usually while I'm waiting for this computer to wake itself up and come to life. "The International Webster's Pocket Quotation Dictionary" is the title of this handsome little hardcover that I rescued from the used book section of the local resale shop in town.

I have recently vowed not to rescue any more stray cats. I said nothing about not rescuing stray books.

The quote for today that caught my eye and made me think:
"The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and through politics." --Albert Schweitzer