11:55 a.m. - 2002-12-13
Getting Ready For The Big Trips.
I'm kind of in a dither this morning. It's one of those days where I'm just in a mood to play. However, the Universe (or whatever God or Goddess I happen to be subscribing to at the present moment,) has deemed that this is the day that I need to get ready for the serious traveling we'll be doing over the next two weeks. You know, for that holiday that I don't believe in but use as an excuse to see my parents and friends up North once a year?
We leave tomorrow for two days at Dauphin Island so Bruce can collect some fish for a study he's doing. If I can manage to get out of bed early enough on Sunday for us to finish this collecting by noon, we might take a side trip to New Orleans, my favorite city which I desperately need a fix of right now. Home on Monday and Tuesday, and then off on a whirlwind tour of the East Coast, stopping in Baltimore, Boston and New Hampshire, with hopefully lots of friends in sleazy bars and greasy diners thrown in. The twenty-five-people-in-two-days effect, of course, but I don't care. I really need to see folks - e mail just doesn't cut it after awhile.
Needless to say, my diary will be spotty during this time but I'll try to update as much as possible. Certainly at Bruce's Dad's house I'll get to see a computer but once we hit my parent's in New Hampshire all bets are off. My parents are barely in the 20th century, never mind the 21st. Basically they live for their garden, and believe it or not, you do not have to have a computer to have a really fabulous garden. You just have to spend all your waking hours in the summer out pottering in it, and all your waking hours in the winter drooling over seed catalogues. Which about describes my parent's life.
Someday I'll write more about them, because they are really sort of fascinating to me. My Dad is the classic English gardener, ie: spending huge amounts of time on those large heaping masses of flowers so that they look totally casual and like no one ever bothers with them. Especially the poppies and delphiniums. My Dad is the king of poppies and delphiniums.
My Mom, on the other hand, is a total old New England Yankee, which means that everything is utilitarian, even the flowers she plants are edible, and she does all this esoteric astrological planting stuff which I actually am trying to get back into doing myself. I really believe in keeping these traditions alive, and, laugh if you will, but it actually seems to work. If only I weren't such a space cadet and didn't have to keep checking the Almanac all the time I'd probably not find it such a royal pain.
Anyway, I could go on and on about them because they are quite a pair and have a very eccentric piece of land that they obsess over, but now is not the time, because I have to do all this other pressing stuff before we go.
Jeez, I really don't feel like it. Is this the most rambling entry I've ever done?!!
I also didn't sleep well last night. I woke up at four am and there was a tremendous windstorm going on outside, and I developed this terror that one of our huge trees was going to come bashing down on our house. I love our trees, but they also scare me to death. Bruce, whose middle name is Alfred E. Newman ("What, me worry?!") thinks I am nuts. He sees no possiblity that one of these humongous giants is going to squash us in the middle of the night, and he finds it frustrating that I sometimes wake him up and try to convince him otherwise.
Last night, though, I think he was thanking me, because as we were looking out the window we saw this really amazing thing. Something that just left us both a bit awestruck.
Little, twinkling lights. Like faery lights.
I'm not kidding. It appears that we have a phosphorecent fungus called Foxfire, common to Appalachia, which we are just barely in the range of. It was mesmerising, and I can totally understand why people think it's caused by the little people. It was sort of twinkling and flashing through the trees, in what was actually a very eerie way. We thought about going out to see it close up but in the end, sleep won out.
Ok, I must stop dithering now and go pack some clothes!
0 comments
