Hair, Hoar::Etymology, Entomology

The other day I went to a meeting with my boss. Although it has mostly been a really mild winter, there were a few really cold days last week, and this was one of them. We went outside to get in the truck, and lo and behold, there was hoar frost on it. It had sprouted up on the edges of the pickup and in the bed like hair grows on a head. It reminded me of someone I knew in junior high who used to "frost" his hair. (He once frosted his eyebrows, too -- made them bleached, when he had black hair. It looked kind of interesting for awhile, especially since he stopped about halfway through and decided he didn't want to go through with it.)

It looked like little frost grass had grown up, as almost all hoar frost does. I was struck by the uniformity of it -- the little crystalline warriors marching up and down the truck rail. I wonder why they call it hoar frost instead of hair frost. Maybe it all started as a misunderstanding...someone said, "This looks like hair!" and his or her friend thought something else had been said. Probably someone with a more serious interest in linguistics could tell me. Etymology, not entomology, right? Just like hair, hoar. (And I know some of you reading this wanted to add, "Har," as in hardy hard har NOT FUNNY, after that last sentence.)

What's that Noise?

Yesterday, while I was walking around at lunch in the neighborhood, I was talking on the phone with the insurance guy. It turns out he was unable to help me (a fact of which we are not surprised) and that there will be many more lunchtime phone calls to get my predicament sorted out.

I was perambulating along at a not great but not little rate when I heard a noise. It was too big to be a squawk, too loud to be a squirrel, too abrupt to be a cat (cats always seem to have to ease themselves into their vocals; everything slips and slides for them).  It decidedly was not a dog. I had never heard it before, and I had no idea. I thought it could have been a mangled crow, but it would have to be a BIG mangled crow that sounded nicer than a murder-wannabe-sized crow could make.

I looked up, as that was the direction the noise came from, and up in the tree, I saw something i had never seen before. If you look in the picture, maybe you will see it, too. (It was better in person, but alas, you all cannot be with me all the time.)

There were herons in the tree. One had its big beak open and was attacking the other one. He snapped it shut and it looked like the other one had to do some fancy neck work to avoid a serious injury. They flapped and fought their way through the tree. I wished I could hang up on the insurance guy, as this seemed much more entertaining and useful. But I was grateful that I got to see them. In the tree, they're not very graceful at all. They seem like they should be called lurchers, not herons, given what I saw. It was like they were those shooters on planet Hoth, lurching about. Not the four-legged ones, the two legged ones with shorter-range blasters, but more aim/mobility.

I was sorry they were fighting, but glad that I got to see a spectacle. They settled down and agreed to ignore each other after awhile, so peace in the neighborhood was restored, and I perambulated back to work. So, if a heron fights in a tree, and nobody was there to see it, did the heron fight still happen? I'm writing this as proof that it *did* in fact happen.

Of High Import

There are a few things that really, really matter to me.

1. My family. 

I like spending a lot of time with them, doing things for them, laughing with them, playing games with them, and just generally hanging around. I always get new ideas from my sisters regarding cooking, and they always listen to me and love me, even when I'm being utterly ridiculous. I'm telling you, you can't buy that dedication and love. You also can't force someone to play approximately 15 rounds of games with you during the holidays. My brother can always be counted on for a good round of gaming! 

2.  Comfort. Especially furniture and clothes.

I cannot abide being uncomfortable. Couches that have faux cushions, pillows that have rough or hairy finishes, chairs that have backs that only go halfway up your spine, or are not the right shape for my little non-bony behind are just wrong. I'm not saying your couch has to be more comfortable than your bed. I'm just saying that if I can't watch a movie on the couch without aching at the end, the couch isn't comfortable, and you should get a comfy one, if at all possible. 

My clothes must also be comfy. Soft is the byword. No little beads that can scratch my sensitive skin. No constricting materials to keep my legs so they can't breathe. Rough material is verboten! Supima or bust! And my shoes. Oh, my. My shoes have to fit. (Shoe shopping with me is a nightmare. Ask anyone! They'll tell you I'm telling the truth.)

3.  Food

The older I get, the more I appreciate good food, and the effort it takes to put food together. Recently I took up reading cookbooks. I thought only boring people read cookbooks for the first 27 years of my life. Ha! I was wrong. I have benefited many times from cookbook readers. I used to have a swanky job where my boss' boss was a foodie. We went out to all the fashionable restaurants in San Francisco when I had occasion to go there, and I had some great food. I had sea bass at a dim sum restaurant that I still can almost taste. I had halibut that melted in my mouth. I had partridges that were skewered and had arugula and risotto with it. I had ginormous corn at a Peruvian restaurant. I also (not work related) have lovely memories of eating Rainbow Salad. 

Now I read cookbooks. I think about the things I eat. I think about the lives of the animals I eat. I think about what the animals I eat eat. I think about the farmers who farm what I eat. I think about the hands that pick the food I eat. 

4.  Time to myself.  

Sometimes, I get "like butter over too much bread." It's important to take time to be myself, for myself, as myself. The older I get, the more "recovery" time I need. Hmmmm. I'd prefer for that to be reversed, but I'm making do with what I have. 

5.  Sleep.  

I love it, I hate it. Can't live without it, don't like taking the time to recharge. I'm working on my attitude about sleep. I've made almost no progress on it. I'll try to improve a little every day. 

Whaddaya bet?

I was at my sister's house. I was talking to her about something...I don't remember what. Seems like I talk a lot, so it's sometimes hard to remember exactly what I was saying. We were standing by the kitchen sink, and the kids were in the next room -- in eyesight, just a few feet away. I was getting passionate about something, and I said, "well, if it were me, I would do it. You bet your booty I would!"

IPGM piped up and said, "Auntie, you just said "bet your booty!" (He is rather fond of all things body and bodily, currently.) I said, "oops, sorry..." not sure that I had overstepped the line of propriety. My sis assured me that I had not.

The kids were playing Minecraft. I thought they would just ignore me and go back to their sheep-making, zombie-smashing ways immediately and forget about it. But then, after a few seconds, both kids softly started singing, "bet bet bet, bet bet bet, bet your booty, bet your booty!" IPGM has all the dance moves and he was grooving along while he was singing it. K was keeping it on key and at a good tempo. It was all their mom and I could do not to roll on the floor laughing.

The kids realized the adults were trying to hold the laughter in so they started singing louder and more exaggeratedly. It was hilarious. I had no idea they had ever heard the original, but I just thought to myself, "I love my family. I love that we do things like make song parodies. I love that we make time for each other. And I love that we aren't self-conscious about being silly!"

Signs (I love my job!)

Sometimes, for my job, I travel to nearly-faraway tiny towns to have business meetings. It's one of the reasons I really enjoy my job.

Yesterday was such a day. My boss and I took a ferry ride and then drove along winding two-lane highways for an hour to get to one such town. It took nearly all day just to have a one-hour meeting. As he drove along, I saw several signs that made me smile. I was too slow with my camera to capture any of them, so you may doubt the veracity of this post, but I assure you, all these signs exist.

1.  Fern Gully Drive NW (a private road)
2.  Egg and I Road
3.  Uncharted Paranormal Services Offered
4.  Old Nip Lee Road

Also, at one intersection, there were some lovely old trees. To protect one tree, which had grown up like an Ettyn, someone had taken two or three construction barrels -- the things that are orange and white and reflect at night (I'm sure you know what I'm talking about) and chopped the tops off and fit them around the (very large) limbs of the tree that were slightly protruding onto the road. I guess the idea was to increase visibility and keep people from running into them. For whatever reason, I found this highly amusing. Maybe they had to resort to slicing it up the back and sewing it around the branch, but it fit quite snugly (so you can imagine how big the tree branches were).

I did manage to take a couple of photos from the car. I like how in the first one, all the grass blurs together, but the fog is still distinct. It makes a pleasant contrast in my mind. Perhaps such things are an eye candy flavor that needs some time to percolate in order to be developed/appreciated. Hmm.

The picture at the bottom is mostly sky, to be sure, but it looked quite lovely from the car. I had to chop off some of the bottom of the pic because we were trundling along at 60 mph and so the rails would have blurred the picture. The light was positively sublime in person...one of the reasons why I love where I live.

This trip also gave me many ideas for a future day/road trip and I now have many tiny stores I want to poke my head into, just to see what's there. Hopefully I'll do it soon and you'll read about my adventure here. :)