One more Birthday

How many times can one celebrate the entrance into this Mortal condition?  Well, as many times as you want and you do not have to wait 12 months between celebrations either.  I have a friend with whom I exchange birthday cards.  It started because I could not remember when her birthday was so I sent her a card each month and that way it did not matter exactly when her birthday occurred, she had a card to cover the event 11 other times 'just in case'.  Last year I celebrated for over a month.  Oh yes, I could remember when my birthday was, but it was more fun to celebrate the occasion with my quilting friends, my weaving friends, my church friends and my family also joined in and it was a lot of fun.  This year I think it will only last one day but it has been a day packed with wishes over the internet, phone calls from family here and in Australia and even at the Archives.  When we arrived, Art and Bill sang happy birthday to me, Peter stopped in to say happy Birthday, Ann was working in our room and we laughed a lot over birthdays etc. and then Jeff came in and wished me happy birthday.  Last night Bill bought me a bouquet of 12 roses.  We do not have a tall vase, or any vase for that matter, so he wrestled the blender into submission and put the roses in the blender.  Now, that is a novel place to put one dozen roses, but it means that I cannot have a smoothie until the roses wilt and I hope that they stay fresh for a good while.

 One dozen roses resting in a blender.  They will be removed before I make my next smoothie.

This Lobster Cake is made up of 12 cupcakes frosted to look like a lobster.  Oh yes, there was gobs of frosting but it is the most unique cake I have ever had.  After all, Maine is known for its Lobsters and what better way to celebrate a birthday and a birthday in Maine no less, than with a Lobster Cake.

For Ethan and Oliver - lessons from the spider.

Preparation and hope, another lesson from the spider

I watched the spider again last night.  There is a light at the front of the apartment building that shines on our side of the building.  I can see the outline of the spider as he gingerly but deftly goes around this wonderful web he has produced.  I watched as  his back legs reached for the silk from his spinnerets and put it exactly in the spot that the spider’s nature dictated.  Each fine line of the web is perfectly placed and this flimsy web holds this seemingly gigantic spider and does not break.

When God created the earth and everything in it, he gave commandments to every living thing to multiply and replenish the earth and to function in their respective realms so that this Earth would be a wonderful place for man to live.  All the fruits and trees and grasses  and plants of every kind giving seed of its kind, all the animals and birds reproducing according to the eternal plan, and He even gave the same commandment to the spiders and other things that make my flesh crawl when I see them and I don’t like being stung by them.  He gave me this spider to study and to learn from.

The spider was outlined by the light in a silhouette and it embodied the hope that some bug would venture through the screen to be in the web.  I can still observe the entire screen and there is literally no hole really big enough to accommodate an interloper big enough to give the spider a decent meal.  Yet the spider waits there, statue still, full of hope, for a meal to come by.

So, my wonderful grandsons, who will hopefully one day read my thoughts and ramblings about daily life on a mission, what lessons can you take from this spider?

The Spider is involved in meticulous preparation.

Preparation is something in which you have been involved from your birth to this moment in your life.  I hope that you are preparing to serve as missionaries for the Lord. 

The spider exhibits great hope.

The prophet Moroni  taught ,”I would speak unto you concerning hope.  How is it that ye can attain unto faith , save ye shall have hope?

And what is it ye shall hope for?  Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of our faith in him according to the promise.

Wherefore, if a man have faith he must needs have hope; for without faith there cannot be any hope.

And again, behold I say unto you, that he cannot have faith and hope save he shall be meek and lowly of heart.   Moroni  7:41-43

The spider exhibits faith that his creator will not let him starve, but will supply his wants and needs as he (the spider) fulfills the measure of his creation.

Ethan and Oliver, I have great faith in you and great hope for you that you will walk in the ways of the Lord.  I am your grandmother and I love you very very much.

God loves His Creation, even this spider building a web in my window,  and I have learned a lot from contemplating the spider and his web and his patience and preparation.  I hope that you are able to catch this vision as well.

He sent me a spider

Now, I do not particularly like spiders.  We have lots of them in Arizona and they skitter around my house with abandon.  I chase them and they hide, I wait for them and they do not reappear (a very wise move on their part) and  they build webs, which my mother used to refer to as ‘Christmas Decorations’.  When I was little, the big grey tarantula that lived on the ceiling and ate mosquitoes etc. that inhabited the house from time to time, was particularly scary to me but he was harmless to humans.  My father called him “the triantiwantigong” and that is what I called him too.  He was about 4 inches across and was mostly legs and a very tiny body.  As he traversed the ceiling looking for unsuspecting bugs, he appeared to have way too many legs for his own good, in my child’s opinion.

Well, the Lord has sent me another spider.  One from which I can draw strength (as long as he stays between my window and the screen and does not come into the house).  In school we read the story of Robert the Bruce, a Scottish warrior who had been defeated 6 times by the British armies.  He was in a cave (in some versions he is in a castle and others he is in a slab hut in the forest), but as he lay on his mattress feeling defeated and sorry for himself, he noticed a spider who was building a web.  The spider tried and tried to make the connection so that the web could go from one wall to another and after 6 tries the spider launched out into space and finally made the connection and from thence on successfully built the web.  Robert the Bruce took courage, gathered his men, and routed the English and retained Scotland for the Scotts.

This spider in my window is an Orb Weaver.  In the light I can see that it has pretty markings on its abdomen and its legs are long and delicate.  I have no idea how it got between my window and the screen because there does not appear to be an aperture big enough to accommodate such a large body let along let the legs remain undamaged while accessing my window space.  There also seems to be a dearth of bugs at this time of year for any self respecting spider to trap and to eat.  We have to eat to sustain life and the miniscule bugs that have become entrapped in the web hardly supply a tooth full for this lone spider.

So what can I learn from this spider in my window.  Well for one thing, I can be patient with the digitizing and redouble my efforts to get the work done, and done properly.  We have digitized one of the reworks 3 times and still they send it back.  I have a good mind to package up the book and sent it to them to do for themselves.  I doubt if my spider would consider going to such lengths, but it does repair its web daily and it sits in the corner of the window waiting for the bugs to show up, and they do.  So I guess I will have to re-tackle the job of this one book that is giving us trouble.  We are to take a reading called and LSI and to do that you have to find the thinnest line on the paper and take the reading on that and then proceed with the calibration from there and then digitize.  Well the problematic book had two vastly different styles of writing.  One is heavy handed, very dark ink, and jagged and hard to read and this hand written record is in the front half of the book.  The rest of the book is written in very fine, light ink copperplate and is a pleasure to look at.  I think the solution is to calibrate the first half of the book, stop, recalibrate to accommodate the second half of the book and if that does not do the trick, then I am totally unaware of what method of digitizing and calibration will produce an acceptable capture of the record.  Another solution would be to ask the people whose court cases appear in this book, to clean up their act and not go to court at all and then we would have a blank book to digitize.  Well it makes sense to me since we are having so much trouble with this one book.  Either that, or have the clerk who wrote with a heavy hand, learn to do copperplate in very light ink!

Well, spider, thank you, I think, for the lesson of patience under difficult circumstances.

The Nutcracker performance at Skowhegan Opera House.

We had hoped to be at the YMCA by 7am but made it by 7.30am.  Bill went into the chamber of horrors and I donned my swimsuit and went into the warm pool to do some water walking.  I get tired of walking round and round the track in the chamber of horrors or walking on the treadmill and watching Dr. Oz and trying to read the captions (they are altogether too fast and I wonder if anyone else has trouble reading what is written).  It was pretty funny to be the only one in the pool that early in the morning and the lifeguard stood watch over me the whole time.  Like having your guardian angel right in your presence.
We came home and had breakfast, scripture reading and then we got ready for the day.  It became late but we went to the Augusta Civic Center for the craft show there and saw some of the same people we saw at various other shows.  We left there and drove to Skowhegan.  there is a small ballet company called the Bossov Ballet (run by Mr. Andre Bossov) and they were performing the Nutcracker.  His take on the story was a little different from the traditional ballet's that we have seen over the years.  Many of the things that he did were quite innovative and effective and really added to the story.  I was disappointed that there was no 'growing tree' but there were plenty of interesting mice - one was even remote controlled and buzzed around the stage.  The part of the Sugarplum fairy was danced by the Queen Bee and a bunch of little Bees.  These are the cutest little kids and they steal the show from the lead dancers.  They entered the stage by sliding down a sliding board that came out of a tree.  The mother Ginger dance was done by the queen bee and the little bees sliding down the board to the stage and doing their dance routine.  It was quite cute.
Skowhegan is a 'two-part city" just like Augusta - it straddles the Kennebec river.  There is also a dam at Skowhegan or perhaps it was a lock to allow ships to come up and down the river - I do not know because we were busy looking at the road signs to find the opera house and so I  only got a glimpse of the water system that we crossed.  The city of Skowhegan reminds me a lot of Johnstown.  Bill found a parking spot right in front of the Catholic church.  I wonder if the priest was excited to see someone park that early in front of the church - we parked there at about 2pm and mass was at 4pm.  Just as we were leaving to come home, the people were pouring into the church for Saturday night Mass.  The performance of the Nutcracker was videotaped ($27.95 plus shipping).  We were standing in the foyer during intermission and this man came up to us and asked where we were laboring.  We were wearing our name tags and it turns out that the one videographer of the show is a member of the church from Bangor and I am always surprised when people come up to us and start talking to us like we are long lost relatives - well we are in a way - and then I remember that I am wearing my name tag that says my name and the name of the Church.

It was a long day but a very good day and when we came home, the spider had nabbed about 5 very miniscule flies in its web and was busy eating them and repairing the web for another night of 'capturing the unfortunate bugs that are still around.'  Perhaps the bugs are not all that bright to begin with - after all who would want to get in through the fly screen only to be trapped in a spider web?  It lets me know that even though we have fly screen on the windows, there are little bugs that can get through even those small holes and invade our domain.

Black Friday was very sunny in Augusta, 2011, but the spider was clueless.

 It is close to 30 degrees here yet this Orb Weaver is the most optimistic spider I have ever seen.  He has positioned himself on the screen but on the inside between the screen and the window.  If it was his desire to decorate my apartment window with a wonderfully constructed web that will catch all the droplets of water from the morning fog, and have them glisten like diamonds when the sun finally makes it to the window., he is sadly mistaken and I am disappointed.  I really thought Orb weavers were more astute than this fellow.  I wonder if his parents have talked to him about the propriety of building a web in a place where the bugs cannot come.  Not only can they not venture near the web and become ensnared in his creation, they have finished their life cycles at the end of the summer and so this spider has cheated himself out of a meal all the way around.  Like I said, he is optimistic, but brilliant bug catching strategy is not his forte.

I visited Hallowell today to escape the bedlam of Wal Mart and other "Black Friday or Bust" stores at the mall.  I entered all the little shops that line the main street  of Hallowell and had a visual picnic.  the above bowl was in a craftsman's shop.  They have over 200 artisans who contribute everything from  candles, to hand painted scarves, to turned wood, and have pottery galore and glass items as well as folk art things.  quite eclectic to say the least.  I should mention that many of the stores in Hallowell are around 200 years old and they are not quite plumb any more.  One even looks like it is sliding down into the River below - it is out of plumb about 15 degrees.(my estimate - and not that of an architect).  However, because Quilters are always checking and re-checking to make sure that the stitching lines are straight, it does not take too much practice to see that the buildings are leaning off center.  When things are off center in a quilt, the points don't match and there are sometimes glaring problems as a result.  Well, one of the problems with a building that is out of plumb is that the door scrapes the floor when it opens and the windows do not shut properly etc.etc.

 This stained glass peacock is at Hattie's chowder House.  We ate lunch there.

 This particular antique shop only has lights - all kinds of lights and the building has a tin ceiling and none of the lights is lit - only daylight coming in by the ill fitting windows is how I was able to view this shop.  when I entered it had a distinctly musty odor and I remarked to the wizened lady behind the counter that the shop "smelled old".  She just grunted some sort of reply and I wandered around the maze of lights and light poles, and lamp stands etc.  It is amazing that they can find anything in this shop.

 This is one of the ornate lamp stands in the lamp shop.

 They had a lot of these types of lamps int he shop.  I don't know if they are tiffany or not, but they sure look interesting.

 This is the jumble of stuff on the river side of the store.

 This is the front of the lamp store.  It takes up two storefronts.

Looking East on the Kennebec River.

There were hordes of people in Walmart and the parking lot was jammed so I did not go there today but rather opted to explore Moore's crafts store while Bill scouted Best Buy.  One lady in Moores had a large shopping cart just crammed with stuff.  I guess she is expecting a long cold winter and she holed up in the house with all her crafts stuff to keep her busy.  She may never be heard from again if she begins work on all the stuff she bought.  Someone should have reminded her that the 50% off coupon was good on only one full priced item.  Found out that Moores takes JoAnn and Michaels coupons.  I think it would be best for me to not go into this store too much if at all.

I opted to spend an hour or two wandering the main street of Hallowell.  When we go to church, we drive through Hallowell and then again on the way back and you just cannot see what treasures are in the stores when you are running late for church and you are hurrying to get there before the opening prayer.

One of the stores I went into had a plaque on the wall showing the high water mark for the 1897 flood of the Kennebec.  It was 15 feet at full flood stage.  The shopkeeper then said that today's full tide was just that, a VERY FULL TIDE due to the melting snow and overly excited streams and little rivulets that drain the higher ground and then the banks.  She said that the last time they had a flood, the water was 12 inches below the floor boards that we were standing on.  She said that the Kennebec gets ice pack on it.  The Stoneycreek River in Johnstown used to ice over as well.

So I had a very relaxed Black Friday and look forward to an un-rushed Christmas a a result.

Thanksgiving at Boothbay Harbor, Maine

After having the walloping snow storm yesterday, we woke to wonderful sunshine today.

Top picture shows the pristine snow in our bakyard from our parking lot. 
Next picture is of the Blueberry estate sign where elder Barker lives
3rd picture is of the pond that one of the neighbors dug.  It was a swamp where the springs flowed into, so he dug it out and made a pond.  It is not stocked, but is fed by snow and springs and little streams.
4th pic. is of the Back Entrance to the house.  It seems that in Maine, most people only use their back entrance to get into the house.
the next two pictures are of the plants in the house.  One if of flowers, geraiums etc and the following pic is of her fresh herb garden - Sage, Rosemary, Thyme.
the next four pics are of Boothbay harbor
We then saw this purple psychedelic abandoned church building.  It has been a church at one time and an art gallery another and now it has fallen into dissuse so they said.
the next two are of the bubblegum pink michelin man and her husband.
The number plate on the car sports a Lobster.  Have seen Moose, Black capped Chickadee and white pine, Lobster and University themed plated here.  Love the Lobster one the best.
The next picture is of the Sunset we enjoyed at the end of the day.
The last pic is of the living room at sunset.  We enjoyed this view while Bill played beatles music on the piano and Soren tried to follow along on the guitar.

The Sun came out today in full force and melted the snow off the roadways.  We took advantage of it all and drove down to Boothbay to spend Thanksgiving with Elder Barker and his Wife Anne and son Soren.  They invited some other people over from their ward and we had a great time.  We got there early so Alan suggested that we drive down to Boothbay Harbor to see the ocean.  I am very glad that we did    because the area is very beautiful.  I took a few pictures of the area.  We will go back some other time to visit more places in this part of Maine.  I made a paper pieced bowl for Anne and one of the sisters who was at the lunch, saw it and wants me to go down to their ward to help teach them how to do it.  I will have to make it on a Saturday because to do it one week-night is out of the question.

Snow that is purposeful

 This sign is on a truck that is parked in our parking lot. 

 Our snow covered mail box.

 this is how I use my quilting ruler - it measures 9inches of snow on top of our mail box.

We found our car buried up to the license plate in snow.  It must be ours because it has Arizona plates.

It started snowing last night.  The powers that be, you know them, they are  the ones who sit at computer stations and punch in numbers, look up the Farmers Almanac, study the pig entrails and find woolly worm caterpillars to do the forecasts,  threatened us with a 10 to 14 inch snowfall and some people at the office just laughed and said – well, we will believe it when we see it.  Some  people in the office  thought it just might come to pass so they opted out to stay home.  One man took off the rest of the day yesterday in preparation for the snow today.  I received an email from Anne this morning and yes, only she and Art the Archiver showed up for work today.  We are all a bunch of wimps I suppose, but I noticed something about the snow here in Maine.  It is purposeful snow.  That is, the snowflakes begin up in the sky in the cloud, and they pelt themselves to the earth with real purpose.  Almost like they are committing suicide, and they congregate on trees, cars and any surface that will accommodate them.  The various snowplows have been going up and down the road all day and one even came into the parking lot where we live.  He did a really good job of plowing the snow and leaving a pile right behind the parked cars and so they would have to be shoveled out manually before they could get out.  Our car was one of those.  In fact, he plowed the snow beside our car and that part was not the parking lot – it was grass.  We parked in the last parking space last night, and the man plowed the space next to us and took out the lawn with his plow.  Ouch!  I guess he thought it was paved.  They will have to reseed it in the spring.

I have come to the conclusion that the term “from away” is the quintessential  example of ethnocentrism.  Dr. Seuss pointed out how ethnocentrism affects a community in the story, “The Star Belly Sneeches”.  The staff were talking about who was born in Maine and who was ‘from away’.  I looked at the group and they all looked like human beings and there seemed to be no identifying factors that would tell me who was ‘a real Mainer’ and who was ‘from away’.  Art even went so far as to brand “those from Down East” as being Bostonian transplants or transients who use Wiscasset as a bedroom community for their work travel to Boston.  Much like there are a group of people who make their home in Prescott, Prescott Valley, Dewey, Humbolt, Mayer, Cordes Junction  or even in Sedona and Cottonwood and commute to Phoenix.  One of the doctors at Mayo who treated Bill has his home in Cottonwood and he has an apartment in North Phoenix that he stays in Monday through Wednesday and is home in Cottonwood Wednesday night through Monday morning.  Art the archiver refers to us as ‘flatlanders’ even though Prescott is 5500 above sea level.

In any case, we did not make the trip into the office today;  We wimped out along with many of our neighbors.  There are still about 12 cars in the neighboring parking lot that look like huge snowballs with wheels.  A lady came out this morning and wiped off the snow with her gloved hand and then drove off.  She did not even shake off the snow from her sleeves and from her coat before getting into her car and driving off.  She must have been late for work and to stop and shake off the snow was going to make her even later than ever.  I watched the snowplow scrape up the snow in that parking lot as well, and it surely is hard on the flora that lines the pavement.  They may never recover from the assault of plow and snow.  I can see why the people down the highway put hessian over their plants…..it just may provide some protection for them against the onslaught of the snowplow.