King Burger…your way…?

    Sometimes a hamburger sounds like the best thing in the world and as I was suddenly and intensely hungry and also on my way to interview some potential clients for a wedding, I figured I should get something to eat and not be sitting in that quiet parlor shooting anxious sideways glances every time my stomach growled.  So, I went to King Burger, and couldn't decide between drive through or going inside, but I ended up doing both because once I'd ordered my food I realized that I was really thirsty…for coke.. {horrible, i know, but sometimes coke is just so good. } Well, here's where I was reminded of just how silly I can be.  I pay for my coke {after waiting a looong time for a man to decide between #1 and #5, and cash or credit or change} then walk over by the fountain drinks to the ice and hold out my hand without the cup, which she reminded me I'd forgotten.  Retrieve it and hold it under the ice…nothing. Ok, so the next ice dispenser…nope. Nothing coming, but that's the moment I realized it was jammed!!!
victory: Remove large obstacle of fused ice which is blocking the pathway of other ice and proceed to fill cup with ice.
 I go to working on this piece of ice, grab a napkin and am attempting to 'melt' it out, but that cotton picker wouldn't budge. The maddening thing was that it was just large enough to not come but small enough to keep me believing that if I could work on it just a little more I'd have it.  I got involved. Studied the mechanics, the estimated time of removal, the force of what it'd take to get it out,  considered simply breaking plastic, applied heat where possible … During this, I happened to glance over my shoulder toward the counter..I don't know, maybe it was tinted with slight desperation, but whatever the case may be, it was enough for the two laid back older black guys to look at me and say in a half laugh,
"Ain' no ice."
….Now, you can imagine my chagrin.  They'd been watching me the whole time and there I'd been wrastling this ice machine for the past 5 minutes and really, I couldn't believe they'd stood there and watched me do it. So I told them,
"No ice??? … I can't believe you just stood there and watched me do this!"
At which they burst out laughing and as I filled up my coke - luke warm - they kept laughing with an occasional,
"She was pullin on that thang! She didn't know they ain' nothin' in there…"
And as I walked out, they were still laughing, but I was too, so I guess that's called a win win.

  OH!!! Home Depot just does something to my insides. I walk in there and feel like I could tear down my whole part of the house and renovate it with my bare hands and a saw.  That smell, the rows of 24 ft. tall shelves, packed with ANY thing you could ever possibly need for ANYTHING…it's overwhelming and dangerous for me to go in there.  I never feel quite satisfied walking out until I can envision dumping my imaginary house inside out and starting with a clean slate full of all the wonderful possibilities in my head and home depot…I passed just the sign tonight and it took all I had not to turn into it, and imagine all the way home what I could do with its treasure store of usefulnesses.

and all the cows come home

last night's excerpt.
'abrum's home. so we are in the living room, daddy kicked up in his chair,
chris sitting cross-legged on the couch, merry strewn out on the long couch,
moriah sitting on her legs, abe sitting on the end with a little of all of them on him, tickling.
melody asked abe,
'what is your major?'
'I'm presently working on Layman of Plant Protection.'
Chris says
'I'm still workin on my Bachelor's.'
abe says to chris,
'Well, Fulmer, you done rounded up the nerve to go ahead
and scare up some tax forms?'' '

 does a soul good to have the men home.

abe said ' speakin of my beard, i did find a caterpillar in it the other day. don't know how 

he managed that, but i had to walk through a bush on my way to class the other day,

so i reckon he hitched a ride somewhere.  i wouldn't have seen the critter if the folks hadn't pointed him out to me.'

robin egg saturday

we had our first egg hunt ever today and it was ridiculously fun. mama got all the dyes and boiled the eggs and made our baskets with edible grass and jelly eggs. and we decorated eggs, listened to music, and then chris, daddy and mama hid them...felt like christmas in spring. i'm sold. it's an official fulmer tradition for the grey submarine from now on. the red robin egg hunt. i remembered as we were looking for eggs that i used to believe if i would only lie on an egg and keep it warm enough it would hatch. it's been a good good saturday.  after daddy grilled steaks, dawn and i grilled porkchops and hot dogs and then all of us girls climbed the maple tree. so sad. it's going to be cut down. i think also, that my caterpillars are dead, which is too bad. they would have been nice butterflies.  i hope they'll still come out of their cocoon.  here are lots of pictures from today.

venus, dawn's turtle. apparently he's lived in her garden for a good while now, but 

it was only today that we girls discovered dawn even had a turtle at all.

his legs were so rubbery and funny. 

and the way he looked from behind when he walked

was adorably comical.

poor maher.

best friday

     Anne and I haven't belly laughed in a long time, but tonight we had a real, solid one.   that felt good.
Apollo sent us boxes in the mail and  (!!!) letters and my caterpillars are in their cocoons.  Daddy bought our first watermelon of the season - woohoo!  The light has been so soft in the evenings lately.  It intertwines with the trees and grass and casts a warm luster over all the fields, especially.  Bust my buttons, but I'm tired.  But the cookies must be baked before the morning.  I discovered tonight that when you plan to make white chocolate raspberry cookies but you don't have raspberries, you use cranberries. and when you don't have flour, you walk over to Neighbor Angelot's though it be 11.00, and see if she does.  She did. So then, onward with cookies. And onward to bed. I'm really too tired to be writing anyways.

 My caterpillars: Everesence, Sympathy Joy, Calamity Jane and Leviathan. 

Seen here,  Leviathan. 

of tweet and retweet

Tweet

and Retweet 

were sitting on a boat. 

Tweet fell of and who was left? 

twitter.

Retweet's imaginary friend. 

You see, Retweet and Twitter have almost the 

same amount of letters, which means they are almost identical in strength.

and if Retweet was silly enough to create an imaginary friend 

nearly as strong as himself, this suggests to me that

Twitter would soon grow into an irreplaceable

 presence in the mind of Retweet, so that one day Retweet

would eventually give in to the strength of his friend.

And what better time for Twitter to take 

advantage of this weakness than 

when  Retweet had his back

turned, busy with

pushing off 

Tweet?

oh my dawn.

    I hear Dawn getting onto herself.  She's sitting across the house in her indian suit, and I'm in the bathroom getting ready for work, but all the doors are open between us so we can hear each other.
 "I DON'T NEED HELP ON THIS PROBLEM!!!"
 "What's the matter, Pocadawnkis?"
"Nothing's the matter!!!  I'm just stupid enough not to get this problem right.  I've been going on with this problem for a while and - It's 25x4...The easiest problem in the world!!!  But I was all like, "... 4x5, carry the 2, whatever...and then I got the answer and I thought..'hey..i know this..YEAH!  I DO know this!! I'm so Dumb! I'm the dumbest person on the planet!!!  Broge, what should I wear to fish in?  I could be super redneck and wear my Georgia Bulldog shirt with my fly fishing vest.'
  

hard

go hard after Christ,
  don't look back and don't let luggage weigh you down.  don't let friends who are wearing the race tag, but are merely lounging on the sidelines, draw you in to sit down or to sway your ambition. go hard! push to the limit - where your lungs are burning, your breath short, your legs weak - keep running. and don't think the people on the sides who are taking this easy have anything better to offer you. they don't.
  our goal is beyond this place- keep focused.  the more we run, the more we sweat, the less we care about our material worth and all that is noble, lasting, worthwhile is ever before our eyes becoming our most beautiful desire. that quenching well away from this heat, that cool forest away from this desert. keep pushing, pressing, looking further. keep running.

dawn's dreams win

dawn and i were doing some work at the table. she said,

'what would have made my dream even better would have been

if saruman had had a long southern drawl,

but as it were - 

hey!  i actually got the chance to use that phrase in a real sentence!'

'think it'd be, "as it was", dawn.' 

'what? no!  you go look it up in the books. it's what the hobbits used all the time. 

but anyways, as it were, he only bought you flowers and

had a crush on you.'