replay

The weekend was magnificent.  We had beautiful fall-like weather with very-low humidity, a few fluffy clouds in the sky, a light breeze, and temperature around 75 degrees.  Perfect golf weather!  Someone and I went to our usual golf course, Sandy Creek.  The course is nothing to rave about, but it’s convenient (20 minutes from home).  There are not many decent golf courses nearby.  My favorites are at least an hour drive. 

It was a fun round of golf for me Saturday, fun because I was playing well for me in comparison to how I’ve been playing all summer.  I had 4 birdies in one round of golf which is very rare, and two of them were back-to-back.  Sheer luck!  Maybe 90% luck and 10% skill. 

The #5 hole is a short par 4.  The tee is on top of a tall hill; the fairway is very narrow with big maple trees all along the left side.  The right side is a steep hill that is partly very rough tall grass at the lower section along the cart path, and woods on the upper section.  If a right-hander hits a slice or push, chances are good that the ball will hit a tree, bounce out and get swallowed up in the tall grass on the slope.  The green is guarded in the front by three mounds of tall grass.  It’s a tricky hole.  So anyway, Saturday, I hit my drive really sweet.  The ball sailed out over the middle and faded right which was a blessing, otherwise it would have buried in a mound for sure.  Because of the fade, the ball landed squarely onto the concrete cart path.  It took one big bounce and landed on the green rolling up 15 feet from the pin.  WooHoo!!  My putt for eagle was short, but I tapped in for birdie.  That was fun!   

From the front of the tee box, Sandy Creek #5, photo taken 09/2012

The #6 hole is a very short (about 115 yards) par 3.  It’s another narrow fairway with big pine trees on the left and out-of-bounds on the right.  The tee is elevated.  The green is also elevated and unwatered, so it’s hard as brick…meaning it rarely holds (which means if you land the ball on it, chances are good it will roll off).  My tee shot hit on the front fringe and rolled all the way across to the back fringe.  The pin was on the front, so it was a long putt…maybe 35 feet, with a slope to make it even more tricky.  The green condition was very poor; not much grass, lots of ball marks and twigs laying around everywhere.  In those kind of conditions, there’s little hope of making a long putt.  My hope was to finish the ball somewhere within a 5-foot circle around the hole.  I lined up, gave the ball a good rap, and watched it bounce and roll down the hill, all the way, and drop into the cup.  Someone looked at me and said, “You asshole.”  I’m a tough act to follow…sometimes.

Someone and I can have fun together playing golf. I suppose it’s a good thing that married people have something they can do together for fun.  Honestly, I’d rather play golf with women; it’s more fun.  To a pack of women, golf (at the amateur level anyway) is a social game.  To men, no matter how bad they are, golf is a competition or even a test of manhood sometimes.  Someone and I can play, but as soon as another man joins us, the game changes.  I have never seen a woman intentionally break or throw a club, but men do it all the time.  It’s senseless to get so bent out of shape over a game played for leisure.  Anyway, my worst day of golf beats my best day at work.   

abundant harvest

Fall weather is already here.  Sadly, it should be since the autumnal equinox is September 22.  The nights are getting colder, there’s fog in the mornings, and the leaves have a hint of yellow and orange.  I’m not ready to give up summer.

I visited our Farmer’s Market yesterday hoping to buy some banana peppers.  We didn’t grow any this year in our garden.  It seems like 95% of them go to the compost pile anyway, so why bother when the local farmers always have piles of them for sale?  Well, there were no banana peppers for sale yesterday, so the joke is on me.  I did buy pots of beautiful mums, a pumpkin, and one of my most favorite fall decorations of all time…Indian corn.  I also bought 4 giant tomatoes and a gigantic onion.

We have plenty of tomatoes growing in our garden, but Someone is very possessive of them.  I dare not pluck one of his precious (bug-eaten, blight-mottled) tomatoes for my purposes;  Someone’s wrath is nothing to toy with.  Anyway, I detest tomatoes, but I needed some to cook with. 

We have 12 green pepper plants in our garden this year (actually, they are more-formally known as bell peppers).  In eastern Kentucky, we call these things green peppers, even if they are red or gold.  I upped the number from last year because we had space due to my decision not to plant banana peppers.  Also, I tried some Miracle Grow on them this year.  Wow!  We got the miracle.  We started getting magnificent giant peppers in early August, and they just keep coming.  They look like the ones grown in California; they’re that big.  I’ve been making stuffed peppers with them twice a week, to the point where Someone and I are tired of eating stuffed peppers.

A few peppers from our garden

 

Last night I picked about 30 of the largest peppers.  So today, I ran home at lunch and put a bunch of stuff into the crock pot to make what I call Hungarian Goulash.  I’d share the recipe with you dear readers, but there is no recipe.  It’s wait-and-see every time; just toss stuff in, stir it up, and let it cook.

 

Today’s goulash experiment:

1.5 pounds browned ground chuck

4 large skinned, chopped tomatoes

3/4 gigantic onion, chopped

Green peppers, chopped….sorry, I lost count…maybe 5 or 6 of them

3/4 of a large jar of banana peppers, plus I dumped some of the jar juice into the pot too

2 cans of white shoepeg corn (fresh white corn works…but I didn’t have time today)

1 boatload of chili powder – no idea how much I dumped in…a whole bunch of it

1/8 (what was left) of the bottle of Texas Pete Hot Sauce that’s been in the refrigerator forever

1 Large can of tomato juice

Just before putting the lid on it

There you go…the crock pot simmered for 8 hours.  This was actually my first-husband’s mother’s recipe…er, maybe she had a recipe, but I never have used it.  Usually I make a pan of corn bread to go with it, but not tonight.  I left the office at 5:10 and was on the lake with my kayak by 6:05.  It was a wonderful evening!!!!  BY the time I got home, Someone had already eaten his fill.  I won't make corn bread for just myself…too much work and dirty dishes. 

As repulsive to me as fresh tomatoes are, I will eat them if they are cooked enough that they don’t look or smell too much like tomatoes.  My grandmother always insisted everyone likes tomatoes and I was just being too picky.  She forced me to try one every summer when I was young, with the same result every time – lots of gagging.  I just hate everything about them.  In fact, I’m somewhat allergic to them.  If I handle them for more than a few minutes, I get an itchy rash all over my hands.  My grandmother told me that when my mother was pregnant with me, she stood over the sink all summer long and ate tomato after tomato.  She’d never seen anyone eat so many tomatoes.  My mother must have had a very strong craving for them.

Life is busy all the time for me these days.  I get home from work and start answering emails from my students.  Tonight, I must do some analysis of my grade book and submit reports on students who are falling behind or failing.  My general impression is that about half my students are doing very well, a few are doing OK, and the rest are just not catching on at all.  It’s not easy stuff that we are wading through, but the training provided in the simulator is very good.  I think almost any student in my class who is willing to put in time with the training simulator can do well.  Very few have used it though, despite my repeated advice to try it and see if it helps.      

My new favorite TV show is Breaking Bad.  It’s partly why my life is so busy.  I’m always trying to fit some Netflix time in with working two jobs, walking Gracie, and keeping up with the housework (and golfing, and kayaking).  I’m NOT keeping up with the housework, but just merely trying to keep things sanitary enough.  Someone does very little housework.  What I didn’t realize is how much housework the girls were doing when they lived here.  Wow…I really miss live-in housekeepers.  

vicarious dialogue

“That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!”…Popeye

I visited my brother again in the hospital last night after work.  Oh boy!  I firmly believe that if you have nothing nice to say about a person, you should just say nothing at all.  Dear readers, you will be spared a long string of expletives.  My brother’s name suits him perfectly, “and that’s all I’m going to say about that”…Forrest Gump.  Needless to say, he pissed me off.  It’s not the first time.

Alcoholic brother is leaving the hospital Thursday.  He is still infected with some unknown bacteria and fungus in his lungs, but he’s much better, he’s finally able to walk out now (with a walker).  The hospital won’t keep him any longer.  It’s been a month of hospital time already, and he’s a charity case.  After our conversation last night, I told him good-bye.  I meant that in every sense of the word; if I ever see him alive again, he will be back to his usual state of oblivion.

Take that first step today.

This fortune was in my cookie months ago when Erin and I stopped for lunch at a not-so-great Chinese restaurant.  For some reason, it spoke to me and I kept it on my desk at work.  A few weeks ago, during a lengthy phone meeting, I was fiddling with the slip of paper and wedged it into a crack on my keyboard.  Now it demands my attention all the time, reminding me to do something…start something…but what?  What should I start?  There are lots of things to start, but it must happen that I will procrastinate while mulling them over.

“Dum spiro, spero.”…Cicero

“While I breathe, I procrastinate.”…KyLady

one foot on the platform, the other on the train

I’m standing in the doorway of opportunity – people are waiting for my decision, which I promised to render by 4 PM EST tomorrow.  Do I dive into the deep end or continue to wade in the shallows?  The part of me who wishes life could be easy tells me to continue wading until I gather more information.   The YOLO part of me says to stop worrying and dive.  Just do it.  Do IT, DAMMIT!  The opportunity may not repeat itself. 

With not yet three weeks experience, I’m thinking to willingly commit to teaching two courses in the spring, one online and one F2F in a real classroom with real people.  It’s scary to think about, and exciting at the same time.  I don’t want to suck at it.  I might totally suck at it.  The thought of facing real students who ask questions and expect me to deliver intelligent answers on the fly is pretty frightening.

  

The most pressing worry is that I still have my real job…you know, the one that pays the bills for this family.  For the F2F class, I have to commit to being on campus Monday afternoons for 16 consecutive weeks (excluding spring break).  That means I will mark my calendar with vacation (real job) every Monday afternoon for 15 weeks.  If my boss notices, he’ll be wondering what’s going on.  Worse than that, I might get sucked into a meeting halfway across the country that starts on Monday morning.  It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.  You always have some young, studley-do-right manager-wanna-be who wants to demonstrate his promotion-worthiness by forcing everyone to F up their weekend by traveling on Sunday or Saturday.  It’s like “Look at me, I’m so dedicated to this company and my work is so important that I will donate at least part of my weekend to the cause and inspire others to donate theirs as well.”   But, as an employee with one foot out the door, I’m prepared to say “Oh, well, I have  vacation scheduled for Monday afternoon so if my attendance is required, you’d better reschedule your meeting…or perhaps you can just conference me in via phone? ”  It might work.  It would be like shooting my career in the head.  It’s OK, my career has been dead for a long time.  Still, the bonuses just get better every year, and I get 30 days of paid vacation every year, plus 10 holidays.  It’s hard to walk away from.

typical manager-wanna-be

 

I will take one more night to sleep on it, mull it over, and agonize over the decision.

My alcoholic brother is like a cat with nine lives.  It looks like he is recovering now, thanks to a horrible surgery.  They went into his lungs and surgically scraped the nasty gunk out of them.  They did that last week, he was in the ICU for days afterwards, and today they moved him to a rehab floor.  He expects to go home (or perhaps to a nursing home) in just a few more days if he continues to improve.  I think this was the 5^th life he used up, or perhaps the 6^th.

I visited him last night.  He insists he will never drink or smoke again.  He has been completely sober for nearly a month now.  His hands still shake.  He still has no concept of time – he doesn’t know if an event happened two days ago, two weeks ago, or two months ago.  We talked about things in the news, because all he does is sleep and watch the news lately.  He almost sounds like my brother again, which is kind of a sad thing for me.  I had completely given up on him more than a year ago.  In my mind, he was already as good as buried in the cemetery.  His death was over with, other than the formality of making arrangements and notifying people.  It sounds cold and heartless, but it was a good place to be, not having to worry about him or how or when it’s going to happen.  Now he’s promised to change.  He says as soon as he’s back on his feet, he’s going to look for a job.  If only he could keep his promise.  He just can’t.  I’ve been visiting a ghost in the hospital.

Well, this has become a pathetically depressing post for my poor blog.  Truly, my life is blessed and very good despite all the crazy shit.  I miss my daughters, but maybe I'll visit two of them this weekend.  My students are starting to figure things out.  The number of emails is decreasing (although I have several of their emails waiting for my attention right now).  I've started thinking more seriously about cleaning my house and clearing out junk.  In particular, the nether regions (dark corners, closets, and SCARY BASEMENT) need a lot of attention.  My goal is to have everything neat and clean by mid-November.  Place your bets.