Took a Road trip to Northern Arizona with Lorna and Danny & Jennifer Handler - friends from Austin who's great aunt happened to leave an awesome house in Sedona, AZ. to Jennifer's family. Ok, not all road trip . . . we flew to Phoenix and rented a car to drive to Sedona. Once there we all proceeded to pretty much sit in the quiet solitude of the surrounding scenery for the first few hours trying to take it all in. Wowser, what a place.  
After stocking the fridge for the 5 days we were going to be in Sedona, the remainder of Saturday was spent on the porch, cold beverage in hand watching the ever changing light and enjoying the low 80 degree, almost no humidity temperature. Nice change from the Texas summer heat we'd come from.
   . . . . To be continued.
  

Holy Moly! 

THIS IS AMERICA    dmarsh music ©2005

It's a white linen tablecloth from a dime store
A weathered old hat on a nail by the door
Linoleum worn thin at a small town cafe
Or homemade ice cream after church on Sunday

It's Christmas with family and a candle light dinner
Or picking six numbers, hoping your the next winner
It's a high school reunion on the fourth of July
And a dance at Gruene Hall on Saturday night

This is America
The home of the brave and free
We can follow our dreams
Where ever they lead
This is America

It's running for office in your local election
The privilege to vote and help make the selection
It's going to worship where ever we want to
Or not going at all if that's what you choose

It's a new born baby in the arms of its mother
Or people in need helping out one another
It's the strength and the courage in the dawns early light
It's rising above when there's no hope in sight

This is America
The home of the brave and free
We can follow our dreams
Where ever they lead
This is America

I'm a coal miners son from the hills of Kentucky
I'm a millionaires daughter, sometimes were born lucky
I'm a veteran who dreams of all the old days
I'm an angry young man and I've got something to say

We're farmers and ranchers out in the fields
We're the movers and shakers making the deals
We're teachers and students and truck drivers too
We're the cops and fire fighters
We're the red white and blue!

THIS IS AMERICA
THE HOME OF THE BRAVE AND FREE
WE CAN FOLLOW OUR DREAMS
WHERE EVER THEY LEAD
THIS IS AMERICA

Oh beautiful
 for spacious sky
For amber waves of grain

This was the picture I saw a couple days ago as I was walking to my motorcycle to ride home. It cracked me up because you normally see big ol Harleys with 100 horsepower engines and crotch rockets that can hit 160 mph in 4th gear. Then here sat this little, tiny, old mini bike with a 4 hp lawn mower engine , rusty sprocket, fading paint and a banana seat. All that was missing was a 4 foot Elvis impersonator in a white polyester suit and big sunglasses.
There's something to smile about where ever you are . All we have to do is look  around!

I swiped this from my friend Terry Lynn Melody's Facebook page and it's waaay too good to be left in the new age shoe box of the digital world.

Make your week a great one!

I've come to the conclusion that if the devil has a green place he likes to retreat to in hell - I suppose even the devil takes a break now and then and wants to sit in a nice lawn chair on a warm ( ok, hot )  grassy hill sometimes - if such a place exists   in Hades it must be green with crab grass. 
I once had a nice, thick st. augustine lawn in my back yard. Then there was the hottest, baddest summer on record in 2011.  Even hotter and badder for longer than the summer of 1980. It was worse than the weather that created the dust bowl days in Oklahoma in the thirties that Steinbeck wrote about in The Grapes of Wrath. It dried up lakes. It killed millions of trees and wiped out about a gazillion lawns , mine included. This year it looked like the lawn was making a comeback until I got out the old mower a few weeks ago only to discover that about 90% of what I thought was lawn grass turned out to be crab grass. Sheesh! So I've pulled up (by hand, mind you) every bit of that grass from hell and re seeded with bermuda and hope it all takes hold before the first freeze. So far so good. About half has sprouted and gotten about an inch tall.

"Every day life gives us a box.It is up to each person to decide if it's a coffin or a gift!"
It's funny how the truth sometimes jumps out at you from the most unexpected places. 
I had to take Ms Lorna to have blood drawn due to a blood thinner she has to take for the next few weeks as her slightly cracked hip bone heals. 
This was written on a white board in the hall of the phlebotomist's office . Seeing that written there was a gift in it's self. It seems like every day finds us in a bigger hurry than the day before with twice as much to do and less time to do it.  Life in the fast i guess.  It was nice having  that little reminder today.  And I learned a new word!  Now if I can just work phlebotomist into a verse of a song .  

Dear AT&T , every other week or so I get a couple of envelopes in my mail box - the metal one by the front door of my house. A couple of envelopes stuffed with real paper made from real trees that are full of offers to save me money by signing up for U-Verse. Oh, the amazing things I'll be able to watch on 400 plus channels! 
Iv'e been receiving these offers for a couple years now and honestly don't know how Iv'e been able to resist! Now I'm pretty sure there must be at least a few hundred thousand other folks getting the same envelopes just as often.  You know, that's a lot of trees, postage, and postal worker hours to pay for. If you REALLY want to save us some money on U-Verse how about you quit filling our mailboxes  full of paper that mostly winds up in the recycle bins and trash cans from sea to shining sea? 

It's kinda like fishing.

 Sooner or later if nothing ever bites you pull up the anchor and move to another spot. 
Move along AT&T - No one biting here.
Quit wasting bait.

    ~ d

I should have gone to work for the highway department. Total job security at least around these parts. Not that delivering tens of thousands of Amazon and QVC  boxes everyday isn't job security enough.  Come to think of it, I guess not having to dodge cars and trucks that are all in a hurry to get somewhere  driving and texting and talking on their phones, reading novels, eating bowls of cereal, putting on makeup, using laptops , reaching for something dropped on the floor  and a hundred more things I've seen people that are supposed to be driving do isn't so bad after all. Oh, wait. I do dodge those folks every day! (like we all do) It's  just in the relative safety of the big Brown Truck vs. standing on the shoulder with a shovel in my hand. 
Keep those catalogs  near by . . . there must be something you need to order.