Coop's Corner

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Easing Into Christmas Day

Friday was my last day of work before Christmas Day, I won't return until we're in the presence of 2014 and that feels pretty darn nice. Our two far-away-at-school daughters are home this weekend, in fact have already been home for a couple of weeks and our oldest daughter made it home yesterday as well. For a time it looked as though our son would be home on leave but that just did not work out the way we had hoped.

So, here I am, many days off and with most of our immediate family present. We have some plans but only just a bare few......getting together with grandma the most important and actually the only planned event that will in any way be scheduled. With all of this unstructured time, there are certain things that will be accomplished though, rest assured of that. Decorating the tree, baking cookies, an extra decent job of tidying up the house, the last of the gifts to be wrapped; all things that are being taken care of over the next few days. I've two books that will be re-read; both of them annually revisited over the holidays and this year they will luxuriously be enjoyed in fewer sittings.

So far, as of this afternoon --

Much grocery shopping completed; the cats will not go hungry either
Coffee yesterday morning with the crew at Diamond's in Minneapolis
Two more episodes of Downton Abbey watched
Now within striking distance of every Poirot episode seen
Photos and slides scanned, enhanced and cataloged for buddy Mike, the images from his Army days in Africa
The recently released motorcycle film "Why We Ride" watched (thanks for sharing the DVD Mike)
Route planning for next year's Wildcat Rally "Slow Ride" moving forward. We'll once again mix in some area history with our rest stops, ride some real gravel for the first time and enjoy lunch at some place I'll bet none of us has dined at previously.
2014 Rally dates marked on the calendar and my favorite form of all, the Requested Time Off Form is being caressed

Tasks hoped for and yet to be completed include a couple of naps, possibly even a few. There's a large collection of music to not merely be listened to but really absorbed.....Quality Listening is what I refer to it as. I'm promising to stay out of the garage other than to shift the Battery Tenders around the loop; real motorcycle work will not begin until after the holiday. There are two audiobooks that I've been choosing to more closely enjoy than our commutes allow for as well.

Last though not least, a few future Blog Posts that have been drafted will evolve and some new ideas for posts will be started as drafts as well.

I've got a feeling that I'll be even better utilizer of this time off situation in another week and a half than I already am, in fact, so very good that.......

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and all the best to our friends in 2014!!

This photo from Christmas 2008........all persons except for me have become more handsome since then. From right (your right) to left, the back half of Annie, our Chocolate Lab, Percy getting her neck scratched, Peg, Lauren, Katlyn, Hanna, Milford the Welsh One, our Marine Corporal Ben and Coop.

Others say....

"it was auspicious to approach any situation from a deferential, inquisitive place. Conceding that there is much to learn is the best blueprint for discovering something new." ----B. Fuller

The Man straightened stiffly above the block of salt fixed to the stake and looked at the young cattle ringed about him. The pasture was holding out well and the stock was looking good. This bunch would be ready to sell in another month, maybe sooner if the market was right.

A stir among the cattle down near the river brought him round to face the swinging bridge he'd built years before. Someone was coming toward him from the bridge. Someone in breeches, but it didn't look like a man, somehow. What was a woman doing in his pasture this time of night?

He bent over the salt again; maybe if he paid her no heed she'd go on past and let him mind his own business. He heard her footsteps come nearer and stop. "Good evening," she said.

Her voice was smooth with book learning but friendlier than most, and somehow almost shy. When he made no answer she went on, "I've been sitting on your swinging bridge....I thought I'd like to say thank-you...." Her voice stumbled a little, then she tried once more.

"You are Mr. ____". His name sounded strange in her voice, but she went on to tell her own.

"That's what they've called me the last sixty-eight years," he said, looking past her face to the hills fast darkening under a single star. "I reckon the woods are free for those that like to walk there."

The unfamiliar voice laughed a little. "That's what Emerson said: the grove belongs to the man who walks in it with an open heart....On that basis I guess I've owned part of your woods for a good many years.....". She made a final effort. "I've always wanted to thank you....."

Something deeply hidden stirred in him. "There's a stump up there, in the notch of the woods", he said slowly, "that before the timber grew so tall you could stand on it and see all over this country."

He kept still a minute, remembering, then, "I used to stand up there an' look at things, an' wonder how they come to be like they was, an' how the hills was created, an' all the things in Nature.... I told my wife I guessed all the religion I ever had I got standin' on that old stump, a-wonderin'..." He turned his face away from her.

She helped him out. "I know about that, a little. This afternoon I saw......." Her account of a thing she had really taken time to look at eased him, and he answered with telling of the badger den at the foot of the swinging bridge.

When she had gone, he turned to watch her. After a moment she stood clear and unmoving against the sky. You could hear the sounds of the river where she stood. She was one that could stand still long enough, he thought, really to hear what a body was saying, or a river.

Then she walked down the farther side of the slope and was gone. ------Margaret Snyder from A Chosen Valley

Fall was the end of harvest, end of the growing season, a burst of color and sun-warmth before killing frost turned the land gray and cold. Fall was a moody time, full of both life and death, a time when we were reminded of the power outside of us, reminded that the seasons happen to us. We do not invite the change to come.-------Ben Logan, from The Land Remembers

When you get those rare moments of clarity, those flashes when the universe makes sense, you try desperately to hold onto them. They are the lifeboats for the darker times, when the vastness of it all, the incomprehensible nature of life is completely elusive. So the question becomes or should have been all along, what would you do if you knew you only had one day, or one week, or one month to live. What lifeboat would you grab onto? What secret would you tell? What band would you see? What person would you declare your love to? What wish would you fulfill? What exotic locale would you fly to for coffee? What book would you write? ------- Ben Tyler

We were also cautioned about journeying far from home. As an example of the dangers, the town had a badly crippled lady named Lucy, who as a girl had traveled to New York City. As she traveled along a sidewalk, sightseeing, she was struck by the outstretched hand of a suicide who had leapt from high above. Her spine had been shattered and for the rest of her life, she was to walk bent forward at the waist, tapping the sidewalk with two black canes. Whenever the subject of travel to a big city was raised, someone would say, "Just remember what happened to Miss Tripp." ---- Ted Kooser, from Local Wonders

"Steamboats are like wedding cakes without the complications...." ----Mark Twain

"It's not about having lots of money, it's about having lots of options......." -----Chris Rock

As the very proud father of three former ponytail wearers, hopefully I can get away with this....."For the past few years it's been fashionable for young women to wear ball caps and to snap the strap on the back under their ponytails. I like the looks of that, their shiny ponytails jauntily swinging, but it's hard not to think of the rear ends of horses. There's a piece of harness called the crupper that goes just under a horse's tail to keep its nose down. If the horse lifts its head to look for a way out of whatever predicament it's in, the crupper tightens and hurts the horse. But it's foolish for parents to think that a ball cap might keep a young woman from running away. Anybody can see they're made for running." ------Ted Kooser, Local Wonders

"I tell the guy's girlfriend that the only difference between the book's main character Phaedrus and myself is that I am neither brilliant, tortured or insane, she looks at my bike and there is an uncomfortable silence." --------ahendepe (a.k.a. Vermin)