Category: Family

Harper’s Day to Ride the Bus

I wrote this piece awhile back for my youngest granddaughter who was two at the time and couldn’t understand why her older siblings got to ride the big yellow school bus and she didn’t.  

Harper D is now three, and today was officially her first day of Pre-K, but I thought it would be fun to revisit this mostly true poem.

  

“D Wants to Ride”

The big yellow bus came to D’s house today.

Garrett got on the big yellow bus.

McKayla got on the big yellow bus.

D could not get on the big yellow bus.

“You must be three, and you are only two,” said Garrett.
“You are way too little,” said McKayla.

“I am big,” said D.

“I can count,

I can sing,

I can climb,

I can swing.”

“Just one more year,” said Garrett.

“You will be a big girl next year,” said McKayla.

“But I AM a big girl!” Insisted D.

“I can play,

I can dance,

I can run

Really fast!”

“D,” said Garrett, “Be our baby for awhile.”

“D,” said McKayla, “Stay little for awhile.”

D thought and thought. “OK,” she said.
“I will be your baby for one more year.

I will still count and sing, climb and swing.

I will still play and dance and run very fast.

But next year I will get on the big yellow bus!”

“Bye, D,” said Garrett.

“Bye, D,” said McKayla.

“Bye big yellow bus!” said D. “I’ll see you next year.”

  
Peace, people!

Poem for my Brother Brent

My youngest brother Brent, or “Brentia” as we used to call him back when we pretended he was a baby sister, was one of only three friends who participated in my first annual “Guess the Arrival Time of the Comcast Cable Installer and Win a Poem in Your Honor” contest. 

Amazingly, having given us a window of between 5 and 7 on Saturday evening the cable guy rang our doorbell at 5 p.m., and while none of my guessers came very close to being correct, Brent’s prediction of 6:45 p.m. beat out the others. Brent, I hope you enjoy your poem. I wrote it from the heart. 😉 

“Brent’s Poem”

Hey, baby brother
You didn’t know,
but this is true
when you were born
I wasn’t crazy about you.
I was seven;
you were a pain,
too cute for words
while i was plain,
but you grew on me
as the years went by
like moss or mildew
you’re a real fungi.

Love you little brother!

  
Peace, people!

Tiny Kitten Third and Final Update

Cake, the tiny kitten I helped rescue from a Tallahassee storm drain, wasn’t in the feral hold room at Tallahassee Animal Services when I checked in for my volunteer stint yesterday afternoon. I have to admit my heart was sinking as I pondered the possibilities. 

She was so small and weak, and having lived in a storm drain her entire three or four weeks of life, might have contracted a disease. 

I couldn’t locate a veterinarian right away, so I hurried back to the cat kennels to assist potential adopters and to take care of the resident cats, but Cake was very much on my mind.

I couldn’t help but notice that there are a couple of adult cats who have been at TAS since I started volunteering there almost two months ago:

Nancy is a sweetheart. She’s calm and gentle and would be a terrific family pet. The staff estimates her age at 7 years, making her eligible for the reduced senior adoption fee.

 

Nancy–notice her Harry Potter-ish lightning bolt.

Another handsome adult cat is Goldie.  He loves attention and is a playful guy. Goldie is only one year old, but he’s a big boy who needs a home to run around in for exercise! 
 
Goldie is an attention getter.
 
After I’d had an opportunity to do some actual work I went in search of a vet. Fortunately I soon came across a young man who’s been really helpful in the past and asked him if he’d seen the little mostly black kitten that had been brought in on Tuesday, and if so did he know its fate.

To my immense relief he said that the kitten checked out and was in surprisingly good shape considering her shaky start in life. He said she was now at the Humane Society where she’d be available to adopt as soon as she gained some weight. 

I might’ve blubbered something like, “thank you, thank you!” before heading back to the kennels. 

Remember folks, adopt, don’t shop! There are so many adoptable pets who would welcome the chance to join your family.

Peace, people!

  

Call Me Maybe?

https://www.facebook.com/leslie.h.noyes/posts/10206407681125191
I’m not even sure if this will work, but I’ve been giggling over my grandaughter’s video and hoped that you’d giggle along with me.

Her name is Harper, and she is three. She also happens to be a certified nutty kid. I miss her and her family like crazy. It’s a long way from our home in Tallahassee, Florida to their home in eastern Illinois. Videos like this help, though. 

Update on Cooking for Studly, Dammit!

One of the key ingredients for cornbread dressing is, duh, cornbread. Instead of making my cornbread from scratch I bought a mix. It was a new brand and I read over the list of dry ingredients to make sure there was no sugar in the mix. Sweet cornbread does not make a good dressing base. Trust me on this. 

The cornbread baked up beautifully. And sweet. I must’ve missed the sugar listed on the box. Perhaps I was just weakened by the manual labor. Poor, poor me.

Thank goodness I tasted the cornbread before I began putting together all of the other ingredients. Of course now there’s no time to bake another batch of cornbread, but fortunately I had some Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix on hand. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed and will appreciate it if yours are crossed, too. Unless you’re doing something important, like brain surgery.

Peace, people.

Cooking for Studly, Dammit

Yes, I’m still cooking for Studly Doright. For those of you not in the loop here’s a brief recap: 

1. I’m not a good cook.

2. I’m unemployed.

3. Studly Doright, my husband of 39 years suggested that I need not seek employment IF I began cooking our evening meals.

4. I agreed.

The quality of my cooking is like a roller coaster with big highs and stomach emptying lows. Recently I’ve relied a great deal on Marie Calender and Stouffer’s for our entrees, with Digiorno’s pizzas thrown in on occasion. And while those will never qualify as haute cuisine, at least they’re always edible. Mine cannot always make that claim.

Then last night, out of the clear blue Florida sky, Studly decided he wanted a full-blown holiday-type meal: turkey, cornbread dressing, cranberry sauce, fruit salad, rolls, etc., on a week night. That’s just sacrilege! Illogical!

But of course I’m slaving away today making Studly Doright a holiday meal. Dammit. I wouldn’t mind it so much if there was a present with my name on it under a tree. Any tree. 

   
 Peace, people!

The Girl and The Butterfly

I wrote this several years ago for our oldest granddaughter, Dominique, and published it last year on WordPress in honor of her birthday. Dominique was three, I believe when the butterfly landed on her outstretched palm, and today she will be 13. Yes, Studly and I are grandparents to a teenager! Happy birthday, Dominique!

The Girl and the Butterfly

One little butterfly, orange and black circled the flowers in the summer garden.


One little girl, in red, white, and blue, danced around the flowers in the summer garden.


“Here, little butterfly!” called the girl.


But the butterfly flew higher than the girl could jump, and faster than the girl could run.


“Please!” said the girl.


No matter how hard she tried, the girl could not catch the butterfly.


“You must let the butterfly come to you when he is ready,” said Mama.


“I don’t think he will ever be ready,” sighed the little girl.


“Here, sweetheart, I have an idea,” said Mama. “Hold out your hand.”


Mama poured a drop of orange juice into the girl’s hand.


“Now hold out your hand and stay very still.”


The girl did just that.


She waited.
And waited.
And waited.


And would you believe it? The butterfly landed ever so lightly onto the girl’s hand.

The girl smiled at the butterfly, and after sipping the juice, the butterfly smiled back.

Peace, people!

Marketing Might be Her Middle Name

My ten-year-old granddaughter just posted her first video to YouTube. If you watch it, be sure and note her natural marketing ability at the end.  Maybe I should hire her.

I have no idea how to post something to YouTube, but I’m fairly good at pleading. Must be genetic.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b3jxFn6n7Fc
Peace, people!

Delayed Gratification

In college I took enough psychology classes to make me annoying (ok, more annoying) to my friends and family. I loved reading about experiments and studies into animal and human behavior.

One that has stuck in my mind is an experiment that I believe B.F. Skinner, known as the father of operant conditioning, constructed. Now I tried to google the experiment, but never hit on the exact study I was looking for, so maybe I made it up. Please, if you know of the study correct my errors.

As I recall, in the study some rats were given a treat every time they pressed a lever, while other rats never received a treat, and still others received treats at random. Understandably, the rats receiving no rewards soon gave up pressing the lever, and the rats who always received a treat became complacent. The rats that received treats only now and again, though, were the most eager to press the lever. 

Hmmm. I get this dynamic now; whereas, in college I did not. Let me illustrate:

Once, many years ago, I arrived home from a business trip to find Studly Doright standing outside our home in Melbourne, Florida, with our motorcycles loaded for a trip. He told me to get ready for a weekend ride and to grab anything I might need for a weekend of fun. He refused to tell me where we were headed, just that I might need my swimsuit.

Unbeknownst to me he’d booked us the attic room at the Seven Sisters Inn (A Historical Bed and Breakfast) in Ocala, Florida. It was wonderful and romantic, and ever since that time I’ve fantasized about another such surprise. Had he never treated me to that trip I’d never even entertain the thought, but he did and now, no matter how often I push the button I receive no reward. Well, at least not THAT reward.

Sigh. Better to be the rat that never got the treat? You decide.

 

Seven Sisters Inn
 
Peace, people!

Spring Break in Kohler

This seems to be the year that places we’ve visited have shown up on the Golf Network. First the British Open was played at St. Andrews and now the PGA Championship is being held at Whistling Straits in Kohler, Wisconsin.

Four years ago Studly Doright and I decided to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary over spring break rather than wait until late July. During the summer months he’s always wrapped up in his company’s budget process and a vacation scheduled around July 30 (our actual anniversary) would take him away from the office when he most needed to be there.

We lived in central Illinois at the time near Champaign. Studly brought home some brochures on tropical locations, but for some reason I got the idea that we should drive up to Kohler, Wisconsin, about an hour north of Milwaukee. He was thrilled that we wouldn’t have to fly to our destination and told me to make plans.

Kohler is the home of the Kohler Co., an American manufacturer of faucets, toilets, shower heads, sinks, tubs, and much more. There are two hotels owned by subsidiaries of Kohler: The American Inn and The Inn on Woodlake. Both are part of the Kohler family and are outfitted with the most elegant and state of the art bathroom fixtures.

But what interested me most was the Kohler Waters Spa. As soon as Studly gave me the go ahead for the Kohler trip I arranged for us to spend a day enjoying the spa. 

   
 
  
It was by far the highlight of my trip. I even talked Studly into a couple’s massage. That’s something I’ll never do again! Throughout the whole massage I felt certain his massage therapist was doing a better job than mine. Talk about stressful! In spite of that our day at Kohler Waters Spa was a hit.

There’s not much to do in Kohler in early March. We did tour the Kohler Design Center to look at the amazing array of faucets and such, but the golf courses weren’t open, so we spent a lot of time watching movies on the television in our really lovely room. 

Then, as luck would have it, the weather turned very cold, snow began to fall, and before long we were in the middle of a full blown blizzard. Right–it’s Wisconsin. I should’ve expected winter weather. Those tropical destinations began to look pretty good. What had I been thinking?

After three days we decided to cut our vacation short and head south. We did stop and spend a day wandering in Milwaukee. We toured the beautiful Harley Davidson museum there and then found a nice hotel for the night. Not American Inn nice, but nice all the same.

  
At least in Kohler we didn’t have to worry about hordes of spring breakers partying ’til all hours and running around in skimpy bikinis; although, there might have been a couple of guys parading around without their knit hats and gloves. That’s what I call living on the edge.

Peace, people!