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... should not see a lamblet... even in a photograph...
I grabbed one of the lamblets' cameras this morning to take some quick bunny shots. When searching the memory card, I found the above... Of course I did not see this scene when the photo was being taken, because I believe I was clinging to flatter rock formations NOWHERE NEAR THE EDGE POINT OF NO RETURN!
My father is 84 today. Yes, he's still with us... although I think I've been holding my breath for a few years now, always expecting that call... sometimes hoping for that call as opposed to thinking of what might be coming.
He doesn't live at home anymore. He went into assisted living this past summer... something I fully understand, but still hate and don't understand. I keep resisting the urge to bust him out... while also fighting the urge to lose my lunch.
How can this be?? How could so much have happened so fast over the past few years?? How does a man go from exercising every day and having a stellar mind, to not being able to walk, and not being sure what day it is?? How does a man go from building a home and living in it, to no longer being able to live there, even though it's still his?? He has a home! He just can't live there... at least not without a team of people. It's very easy to move a baby, it's not so easy to move a 6'1" man.
He's still there though... or part of him is still there. Sweetness, as I have mentioned before, has taken a stronger hold in him than he has probably allowed since childhood. That is one of the few blessings, no, probably the only blessing of the stripping away of who he is.
He still has a fondness for ribald jokes. Go figure. You can ask him what time of year it is the day after he attends a 4th of July celebration, and he'll say October, but apologize to him for possibly giving him a wedgie when trying to move him from his wheelchair to his recliner, and he'll laugh right on cue and say it's probably the most he's felt down there in a long time...
He still retains (or I think he does) a fondness for flatulence humor, so today, when out shopping, and happening upon the scratch 'n sniff farting unicorn card, I snatched it up. I guess I'll find out Sunday, when we go to visit, whether this part of him still exists, or if it has joined the long line of characteristics he has left behind.
Below is my father, in younger years... Ha! I say younger, but he would have been roughly my age now when this was taken... 1976. He loved to cook out and built an awesome barbeque pit, which allowed him and one of his best friends to throw annual hog roasts. 1976 was one of the years they didn't... instead it was the Bicentennial Beef Bash... beef was chosen so a variety of other friends who did not partake of pork could attend.
You gotta love those shirts... again, it was the 70's... His glasses, however, were pure him. He's worn round spectacles since and before I've known him. I counted once, he had around 120 pairs... all different, but all round. Some crazier than others. He referred to them as his Magoo glasses.
And then there's that smile... a smile he often tried to restrain because it was crooked. Egads. What was he thinking. Smile Dad... smile!
The lyrics of this song don't really pertain, but it's been playing in my head since I put this up.
...that we forgot was there...
I have a bad habit of not downloading every photo I've taken so looking at my memory card does indeed bring back memories... even if I don't fully remember taking the photos. Maybe I didn't take this. Maybe something more sinister did. I'm guessing there's a big ol' head o' lettuce behind the camera... reveling in the emergence of its creation!
Mr. Thundra laughed in my general direction... saying my Daddy Long Legs-type speedra was not a real speedra! He was wrong. It was huge and angry and pulsing... it was waiting to pounce... I barely got away with my life! I did not, however, get away with my lunch...
I can't believe I'm now posting spider pictures. I'll be flagellating myself next...
The purslane* is in... in a matter of a day or three, BAM! It's purslane city. It's not even bad looking. It's kind of a nice succulent ground cover, but it tends to choke things out... things that I want, like this sad little basil plant which should be HUGE by now. Of course, it's not choking out its fellow weed... some mustardy type thing.
What else is choking out the garden? Aside from the crabgrass and creeping charlie and THISTLES?!?! Amaranth... or a variety of amaranth. It's in the amaranth family. It's a weed, but is supposedly edible, as is purslane, but I'm not going to try it. It will not get the honor of gracing our table. It will get the honor of gracing our composter... which gets plenty hot, to kill any optimistic seeds.
I'm feeling surly today. One more hour of weeding and I will have found my Zen calm... my empty mind... all thoughts having been sweat out of my bod in the pursuit of one task... weeding. However, I'm not there yet...
* shown in extra big cinemascope for B^4's pleasure.
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