Thursday, December 06, 2012

— My Alphabe-Thursday (2nd), the letter "C" / Thursday Two Questions —

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Here we have nine pictures to honor Alphabe-Thursday letter "C"

 

"C" is for clouds.  These rainy looking clouds are the first of my "double C's" for today.

These are Croatia Cloudsdouble C's, sitting over the red-roofed old town of Dubrovnik.  We were on our way to the airport which is out of town proper to the south. 

The picture on the left is also a Croatia Cloud picture that we took on the way to the airport.  This one is looking south towards the airport. 

Please note the big sign right in the middle of a pretty setting.  I call these signs Sky Pollution.

Here is another double "C", a rack of Christmas Cards for sale in a London grocery store.

Below is a plate of fish and chips that I had on the last noon meal in a London restaurant before we left for home. 

The bowl of chips looks small.  I had eaten several after I gave Mrs. Jim almost half (chips are what Americans call French fries and the French call frites).

This TV display of the word "CHIPS" is a chance to show off my latest toy, new to me but about forty years old.  It is a John Deere wagon that I can pull with my Farmal MTA tractor. I bought it on eBay with money I received for my latest birthday. (The TV program was 'F a m i l y  F e u d'.)

Dad's last farm tractor was an MTA and he found this toy on sale after Christmas at the farm supply store in Tekamah, Nebraska, where he lived.  He also had a green wagon this size but it had a wooden cargo area.  This one is metal.  When Dad died I was elected to have the tractor and Lois (my sister) was given his wagon. (You can click on any picture for a larger size.)

 

This is another double C picture, a shot of our car's GPS showing the surrounding golf course by our house.  In the caption it shows the name of the Country Club. The club building is across the valley on the right from our home which is shown with the circle.

Below are two more double C's.  First is a shot I took of our Christmas Concert presented by the Conroe (Texas) Symphony orchestra.  It cam out fuzzy because I took it from the back row. 

On the right is a picture of the double C'd Coconut Creme pie that Luby's Cafeteria was trying to sell me before the concert. I had a salmon patty, cooked cabbage, and a large dinner salad with a piece of corn bread.  But no coconut creme pie.  Luby's does make my favorite coconut creme pie, here.

 



This last picture is a Cloud picture I took at dusk from our back porch.  The clouds reminded me of sail boats sailing up from Galveston to the south of us on the Gulf Coast. Remember that my little Sony pocket camera doesn't do sunsets very well.  Looks like neither does it do dusk. 

The Alphabe- Thursday portion of this post is for Head Mistress Jenny.

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Now for my Thursday Two Questions.

I really enjoyed your responses to my "B" Blues and the toy questions post of last week.  I did feel badly to hear that some of you did not have toys when you were growing up.  My sister and I didn't have many but we did have ones plenty good for us.

My Two Questions for this week (you can answer just one if you wish):

1. What if any pleasure to you enjoy when looking at clouds?
I remember laying on my back on warm summer days and looking up at the clouds.  I wasn't really enjoying the clouds but I was enjoying my dreams and thoughts that seeing the clouds triggered.
 
2.  Did you attend any Christmas music presentation this year?  If so we would like to hear a bit about it.  Thank you.
The Conroe Symphony Orchestra played about an equal number of Christian Christmas and secular Christmas carols, both classic and modern music.  I enjoyed every one.

Bonus Question: What is your favorite "C" word? .

My Thursday Two Questions post is for Amanda.

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Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Two Shoes Tuesday # 14 -- "Light(s)"

I was going to write on several aspects of light. First would be 'no light.' Then lights in general followed by lights of old cars and for sure house lights. Probably there could be more.  Christmas lights and tree lights for sure.

But Father Time got hold of me and so I will just write about an episode in my life where there were not lights.

The condition resulting from having 'no lights,' natural or artificial, is 'darkness.'  Did you know that dogs DO NOT SEE very well in the dark?  I had to prove that to Mrs. Jim as she thought that if cats could see in the dark then so could dogs.  But they can't.

My story: When I was growing up on the farm, we did not have electricity until 1938. That was the year my younger sister, Lois was born.

Lois was trouble as soon as she was too old to be sleeping in Mom and Dad's bedroom. Our house only had two bedrooms, upstairs. At first there was one for my parents and one for me.

After Lois came she needed the bedroom that I had and so I was relegated to the front porch which was to be used as my sleeping room. Just a sleeping room. In the daytime my bed was put back as a studio couch and with the rockers and the other chairs our front porch was a place to hang out in the evenings. It was screened to keep the bugs out and also had storm windows for the winter to keep the winds out. But it got cold out there.

Yes, we had electricity and there were two lights hanging on the back side of the porch attached to the house wall. So I had light.

We also got an inside bathroom that year. It had a tub, a toilet, and a sink. And a closet for my clothes. We still took showers out on the back porch though. Now instead of a bucket of warmed water to bath with we had a real shower hose attached to the faucet used to fill the washing machine. We shared that part of the back porch with Mom's old Maytag machine.

Dad did not like us using the toilet in the bathroom either because it meant cleaning out the cesspool more often (the sink, toilet, and tub drained into the cesspool). 

Helping the cesspool, the porch shower water ran outside into the back yard through a hole in the wall at floor level. When we weren't showering we put a big round wooden plug into the hole to keep snakes out. But we couldn't run any toilet water out into the back yard.

The 'light' story

So we were supposed to use the outhouse (outside toilet in a little house) that we had used before.  It was out behind the chicken house in the grove. If only company were to use the inside toilet and our family always used the outhouse we would probably never have to clean the cesspool out again. I don't think we did either.

The problem at night was that it was dark going out to the outhouse. I can't remember if I was afraid of the dark or just pretended to be. But at any rate I can remember convincing Lois always to walk with me at night, in the dark, out to the outhouse.

We may have had flashlights but not one to use going out there. They were saved for working in the dark or fixing things at night. I suppose that Lois also used the outhouse while we were out there. I don't remember that part..

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Too bad the tree fell on it. Of course no one was inside, just a whole lot of memories left there waiting.
You can buy a brand new one in kit form for around $449.00.
Go here
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This outhouse we had was a two holer. I don't remember anytime that there were two people in there together.
Then why were there two holes? I may answer in a few days. Or you can furnish me with one.
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This posting is for this week's round of Two Shoes Tuesday... a place to share what we enjoy doing most... writing! Each week we have a one-word writing prompt and are asked by Josie to share a short story, poem, essay, thought, or photo relating to that topic.
The writing prompt for Tuesday, December 4th, is "light"
 
You can find other light blogging here, at Josie's blog:
http://www.josie2shoes.com/2012/12/two-shoes-tuesday-14-lights.html

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Sunday, December 02, 2012

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Redheaded freckle faced Dolly was cheerful today. For her birthday she was allowed lipstick and mascara.

Boyfriend? Redheads beyond reproach.

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140 Characters counted and spell checked by MicroSoft Word.

µ-fiction Story Copyright

© 2012 Jimmiehov
All Rights Reserved


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°°Grandma of Succinctly Yours Week 89 gives these directions:
°°Use the photo as inspiration for a story of 140 characters OR 140 words or less.
°°Word of the Week, 'reproach', was furnished by Grandma.

°°Also linked to Sandee's 'Silly Sunday #56' at Comedy Plus.

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