Hope not, but today on Xmas eve, it’s blowing like 60. Really. Wind speeds are 20-35 mph with gusts up to 60 mph, and we’re under a wind advisory and a small child alert*. As you might suspect, we have some very moving scenery today, heading NNW at a pretty good clip. I had a pretty stiff headwind coming back. I thought I was going to have to beat to windward to get back in the building.
These pictures don’t really capture how just plain brown the sky is near the horizon.
The above were taken when I braved the elements to get another Phred at Market Street, which is the same chain of super markets that I got the original from. The original Phred was a Norfolk Island Pine. This Phred is an Italian Stone Pine, which is drought tolerant and wants 6-8 hours of full sun a day — which he isn’t going to get, alas. My new windows face the northwest. This new Phred will either adjust or he won’t. I had the last Phred for 27 years, which sets the bar pretty high.
The gnome with the white braids is wishful thinking on my part. One day my hair will be long enough to braid again and I’ll knit myself a gnome hat to celebrate. Goals. I haz ’em. Here is my contribution to the decorations in the common area. I’ve never really been big on seasonal decorating — even when I had someplace to store them.
The revised forecast for mañana is a high of 78 F/25.5 C, which is even ridiculouser than a high of 73 F/22.7 C, but then today’s high was 81 F/27.2 C. No surprise that today’s quaff is peach juice on ice. (serious nums!) I need to find my baggie of mom’s name labels and my laundry pen and get to sewing.
Small Child Alert — if your child weighs less than 35 lbs, belay them to something heavy like a car before you let them go outside, otherwise they’ll probably get blown halfway to Crosbyton and you’ll have to go hunt them.
He was the love of my mother’s life, and her husband for 68 years. He was my dad. Hard to believe he’s been gone six years now. I will always miss him. He was always faithful — as a Marine, as a husband, as a father.
One of the stock interview questions authors, actors, film makers, and artists of other ilk get asked when they are interviewed about their creations is: What were your early influences? What captured your imagination in your formative years? In a way, it’s like asking someone who’s made a particularly delectable item of food, “What ingredients did you use in this dish?” It’s one of the many variations on one of the most important of human questions, “How did you do that?”
The Crescent Moon Painting by Montague Dawson***
I couldn’t tell you any more how I ended up thinking about influences just now, because I’ve breathed since then, but I can tell you that it set off one of those free association things in my head that can be such fun. One thought pinballing off into my head and I get to see what bumpers light up and go ding! (I’ve ended up in some pretty interesting headspaces (2) that way.)
Somewhat later, when I had more in the way of discretionary funds*, I ran across the Airplane’s first album “Surrealistic Pillow” with the iconic Grace Slick singing the iconic “White Rabbit” and had liked it. I didn’t get to Baxter’s until a year or two after it came out because before I could get to it, I was blindsided by Crosby, Stills and Nash‘s first album and its positively orgasmic vocal harmonies (Sorry. I don’t care what anybody says, Young was a mistake. His voice doesn’t work with the fitted-together-like-Inca-stonework triad of voices that was David Crosby, Steven Stills and Graham Nash in their prime. Not sorry.). If you want vocal harmony that is to die for, that album gets it in one. Ironically, my favorite song on the whole album, the horse dance song, would still be my favorite if you stripped out the vocal tracks. The guitar work on that song is just perfect. (It led me to a magical place where the horses dance and the blue fish sing. It was a peaceful, gentle place. I haven’t been there in quite a while. One day I might answer a Mag Challenge and take you there. . .) (One more time, three great voices so tight, so right. Sigh.)
But back to Baxter’s. It’s kind of one of those you had to have been there. There is a fair amount of acid-trippy signal noise on the album, — it came out of 1969 San Francisco, after all. But The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil with some of its lyrics borrowed from the poetry** of A. A. Milne (I was turned on to Winnie the Pooh, not by having it read to me or by Disney, but by Jefferson Airplane — try that one on your head.) and the gentle “Martha” stand out. But, again, because this album, and the band, came out of 1969 San Francisco, you’ve got Slick crooning quotes from James Joyce‘s Ulysses (ReJoyce), and the aural hash that is “A Small Package of Value Will Come to You Shortly” which ends with somebody yelling “No man is an island! No man is an island! He’s a peninsula.” and a giggle. (I must have listened to that giggle a bazillion times, and it still makes me smile. It’s a truly great giggle — right up there with Anderson Cooper’s.) And some of it is just plain weird. One of life’s many little opportunities to sift through the dross and discover the pearls.
There was a period in my life when I used to doodle (a lot) a tulip shaped bulb with convoluted roots and a daisy like flower blooming straight out of the bulb’s point, and on the bulb, in psychedelic lettering, was the phrase “Understanding is a virtue hard to come by.” Which is a lyric from “Last Wall of the Castle” from Baxter’s. If I had a dollar for every time I doodled that doodle, I could buy quite a nice armload of books . . .
Also out of that time came a song, “Wooden Ships” which was written aboard David Crosby’s schooner Maya by him, Stephen Stills and Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane. It was recorded by CSN on their first album (mentioned above) and by Jefferson Airplane. Somewhere between the poles of the two versions of this song was, once upon a time, a small, strange burrowing bird living in the flatlands, learning to fly. . .
*discretionary funds -- "extra" money, that can be spent on what I like to call "targets of opportunity."
**If you were a bird, and lived on high,
You'd lean on the wind when the wind came by,
You'd say to the wind when it took you away:
"That's where I wanted to go today!"
From "Spring Morning" in When We Were Very Youngby A. A. Milne.
***This picture has no relation to anything in the post. I just like looking at it.
Had another attack of thunder-boomers again last night. Power flicked on and off a couple times, which did not affect my computer because I have it plugged into a UPS*, but it made my AT&T whole-shebang modem** reboot each time the power went off. I need to rethink what I’ve got plugged into my UPS and see if I can’t manage to plug the AT&T modem into it as well.
As regular readers may recall, back in August, one of my back teeth threw a shoe, and I had to have that crown cemented back on. Well, that cement lasted until this past Sunday. While I was eating a baked potato, off came the crown again. I got it re-cemented back on this morning with hopes it will hold until we get back from our planned trip.
Unfortunately, the reason the crown came off again is because the stub of tooth left over from the previous root canal is slowly but surely disintegrating. One way or another, it’s got to come out. Of course, if he just pulls the tooth and leaves it at that, I’ll lose the tooth above it, too. (Bone toughens in response to stress. What keeps your upper teeth in your head is the stress on the upper jawbone that results from chewing. If you lose a lower tooth, the bone weakens around the roots of the tooth above it and that unopposed tooth slowly but surely starts falling out.) About 15 years ago, I lost the back molar on the other side with no option to replace it and the tooth above the empty space hangs noticeably lower than the tooth next to it.
What we’ve decided to do is to go for a second dental implant. The tooth just ahead of the misbehaving molar is the implant I got in 2017, and I have been totally satisfied with it. The bone graft took right away, and everything went well. The implant process takes about 6-8 months from when the tooth is pulled to when the crown is installed. I get the tooth pulled on 4 November. (So not looking forward to that!) I’ll have to be on an antibiotic both before and after the extraction because of the stents in my heart, and I’ll be chewing right-handed for the foreseeable future. Joy electric.
In 2017, my dentist moved to new premises WAY the heck out on 122nd Street***(I live on 66th Street). The town where I live is expanding south and west at a fairly fast clip. Developers are building large clusters of houses (we call them “housing additions or subdivisions; the Brits call them “housing estates”) on the outskirts of town. This photo is looking back toward town from the parking lot of the little strip mall where my dentist has his office. There are large plots of houses to the west, south, and east of where this was taken, with a cotton field right in the middle. (Evidently this plot of land either hasn’t been sold to a developer yet, or else the developer has no plans to build on it right away and the guy he bought it from has enough time to get one more cotton crop out of it before it gets dozed and they start putting streets in.) If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can see that the cotton bolls (white dots) are already starting to open. (Groan!)
That means we’re moving into my worst allergy season of the year — cotton stripping and ginning time. This is when the cotton is harvested from the plants, cleaned of plant trash, and “ginned” of its seeds. Particles of dirt and plant trash coated with herbicide, pesticide, and defoliant, as well as fine pieces of cotton lint are thrown into the air by both the stripping and ginning processes. My lungs and sinuses will be having a hissy fit until about February.
Here’s one of the usual suspects in action. The below video was made northeast of us, fairly close to the state line between us and Oklahoma. (The land there is not quite as flat as it is where I live.) This cotton stripper not only picks the cotton bolls off the plants, it takes the boll off the cotton and discards it, so that what it rolls up into that nice round plastic-covered bale is about 95% cotton and only about 5% plant trash. You’ll notice the lint and dust blowing off the machinery as it heads down the rows. Oh, and by the way, one of these little buggies will set you back about $700,000.
In the knitting news, the BJD sweater is coming along. I’m writing the pattern up as I go along and I’ll publish it in my knitting blog. I need to mail it next week for it to arrive in time for Jane’s birthday. You’ll notice in the picture on the left what looks like a piece of slightly bent wire. That’s the tapestry needle that I was using as a cable needle. I will have enough yarn to finish the sweater (whew!), and probably enough yarn left over to make a stocking cap to match. So, that.
Here in the flatlands we have what is described as a “semi-arid” climate, which means our humidity rarely goes above 60% (usually only when it’s pouring down rain) and can get down in the teens and nobody thinks too much about it.
I have one of those thick plastic mats that you put under office chairs so they will roll easily on carpet. If I’m wearing my ear buds listening to stuff on the computer, and I shuffle my bare feet on the plastic mat, I will get static sparks in my ears. (Gets your attention, I can tell you!)
Feeding my Aunt’s Chickens, aged 3
This GIF is so evocative for me. As a child, I was a tow-headed blonde with fine, flyaway hair. When I was about 3 years old, my parents had an old green Studebaker that had bench seats, and seat covers woven out of plastic thread, (like that stuff they put on lawn chairs). This was way back, long before the days before child protective seats. When we went somewhere in the car, I stood on the seat beside my mother. In order to get out of the car, I had to slide across the seat on my tummy until my legs were clear of the edge and then climb down; and when I stood up, I looked a lot like this little girl. (Except blonde.) (And cuter.)
*Uninterrupted Power Supply, AKA battery backup/surge protector. I've got 10 minutes worth of battery to allow me to save computer files I'm working on so I don't lose stuff when the power goes out.
** a cable company modem that controls everything you get from their service with a single modem. In my case, that's cable TV, a VOIP land-line phone and internet access. If you lose power, the modem goes off and you have no internet, no TV and no phone.
*** Because we're in the flatlands and there's pretty much nothing but a shallow canyon in the way of putting a town anywhere you want to, my town (pop. 261,000) was laid out on a grid, with the east-west streets numbered north to south, and the north-south streets named alphabetically east to west, which makes 122nd Street 56 streets further south than 66th Street.
Gobi Gobatiputtitatti
11 July, 1999 to 17 April, 2015
He had a variety of nicknames, but the one that stuck was “Pu” (short for Emperor Pu An Yu). His father was a Godknows out for a night on the town. His mother was a long haired lilac-point Siamese belonging to the then daughter-in-law of my then landlord and his wife. They owned the apartment building where I lived for over 21 years, longer than I have lived anywhere else. That building is no more, pulled down to make way for the building of the Marsha Sharp Freeway. Where it was is now the deli section of a Market Street supermarket.
When I had Stormy put down in March of 2015, it was because she was dying of kidney failure. That left me with two cats, Jaks and Pu, who was 15 going on 16, but was still healthy and active. The reality of that situation was it cost $20 a day per cat to board cats at Petsmart’s pet hotel and my then 91-year-old mom wanted me to drive her places, to visit relatives and friends. She would pay to board one cat, but not two. I had Pu, my wingman, put down a month after I had to say goodby to my baby girl, Stormy. That left me with Jaks, the black one I lost in January of 2018. He was 11 when I had him put down also, right at the start of this horrible year. He was badly overweight, had been getting clingy and very stressed by having to be boarded, and it was as if I somehow knew I was going to have a heart attack less than a month later, and be hospitalized four times over the next five months and be one sick puppy for most of the first half of the year. It was time for him to go and it was the first time in 21 years that I had been without a cat. Yeah, I miss all of them, including my first two, Shadow whom I lost to osteosarcoma in 2004 and Jett whom I lost to diabetes in 2009, but Pu is the one I regret. I could have kept Pu.
What brought all this on was I dreamed about him last night, ol’ Pu. My wingman. The one that followed me from room to room, content to be where ever I was, gruff, crotchety, opinionated ol’ curmudgeon that he was. I dreamed he was living with my former landlord and his wife, and that I got to visit him there. I was so glad to see him again. I picked him up and held him in my lap and petted him and loved on him. It was a dream of sensory memories, of having him to hold again. The feel of his fur, the weight of his body, that one whisker (his wild hair) that grew in a quirky direction. I started crying about the second sentence of this post, looking through my pictures of him, remembering his taste for paper, his thing about boxes, his puffy-fluffy, eloquent plume of a tail, the tufts of fur between his pink paw pads and his splendidly long whiskers. Remembering that time it rained on his house. He was a part of my life for almost 16 years. I had him longer than I had any of the other ones. He’s the one I regret. I could have kept him.
I had to stop working on my Cobblestone Lace shawl because I had been working on it so much that I was so familiar with the pattern I wouldn’t pay attention to it, would get ahead of myself and make mistakes. Ribbit!
Also, I don’t like the way the decreases look and I revamped the pattern. (The pattern on my knitting blog is the latest, revamped version.) so the blue shawl is going to be a giveaway to someone who won’t be bothered by the way the decreases look. I’m making another one for myself in a very light greyish blue. I will finish both shawls, and the light blue one will eventually be the picture for the pattern in my knitting blog. But, like I say, I’ve put them aside for a while to work on the Cable Edged shawl.
I had liked the Cable Edged Shawl pattern as written, but the scalloped edges of the lace curl and won’t lie flat, and acrylic yarn is tricky to block. (Yes, you can too block acrylic yarn.) I futzed around with the original pattern and modified it slightly, and the modified version is the one I’m making. As I was working on it, and growing more and more displeased by the way the scalloped edging curls under, it occurred to me that maybe I could find a garter stitch lace pattern with edges that would lie flat and wouldn’t have to be blocked. I looked through the collection I have on my computer, but none of them were suitable. I went to the website where I got most of them and had another poke through the treasure chest and found one that would fill the bill. It’s called Hilton Lace (which is why I’m calling it “My Own Private Hilton Shawl.”
Now here’s the thing: the basic pattern for a braided cable has an 8-row repeat. It has two different types of cable crosses (cable front and cable back) and 3 rows of stockinette between each cable cross. I needed a lace pattern that had either an 8-row repeat or some multiple of 8 (i.e., 16, 24, 32, etc). The Hilton Lace has a 16-row repeat, just like the lace pattern that was used in the Cable Edged Shawl pattern. Simple. I’ll just copy the Cable Edge Lace pattern to a blank page. Since I’m familiar with the pattern and know what part of each line is the cable and what part is the lace, it should be a simple matter to cut and replace one lace pattern with the other.
Guess again. The first time I tried it, I got the wrong edge of the lace against the cable — in effect, I put the lace on upside down. The second time, I got the lace right side up, but wrong side out:
When the cable was right side up, the lace was wrong side up. Oop! Ribbit! (Just to complicate matters, the Thompson seedless grapes I was snacking on weren’t always, so expletives and pejoratives were infrequently punctuated with grape pips. Pa-ding!)
Finally, after much finagling and skoojuling, I got them both right side up and with the right edges together. In order to get everything to come out right, I had to switch the cable crosses around, too, but I got it sorted. TaDa!
I also had to work out the little 6-row edging starting bit and ending bit as well, so I did the test swatch with the starting bit, two lace edge pattern repeats in between, then the ending bit to make sure everything came out right.
The edge on this lace readily lies flat and I’m very happy with the way it looks. It’s also a wider border. (The original border was 22-stitches wide. This border is 33 stitches wide.) It makes the shawl longer from top to bottom, which I like. So, win there, too. The best part is that the pattern repeat for this edging is interchangeable with the edging pattern on the original Cable Edged Shawl pattern. I can use the pattern for the body of the shawl as written, and put whichever edging I want on it. Total win. And it only took me about 10 hours to sort it out.
Not much else is happening. It’s too dang hot out to go outside except in the early morning. Since I don’t start rustling up breakfast until 10 o’clock, I don’t go out then either. Besides, it’s been wet enough that there’s skeeters, and that’s when they’re out, too. Another reason to stay in.
It’s been almost 6 months since I lost the fat(cat)boy. I still miss the little schnook, although time has worn the hard, sharp ache down to the odd twinge that catches me by surprise now and again. I’ll see the Petsmart “Petperks” tag on my keychain and realize why I haven’t been there in a long time. The cabinet where I used to keep his food and the corner of the office closet where his poop box was now have other things there. There is an empty corner in the kitchen, and silence, where his pet fountain used to sit gurgling.
About four months ago, I rearranged my furniture so that one of my comfortable arm chairs and its footstool that used to be in the living room is now in my rather large (master) bedroom, and I’ve set up my knitting nook around it with a pole lamp, a little night stand and my reader’s table. If the book I’m reading is a dead tree edition, I often sit there to read. One evening about three months ago, I started reading what turned out to be a particularly good book and, as not infrequently happens, I opened the front page and kept turning pages until there weren’t any more — which broke the spell. I looked up at the clock, which said 4 o’clock (a.m.), and something in the hallway caught the corner of my eye. I would have sworn it was a certain fat(cat)boy with his golden eyes aglow, sidling down the hall and into my bedroom . . . but of course it wasn’t. I had a little cry, washed my face, brushed my teeth and went to bed.
The other evening I was walking down the hall toward the kitchen, and something on the floor up against one of the office bookcases caught my eye. I went over to pick it up and it was a Greenie lying there like a little booby trap waiting to ambush me with a gut-punch in the memories. Whenever I had to go out for more than an hour or two, I’d pour some Greenies in my hand and toss some in the office floor and the rest in the bedroom floor for him to hunt. What are the odds that half a year later I would find one that he had missed (highly unlikely — he adored them), and that the cleaning lady (who is a very thorough vacuumer) had missed on three separate occasions? I miss them all, every one. This is the first time in 21 years I haven’t had at least one cat companion. There’s many good reasons why it’s better not to have one right now. Unfortunately, there one very good reason why it isn’t better not to have one right now; I haven’t lived alone in 21 years.
My friend LB made a bunch of knitted snowmen, and she gave me this one when I went to see her Thursday. She used yarn that has a thread of iridescence in it that gives it just the perfect little sparkle like snow (like the iridescent glitter I used on my snowflakes) — which doesn’t photograph at all well . . . .
The little snowman got me to thinking again about how a simple object of little intrinsic worth becomes an object of great value because of its history and how one came to acquire it. Its worth lies in its ability to evoke memories, of the time, the place and the giver. . . . It becomes a “souvenir” in the literal sense of the word, which is French for “remember.”
Sans segue, I remembered I had this little bamboo silverware tray (it’s too narrow for the silverware drawer in this house), and I had a brainwave — I put it on the little table I have by my computer to organize my knitting needles. It works a treat. I had a hard time getting to my double pointed needles before, but not now. They all go in that front bit quite nicely, as does my needle gauge. Win.
Here I make all these hats for other people, but I hadn’t made any for myself. Last year, I had made a ribbed cowl to fit up around my neck, which I fold in half and which fits like a turtle neck sweater without the sweater. I used it when I had to go out Friday, and it is tall enough that it will cover my mouth and ears no problem. I made it so long because you can also unfold it and bring one end of it up over your head. It fits my needs very well. I thought a toboggan to go with it out of the same Caron Simply Soft yarn would be just the thing, so on this chilly (41 F/ 5C) Crimmers Eve, I’m making one.
Late in my salad days (1986), when I first started doing medical transcription, we worked at the hospital in a little room off the medical records department. The lady I worked for, and who taught me transcription, used to get tickled at me for refering to “Christmas” as “Crimmers.” I was more draw-y and cartoon-y then than I am now, and I drew her this little thing below one Crimmers. (I didn’t know until about 20 years later that she had not only kept it all these years, but had had it very nicely framed.) The sentiment still holds up well, I think, even now in these dark days. . .
I’ve finally finished crocheting all the snowflakes I plan to crochet this year. There is glitter EVERYwhere, especially in the living room carpet by where I have the ironing board set up. Whoopee!(I have it set up in the living room right next to the dining area so I can use the dining table to put the bottle of stiff stuff, and the containers of glitter and straight pins, and what not on. I still have two snowflakes that need the second side stiffened and glittered, and then glue the ribbon loops on, and then packing one bunch to mail. I was going to try to get them there before Christmas, but obviously, that isn’t happening.
Then I have to clean up the mess. Ugh. I out-and-about-ed all day yesterday — I went to the dentist and the verdict is that the post is looking great. I’m supposed to come back Wednesday-week to get the impressions made for my new molar. I had the tooth pulled in May. I’ll finally get the implant/replacement in January. I will be so glad to finally be able to chew on that side again. (Oh, I can chew on that side, but it’s a bootless undertaking . . .)
After that, I went to visit my friend LB and took her a snowflake. She had knitted a bunch of snowmen and gave me one. She is currently dealing with her third recurrence of breast cancer which has now metastasized to her bones. ( She’s being treated at the same cancer center where I donate the hats.) She’s had a third round of chemo and radiation treatments to her ribs where it first showed up in the bone. Her latest MRI showed she had lesions in all but two of her thoracic vertebrae. She’s trying to stay upbeat. They’ve started her on this new pill type chemo that is supposed to be really great. I hope it works.
Last week, the battery on my computer UPS device died — I have two UPS devices, and the battery on the other one died first, and I changed them out. Now this one died as well — and I had to go get a new battery. I took one of the dead ones in to be sure I got one that would work, and since both devices use the same battery, I got two. I left the dead battery with them to recycle (it contained lithium), and one of the errands I had to run yesterday was to take the other dead battery in to get it recycled as well. And I had to go to this store to get this thing and that store to get that thing, and then shop groceries. By the time I got home, and got everything sorted out and put away, I was pooped. As a result, I went to bed too soon after I ate supper and had a bad reflux episode, woke up coughing and gagging, with my nose streaming. I had a hard time getting back to sleep again, and I have a sore throat, and I’ve been wheezing all day.
I had an optometry appointment at the VA today, and they dilated my eyes. I looked a little weird wearing dark glasses on such a grey, overcast day, but I was able to drive home. In addition to being grey and overcast, it was also colder than the proverbial wedge (our overnight low is supposed to be 24F/-4.44C tonight). I stopped by my moms later this afternoon, after my eyes had settled down, and her halls are quite thoroughly decked. Our family moved to that house in the 1960’s. The house had a fireplace but no mantelpiece, which my mom found odd and disappointing. At the time, my mom was doing ceramics as a hobby — one of her friends had a shop for hobbyists with molds and kilns, etc., — and she was working on this deluxe nativity set which would have been perfect to display on a fireplace mantel — alas! My dad decided to make her one, and did woodcarving on it. It took him forever (his projects usually did), but finally he got it done. (The reason it took forever was that he was so painstaking. The results speak for themselves). The white pieces pf the nativity set stood out better before mom had the brickwork (and the wood paneling) in the den painted.
The picture above the mantel is a photograph my dad took of my late aunt’s former house in El Paso all decorated with luminarias. He had it enlarged and framed and they gave it to her one year for a gift. When she passed, her son wanted mom to have it as a memento. My dad’s niece made my parents promise that if they ever sold the house, she could have the mantel. When my brother and I were little (1953), this lady in their church made stockings for us and my mom hangs them up every year. I cropped them out of the picture, because this is not Facebook.
As mom and I were sitting in the den visiting this afternoon, I looked up through the sliding glass door into their back yard, and it was snowing — just not sticking. When I got back home, Lo, how a rose e’er blooming in my flower bed was sprinkled with snow. Three days before Christmas, it’s still blooming.
After having to listen to this rock diva and that country music star warble and butcher all the popular* Christmas carols in practically every business I went into yesterday, I hunted up some little off-piste delights — trained singers singing a carol that hasn’t been sung into the ground because it’s one everybody knows.
Well, the pattern is modified and the slippers are knitted and on my little tootsies. The math involved makes my brain hurt, even when I’ve got a calculator. My three remaining working brain cells are knackered, and I’m ready for a little mindless TV knitting.
They worked up nicely, but you have to sew up the sole and the back of the heel portion . . . grumble . . . grumble. I strenuously avoid knitting patterns you make in pieces and then have to sew together. If I wanted to sew, I’d get out my sewing machine.
The pattern is sized for a foot 9-10 inches (23-25.5 cm) long from big toe to the edge of the heel, which would accommodate an (American) 8 to a 10 ladies size shoe.
Yesterday was Veterans’ day, and I just couldn’t. The picture of my dad in his dress Marine uniform at the start of WWII, the exact one (which is still in the exact frame) that his father had at his bedside while he was dying of cancer and hoping his 3rd son would make it home from China in time to say one last goodbye is just too fraught with memories.
My mom is an anniversary marker — she knows the birthdays and the date of death of each of her 12 siblings, her mother, my dad, and my brother’s late first wife, and she never fails to remark on each event and how many years it has been since. And she put that picture of my dad up on her Facebook page for Veterans’ Day. That’s all well and good, but, we shouldn’t just remember veterans on Veterans’ Day; we should remember them every day. They don’t just protect and defend us on Veterans’ Day. They risked and continue to risk life and limb in our service every minute of every day.
And besides, my dad’s not the only veteran in the family. Both he and my mother had brothers in the armed services during WWII, and they had a child who proudly served as well.
The Owl Underground 
