Heating up...

Well, it's nearly the middle of June and tomorrow will be a rousing +24C!  It's getting hotter by the week!

Not only that, the ice is heating up, too.  Strange...

Seems so odd to have hockey in June, but it's an institution in Canada.  I suppose if it were played 12 months of the year, it would get the same solid backing and freakish hysteria as it gets 10 months of the year.  What's two extra months of playing this game, I wonder?  I think if I were paid their salaries, I may want to play 12 months of the year, too.  But wait!  When would they get vacation.  I suppose their wages cover those two months off every summer.  Don't get me wrong.  They probably deserve two months off.  They're sports stars, after all!!!

Like anything else, it's supply and demand.  We NEED events like sports to excite us and make us buy products that are advertised on TV during these events.  Don't we all go out and buy a vehicle, or drink a certain brand of beer or whatever it is they advertise during these games.  The more we buy, the more fun and excitement and entertainment is provided to the masses. 

Big corporations are truly behind the machine.  I wonder what would happen if our resources dried up and no one bought the advertised products anymore.  I wonder what kind of society we would become?  Less self-sufficient, perhaps?  More communal.  Less dependent on 'things'?

Those are a few thoughts and musings as we await game 6 of the NHL playoffs. 

There is something though, about fans these days....they either keep you cool or they heat up excessively under pressure.  I think both will be evident in our home on Monday night!  At least I think that's the next game.....???

Go Canucks!!

The barometric pressure...

It must be falling.  I've had this blasted headache for most of the day.

Dang.

It would be nice though, to have some rumbles of thunder and a bit of a shower but I don't think that is forecast anymore.  Our last bit of rain was good.  It greened everything up nicely.  This is what it looked like after that shower last week....from our rain-spotted bedroom window.

It would be far better to wake in the night from thunder than barking dogs or drunks yelling their way down the street. 

And a few minutes ago there was a boat roaring down the river.  Can't imagine putting a nice clean pleasure craft into that slime and scum, but they did!!!

So, that's all the news from Casa Grande for Friday, June 10th.

And now for some nice Advil gel caps.  I should sleep like a baby.

The purple made me do it...

Purple is a color I don't often enjoy.  I know folks who love purple and their wardrobes are purchased accordingly.

I have, however, taken to the color recently.  I can see why purple has been chosen as a color for royalty.  It's rich looking.  It makes a statement and the deeper the hue, the greater the statement...like it's shouting "Look at me!!  I'm rich and powerful!  I'm beautiful!  I'm the queen/king of the castle!"

So, as I sat on my balcony, with my lovely new hanging purple petunias, I couldn't help but yearn for a cup of tea from a Royal Albert tea cup and wanting to dig out a crumpet from the freezer.  Not every color makes me do certain things, I might add.  Just this purple.  Perhaps tomorrow they may get me wearing a fancy hat and white gloves...who knows!  I'll stop though when I feel the urge to wave at the passing traffic as I summon my man, making him call me Your Highness and requesting him to go and purchase me a diamond tiara!:)

Yep, purple can do funny things to a gal!

Enjoy your evening.  The wind is keeping the bugs at bay.  Yay!

The cleaning man...and a book...

I got settled on the deck today after lunch, ready with a new book, sun shining brightly, gentle breeze blowing, leg up and resting and all is right with the world.

Then along came the cleaning man.  His truck pulled up, on went the huge vacuum machine and away he went to the top floor of the building to do some rug cleaning before the new tenant moves in next week.  That machine makes a honkin' loud noise, so needless to say, my reading was curtailed for a few hours. 

I'm reading a book by Victor Malarek entitled: "The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who Buy It".  I would call this a serious read.  It is opening my eyes to the universal sex trade and the millions of men who brutalize, rape, and even murder women and girls...because they can.  The book is removing the blame for prostitution from the females and placing it rightly on the heads of men the world over....right where it should be.  There would not be prostitution if it weren't for the men who are willing to buy and use females for their own sexual gratification.

The cover of the book states: "...a first, crucial, long-overdue look at a global secret:  the identities of customers who make sex trafficking profitable.  Read it, weep, and begin to humanize the idea that 'masculinity' requires dominance and humiliation." (a quote by Gloria Steinem)

This book was one our daughter was reading in her university class last year. 

When it comes to prostitution, well, here in P.A. it's right on the street where I work.  Each morning some of the gals are already strolling and certainly after work around 5 p.m. P.A. begins it's night life and the men come out of their places and begin "looking".  The vans drive around, the trucks with their tinted glass, the little cars....all looking for some action and some cheap sex.  Most of the girls already are on drugs so they need their cash to get them through the day. 

There appears to be a great lack of self esteem with these gals.  If they learned their importance as women, as individuals, and human beings and really believed in themselves, these lifestyles wouldn't be sought out by them.  They would know there is so much more available for them than what has been dished out.  Probably no one has told them of their great value.  If someone had, perhaps their lives would have gone in a very different direction....and perhaps not.

Our children need so much to be told of their worth.  When we don't tell them, we are doing them a great dis-service.

So, I shall continue on with this book.  I know it will put me in a very melancholy mood but perhaps I need to be in order to fully understand the extent of the disgrace that men are putting on themselves.  Men, I believe, also need to know their value as men, as human beings, so they can begin to value others as well. Actually, we are all in the same boat, as far as our need to be valued is concerned.

There is, of course, something very raw about this topic, a topic that is not spoken of much at our supper tables!.  It's about men and their failures, after all.  Of course, we women are not without our failures, I certainly acknowledge that.  But since I'm reading this book, I have concentrated on the men.

Enjoy your night...and think about those millions of women and girls who are even this night, being bought and sold and used and brutalized all for the sake of sex.  It is a topic worth talking to God about and also with one another.  We need to begin to acknowledge the mess and to help get it cleaned up!!

Just read...

"The Old Man and the Sea", another of Ernest Hemingway's books.  Short and excellent writing.  It was a sad book though filled with love, honour, respect and determination.  It gives a picture of a man who was totally at one with the sea and everything in it and with all of nature, in general.  It involves relationship in various forms as well.  Reality of the Spirit is subtly spoken of......even in a humorous fashion.

A solid book.  I believe it has been required reading in high school or university at one point in time.

Hemingway is a very descriptive writer, going into great detail on various subjects.  This book was all about fishing...in the ocean.  I'm not familiar with that kind of fishing but it took me there, into the Gulf Stream, into the little fishing boat as it is pulled relentlessly out to sea by the largest fish the old man had ever had the good fortune of catching...until both are left battered and worn and one of them, ultimately, dead.

The most admirable quality of the book, in my opinion, was the relationship the old man had with a young boy and how much the young lad wanted to learn of the sea from his elder friend, but circumstances would not allow it.  But even circumstances were not enough to sever their friendship.  Theirs was true and lasting.

If you haven't read it, it's worth the few hours it takes to read it.  A tiny book..only 140 pages or so.

I think Hemingway will be my choice for this summer's reading.  Off to the library I shall go.

Friendship...

What is friendship anyway?

Guess it's many things. 

It's an ability to appreciate another person for who they are, not what they are.

It's when one person believes in another person, no matter what they have done or how they have messed up.

It's enjoying another person's company and they, in turn, enjoy yours.

It's two people listening and hearing each other.

It's encouraging another person to become better than what they are at the moment.

It's the ability to allow for others to appreciate that same person, just as you do.

It isn't clingy.

It isn't jealous.

It wants to help out when the other person is down.

AND it is willing to sacrifice everything for the other person.

Kind of sounds like a marriage, eh?  Well, I guess marriage IS a kind of friendship.  At least it begins with that...and progresses into a much deeper and perhaps intimate level.

There are people in my life that are true friends, and they have demonstrated time and again what friendship really means.  They are willing to go the extra mile and they also allow me to do the same for them.

It is good to have friends...even though friends come and go from my life, I can say that because of them, of what they have been to me, I am a better person for having known them.  Some of them have given me things that I shall always treasure.  When I see these treasures, I am reminded of how grateful I am for their generosity and kindness.

There are people whom I haven't seen in quite a very long while and yet, I continue to consider them my friends.  No, friendship doesn't mean having to always be present with another but it does mean that a part of their inner self goes with you, no matter where you are because I believe true friendship is also very much linked to the spirit world....unseen, yet powerful.

Friends are simply....a blessing.

Yes, friendship means much more than I could ever write about here!  Oh, and it can be hard work, too:)

Who would have thought...

You take great pains to pick out your little plants, just the right color, size, whether they like sun..or not, and how much cash I'll have to dish out.  You bring them carefully home.  Husband and I picked out just the right kind of plant hangers to be bolted onto the iron balcony railing.  I have watered them every morning and fertilized them each week, brought them into the apartment every night there has been a frost warning and back out on their little hangers when the warning was ended.  I have sat in front of them and taken their pictures, and admired their beauty and their doubling in circumference.  In short, they are the only living things I own these days and I have babied them considerably.

So you can imagine my consternation upon gazing out the sliding glass door to find one of my hanging pots is no longer hanging....the beautiful, cascading fuchsia-colored petunia basket has left the balcony.

First my eyes got very wide.  I checked to see if I was indeed wearing my spectacles.  I was.

I then took notice of the trees around to see if it was windy and the plant had fallen off in the wind.  No wind.

I then checked out the dining room window to see if it was on the grass below.  Not there.

I was getting pretty ticked by then.

But I readied myself for church and when we went out to the car, husband checked around the building, I checked the garbage cans and the lawn area on the other side of the wall.  No plant.

On my way back to the car, walking up the parking lot, there, on the asphalt, sat one lonely little fuchsia-colored petunia looking as if she was attempting to leave her body on the ground as a point of direction for me to find her poor mother.

We traveled a ways by car to the west to see if someone had thrown her onto the Rotary Trail.  Nothing.

I then began to think about this.

Who would do this type of daring piece of thievery?  Certainly not anyone on drugs or drunk.  They wouldn't have made it.  We're talking about a second storey balcony here!  I did hear quite a few people yelling outside though in the night but they sounded like they were on the street and I wasn't up to checking on their condition!

They didn't bother with the geranium...just that huge, lovely petunia with cascading Lobelia.

My next thought was "If they got up high enough to pick that hanging basket, could they get over the balcony railing and in through the sliding door?"  Although we always keep that door locked...but that thought was there nonetheless.

Vandalism?  Covetousness?  Mischief?

Whatever the reason, I hope that whoever has my hanging plant gets to really enjoy it...although, it may just be in some dumpster....

So, now I have a purple petunia in it's place!  Perhaps I should wire it up a bit with a few volts...heh heh heh

 Farewell, dear plant.  Parting is such sweet sorrow......