sister

My sister called last night. We were on the phone for an hour and a half, because we had to catch up on about three months worth of our lives.

At some point, in our twenties, we lost touch for awhile. She went off to college; I got married. She met her future husband at college and got married after graduation. My husband was deferred, hers went to Viet Nam. During the Seventies, we both moved around, following husbands’ school or work. She had children; I did not. She stayed married; I did not. Through almost all of that, she has been the constant in my life. We’ve both strayed “a fur piece” from our home town and rarely see each other, but we talk. My, how we talk.

Although I think we’re very different, we help each see the other’s perspective. Maybe not clearly, but we offer glimpses. Having a common early history, we can offer fairly accurate appraisals of motivation and reaction. We both tend to take things too personally but in different ways and with different responses.

I wish she was closer, geographically. I know we’d get on each other’s nerves, but the idea of talking, face to face is pretty wonderful.

smearing

I was sitting in the front yard, with my coffee and a cigarette, watching the hummingbird moth sipping at the abelia and the hummingbird at the basil, when I saw a half dozen leaves floating down. The seasons are definitely not set in stone. The cicadas are calling; the temperature is rising toward a probable 90 degrees. But the leaves are beginning to fall. Much as we’d like to think there are clear lines between things, smearing occurs. In October, before the first hard frost, the impatients will be lusciously pink, the nasturiums vividly red and orange. Many of the trees will have lost their leaves, but the summer will be remembered by the annuals.

more roommates

I have a small back porch, just big enough for a couple of chairs and a small table. That’s where I have my morning coffee and observe the goings on at the creek. Living in the county has introduced me to previously unobserved critters. One of them is the carpenter bee.

They’re those big, fuzzy black, slow-moving insects I’ve always called B-52s. They tend to startle you but rarely act aggressively. Since moving here a year ago, I’ve been able to watch them through their yearly cycle. What alerted me to them was the appearance of sawdust on the porch floor and circular holes in the rafters.

Xylocopa virginica is yet another roommate. The Ohio State website tells me that carpenter bees are solitary, overwinter as adults within their old nest gallery, and emerge in April or early May to mate. The females prepare the nest, excavating an entrance hole slightly less than a half inch wide. She’ll bore a couple of inches perpendicular to the grain, then make a 90 degree turn and bore out four to six inches to crate a gallery for her offspring. She puts a food ball, a mixture of pollen and regurgitated nectar, in the end of the tunnel, lays an egg on it, then walls off the brood cell with a plug of chewed wood pulp. She repeats the process six to ten times and dies soon after. The babies stay in their brood cells, going through the entire life cycle (egg, larva, pupa, adult) for about seven weeks, then chew their way out. They use their birth nest to hibernate through the winter.

Carpenter bees like wood, particularly weathered wood, unpainted. My house has aluminum siding, but the underside of the porch roof is unpainted wood. There are places where holes have been plugged, with putty and duct tape. I’ve added some duct tape patches, myself. But this fall, when the temperature has fallen enough to make the bees less active, I’ll plug the holes (the ones I can see, anyway) and paint. They don’t seem to like painted wood.

I’d really prefer to choose my roommates!

friends

I joined Facebook about six months ago, mainly to keep track of the people I worked with on a film last fall. Facebook seemed like an easy way to do that.

The first thing I noticed was how hungry I became to acquire more “friends.” Funk & Wagnalls defines “friend” as: “one who is personally well known by oneself and for whom one has warm regard or affection.” Is it possible to have over a hundred of them? Not for me.

Two things happened in the past week. I sent a “friend request” to a young local woman, who I’ve known since she was a child. She sent me a message, “who are you?” Indeed.

I was contacted by a man I went to high school with, asking, “Was your maiden name Fox?” No, but I responded with my maiden name. I accepted his friend request, and all hell has broken loose for me. He’s sending suggestions for friends to me and sending the link to my profile to others. He seems to have taken it upon himself to be the moderator of all things high school for a growing number of sixty-somethings, posting photos from our yearbooks and old newspapers, suggesting changes to our profiles, including our photos and names (please include your maiden name, so it’s easier for your classmates to find you). The historical bits are interesting, but to get back to my main premise, can all of these people be considered “friends?”

Not for me. The young woman’s question resonates. She’s caught in a bind, isn’t she? If she accepts my “friend request,” she may feel obligated to edit anything she posts. If she doesn’t accept, any time she sees me could be uncomfortable. I do have affection for her; I’ve watched her grow up. But I can understand that the feeling may not be reciprocated.

The conductor is not my friend. I remember his name but only recognized him after checking out my senior yearbook. I changed my profile photo to my senior picture but will now change it back. I did not follow his request to add my maiden name to my profile. I haven’t used that name since 1967 and don’t think it defines who I am in 2009.

health

Fortunately, I’m extremely healthy, at age sixty-three. I don’t have (and don’t much care to have) “health insurance.” I could have had insurance at my last full-time job, but even with the company paying 71% of the premium, my monthly payment would have exceeded my yearly health care cost. What kind of financial sense does that make?

My opinion is that the combination of the medical, pharmaceutical, and insurance industries has fostered the impression that we are all accidents waiting to happen. Somehow, we’ll be “safe,” if we are constantly monitoring our vital signs or begging doctors for medicine. The implication is that we will live forever, if we just spend the cash needed.

I am not defined by my physical ailments, most of which I’ve brought on, myself. I don’t need an anti-depressant to handle what is a gradual lessening of energy, as I age. The few times I’ve gone to the doctor to have my ears flushed, I’m usually asked how the rest of my life is going. (I think they feel they should do some diagnosing and prescribing, doncha know.) Depending on my mood at the time, I’ve sometimes said I was feeling tired. I’ve never been asked if I take dietary supplements and/or eat well; I have always been asked if I want a prescription for anti-depressants.

In case it isn’t apparent, I’m all for “socialized” health care. In a year and a half or so, I’ll be eligible for the American version, Medicare. I probably won’t use it much, anyway.

flood

In spite of all the rain we’ve had in the past few months, this is the first time I’ve seen the creek look flooded. It’s high and silty brown. The rain started at about quitting time at the bank yesterday, growled into a thunderstorm, settled into a downpour, and continued through the night. Because of the silt, I suspect it was raining on a good part of the creek, upstream.

Although this has been a beautifully cool summer, the rain has necessitated that the windows be cracked, instead of wide open at night. Hence, the house is stuffy and smells of mildew, stale cigarette smoke, and cats. The house is built on a concrete slab, which is covered with carpeting, so I’m seeing blotches I’m assuming are caused by the damp, leaching up through the carpet. There’s an infestation of small black ants, which appear to be munching on the shoe molding in the kitchen, not to mention errant pieces of dry cat food. All in all, I’m meeting roommates I wasn’t aware I had!

cycles

Yesterday, I had what I consider a productive day. Lots of resolution of issues, some chores accomplished. I felt energized.

Then I spent a restless night. Today my brain is sluggish, my thoughts scattered. I’m not sure which is the cause, which the effect, but the cats’ actions seem to reflect my state of mind. Either they are playing out my indecision, or I’m just projecting my frustration on their usual activities.

Life is like that, filling and draining.

This could be a perfect day to have lunch with Rita!

Necessities

I belong to a rural electric cooperative. Formed in the 1930s and 1940s, electric co-ops buy power from generating companies, then push it through locally maintained lines and connections. This allows those of us who appreciate being away from “the madding crowd” the ability to live less primitively. Somehow, over the past sixty or seventy years, the rural electric cooperatives have gotten a bit arrogant.

Every month I receive a glossy (small) magazine called “Cooperative Living.” The latest issue has been sitting on the kitchen table for the past few days, as I ponder why I’m finding it offensive. It has a hard stock over cover, with the headline, “Electricity is a Necessity….. Don’t let Congress make it a Luxury!” It would appear that there’s a “cap and trade” bill before Congress, which would levy fines on electricity generating facilities for carbon emissions. The co-op would have me believe this would make buying electricity from them too costly.

Two things come to mind. I think the co-op is getting me ready for yet another rise in my electric bill. That way I can pay for the “free” Cooperative Living magazine, which gives me great advice on how to conserve energy in my home, advice I read thirty years ago in Mother Earth News.

The second thought is this. When did artificial things become necessities? It’s only been about a hundred and thirty years since Edison lit the first light bulb. I’m sitting here at my computer, writing this, but I think I have a pretty clear idea of what necessities are.