What I Think

Snow in Mountains...Hoping to get up there...

2012-02-15T08:28:00.000-08:00

It is mostly cloudy today and supposed to rain again tonight. It is cold too. And this storm is supposed to bring more snow to the mountains. I so want to get up there with my camera. Hailey said that there was lots of students missing from her classes. I think that they all headed up to the snow. I can remember back when I was in high school and snow in the mountains meant that we had half empty classrooms.

Whitney

2012-02-12T18:54:00.000-08:00

I posted this on facebook...

The only think I can think about this is how sad it all is. Whitney was one of my daughter's favorite singers. Whitney had so much talent. She let drugs bring her down.

I have a son that did drugs and no matter how many chances he had, he couldn't stay off drugs. His first sentence was probation and he had to pass drug tests. He failed the tests and they put him in a rehab. He failed again and finally they sent him to prison. He got out on parole several times and continued to fail drug tests and back into prison. Finally he finished his prison time and was out and not on parole. He couldn't stay off drugs. Meth is his drug and meth causes user's teeth to fall out. He had not lost any teeth up to this last time out and then I heard that he has lost some teeth. He started borrowing friends cars and ran into a neighbors fence and made that into a hit and run. His friend turned him in for stealing their cars. He couldn't work and wrote some bad checks. He is back in prison. There are people that have done really bad crimes and have done less time than my son. It may not be fair but while he is inside he is off drugs. I always pray that God will keep my children safe. Maybe all that prison time is keeping my son safe.

I wish someone or something could have kept Whitney safe.

Visitor

2012-01-13T13:58:00.000-08:00

A few years ago we saw an egret at the Wild Animal Park. Some of the people there thought that the egret was a resident of the park. Not! They come and go as they please and we have a couple of them that visit our yard once in awhile. Today was visiting day.

More Pastels

2012-01-13T01:50:00.000-08:00

Just because I didn't make it to my class doesn't mean I haven't been busy. I've been working with my new pastels. I realized that they needed to be organized somewhat so that I would know what was where. It isn't easy sorting out so many colors. I really like these colors too but they are are a work in progress for the maker and while colors in different color groups are numbered the groups cannot be sorted by these numbers...if I want the blues, or reds, etc. to be together. I could just dump them together by color but I don't know these pastels that well, and I like using the same red or orange when I go back to working on a pastel painting. And I want to know where to find it. I can still see color shade differences but am not as good at it as I used to be. I read that when we get older the lens of our eyes yellows some and that changes how we see color.

My Mama was really good at seeing color. My Dad was partially color blind. I've always felt that I could tell colors and color differences but then if I couldn't...how would I know. Anyway I sorted the pastels and that took me awhile...trying not to be obsessive compulsive about all this too...

And I will post some work soon...I promise.

Pastels

2012-01-10T09:19:00.000-08:00

Getting old means too much stuff. I couldn't think of anything I really wanted for Christmas...other than winning the lotto...yeah right! Anyway I saw an ad for Mount Vision pastels at a wonderful sales price. Less than half of list and and lots less than most discount offers. So asked my husband for the amount to get them. I was so excited when they got here. I love mail order...but it also means waiting for stuff. When I took them out of the boxes to look at them...all 350 of them...I spread them still in their foam packing accross my desk. I wanted to look at them and get familiar with the colors. Mount Vision is a soft pastel and the sticks are a little larger than most pastels. I bought them on faith. I've found that I like the softer pastels to work with.

Last year I bought a set of Sennelier Soft Pastels half sticks. The set was on sale but still expensive. They are really nice to work. I've been taking these to my pastel classes. No way could I get a full set. I did buy a few open stock Sennelier pastels and found one was pretty much crushed to powder and two sticks were gritty. Then I bought a set of Rembrant pastels. These are a little harder than I like to use but a very nice set.

My new Mount Vision pastels remained on my desk for several days. One day I came into the room and my big black cat was curled up asleep right on top of the pastels. Urf! Good thing the foam protected them from the 20 pound cat! So I decided to buy some pastel storage boxes for them. This is a good time for getting stuff on sale. they were sixty percent off reg price. Now my new pastels are safe ready for me to start messing them up.

The Last of Autumn

2011-12-18T13:13:00.000-08:00

Hailey and Jackie and I spent some time at Summer's Past yesterday. We had warm drinks...Hailey's was hot chocolate with whipped cream on top. The sun was iffy...and it was a little cold. I took a few photos anyway.

Then we went to a great pizza place and had a lovely lunch.

Winter Roses

2011-12-10T16:39:00.000-08:00

Sunset

2011-12-01T10:19:00.000-08:00

Taken the same day as the sunrise photos. I don't have a good view of sunsets here but could see the pink orange sky.

Red Sunrise

2011-11-29T10:21:00.000-08:00

We had a lovely sunrise this morning. I saw the red glow through the window it was reflected on the wall and the room was filled with red light. I went to get camera and couldn't remember where I put it down. Found it and then had to put in a card. Usually my camera always has a card. The card I grabbed was full so had to erase the old photos....this all took time and the view of the sunrise did fade a bit. Still I got a couple of photos. The view in the top photo once had a tree that I photographed many times and then one day I noticed it was gone. I miss the tree...

Veterans Day

2011-11-11T11:42:00.000-08:00

Armistice Day was important to my great Uncle Burt Clark. He was there at the front when the guns were silenced at the end of World War I. It was on the the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918. He always wondered why they waited until the exact hour to stop. He always remembered the silence. I remember when Armistice Day was changed to Veterans Day and my Uncle Burt wasn't all that happy about the change. He thought that they should have chosen a different day for Veterans. For awhile Veterans day was changed to the fourth Monday of October to make a long week end. Uncle Burt was even more unhappy about that change. Later it was changed back to the original day. By then he had passed away. Uncle Burt is buried at Fort Rosecrans on Point Loma in San Diego. He always said that was where he wanted to be buried. The cemetary was long closed but they often had openings on a first come first serve basis and the timing was right and he got his place. It is beautiful there.

Pastel Class

2011-10-22T11:09:00.000-07:00

Last week I worked on this picture of my old photo of a rose while in class. The painting is not finished but the instructor wanted me to stop working on the rose and finish up the background and put in the leaves. There is more I want to do to this but now am undecided...what to do?

This is a scan of the original photo.

Back in the mid 1990s when I first got on the internet and made my very first home page I used another rose, the one one the left below, on my web site. I took away the background and put that rose on a pink background. Later I made a gif out of that rose and used a transparent background.

This rose was modified using a paint program similar to Photoshop. I started a section on my web site with other rose photos that I scanned and modified. I upgraded my computer so I could use the Photoshop program that I had bought. I got the PS as an upgrade when my other photo editing program was bought by PS...lucky I had registered it...that program came free when I bought my first scanner. For some reason this photo was stolen by others and put into many photo collections. I used to get upset at that and write to the collectors asking them to take my rose off their pages. Mostly they did.

I have tried to draw that rose several times and have not been happy with my work on it. URF! Anyway I couldn't go to my class this past Wednesday...E R made plans and I needed to pick up Hailey from school.

Three views of the rose put together into one picture.

Protesting Wall Street

2011-10-10T09:48:00.000-07:00

Socialism doesn't work. Communism doesn't work. For some reason a few people have forgotten history. They are protesting Wall Street...whatever they think that represents. The catch phrase is corporate greed. What is a corporation? Do they even know? Corporations are owned by anyone who buys stock in that corporation. Hopefully the stockholders will receive some sort of payout when the corporation makes a profit. If the corporation is successful the stockholders may sell their stock for more than they paid for it. It is a way to invest their money. Corporations pay taxes on profits. Then the owners...stockholders that receive a payout, a dividend, again pay taxes on that income. Our government is right there to take a cut of everything. Corporations are regulated by laws that restrict everything they do as a business.

For years businesses have moved out of the country. Most things we buy these days are made in other countries. That means fewer jobs for the people here. We also make it easy for people from other countries to come here illegally to work for low wages and take entry level jobs that in the past would be given to our young people. They come from countries that encourage a high birth rate that their economy cannot support. They come here for a better life, but they are exploited too. Then taxpayers here must make up for the benefits and taxes illegals don't pay. Our laws also make it easy for employers to hire workers and call them independent contractors. Employers don't keep good records of independent contractors and they don't pay for income taxes and benefits for these workers. Most of these employers are small businesses, such as small contractors, restaurants, landscapers, and housekeeping agencies...to name a few. Our government has enabled illegals to come here and bring their children. The children go to our schools and grow up American. Then our country sends these young people back to places they don't know and don't fit into. They don't know how to live in their birth country. We let that happen. I think we owe these children something. Though many of our tax payers may not agree. We let our own children age out of foster care and give them very little help.

We have built an economy based on inflation. The government likes inflation because when wages and costs go up taxes increase. Even in recession we have inflation. The worst example of inflation is the cost of homes. Our government could have stepped in and put a stop to the artificial increases in home prices. They let the scam continue until our banks and financial institutions had loaned millions...billions...on inflated values. Now we have people that owe more on homes than they are worth. Where did the money go? The banks didn't get that money. They are holding the bag when they have to foreclose on property that is worth less than what they are owed. The money in those banks come from depositors. The real estate profits went to real estate brokers and to the lucky folks that sold property for lots more than they paid for it. And a share of those profits went to the government when all that gain was taxed.

It isn't corporate greed we need to worry about. It is individual greed. It is the government...those in power in our government that want to suck the worth out of our country. People in government are looking at Social Security for some way take it away from the people it was promised to as a pension. Employers and employees have paid into Social Security for years and now there are those in government that want to rob it. Social Security does not belong to the government. It belongs to the people that paid for it.

Protesting against big corporation and big banks is silly. The only people that could win in this situation is the socialists that have wanted to take our country down for years. Our government has made some big mistakes but with some common sense we can put things right again.

Green Spider on Pink Rose

2011-09-26T11:22:00.000-07:00

David came and told me about the green spider on the rose. So I grabbed my camera and went out. The sun was still hidden by morning clouds so the lighting was very soft. I planned to shoot the pink roses today anyway. But intended to wait for the sun.

Dawn and Sunset

2011-09-25T23:47:00.000-07:00

Hummingbirds and Roses

2011-09-20T11:48:00.000-07:00

These photos have been posted on pbase, but thought I would add them to my blog. It was a nice day out and I put my Minolta mirror f8 500mm lens on my Oly camera. The old Minolta Rokkor lenses work great with the 4/3rd system cameras. My old film cameras were Minolta. I used my second Minolta for over 25 years. Loved the thing. I was happy that I could use my old lenses on my Oly DSLR cameras. Then added to my trove of Rokkor lenses going on ebay. On of my finds was the mirror lens. When I started checking out ebay the Rokkor lenses were a lot less expensive than they seem to be now. Here are the photos.

A Visit With Sarah

2011-09-11T13:25:00.000-07:00

Sarah and her daughter drove down to stay the night at Barona. Sarah lives in Hemet. Hailey and I met them at Marieta's in Santee. Wonderful Mexican food. Hailey ate all of her cheese and bean burrito. Then Sarah's daughter left us and Sarah and Hailey and I drove up to Summer's Past so Sarah could take photos. She got some wonderful photos. I took a few photos too and caught a couple of butterflies. It was a great day...though Hailey was a bit bored. She was really good about it all though. I would have left here here at home but David was having a bad day. That seems to happen a lot. E.R. is back east visiting his brother.

Where Were You?

2011-09-11T12:26:00.000-07:00

I was still at the storage in Santee. My stepmom, Marlise had passed away the year before, July 2000, and the storage was being sold. I still managed it for the estate and the trustees were not talking to me. I began to manage the storage in 1979 for my Dad. My children finished growing up there. My dad used to stop by to talk almost every day. In 1983 my marriage broke up and in 1985 my father passed away. Marlise and I became close friends. She would come by to talk almost every day and we would go to lunch. When I got Hailey we took her with us out to lunch. Fun times.

The house was old and had been there before the storage was built, E.R. and I lived in the house when our oldest, David, was a baby and we took in Jeff when we lived there. Jeff was our nephew. Later we moved to our own house and we adopted Jeff.

Marlise had open heart surgery in 1998. I drove her to her appointments and then to the hospital. We took Hailey along on the doctor appointments. Hailey was almost four then. Marlise was supposed to get well but they found cancer in her airway...just a small spot. For some reason they decided against chemo. They decided on radiation and a stint. Maybe because she was still recovering from the heart surgery. I put Hailey in day care near here so I could drive Marlise to her appointments. The next two years were total stress. Then Marlise died and my sister turned against me. She was one of the trustees and the other trustee also was a total bitch to me. The first thing they did was cut off my ability to pay bills for the storage and then they both went on vacation. URF! Looking back I don't know how I kept it together. Hailey had gone to day care and then to the kindergarten at Creative Child for over two years. It was time to take her out. E.R. was living up here in Eucalyptus Hills so I but Hailey into first grade at the small school here. It meant a trip up here every morning for us both. Hailey would have breakfast at E.R.'s and then he would drive her down the road to the school. I went back to the storage and coped the best I could.

On the morning of September 11th I got Hailey ready and we were ready to go out the door. I went to shut off the TV when I saw the first tower burning and they said a plane had hit it. I thought it was a terrible accident. Then another plane flew into the second tower. Maybe it was all the stress I had been living with, I felt numb. My mind couldn't process something so dreadful. We had to leave to get Hailey to school. The first thing we did at E.R.s was look at the TV! I thought about my parents hearing about Pearl Harbor on the radio. My young life was filled with war news. I was a little girl when the war was over but people talked about it for years.

As everyone else did, I kept the TV on and saw the people running and the towers falling. Nothing will ever be the same and then again most everything is the same. This country is big and the loss of the two towers is a tragedy that we should never forget. We have been at war with Muslims ever since too and now the US is broke. The US has been broke before. We have been attacked before. We survived. If anything is learned by the loss of the towers and so many lives, and the wars that followed, terrorism doesn't work. It only makes people want to fight back.

Blacked Out

2011-09-09T17:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was really hot! I drove down the hill to pick Hailey up from school and it was 104 F. That had gone up a degree by the time I got over to El Cajon. Then we drove through Lakeside to stop for some fast food and it was 107. URF! I bought a cup of iced coffee for me. Back home I turned on the TV to watch the Closer. Right in the middle of the drama the power went out. I thought that someone had hit a power poll. That happens on our curvy narrow roads up here. So after a few minutes Hailey, Dave, and I, decided to drive around. We learned from the car radio that there was a county wide blackout. The small stores at the bottom of the hill both closed and couldn't get any ice. Lots of traffic on the roads. We found out later it was because so many people left work when the electricity went out.

We came back home and found a small radio. That kept us updated on the black out. The house was too hot to stay in and even though it was still hot outside the wind was blowing and it was the better choice. We sat in the shade on the front patio. Hailey worked on a project for class. She needed pictures. So she drew them. That kept her busy. It went dark and cooled off. I brought out candles and flashlights and Hailey kept working on the pictures. We talked and the time went by. I told her that she could now say that she had done homework by candle light.

About 9:30 we decided to go in. Hailey started reading using a flashlight. I went to sleep. Then at 12:40 am the lights came on and woke me up. The blackout was over.

A Favorite Place

2011-08-20T11:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we went to Summer's Past. Hailey, Jackie, and me. I love that place and can always find new things to take photos of. The snack bar was open, but the place was not as crowded as it has become on weekends. We sat and drank some iced tea and then Jackie and Hailey went to the gift shop. That usually gives me some time to walk around and take photos. It was only a little while when they were back ready to leave. I think I've burned them out on the place and they were bored. I did get a few photos and even some while they waited on me to hurry up...though not anything I want to post. Darn.

We had a lovely lunch after in Alpine. A resturant there makes the best BLT I've eaten in years. We sat outside on the patio and the lunch was totally enjoyable. On the way up to Alpine we had noticed a place with cactus for sale and had planned to stop on the way back but both Jackie and Hailey were ready to go home. Naps were mentioned. So we didn't stop at the cactus place...saving that for next time.

Shooting in jpg or raw or Both

2011-08-17T20:39:00.000-07:00

Taking photos in both jpg and raw gives a greater choice in processing and in choosing the best version of the photo. The first picture is the original jpg as it came from the camera. I did use the vivid setting. The second photo is the raw version saved in jpg without any other changes. The third photo was processed in Adobe Camera Raw plugin for Photoshop. The photos were reduced in actual size for showing on the net.

Changes

2011-08-12T07:30:00.000-07:00

In the years since I took my first computer class at our community college back in 1989 lots of things have changed. In the beginning I just wanted to run the office at the storage with a computer program. My first computer came from Costco, or maybe the store was still the Price Club. Anyway it was a Packard Bell. And compaired to the computer I have now it didn't do very much. It did have a hard drive with 20mg of memory. Wow! For a few years back then, I was alone at the storage. My husband and I had separated years before and my children were grown and out on their own most of the time. David joined the Navy where he he was found to have schizophrenia and he spent some time in the Navy hospital before being discharged. That is a whole other story.

I took an ROP class in commercial design...old fashioned commercial design where we worked with pen and paper...not computers. Other students talked about computer desktop publishing using CorelDraw and when I saw the software for sale at Costco I bought it. That was the beginning of my life with computers. After I closed the gates at the storage I could work on the computer as much as I wanted. As software got better, we all needed better faster computers. My first community college classes were in real estate. I got a sales license but I already had a job running the storage and never got into selling real estate. The beginning computer class was an eye opener. The class had two different groups of students...older people like me that wanted to catch up with this new technology and young colllege students. By the end of the class most of the older students had dropped. I hung in there. The hardest part of the class was writing programs in basic. URF! One student brought in a chewed up floppy disk and told our instructor that his dog ate his homework. The final exam was really hard. One young man turned in his final and left while the rest of us labored on. I answered all the questions and no one else had left. So I took my exam to the instructor. He asked me if I was sure...guess he meant did I actually get through it. I remember telling him that it was a good as it gets. Later when the grades were posted, I was one of only two students with an A for the class. That made me feel really good. After that I took more computer classes and real estate classes and then discovered the art classes. I was having a great time. The most amazing thing happened to me. I found out that I could learn and get good grades in my classes. My child hood had been full of stress. I loved my mother but she was basically an angry person. Then I was shy and going to school was never easy for me. I got through it and even made it to college for awhile but there were many times I would have to read something over and over before I could remember it. Looking back I think it was the total stress of trying to get through my days in some sort peace. I always read a lot.

Then I married a basically angry person and the stress continued. We raised four children, each with their own set of problems. Our oldest was our nephew. Our first child, David, was six months old when our nephew came to live with us. We had a daughter and another son. The years when the children were little were wonderful and fun. I thought my children were perfect and good. My mother had been so angry at my sister and I so much of the time. There were lots of spankings with the hairbrush and yelling. My children didn't need any of that! But the good times never last. My children were faced with the worst drug out there. Meth, when they were still in middle school. It was something I had never heard of and the only thing I could tell them was to not use drugs. Not to try it because it sounded dangerous. They looked at me and swore that they wouldn't use, but they lied. Kids lie to parents. So both our nephew and our youngest developed drug problems. My daughter was one of the lucky ones...she didn't get hooked. David didn't do drugs.

Learning that David was schizophrenic was the greatest tragedy of all. But then my youngest son has had had problems with crystal meth for years and years and that is another tragedy. He is Hailey's dad. He has spent most of Hailey's life locked up...for failing drug tests whenever he got out on parole. He was never guilty of the original charges he went to prison for, but took a no contest plea for a short time in jail and probation. I've gotten off what I meant to write about.

The wall paper on that first computer was the Corel tiger. For some reason I love that photo. So for all these years the one thing that has pretty much stayed the same whenever I get a newer better computer...I use the Corel tiger for my wall paper most of the time.

If you have been to my blog before you will notice that I have changed my design. The picture at the top now is one I created with an early paint program. I did work on it a bit later but basically it is the same as it was twenty some years ago.

My Webpages

2011-08-09T12:39:00.000-07:00

Does anyone remember Prodigy? I had my first web page there back in early 1996. When it changed...sold or something, I started a webpage at AOL. AOL would not accept my nickname and I couldn't think of anything so picked dotcombs. Back then we needed a lot of patience to upload files and our time on the site each month was limited. Someone wrote me a strange email mentioning dotcombs and the similarity to dotcom. I didn't think too much about it at the time. I started another page at Netcom...they sold out to Mindspring and I really liked it there...Mindspring became Earthlink. I finally could buy my own domain name and I parked it at Earthlink. I had hoped to get dotcombs.com but someone had already taken it. Probably that strange person that wrote the email about dotcombs. I choose dotcombs.net for my domain name. Over the years I check dotcombs.com and for awhile there was nothing then odd sales sites. When it came up for renew the first time, I looked for it to be up for grabs, but it was renewed. Whatever.

For a few years I had a Geocities account too and kept my computer graphics there...I really enjoyed creating computer graphics. I had started making them before I ever knew what the internet was. I made cute clip art that could be added to envelopes and letters. I already had CorelDraw software...bought at Costco. I took a CorelDraw class.

I had taken a class in what was called back then...digital photography. Digital cameras were not available for anyone to buy...they were thousands of dollars expensive...our class had one to use and it took photos in black and white. I got to use it once and only in the classroom. In class we scanned photos in b/w and used software to change them. We worked in b/w. As a class project I scanned several old photos and made a printed album using the computer. I also took several art classes and in one of the classes we had a Mac with a computer paint program in color. I learned the difference between a computer drawing program like the CorelDraw, a computer paint program, and photo editing software. The instructor let me come in after our class time and work on that computer. My computer drawing was crude and took me forever. I did learn a lot though. Later I bought my own scanner...it scanned in color...and a color ink jet printer.

This is one of the first photo edits I did in color. I printed this as a 7x10" poster.

Original photo

The first photos I put up on the internet were my scanned rose photos. My scanner came with photo editing software. I registered it and when Adobe bought out Photostyler they sent me an offer to get Photoshop at an upgrade price. I have been upgrading PS ever since. All my early rose photos were edited. Graphics on the internet changed quickly. I made gif files with transparent backgrounds and animated gifs.

In late 2001 Hailey and I moved here to an area where the phone lines were old...no fast connections to the web so while I could keep my website at Earthlink I had to find another way to connect to the net. I went on cable. I shut down my pages at AOL too. Over the years I put a lot of stuff on my website. Lots of it forgotten. When Geocities shut down, I realized I hadn't updated my pages for several years. I bought another web site, dotcombs.org, and I started a board for Janee's Photoshop group. She had to give up her board and her Photoshop classes. We did OK for a couple of years and then our favorite member passed away and everything seemed to stop. Most of us moved on to Facebook to keep in touch. There are some nice places on the net to post photos. Webshots, Flickr, pbase, Picasa, are some of them and I have photos at all of them. I don't need the big web site anymore so am going to slowly check out what is there, what I want to save, and by the end of the month the site will be moved...if I keep it at all.

Amaryllis Belladonna

2011-08-07T17:31:00.000-07:00

My mother grew amaryllis and took the bulbs with us wherever we moved. They would disappear for much of the year then lush green leaves would sprout up and like green pompoms cover the ground. It was nice to see that green along side of our house in our mostly brown dirt yard. The green would die down and there would be dry brown earth. A few weeks later, like something magical stems with brown pods pushed up out of the dry ground. Soon the pods would split and lovely pink flowers bloomed several from each pod.

I never got some of my mama's amaryllis bulbs to plant and always missed them. Then someone gave me a big bunch of the bulbs with the green leaves still attached. I didn't know if they would grow but planted them anyway. I was managing the storage then and had only a large brick planter for them. They grew but didn't bloom the first year, but did the second. I was a happy camper. I looked forward to seeing the pretty pink flowers bloom in summer. One year my dogs got into the planter and dug up the bulbs. I found some white garden border fencing and put it around the edges of the planter. I forgot to dig up the bulbs when I left the storage. Maybe the new owners would not have liked it...I didn't ask, and I didn't take my amaryllis bulbs. A couple of years ago I found some pink amaryllis bulbs for sale at local nursery. I bought three bulbs and planted them in two large pots. They bloomed last year and now are blooming again. The bulbs have divided too so have more amaryllis this year.

I told a friend that these always remind me of something from outer space!

A Distant Tree

2011-07-27T11:12:00.000-07:00

I've called this view my mini view because I can see the hills in the distance. For several years a tree has been the focal point of many of my sunrise photos. I was never sure what property the tree grew on but it showed above the other trees and above the hills beyond. I came to like the tree. Then one day a few weeks ago I looked out at my view and there was no tree. I don't know when it was cut down, but still feel sad at the loss.

Here in Eucalyptus Hills we were very close to one of the worst wild fires in California history. It happened back in 2003 and was called the Cedar Fire. Some homes burned on the edges of Eucalyptus Hills but both Lakeside firefighters and a change in wind direction kept it from storming through here. We left without knowing if we would have a home to come back to. Not a good feeling. Since then many eucalyptus trees in this area have been cut down. At first the chain saws could be heard every day. There was another fire scare a few years ago with the Witch Creek Fire that burned north of here.

Now we only hear the chain saws once in awhile. I didn't notice the sound of saws when the tree was cut. Or maybe I did but didn't pay attention.

This first photo is of an old dead tree that I took many photos of and on the right "my" tree.

This is the last photo I took of the tree. It is strange to feel a sense of loss at something like this tree but I do.

Schizophrenia

2011-07-21T15:35:00.000-07:00

A 24 year old man stabbed to death his mother and sister this past Monday. His mother was an officer with the San Diego police. His sister had just graduated from high school and was looking forward to art school in the fall. Two lives taken away for no real reason. They say the young man was schizophernic but was not on meds. Someone on the news said that the young man would not have had his mental illness for long, and that he and his family were still learning to cope. He and his older brother had some sort of fight while the mom and sister were away, but the brother said that it was settled. This is all so sad. This family had no idea that their son and brother was a danger to them. If they did, what could they do about it. His mother was a police officer who's duties were working child abuse cases. You would think that if there was help for her son she would be able to find it. In reality there is no help for families of the mentally ill. And most of all there is no help for the schizophrenic.

The families often have only two choices. Live with the problems or send the victim of mental illness out to live on the streets. And who is to say that someone with schizophrenia is a danger to himself or others.

My son joined the Navy and then fell apart. He went awol and came home. He cut his wrist. Then was in the old Navy Hospital near Balboa Park. They kept him there in the mental ward for several weeks while they worked on a discharge for him. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was put on meds. After his discharge, he had counseling through the county for a time. The meds made him feel sick. He stole our car and drove it to Nevada. We had to go after him and drive the car back. His father had to go up to Idaho and bring our truck back. He was stopped at the Canadian border in a stolen car from Reno NV and spent some time in Eastern State Hospital in Washington state. He left home many times and then called home and his father would go and bring him home. His father flew to Washington state to drive him back after he drove our truck there. Finally he took the car we had brought back from Nevada and ran it into a creek somewhere in Northern California. That was the last time he took off in one of our cars.

I was still at the storage when he started throwing my furniture and he broke a maple rocker. I called the sheriff for help and they just made him leave. The next day he had made it up to Mojave and he called me and said that someone there must have been killed. He said that there was blood all over. I asked him if there were other people around and he said yes. I asked him if they saw the blood and he said that they didn't. A few months ago he mentioned that phone conversation and told me that he thought about it and decided that there wasn't any blood after all. When he told me that voices told him to hurt other people I told him that he didn't have to do anything they told him to do. He is not the kind of person that ever wants to hurt anyone else. I have sent him money Western Union when he gets himself stranded somewhere. His dad has made countless trips to towns in Washington, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona to bring him back home.

When my son went off meds and refused to ever take them again, I tried to get a conservatorship that would have given me the right to hospitalize him for a little while. My stepmom said she would pay the fees and maybe we could get him back on meds. I made the right phone calls and someone from the courts came and interviewed my son. She told me that my son was not all that ill and that there was nothing I could do. She told me that unless she agreed that a judge would never hear the case. No recourse. That was over twenty years ago. We have gone through a lot.

Do we think that our son is a danger to us. No. He is basically a kind and gentle person. He can rant and rave and get angry over things we don't understand. Once he shoved his arm through a window and cut his upper arm. He woke me up and I wrapped a towel around his arm and I called 911. When the paramedics didn't come we had to walk out our long drive to the road to find the sheriffs were not letting the paramedics come to the house. I held my son's arm above his head while he bled and we talked with the officers and they asked us dumb questions. Finally my son was taken to the hospital. Someone there told us that my son needed treatment for his mental illness. Then when they checked into it...nothing...my son was sent home.

My son and his father lived in a separate house on my stepmom's place. After my stepmom died I bought the property. Hailey and I moved here from the storage about ten years ago into the house that had belonged to my dad and stepmom. Five years ago my daughter came to live here and she wanted her dad's little house so my son and his dad moved in with Hailey and me. It hasn't been easy for us. I truly love my son and Hailey loves her uncle. We hear him at night talking to himself...sometimes working himself into a fit of anger. I hope I'm doing the right thing. I don't sleep much at night.

Google Earth

2011-07-20T00:54:00.000-07:00

Google Earth is an interesting program. It might be a little scary too. The first time I looked at a view of my place it looked like this.

The weired concrete shape at the lower left is our neighbors parking area. I've always wondered why they made it that way. The nice thing about it though...it made it easy to find my place.

Google Earth got better over the years and really improved in 2003 with color and a better picture. This was taken in Dec 02 and makes our area look nice and green.

This is the latest view taken in August of last year. Summer time things around here get very dry and brown. A big change is the swimming pool. In the above photo the swimming pool is is a large brown spot circled in concrete at the side of my house. My dad was tired of the pool and decided to make a very large planter out of it. Over the years we had small kids pools for Hailey in the summer. She outgrew the kids pools so one year we got a blow up pool. That lasted one season. Then we got an above ground pool and it took us a couple of years to get it put up. Those things are not as easy as they look to install.

My daughter came to live here for awhile and in the spring of 09 decided we should dig out the original pool. I posted photos of all the work it took in an earlier blog. Last summer she moved away.

Google Earth has a street view that takes photos of the view from the street. Since we are back from the road our street view is just our long drive with the palms and one tiny view of the house across the neighbors field. And the view shows lots of green so the photos must be from this last winter or spring.

It is amazing how much the Google Street View photos show of most people's homes.

Cactus Flower

2011-07-15T21:50:00.000-07:00

Cactus Flowers

Humming Bird at Feeder

2011-07-15T14:39:00.000-07:00

Lilies and More Agapanthus with Visitor

2011-07-11T22:38:00.000-07:00

The difference in lighting is because the above flowers were touched by the sun and the photos below were in the shade.

Agapanthus

2011-07-09T05:33:00.000-07:00

Agapanthus is a flower from South Africa. Here we see it everywhere. It is a favorite for roadway medians and minimall planter boxes as well as PUDs and apartment complexes. I think that is because they have long green leaves that don't die down so add green to the landscape all year long. My sister's back yard, she lives in a PUD, was edged with agapanathus bulbs. When her gardener thinned them she always had lots to spare so I asked her for some. She gave me all of three bulbs. It took several years but I now have a row of pots with these pretty flowers that I keep along the front of my house. I enjoy seeing them bloom at the beginning of summer every year.

Thunder Storm

2011-07-06T21:00:00.000-07:00

We went out to view this big rainbow and it started raining. We sat in the rain and enjoyed seeing the rainbow...Then I ran in the house for my camera. The rainbow lasted for awhile. It was a complete arc and wonderful to see. The rain drops were big and warm and reminded me of the times my children loved to play in this kind of rain. They would splash the puddles that formed with their tennis shoes. And just have a fun time of it. I took the photos from my car port though my camera can stand a bit of rain.

Then I looked in the other direction and saw the orange sunset.

This evening we took our coffee out to enjoy the cool air, but my son was having some problems. He sometimes rants and raves and makes my life miserable. I took my coffee to my room and am waiting for him to settle down. He has schizophrenia.

I was reading that there are new meds for schizophrenia but then I read the side effects. My son will not take meds though he did back in the beginning of his illness. They made him feel very sick. That may be why he will not even take an aspirin when he has a headache. Anyway after reading about the side effects of the current meds I could never encourage anyone to take them. I do get upset but then the storm is over and my son settles down and I see what a great person he really is. So I let the anger of the moment flow over me and fade away.

The things some people do...

2011-07-03T09:26:00.000-07:00

While I have not watched the trial daily, I have watched and read news about Casey Anthony. It is hard to miss. Husbands and wives that murder spouses, children doing in their parents, and parents that kill their children make the news. Everyone wants to know about and most of all to understand why. They said that Casey Anthony cried in court today. Casey has not been found guilty by the jury so I cannot say she did kill little Caylee. But to me whatever the jury says I tend to believe she did. And I wonder, why? Why do some people feel that getting rid of another person is what they need to do? Susan Smith, Scot Peterson, and all the others that ruined their own lives by taking the life of those that loved them must have something totally missing in their brains and hearts. They must be self centered selfish people. The rest of us see what these people do and we cannot really understand the why of it.

In our area we have had three family murder sucide cases. Bright beautiful children were murdered because the parents couldn't go on with their own lives. Things may look bad today, but there is always tomorrow. There is always hope.

Casey could have let her parents raise her child.

Pit Bull

2011-06-30T07:59:00.000-07:00

On June 18th a seventy-five year old woman was the victim of a horrific bit bull attack. Her neighbors two dogs came through her fence into her back yard and mauled her. She lost her leg and suffered damaging wounds on her other leg and an arm. The dogs, along with eleven puppies, were put to sleep, but that doesn't help the victim of the attack.

Pit bull dogs are the creation of humans. They are bred for fighting and seem to revert to that at unexpected times. There is no reason to preserve the breed. There are people that say pit bull dogs are only dangerous to other dogs but too many children and people, often the elderly, have been harmed by these dogs. With so many other wonderful breeds of dogs to choose from why people choose to have pit bull dogs is beyond me.

Any large dog can be dangerous to children. I had lovely German Shepards at the storage when Hailey was little. They were not trained guard dogs and were totally gentle. I never once left Hailey alone with them. We did let the dogs out at night to wander the yard after the gate was closed. Hailey and I would walk with them when she was older. Still she never played with them alone.

Then we hear about people that let their children grow up with their pit bull dogs as if nothing could ever go wrong. Maybe nothing ever will but parents that take that chance with their children are not thinking. Unless the dog attack is fatal or very damaging to the victim we never even hear about it.

Smoky the Cat

2011-06-25T22:02:00.000-07:00

Our kitty Smoky lay down and went to sleep today then passed away in her sleep. Smoky was born here July 5, 2006. We took in her mother and her mother's half grown kitten we named Fluffy Boots six months before. We named mama cat Stormy because she was not very friendly and growled at other cats including Fluffy. She got pg in the spring and had five little female kittens. Stormy went to the vet and didn't have any more kittens. We lost Stormy two years ago...she went out and never came home.

My granddaughter Megan was here and both she and Hailey wanted to keep a kitten. So we kept two. One was black and white and the cutest of the kittens. We named her Tuxie. Smoky was the runt and the one I spent the most time with. Her eyes needed cleaning twice a day until they were well. We named her Smoky because her fur was a dark brown.

Smoky is the kitten at the top.

When the time came both Tuxie and Smoky went to the vet. No more kittens! At the vet Smoky almost died. They didn't know if she would wake up and were very worried about her. They told me that she had a heart murmur. She seemed to be fine when we got her home and she lived an ordinary kitty life usually staying close to home. Tuxie was the wanderer and we worried about her a lot. Once she was gone for two weeks and we were sure we would never see her again. I know that some people think that we need to keep our cats locked up in our houses but they really hate that. So I know we take a big chance letting them roam, but I haven't the heart to jail them.

Pictures of Smoky

After my heart attack and my cancer op, Smoky began to visit the neighbors and not come home for days. More worry. When she came home she would sleep near my feet and seemed to want lots of attention. But soon she was gone again.

Smoky was gone almost two weeks this last time and then one morning she was back. She was very thin but tucked into the food and began to put on weight. And she stayed home. Then this morning she seemed to fail. Our cats and other pets are like some people. Some are just not destined to live to old age. We put Smoky at the edge of my flower garden. It is a pretty place with all the flowers blooming.

Good Bye Smoky. You were loved.

First Admendment

2011-06-22T16:31:00.000-07:00

I just read about the beauty contestant that tried to give a good answer to a bad question. She did not agree that the Quran should be burned as a right of free speech. Burning books whatever they are seems more like censorship than a right under the First Admendment. I also need to add that the First Admendment is there to give us freedom of speech not to give us the right to stop others from speaking.

I think she gave a very good answer to the question and the judge that was so pleased that she lost just doesn't get what the First Admendment is really all about. I wrote this as a comment.

Free speech is respecting the ideas of others even when we don't agree with them. Burning books is not free speech and while we do not make it a crime to burn the words of others, unless we start a forest fire, burning books is censorship and that has nothing to do with free speech. I never watch beauty pagents...that is just me taking advantage of my constitutional rights.

And if anyone wonders...some censorship is necessory...the best example of this is child porn. The beauty contestant mentioned lines we shouldn't cross. These lines are created by our society and make living together and living with ourselves possible.

Spring Flowers

2011-06-22T14:35:00.000-07:00

Another trip to Summer's Past.

Backlit sunflowers.

This is the dark sunflower backlit by the sun. On the seed package they are called burgundy.

Sunflowers

2011-06-16T22:17:00.000-07:00

This year I managed to get sunflowers planted...several different kind. They are so cheerful.

These are black...well with a very dark brown flower face and yellow showing on the back of the petals.

These were not photographed. I scanned them.

Memory

2011-06-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

On the news this morning they were talking about a study on childhood memory. Guess it has been descovered that children remember better if their parents talk about things that happened when they were little. Then the news person said that is not memory but retelling the stories they heard from their parents. I've heard that before. I have memories from when I was very young and I've been told that they were not really memories but things I heard my parents tell and reminded me about. The thing is...parents cannot tell a child what they were thinking or feeling when the memory happened.

My mother mentioned years later when I was about 15 that when I was about three years old I would put big red tomatoes in our freezer. She said she would open the freezer and there was a big red tomato sitting there. Frozen tomatoes turned to mush and she would take it out and throw it away. My mother sold vegtables from our front porch so we often had lots of big red tomatoes. Any way she always wondered why I put them in the freezer. So I told her why. I thought they would turn white like ice cubes. I used to go back and check and they would still be red. Then they would be gone and I would get another one and try again. I never did see a frosty white tomato...

There could be things that I remember only because my mother talked about them but in reality my Mother seldom talked to us children about things that happened in the past until we were in our teens. I remember when she said that she was glad when we got old enough to have conversations with her. Then there were things that I remember that happened when my mother wasn't there. She went to work in an aircraft parts factory when I was still three years old. I know the difference between the things I remember and the stories we heard about our childhood. My father was supposed to stay home and watch my little sister and I but often he would leave us alone. My great grandfather and my great uncle Burt lived accross the road. Mama said later that Grandpa Clark, who was over 90 years old, would sit out side on the porch and watch our house. Mama was still pretty mad about that years later! Uncle Burt would check in on us when he could. One day Uncle Burt came over to find me on top of our electric stove turning on the burners. He got me off the stove before the burners got hot. I totally don't remember that.

When I was about a year and a half years old my Uncle Burt was holding me near our front door and I put my hand in the back of the screen door as it was closing. I can still see the gap in the door. I just reached out and stuck my hand in the gap. I couldn't resist. The screen door closed and pinched my fingers. It hurt and I cried. Uncle Burt said look at the birdy and he pointed toward the yard...to get me to forget about the hurt fingers. This memory is part totally remembering what I was thinking when I put my hand in the door and Uncle Burt telling me about it.

When I was three and my little sister was about a year and a half old, she was kept in a play pen made out of three old crib sides and the wall. Uncle Burt was worried that something would happen and I needed to know how to get my sister out of the play pen. So he showed me how to put one of our little chairs into the play pen and to push the other one up to the outside of of the bars. And he showed my sister how to climb out. So when we were alone my sister wanted me to get her out of the play pen. She would cry until I gave in and got her out. Then we got into even more trouble in the house. One time she pulled all the pots and pans out of the kitchen cuboard. I tried to stop her but she was too much for me. Then I tried to put them back in before my mother saw what we did. I couldn't figure out how to do it. Another time we took all my mother's books out of the bookcase. That was my idea. I thought we could put them on the floor and walk on them like stepping stones. When we tried to step on them the covers would slip and tear so I took them all off. I remember being upset because my sister couldn't walk on the books. Also I found out that books had blank pages in the front. My sister and I drew pictures on these pages with our crayons. I still have couple of the books. I got a good hard spanking for taking down the books.

The worst thing I did was climb that same book case to get the undeveloped film that my mother put at the top. She took our pictures and then took the film out of her camera. We didn't have alot of money so Mama would only take a few photos once in awhile and then when the roll of film was used up she would wait until she could afford to get the film developed. She told us that our pictures were on that roll of film. I wanted to see the pictures. She told us that we would have to wait. I didn't understand. So climbed up and got the box with the rolls of film. I ruined my sister's baby pictures. I got a really hard spanking that time. I had been so happy that day because I was wearing my favorite skirt. It was blue with red and yellow embordered girls around the hem and I had on patent leather shoes that I also loved. When I outgrew those shoes I had to see my little sister wearing them.

The little chairs were oak and came with a small table. Uncle Burt bought them for us when I was still too young to sit in the chairs. I remember sitting in one of the chairs and my feet didn't touch the floor. I had to climb up to get into the chair. One day my mother was sitting in one chair and me in the other and she was feeding me lunch. She went into the kitchen to get some pudding. I was going to surprise her so I got off my chair and ran to hers. Then I changed my mind and got down and ran back to mine. Then I got down again and ran to get in the other chair. I slipped and fell and cut my upper lip on the corner of the chair seat. I cried a lot. Years later my mother told me about this and wondered what I was doing. She didn't know that I had changed chairs more than once. I also remember feeling bad that I didn't get to eat the pudding.

I wasn't supposed to touch the things in the kitchen. My mother worked swing shift and she was tired. One morning when she was still in bed, I pushed a chair up to the sink and I picked up a butcher knife. I knew I was not supposed to touch it. I cut my thumb on the blade. It hurt but if I cried my mother would know so I stuck my thumb in my mouth and never told her what I did. No one could tell me about this memory.

Second Look

2011-04-23T12:48:00.000-07:00

A few more photos from WAP 09. The flight cage where the birds are is a mixture of sun and dark shade. It is hard to get the camera settings just right. The bird photos were taken in both jpg and in raw. The photos were very dark so I overlooked them. At the time was more interested in the butterfly photos. Going back to the dark raw photos I opened them in Photoshop raw converter. Using the sliders I found that I had taken some nice photos. Here are two of them.

Sleeping lions. At a later visit I got some better shots of this big guy.

San Diego Wild Animal Park Visit back in 09

2011-04-19T20:51:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth, Hailey, Ashleigh, and me went to the park to see the butterflies. I posted these photos in another blog that sadly bit the dust. We stood in line for a long time even though we went on a week day and got there early. The butterflies were wonderful and I would have stayed a lot longer but the girls seen it done it and wanted to go on to something else...teens!

Last year I was recovering from some healt probs...Hopefully I will get to visit the butterflies this year...

Where's the Sun?

2011-04-19T09:48:00.000-07:00

After a few beautiful warm sunny days we have slipped back into overcast and cold. Hailey went swimming in our pool three days in a row and thought she would swim through her spring break. Monday the sun was gone. I feel so much more cheerful on sunny days.

I took these the other day when the sun was shinning and the day was springtime beautiful.

Summer's Past with Hailey and Jackie

2011-04-10T09:30:00.000-07:00

We had a rainstorm and snow in the mountains on Friday. Saturday was a blustery day. Partial clouds and windy, still we went to Summer's Past in the afternoon. It was cold. We had hot coffee in the patio area...Hailey had hot chocolate. There was a small plant on the table and a butterfly that we thought was fake. I looked at it and it seemed real so we thought it was dead. Then if fluttered it's wings and fell to the table.

While Hailey and Jackie checked out the gift shop I walked around taking photos of the flowers. Spring is a lovely place at Summer's past. Earlier in the day there had been a sweet pea picking for three dollars a bunch. We missed most of the sweet peas.

Painting

2011-03-30T21:32:00.000-07:00

Today I signed up for a painting class through the Grossmont Adult School. Classes are held throughout the district...which covers a lot of miles. The painting class is held in the Lakeside Community Center. So I thought it was perfect for me. When I got there I found out that it is a pastel class. Most of the students have taken the class before. They came with supplies...I didn't.

I decided to continue with the class. I do have a set of soft pastels that are years old...Hailey has been using them lately and she has created some very pretty work. I used to paint and take art classes but when Hailey came to live with me I put my art stuff away. She was 18 months old back then and it was not easy to keep her out of stuff or work with a small child needing attention. At the time I was also a resident manager of a mini storage facility. Hailey is seventeen now and I could have gotten back to doing art but just haven't...maybe it is time now.

For today the instructor gave me a piece of Canson paper and let me use her pastels. This is what I created from a photograph she passed out to the students. Scanned the painting on my scanner twice and put the scans together. I know it needs more work. My pastel doesn't look very much like anyone else's.

And Hailey let me have my pastels back. Just kidding...she would never keep my stuff, and she knows she can use them any time.

Spring in Borrego Springs

2011-03-28T00:18:00.000-07:00

Borrego Springs is a lovely desert community that is even better when the flowers bloom. My blog readers will know that at least once a spring we like to take the drive over the mountains to the desert. This year I got a photo of a silver puff. There were few desert primroses today. I don't know if that means we misssed them, they will bloom later, or that this year is not a good one for them. Lots of rain did turn the desert floor yellow with flowers and they may have prevented other flowers from blooming.

The camel is the real deal. There is a camel ranch in Ramona and a few of the camels were near the road. So we stopped to take a few photos. You can see our day was foggy and overcast. It even rained on us the way over to the desert.

The sun shinning on Salton Sea. Salton Sea. It is an interesting place to see but it really smells bad when the fish die off. The sea is 30 miles from Borrego Springs. This was taken from Montazuma Road on the way down into the valley.

When ER first came down from Washington State he wanted to see Salton Sea. Guess there had been lots of TV adds promoting the Salton Rivera resort there. I didn't think much of the place. Been there before and thought it was a big smelly place. URF! Anyway on one of our first dates we drove over there. Rented a small motor boat and floated around for a little while. ER saw the resort and the empty dusty streets of the subdivision...only a few miserable looking houses were built on the sandy dessert, and he could understand why I was not impressed by the place. Back then there was a gift shop there and I got a silver charm of an out board motor for my charm bracelet. Still have it.

Looking back from the valley floor to the edges of the clouds we left behind.

The silver puff. I had been looking through my Sonoran Desert flower book and had seen a photo of this flower just the day before. So really nice to actually see the flower and take my own photo. Yea!

Since I had seen the real thing on the way over, took this though I have photographed this sculpture before.

It is great to see even more of these metal animals. Borrego Springs is turning into a Museum of metal art!

Hailey taking a photo of the ORV sculpture.

Along Montazuma Road on our way back home. There were more of these yellow flowers here than I've ever seen before.

Ocotillo close up.

On the way home we stopped in Santa Ysabel and had the lovely breakfast buffet. Hailey just sat and read while we ate the great food. Then we bought her Jack in the Box in Ramona on the way home. Teenagers!

Super Moon

2011-03-20T09:52:00.000-07:00

It was cloudy, but there were breaks in the heavy clouds and the slight overcast that still covered the moon was thin and the moon did shine through. The first of the photos shows the moon rising through my olive tree. Then for a few moments the moon shown clear of the heavy clouds and I got the whole moon in my camera lens. It was not totally clear and that does show in the whole moon photo.

Here is the photo from last night to see the difference. The orange color in this photo is because of my jpg camera settings. The above photos were taken in raw.

Moon Rise

2011-03-18T20:54:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow the moon is going to be closer to the earth than it has been in about 19 years. It will look 14 % larger than usual. It will be a great photo op. Here though they say it will be raining tomorrow night and if not rain at the least cloudy. I will be out with my camera if I can but just in case I took some photos of the moon tonight.

I started as the moon rose behind a neighboring eucalyptus tree. My camera is the Olympus E3 and the lens is my 500mm bigma. I used a tripod.

Julian California with Snow!

2011-02-28T18:23:00.000-08:00

Julian is a lovely old town in the Cuyamaca Mountains east of San Diego. Julian began as a gold mining town and became a farming community. Julian is famous for apples. Snow in Julian doesn't happen every winter. We had cold rain storms with snow in the mountains two week ends in a row. People flock to the mountains when it snows and both weekends saw hoards of people and their children running around in the snow as seen on the TV news. Today the skys cleared and the people went back to work and the children back to school. We drove up to see the snow. The first photos are at a lookout east of Julian with a view toward the desert.

We decided to drive back through Julian as we had not stopped on our way through...I wanted to take photos there.

Then I saw this pretty little school on the way back towards Santa Ysabel

The Julian Pie Company has a store at Santa Ysabel so we stopped to buy an apple pie. It was still warm from the oven and smelled like cinamon and apples. The Julian Pie Company makes wonderful yummy pies with light flaky crusts. Their apple pie is the total best!

We took a small detour to see the Mission.

We decided to drive home through Wild Cat Canyon. We took another detour up to the Country Estates and got a good view of the snowy mountain.

After we got back home from our little day trip we enjoyed a hot cup of coffee and fresh apple pie.

Visitor

2011-02-21T16:18:00.000-08:00

Morning Sky

2011-02-21T08:39:00.000-08:00

After the rain...My mini view toward the east

The weather should be clear until Friday. There is lots of snow in the mountains but not worth taking the drive up there. Today is a holiday and there will be tons of people tramping over everything. Then lots of traffic up and back.

The first time we ever went to the snow, I was about five years old. No freeways back then and the drive back was slow and miserable. I do remember seeing the snow and finding out it was cold. We were bundled up but no one in southern California would have the best clothing for the snow. My hands were very cold and we didn't stay very long. I didn't see snow again until the winter we spent up in Washington. That was when I really found out how cold snow really is. We had to walk about half a mile to the bus stop. Most of the girls had mittons but not us. Our coats were not heavy as we brought them from California...no raincoats which would have kept the wind from blowing through our clothing and I remember just being miserable.

When we were back in California I remember that our high school would thin out the day after snow in the mountains.

Anyway if I do get up to see the snow will post some photos here.

Red Sky

2011-02-18T10:38:00.000-08:00

Rain

2011-02-17T06:32:00.000-08:00

Rain makes everything green. My yard looks like a park from the rain we had a few weeks ago and then the sunny days we have had last month and up to day before yesterday. Without some more rain the green would turn to brown dirt and dust. So I am always happy to see it rain here. I don't know how long this will last...but have heard a few complaints all ready!

Spring is always my favorite time. I think that is true for most people no matter where they live. Here there is such a big difference between spring and summer. In summer everything turns brown. Google Earth updated the photos of this area last August and it was a surprise to me at how brown everything looked though I do live here. Seeing it from space shows the dry we really live in. People might wonder why we don't get out the garden hoses and sprinklers. Water is expensive. If we use too much we must pay a penality for the extra used over our limit. So let it rain!

Lovely Day

2011-02-13T00:45:00.000-08:00

Spent some time kicking back at Summer's Past with glass of iced tea and Jackie. We both enjoyed the tea and conversation. Then we visited the gift shop. I bought some spring flower seeds and am looking forward to putting in a garden. I only hope I don't loose it to my husband's weed eater...that has happened! I said as much to the clerk and she told me that her husband thought her sweet peas were weeds and pulled them all up. We have to plant sweet peas before Christmas if we want flowers for spring. They like cooler weather than we have in summer. So it is now too late for her to replant.

Jackie went to the soap shop while I wandered around a bit and took some photos. Hopefully am not taking the same photos over. There is lots of photo ops there.

Spring is Busting Out!

2011-02-11T03:03:00.000-08:00

Photos from around my yard. The news is making a big thing about our sunny winter weather, but it is not often like this in January and February. When it is though we really enjoy our sunny days.

Orange Tree

2011-01-16T16:11:00.000-08:00

We have a small orange tree that has the most amazing oranges this winter.

What Can We Do?

2011-01-12T11:30:00.000-08:00

After the tragedy in Tucson there is again going to be lots of talk about the mentally ill and what to do about someone that seems dangerous or maybe a little off balance. Years ago our laws changed. We cannot lock up the mentally ill if they don't want to be locked up. We cannot make them take meds if they do not want to take meds! I have written some about my son with schizophrenia. Living with someone with schizophrenia day to day can be very stressful. Some days he seems just like everyone else. Then there are days he rants and raves through the house about being poisoned...the air is poison...the food is poison... Not fun. When someone is mentally ill like my son they can seem so normal. They can have rational conversations. Yet we need to watch what we say. They can take something said out of context. It is easy to forget and we must not ever forget that we are talking to someone that has a brain that doesn't think the way we do.

As parents we raise a child we love. They are cute and lively and wonderful. The care about animals. They do well in school. They have friends. Then sometime in their late teens that slowly changes. They become someone else. We still love them and we don't know what to do. My son went to counseling and took meds. That doesn't last. So as his mother I sort of became his counselor. I listen to him and when his ideas get too strange I tell him no. That is not how it is. I have always told him that he does not have the right to hurt anyone else. He has to try to understand that most people out in the world are doing their own thing and are not concerned with giving him poison or in any way harming his life. It is a never ending process. I feel like I walk a thin line. My son is basically a kind person. I am not saying that what I do would work with every child that becomes schizophrenic. Still listening and talking does help.

I have no idea what there is for parents when they know the child they raised and loved becomes mentally ill and seemingly dangerous. Dangerous is hard to prove. There are no facilities for the dangerously mentally ill. As a society we have to wait until they commit a serious crime...like killing people...and then send them to prison.

If as a society we give the parents of the mentally ill no help, no way to get their child help, how can we point fingers at them? How can we say they didn't do something. Like what?

Our San Diego news paper did a story about a homeless young woman that was found dead in a park here. They interviewed her stepmother in another state. When the girl's father was alive he would find a hospital for her when her illness got out of control. This happened over and over and cost the father a lot of money. The stepmother resented the girl and felt that the girl could stop being a problem if she wanted to. The father died and the stepmother blamed the girl for breaking her father's heart. No more hospitals or help and the girl was truly homeless and it isn't safe for women on the street. She met up with the wrong person and was raped and murdered.

The mentally ill have committed crimes and when caught are sent to prison. Still I truly believe that when the mentally ill have no family to help them or provide a home for them they are much more likely to become victims of crime. It is a burden I would never wish on another family.

Painted Sky

2011-01-10T12:46:00.000-08:00

We woke to another pretty sunrise this morning. So it was out in the cold with camera. My big black cat Tuffy followed me with his loud meow! Was I being scolded for being out in the cold or did he just want attention...whatever...I just kept shooting.

I took these in raw with my Oly E-3 and my 50-200mm lens. Most of the photos I post are jpg images to start with. These photos looked better in the raw versions and without any editing. I find that the PSP raw converter works great. My camera is always set to take both jpg and raw. I like that I have a choice of which format to use.

The Shooting in Tucson

2011-01-10T02:13:00.000-08:00

It is a tragedy that took the life of a young girl as well as killing others and leaving a wonderful woman with brain damage. Hopefully she will live. Hopefully the brain damage will not be such that she cannot live a full and useful life. The full tragedy of this seems to be an attack on free speech. I know that there is a fine line between our right to free speech and causing someone to pick up a gun and kill. Free speech does not create the mentally ill person. Our care facilities for the mentally ill are basically non existant. That is another story.

We cannot live our lives in this country watching every thing we say. We have the right to our political opinions, and the right to express them. Once we curb what can be said in the political arena we will lose our all our freedom, and rights that our countries founders gave to us. We need the right to tell our elected officials what we think.

I am not a tea party fan. I am not a Sarah fan. The tea party is not at fault for what someone with mental illness does. Is Sarah at fault? I don't know. Sarah or her people used poor judgement in choosing to put out a map using gun sight images over congressional districts. One of those districts belonged to Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona.

I do not think that anyone should encite others to violence. I totally wish the world was different or that some people it this world would change and stop trying to use violence to accomplish something. That is not to say that people should not stand up for what is right. We need our police. In the world we live in we need our military. But we also need to learn that war doesn't always make things better.

Mark Twain

2011-01-07T08:15:00.000-08:00

Mark Twain wrote what he wrote it the times he lived. We did not read Huck Finn in school. I don't think it was banned all those years ago in California...but it might have been. We were taught at home and at school not to ever use the "N" word. We were to say negro and to also never say black. Later black became acceptable. Never the "N" word. So I never actually read Huck Finn or for that matter Tom Sawyer.

Now a publisher is planning to remove the "N" word from the book. When I read about Huck Finn it does seem that the "N' word is used in the name of a character of the book so that is probably why it is used so much in the text. Oh well. If it makes a whole group of people feel better about the book what is the harm? There will always be the original text available. By removing the "N" word it could open up the book for school children to enjoy the story. And if Mark Twain were writing today I think he would have used another name for the character.

Oops! I have learned that the character was not named with the "N" word...but the word was used to describe him. So I got a bit confused. Now I am sure that if Mark Twain were writing today he would not use the "N" word...

Letting others know what I think leaves me open to other opinions. That is good in a free society where we can express our thoughts and beliefs.

Cold Sunrise

2011-01-06T13:39:00.000-08:00

My fingers were frozen...well they felt that way. The sunrise was so pretty that I was out in the cold taking photos.

And another pretty sunrise got me out in the cold again!

A Cross

2011-01-06T10:49:00.000-08:00

The cross on top of Mt. Helix in La Mesa caught my imagination as a child riding in the car with my family. I loved seeing the white cross against the sky. Some years ago it was challenged because it was on public land. The cross was built as a memorial to the mother of the man who eventually donated the land for a park. A small section containing the cross was sold to a private group to maintain the cross after it was targeted by an athiest group on the church and state issue. The same group made the La Mesa Police change the emblem on their uniforms because it contained a replica of Mt. Helix and the cross.

The cross on Mt. Soledad was built in 1954 for a Korean War memorial. This cross was also targeted by someone that wanted to see it torn down. Now The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the Mt. Soledad cross is unconstitutional. Personally I always thought the cross looked like concrete blocks stuck together. Anyway it means a lot to many people and I can see no real reason why it shouldn't stay right where it is.

I posted this on Facebook and am posting it here. It is what I think:

People have lost sight as to what the intent of the constitution meant on religion. It wasn't to ban Christian crosses on public property. It was about letting all versions of the Christian religion have the freedom to practice as they wished. In other words the state would not favor one church over another. This was expanded to give freedom of religion to other beliefs. It never meant that the government had to ban religion in any way from government or government property. Our courts are rewriting history in a stupid and careless way.

Remember when the Muslim Taliban blew up the Buddist statues? Is that what we want here? I am not a Buddist by any means but hearing about this happening was hurtful to me.

Happy New Year

2011-01-04T10:42:00.000-08:00

I've had some computer problems. First my big computer stopped working and then my laptop. So now I have a new computer. I haven't loaded up all my software yet. I do have a new PSP and can download my photos. These are motion photos of my scruffy bird of paradise. I reduced the apeture size and lowered the shutter speed and then moved the camera as I depressed the shutter. This is fun and the effects can come out quite beautiful.

Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T20:17:00.000-08:00

My mother made great Thanksgiving dinners. Once we had too many visitors for our little house and we had wooden boards placed on sawhorses for our table and a bed sheet for the table cloth. The weather was beautiful and sunny and perfect for an outdoor meal. My Dad and Marlise were there and two of Mama's friends from Washington state down for a visit. Both men from Washington, were a little bit in love with my mother. Mama wasn't married to anyone at the time. We had my Mama's friend Violet at dinner too. Her husband was away in the Navy.

I remember another Thanksgiving when my children were young and we lived next door to Mama and my last Stepfather. We called him Shorty. His name was Lee Roy Castleman. It was an easy walk to grandmother's house. Uncle Burt...Mama's uncle lived in her little house accross the driveway. My sister and her husband the their two sons were there and someone opened up a bottle of Cold Duck. Do they still have that? My sister's oldest son said, "Cold Duck and hot turkey." Everyone laughed and we remembered that through the years. I mentioned that today and my son David said he remembered when Jimmy said it all those years ago.

Back then I was living my life and not thinking that I was making memories. Sometimes I look back on all that has happened and I feel sad and a sense of loss. Things could have been a lot better. Mama could have lived to be 90 instead of dying at 57. We could have kept our house and not moved to Wyoming. E.R. had left me a couple of months before Mama died, and he got a job in Wyoming. I couldn't pay the bills. With Mama gone I didn't want to live next door anymore. So I agreed to go to Wyoming. We only stayed the summer and came back to Lakeside.

My Uncle Burt went into a home and so we moved into my mother's little house. The same one we lived in when we had too many people for Thanksgiving dinner years before. E.R. went back to Wyoming to work. One evening Shorty came over from Mama's house and told me that I was responsible for my mother dying. He said I had caused her to die. I was so upset I called E.R. and asked him to come back. We stayed a little over a year and I went to beauty school. Then we moved to Ramona. I did like it in Ramona but then we only stayed two years. My Dad needed someone to manage the storage and so I took the job. My husband didn't want to do it. I said I was going with or without him. I had applied for a job at the Country Estates and finally was hired but it was too late. I was commited to move to the storage. Our marriage broke up three years later for the last time. We take care of David and Hailey and have a sort of friendship...Life can be so sad.

My first Thanksgiving alone was just me at the storage and some wine and very quiet. My kids were with their father. People invited me to dinner. My Dad and Marlise, my friend Janey, and my sister, all invited me...but I needed to be alone.

I was never totally alone at the storage after E.R. left. My kids came and went. My father passed away two years later and I got to be friends with Marlise. Marlise and I began to spend time together and we had some good times. I think when my Dad was gone she didn't feel stressed with me because my Dad cared about me. I felt such a sense of loss when Marlise was gone. We were friends. I think it never gets easier. I cried so much at Mama's funeral and then we lost Uncle Burt and then my Dad. And during those years my Aunt and Uncle and my cousins and then Marlise's mom...who was the only grandmother I knew.

E.R. lived up in Ramona and then in an apartment in Lakeside and stopped drinking. Marlise let him rent the little house from her. She felt better with someone else on the place. Her mother came to live with her too. Then E.R. and I found out what was wrong with David. That brought us some bad times. It also meant that whatever we did we would never really separate and go our own ways...someone has to be there for David.

Then Hailey came. Marlise loved Hailey. We used to take her to lunch when she was just a toddler, Hailey and I had it good at the storage just the two of us. Marlise has been gone ten years now, and I live in her house with Hailey. I'm not as good at making Thanksgiving as my Mama was. But then when I was younger I did some pretty good dinners too. Even with the years gone I still hear the laughter from Thanksgivings past and the good times we had. So this is dedicated to my mother Lillian Elizabeth Ulery, my great Uncle Burt Byron Clark, My father Alfred Julian Toston, and my wonderful stepmom Marlise Dumser Toston.

Dawn and Cold Feet!

2010-11-22T07:46:00.000-08:00

Up early again this morning. I decided to wait for sunrise outside but I got a little too cold for that. I came in and looked up sunrise on the computer. Computers and the net are wonderful!

So was back out with my camera just before the sun came up. The full moon was still in the sky in the west. This is the only photo I cropped. All were taken in raw and not edited.

Hide and seek.

We are surrounded by hills on three sides of our property. There are many new or newer homes on the hills around us. Some of them are pretty expensive. I love telling people that I live in Eucalyptus Hills. They don't have to know that our house is not much better than an old shack! We like it.

Someone's House

Sunrise

The temptation is to keep shooting, but I'm not sure what the bright sun will do to my digital camera.

This Morning

2010-11-21T13:44:00.000-08:00

The sky was clearing this morning.

Another view of the clouds.

Fluffy on top of our old wooden ladder...the ladder really is that tipped.

Now the sky is clouded over and we have rain on and off. Most of the storm is north of us and they say Northern California has lots of snow.

Pouring Rain

2010-11-20T18:06:00.000-08:00

The beautiful sunny weather from last week is gone...today was rainy and they say tomorrow will be rainy too. The kitties are staying in. They like warm and dry. My carport is leaking and I had my driver's side car door under the leak...and I usually keep the window down a little to keep the car from getting too hot...so it got a little wet.

Hailey just came back from seeing the latest Harry Potter movie with her friends. She said she cried at the sad part. Won't tell what because someone reading this might not have seen the movie yet. We had pizza for dinner and Hailey heated up some for herself. I'm trying to get her to start learning to cook...so far heating stuff up in the micro is her limit. I'm not a good example because I don't cook much anymore. I used to cook years ago and am not all that bad...if I do say so... I will be cooking Thanksgiving turkey.

Summer's Past...Love that place!

2010-11-14T08:55:00.000-08:00

Jackie and I drove up to Summer's Past yesterday. We drank mango iced tea and looked through the gift shop and soap shop. I wandered around and took photos.

White flowers are so hard to photograph...for me anyway. In the sun they easily blow out and in the shade they look gray. I took several of this view and still not all that happy with this...

I see a view I want to capture and it never seems as good in a photo...this was pretty much the way it looked to me.

The stream flows through the grounds. I love the sound.

This view caught my eye.

The gift shop windows

Looking out the door of the gift shop.

I took photo of these guys in the past and never quite captured them. They are shaded and finally I think I did a bit better. Yes, I did Photoshop this.

Getting ready for Christmas. This tree is in the soap shop.

Leaving.

We were going to stop at the Antique Barn in Glenview but decided to go for food first. We drove to a wonderful Chinese resturant down in El Cajon and then decided we would visit the Antique Barn next week. Jackie needed the oil changed in her car so we went to a place that does that while you wait in the car. It didn't take long and we had a good time just talking. Then home.

Armistice Day-Veterans Day

2010-11-12T09:57:00.000-08:00

Veterans Day is a national holiday and is the day after my birthday. My Great Uncle Burt Clark was at the front when the guns were silenced. Armistice Day was always important to him. He wasn't happy when they changed the name to Veterans Day. Times change and things change. We were in too many wars after WW1. It was a good thing to give all veterans a day of remembrance. Uncle Burt wanted to be buried at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego. It was closed many years before my uncle passed but we found that they had cancellations and it was first come for the places. It is a beautiful place. His grave is on the bay side of the point.

I always think of Uncle Burt on Veterans Day.

Uncle Burt was there when we were children. He baby sat us for our Mama. He taught us to play cards and told wonderful stories about his growing up in the woods of Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. I wish I could remember them all now. His mother died when he was a child. He had two younger brothers and two younger sisters. His father gave away the younger children. My grandmother was the youngest of all still a baby and she went to a home and was sort of adopted. His other sister was raised by grandparents. Burt and George the oldest of his younger brothers stayed with their father. Uncle Burt baby sat my children too.

Birthday again

2010-11-12T07:22:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth took me to the Red Lobster for lunch. Love the food there and we had a great time talking. It is great to have a daughter and a friend all in one.

Birthday!

2010-11-10T21:00:00.000-08:00

Another year older and....I'm still here! I am a little surprised that I made it this far. This last year started out scary and for awhile got scarier. Right now all is well and I am looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas. Not everything is going great...my son John, Hailey's dad, is back in the slam. Drugs again. He was out two years and couldn't quite get it together. He had lots of help and support but drugs take it all away. Meth is a life killer and Hailey was very upset about her dad. She is making it through this with lots of heart. She is a good kid...well most of the time...She has been missing school and we have to see her teachers on Monday. They want her to sign an attendance contract. She is also seeing a counselor at school.

I voted against pot last week...California is not going to make it legal. Though the idiots keep trying. I am not against the dying using pot to get through the bad times. I am against making pot legal for our kids to get into. John started out using pot and then meth. Both these drugs have not done him any good. If anyone thinks that marijuana is harmless they should read the information found here: Marijuana

The news is doing a series on OxyContin. My stepmother died of cancer. Toward the end they gave her a prescription for OxyContin. I was sent to the drug store to get the prescription. The doctor had made a mistake on the state form and the drug store couldn't fill the prescription. The form had to be taken back to the doctor and a new one signed. The doctor would not issue a new one without the first one being taken back. He had to account for every copy of the form so that the ruined form had to be sent back to the state. Now kids are getting Oxy from their parents, from other kids on the street, and from Mexico. All the restrictions from the past didn't do a bit of good to keep this drug from hurting our children. How will anyone keep our kids from being hurt by marijuana if it is totally legal?

My children grew up when meth became popular and easy to get. I talked to them about drugs. But I didn't know what crystal was. I remember telling my son John not to use it because it sounded dangerous. Of course I had also told him and all my kids not to use pot. A lot of good that did. It took awhile to find out what crystal was. John said that he wouldn't try it though his friend had some. I remember that friend. He was a nice kid that one day told me that he was going to marry my daughter when he grew up. A few years later his family did an intervention but it didn't get him off meth. He did time in Arizona and in California. I saw him about ten years ago and he looked really bad. I have heard that he finally got his life together. I would like to have hope that my son could do that too. Several of my son's friends fell into drugs. Some of them made it out a couple of them died. Some like my son are still sinking.

The day my stepmother died I took all her pill bottles and emptied them into the garbage including the Oxy.

WAP

2010-11-07T06:09:00.000-08:00

The name has been changed so that it is not actually WAP anymore. It is now the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. I had not been there since last year. So tonight I'm one tired cookie. I need to get out and walk a lot more. Anyway had a lovely time with Gail. She was so nice about me being slowed down since my health problems. She is a lovely person and I very much enjoyed her company. I do have some photos.

Outside of gift shop. The photo does not really show the sparkle of the sun catchers.

Both the Zoo and the Animal Park have lots of flamingos near the entrances.

Giraffe skull. This shows that what seems like horns are actually bone and part of the skull. At another location there was a rhinoceros skull but I didn't take a photo.

We took a ride around the park. Since the mono rail is gone they have what they call a tram tour. We took that around the park. We got a good view of the giraffes. The tram is 30 minutes and while they do stop for pictures...have to be quick to take them.

The cattle are the decendants of the original ancestors of the long horned cattle brought to America by the Spanish. They became the Mexican cattle that were brought to Texas and mixed with other cattle that eventually developed into the colorful Texas Longhorns. They were on a hill above the road.

We did see some zebra but the view was limited. One bad thing about trying to take photos on the tram and also on the mono rail before is the time of day and usually being on the shadow side of many of the animals.

After the tram ride we walked to the lions.

Sitting up on his rock and trying to ignore us.

A keeper was hand feeding the lions treats through a heavy wire. She was walking away after eating treats. Taken through the glass.

He decided to get some treats and came over. I shot this through the glass.

We had some lunch and then headed for home through the big bird cage. Lots of shadows make it hard to get good pics, but this one was standing in the sun.

I drove home through Ramona. Was glad to be back home...I need to do more walking...

Descanso and Alpine

2010-11-05T23:48:00.000-07:00

Jackie and I drove up to Descanso this morning. There was an antique sale there. Lots of old and interesting things. I saw an old wooden crank telephone. Back in the 1960s the old wooden phones were changed over to work on modern telephone systems. Years ago I almost bought an old phone until I found out that it had been changed over. Jackie asked and they said the phone was original so went ahead and bought it. I haven't taken it apart and looked inside yet...hope I'm still a happy camper when I do.

We drove home through Alpine and stopped for lunch at the Alpine Inn. Lovely food. I had a wonderful clam chowder. While we waited for the resturant to open we visited a nursery where there were lots of pretty flowers. I was glad I had brought along my camera. Here are some of the photos I took today.

Bottle Brush

2010-11-01T10:31:00.000-07:00

The first two photos taken in jpg format and except for downsizing are as taken by the camera

This one was taken in raw format and edited.

Voting

2010-11-01T08:48:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is the day! First it will mean the end of all the ads and hype that is making watching TV miserable. Second it means I will have to choose between two people that I think should not be our governor. I remember Governor Moonbeam and the problems we had back then. Rose Bird was one. Still I cannot vote for the Meg. URF! Meg seems like a very nice person and I don't believe all that hype about the maid. The maid was a part time worker and earned more than my daughter does per hour. None of that has anything to do with Meg being our governor. Voting age used to be 21. The first election I could vote in, I voted for Pat Brown...Jerry's father. Guess it will be Moonbeam for sure...well maybe...my husband was smart and got a write in ballot...he picked the independant...maybe I should do that...then that is like throwing my vote away...Moonbeam is looking better. Next time I'm going to get that write in ballot for sure!

Sunrise

2010-10-29T08:13:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning to a beautiful sunrise. View toward the east.

View toward the west...Yes my palms again!

Sunshine Makes the Grass Grow

2010-10-28T23:20:00.000-07:00

The rain was gone for awhile. I went out and took photos of my palms a couple of days ago. The sky was blue and there were white puffy cotton ball clouds floating here and there. A lovely day.

Here is my palms as they look now with the tallest missing.

Today was nice too and we drove up to Sycamore Park and looked around and took photos. I had been there on a cloudy day and thought that the view was to the ocean but it is not...Just a lot of brushy hills and trails.Taken at Sycamore Park. The green on the road is grass growing from the rain we had.

Just What I Think

2010-10-28T20:11:00.000-07:00

This blog is named What I Think. Most of the time I write about day to day things and post photos. Once in awhile I will write something more. I wrote this as a comment on Yahoo News. Here it is with a few edits.

The three middle eastern religions all believe in the same god. People have forgotten that. Each of these religions took different paths and spread out in different ways across the world. There are lots more religions out there than these three but many people like to forget that. And many people have no faith in a greater unseen being. The goodness or badness of people is not about religion but about who the person is inside as a decent human being.

I believe in women's rights so that makes it hard for me to respect the Muslem religion as it is practiced in much of the world. That is just how I feel. I am not scared of Muslems in robes. America has come a long way in a short time. Most of us do not look down on any one because of who they are or how they believe in god. If an American citizen is a Muslem, or a Jew, or a Catholic or other type of Christian or any other religion or non believer they have a right to run for office. I mention Catholic because it was once not possible to get elected president of the United States if one was Catholic. John Kennedy changed that. It is up to the people to vote or not vote as they think they should. That is what America is about.

We need to use common sense when we choose our representives. That means we should think first before we vote for any one that is a radical no matter what it is they believe in. If someone is going to say that a group of people are scary, first on the list should be skinhead white power radicals. That is what I think.

Rain!

2010-10-25T09:13:00.000-07:00

Expected to really see some sunshine this morning but woke up to more rain. I think this is going to be a rainy winter. We haven't had a rainy winter for a few years. It is not that I don't like rain. It gives us green grass and makes things grow...I just like sunshine more. I spent one winter in Washington state. I was a freshman in highschool then. We had lots of cold and snow. That winter was one of the coldest they ever had. My sister and I got to walk down the road to the school bus stop in snow. The first morning that we woke up to snow was beautiful and very quiet. Everything outside looked like a Christmas card. We were from SoCal and it was new to us. We had spent several summers in Washington state but this was our first winter...and our last though we didn't know that at the time.

Sunshine Today...Well Some Anyway

2010-10-24T21:21:00.000-07:00

The rain seems to be over for a few days. Last weeks rain storm broke some records...though I don't know exactly what...maybe more rain on the date than was recorded for the same date in the past. Anyway everything is turning green. I looked on Google Earth for Eucalyptus Hills and saw that the photos were updated last August. Everything looks so brown. My pool shows up now...the photos from before showed the above ground pool and we took that down in the spring of 09. I posted photos on my blog when we dug out the old in ground pool. It was so much work and not really worth it. My daughter wanted it so bad and this last summer she moved out of the little house so I don't even see her very often. Hailey only swam a few times and I didn't at all. Since my heart attack I'm a little scared to do much of anything...well it is always cold when first getting into the pool. Maybe next year I will feel better about going in the pool...

My birthday is in Novemember and E.R. asked me what I wanted...I said peace and quiet. He said he didn't have enough money to give me that. Living in the same house with someone that is schizophrenic is sometimes very stressful. Dave has been pretty good the last few days after about two weeks of misery. Then there is Hailey's dad living out in the travel trailer with his ho ho. They fight all the time. URF!

I looked through my old photos and found some of my palms. The tallest tree really stands out and now it is gone. Here are a few of the photos. The first one was from about five years ago. I stood in the rain to get the photos of the rainbow over the palms...I had my umbrella tucked under my left arm while I held my camera.

I was up early and saw the palms in the fog and ran to get my camera...didn't know how they would come out but the palms show up pretty good in the photos.

This was a pretty sunset. We seldom see pretty sunsets as there are hills in that direction and most sunsets are below our horizon. I've posted one of these before if it looks familiar.

Today E.R. John and Dave took down the rest of the palm tree. now it is laying in the yard in pieces. I went out and looked at the top the other day and think that the fire probably would not have killed it. The trunk looked very solid even where it was badly burned. I guess it is better to have taken it down than to risk someone's life or property if it fell in a wind storm though.

I look out and don't see it now and still expect it to be there. I think from my photos you can see just how much this palm will be missed by me.

Goodbye

2010-10-16T20:02:00.000-07:00

Wrote about my tallest palm hit by lightening. Today it came down. A friend of Hailey's dad climbed the tree. The tree waved back and forth as the climber went higher. The climber went far up above the burned area of the trunk.

He tied a rope to the trunk and the other end of the rope was tied onto our little tractor. Then he began to cut the tree with a small chain saw.

The top of the palm landed just inside our fence.

My drive is lined with palms. The neighbor next to my drive on the other side would like to see them all taken down. I just can't do it. Part because of the expense and part because I love to see them there. Then the neighbor's is at least eight feet higher than my drive and taking out the palms on his side would make a mess out of his bank. He doesn't realize that the trees were there before his house pad was graded and his house built. Taking out the trees and stumps would take the stability away from his side yard.

Liberals, Muslems, and Americans

2010-10-15T10:53:00.000-07:00

Liberals feel that we should respect Muslims. We are conflicted over this. Anyone that believes in women's rights should have a difficult time respecting the Muslim religion. In their heart of hearts Muslims have little respect for Christians or Jews. Yet they want the respect they cannot give back. They know that they are right and everyone that is not a Muslim is unclean. I don't know why they choose a location near the ruin of the Twin Towers to build a Mosque unless it is to create controversy. Bottom line they have no respect for the people that died there. I do want peace and for them to have the right to live the way they want...let us do the same. I do not approve of the wars this country has gotten involved in. I felt so bad for the women and girls in Afganastan and at first it may have seemed that we should do something. Still it wasn't our job to fix things. It is not our job to fix the wrongs in this world.

Can we separate the Muslim from his beliefs? Can we respect the person while questioning the religion? Can we expect our people to welcome a Mosque near the Tower site when we know that the principles of that religion brought the towers down? We expect our people to take on the guilt of things gone wrong. In the same way the Muslims should have some respect and understanding when it comes to building their Mosque near the twin tower site. Oh! I forgot they really don't have any respect for us as Americans, or Christians, or Jews, or just as people.

On Whoopie and O'Reilly...they have different ideas about the tower location. I remember when Whoopie defended Vick on his involvement with the pit bull fighting. So what she thinks has no credibility for me. I used to like her.

So while as an American I will respect the right of the Muslim people in this country to have their beliefs and their way of life, I cannot approve of the way they treat their women and girls.

Mission Trails with Jean

2010-10-11T17:53:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago we went to Mission Trails Park to walk and take photos. There is a small lake named Kumeyaay after the Native Americans that lived in this area. It is a great place for taking pictures. Was having computer problems and finally today worked them out. I did have my laptop to use but it doesn't have any phtoto editing programs. So now can process my photos. Here are some that I took.

A Bottomless Pit

2010-10-07T09:32:00.000-07:00

The state needs money. So the state of Californina is going to sell the Del Mar Fair grounds, among other things. Will this be the end of our county fair? The fair has been held in Del Mar since 1936 though the tradition of our county fair goes back to 1880. The fair grounds were chosen by Arnold because of their value. Much of the value is location. And good management has made the grounds profitable. It doesn't run on tax money.

Still, once the fair grounds become private property will profits from the current use be enough that a buyer can afford the property taxes and fees connected with running a private enterprise, while getting the payment price back in a reasonable time? If not, the location of the land would make it necessary to find a more profitable use for the property. That means development.

If the fair grounds are turned into condos it will break my heart and same for lots of us who remember a lifetime of good times at the fair and the Del Mar races.

Why should we loose our fair so the state can balance their budget? This is just the beginning. What will they sell after they take away all our parks?

I'm very glad that I didn't vote for Arnold!!! And I hope this isn't a scam for some people to get their hands on the fair grounds...if it is I hope they spend their old age in prison.

Update: The state is selling the fair grounds and the race track to the city of Del Mar for $120 million. Hopefully this deal will save the fair for future generations.

Another Update: The Del Mar fairgrounds and race track not going to be sold to the city of Del Mar just yet...if ever. Too many people not happy with the deal. Some say price is too low. Yet the state wants taxpayers to pay for what the people already own. The people that run the fairgrounds are angry. They feel left out. But what if the grounds are just sold for condos...won't they be out then anyway?

A little B&C that I posted on Facebook...

2010-10-06T09:38:00.000-07:00

I like the heat! Last week we had 100 plus days and everyone complained. Not me. Then Thursday we had the thunder storm from hell and my favorite palm tree was hit by lightening. I saw it happen too...called 911 for the fire department. Then yesterday it got cold enough to hunt up some socks. Now it is raining. Summer really is over. I hate cold feet!

Stormy Day and Other Things

2010-10-03T12:02:00.000-07:00

For the last week have been using my laptop. My big computer is sick...it won't load windows though it tries very hard to do so...So right now can not download my photos,..

Thursday we had a big thunder and lightening storm. While I was sitting on my porch watching it all, a bolt of lightening hit my tallest palm tree. I've taken many photos of that tree but didn't take photos of it on fire. I was too busy trying to get the fire department to come put out the fire and also to convincing my son David to stay out of the yard. Then I had to tell a couple of neighbors to go home. All I need is to see someone actually get hit by lightening,

Anyway I love that tree. E.R. is away on a trip to IL so he will probably take the tree down when he gets back.

Friday a friend Jean and I went to Misson Trails to take photos. Lots of walking and I haven't been doing enough walking these days and I felt it yesterday. I will get some of the photos posted whem I fix my computer problems.

My laptop was sitting unused since before my health problems last January. So was surprised to find my old Scrabble disk in the laptop drive. Spent a lot of time looking for the game disk, but my daughter had re arranged my room while I was in the hospital and packed up a lot of my stuff...

This Scrabble game was hi-tech once. Better than the computer Scrabble game that came before. This one has pretty graphics but has to change the rez to 256 colors to work and it looks dated for sure. But I love it. Sometimes old is better than new.

Windmill House

2010-09-20T12:09:00.000-07:00

A third grade friend lived in the Windmill House. That was back in the late 1940s. I was invited to spend the night there by a girl named Kathleen. I remember the house very well. My mother took us to Washington State in March of 1949 and for some reason though we moved back to Lakeside I was never friends with Kathleen again.

I did not see the house again until many years later. In the early 1970s my children's grade school class went to see the Native American grinding rocks that are on the property. Some of them are very deep into the rocks.

The house is now surrounded by an RV park. The land was once part of a Mexican land grant and before that it was a Native American village. Los Coches creek crosses the property and there are springs near by. It was quite wonderful all those years ago before it was covered by trailers and RVs. The whole area should have become a real park.

A person can just drive in and see the windmill house. Jackie and I did that yesterday after our lunch at the Italian resturant near there. She was surprised as most people can live around here for years and not know the Windmill House exists. There is a sign that gives some of the history of the house. I had always thought it was much older than it is. It was built in 1925 and the windmill was built to generate electricity. I had always thought it was to pump water. Two of the owners of the house were listed but not my friend's family.

I remember that we had to leave the house and go out to a separate building to go to the bathroom and that seemed scary at night. Kids remember stuff like that.

Bird of Paradise

2010-09-17T08:50:00.000-07:00

Taken with my Olympus E3 and an old Minolta Rokkor 50mm lens.

Quiet Morning

2010-09-05T07:50:00.000-07:00

Up before sunrise this morning. A little piece of quiet to enjoy. School starts on Tuesday and that means a quick trip down the freeway and then a slower trip through a few red lights to her school. Had a cup of coffee in my hand by the time the sun came up in the clear sky. It will be another hot day...yesterday was a 100 plus.

I noticed the bird of paradise beginning to bloom so got the camera.

Looking forward to taking more photos...

Swimming

2010-08-28T07:19:00.000-07:00

We didn't learn to swim as very young children growing up in east San Diego County. Life was different back then. Houses didn't have air conditioning and they didn't have swimming pools. At least we didn't know anyone that had these things. Our hills were covered in sage not miles and miles of track houses. During my very early years America was at war with Germany and Japan. We had blackouts. My family had the only telephone on our part of the road and there were two dairies, one up the road and one down the road, that needed to shut down their lights during a blackout. There would be the phone call and my great uncle would go to one dairy and my dad to the other. The first time it happened my dad was so excited he ran into a barbed wire fence on the way to tell them to shut off their lights. I remember when the war was over. My parents were divorced by then and my first stepfather loaded us up into the car and we drove to San Diego honking the horn while other people on the roads did that too. We were so excited though I don't think we fully understood what it meant that the war was over.

By the time I was six years old my mother's marriage was on the rocks. She took us to Washington state. Bob flew up and talked my mother into trying again. We drove back to California in my grandfather's brand new Kaiser automobile. The next summer the marriage really was over and Mama took us back up to Washington. This time for the whole summer.

There are a lot of lakes in Washington state and summer programs to teach children to swim. So my cousins, my sister, and I were taken to the lake and put into swimming class. The first thing we had to learn was to face float. I saw my sister and cousins quickly go on to the next phase, backfloating. I couldn't seem to get out of face floating. Finally I managed to float to the count of ten...I really think the instructor was tired of me and wanted to send me on to the next class. Back floating was a disaster. By then my sister and cousins were dog paddling. I tried to do everything right but I would only sink up to my nose and breath in water. I decided that I was never going to learn to swim.

A few years later my Dad and Stepmother took us, most weekends, to Mission Bay to picnic and swim . My dad got big inner tubes from his work and so I had a great time floating around on those tubes. Mission Bay was also a different place back then. Lots of space and only a few people.

By the time I was twenty, my mom, by then married to my last stepfather put in a swimming pool. Years go by and my sister and I were both married with children and often on weekends we would visit Mama with our children. My sister smoked back then and she would tread water and smoke. I would hang on to the side of the pool.

I joined a backyard swim class for moms. I learned to dive into the deep end of the pool and to glide face down accross the pool. I even learned to swim a few strokes. I had gained some weight by then and it was easier to float. However when the instructor had us tread water, I began to sink. She looked at me and as I was going under she grabbed me and pulled me up. She said I was doing everything right too!

So I decided I had heavy bones and I just wasn't ever going to float like most people do. Give me a floaty and I'm a happy camper.

Yesterday I had a bone density test. The test is for osteoporosis. My bones are fine. I sort of knew they would be but it is nice to have that confirmed.

Summer's Past Revisited

2010-08-24T21:13:00.000-07:00

Jackie and I went to Summer's Past. I had the iced tea and she a cappuccino. I wandered around and took a few photos while she checked out the soap shop.

Then we drove west on Old 8 to the Italian resturant and had a lovely lunch. I got a small pizza and Jackie ordered bruschetta and we shared. I took this from the resturant parking lot. I liked the way the sun hit the flowers.

Sunlight on Water

2010-08-24T21:00:00.000-07:00

Hailey in the pool, and I noticed the designs the sunlight was making on the water.

Another Photo from Saturday

2010-08-10T11:24:00.000-07:00

This one needed a bit of Photoshopping...

A Wonderful Day

2010-08-07T23:35:00.000-07:00

Sarah and her daughter Nancy were here today. Sarah lives in Hemet about an hour and a half drive north of here. We met at a great Mexican resturant, Marieta's in Santee, for lunch and then Nancy left Sarah with me while she went up to Barona were they had a room for the night. Sarah and I drove up to one of my favorite places, Summer's Past. We bought iced tea and sat for a little while. Then we were off around the grounds to take photos. If you have read my blog you have seen photos from Summer's Past. I bought the paper whites and the pink lady bulbs there too. It is a wonderful place for taking photos. I've always found something new to point my camera at each time I visit. Sarah loved the place. She loves taking photos too. I was a happy camper that I could share the place with her.

We saw this bird house as we walked the path into the grounds past the soap shop.

I love the weathered wood.

While we sat near the juice and coffee bar drinking our tea I saw the sun shining through and had to grab my camera.

You can hear the waterfalls from the lounge area and we walked over to see the stream. There are some small bridges to walk over the water too. I took this of the water fall. The shade makes it look like night.

Sarah visited the soap shop. They make soap with lovely smells and Sarah bought some of it. While she was in the soap shop I found these.

I'm not doing Photoshop as much as I used to but couldn't resist on this one photo. It has a part of a second photo of the same flower added. I once did a lot of photo editing on my rose photos many years ago...gosh it seems like yesterday but most of my rose photos were put together over ten years ago.

Reluctantly we left Summer's Past and headed for Lakeside. A quick drive through the park, because Sarah was getting a bit tired so we didn't get out to take photos. She wanted to see the swans but they are gone. Last year some idiot that works for the county decided that the lake should go dry and drained the water down until most of the birds left. I think that is when we lost the swans. Finally we did have some rain and the lake while not as full as it was does have most of the water back. The people in Lakeside were very angry but it is a county park and what we wanted didn't matter. For over twenty years the lake was dry. Rainy weather in 1978 flooded the area and the lake water came back. Most people don't remember the dry years and how lucky we are to have the lake. Back in the dry years the back half of the lake was a Little League Field. There were people upset that was lost, but there are trade offs in this life and most of us were happy to have the lake back.

Sunset

2010-08-03T08:12:00.000-07:00

The news says another beautiful sunset this evening expected. I took this on Sunday evening.

Usually I don't see pretty sunsets. We live in an area of hills around us on three sides and the sky show is hidden by the hills. The view is down my driveway...the palms on each side of the drive were planted my my dad when he moved here in the late 1960s.

More Lilies

2010-07-12T13:50:00.000-07:00

My mother grew pink lilies. She called them amaryllis, but they are Lycoris squamigera also called pink ladies or naked ladies. I got some bulbs when I managed the storage and enjoyed seeing them bloom every summer. Left them behind when we moved away. Last year found bulbs at a wonderful place near Alpine and waited a year to see them bloom. I'm a happy camper.

These are the red and white lilies. It was a surprise that this year there was a yellow lily blooming with them.

Yellow Lily

2010-07-05T11:20:00.000-07:00

Last year I bought a bag of pretty two toned lily bulbs. I have them planted in two pots and have been looking forward to blooming again this year. What a surprise, this year one yellow lily bloomed. It is beautiful and hopefully the bulb will divide and I'll have more next year.

Will post photos of the red and white lilies when they bloom...which will be soon.

Awards and other things

2010-05-04T20:54:00.000-07:00

Got the word that my operation was a success and I'm cancer free now. Yea! Now I can think about getting my other heart artery cleared out. Plan to wait until fall if that is all right with my doctors.

My keyboard quit a couple of days ago. There is a pop up on my desktop the lets me type letters using my mouse. So wasn't totally off the computer. I bought a kb yesterday. Not all that happy with it. I really liked the one I had but it was really old...a lot older than my computer.

Hailey got an award yesterday evening for her flower class...it is an ROP class...which means Regional Occupational Program...and is a state program run through the highschools to teach young people skills that can lead to careers in the work place. The Grossmont High School District held the award ceremony for ROP students district wide that were considered the best in their classes. There are 12 High Schools in the district. We met Hailey's teacher and she is a super nice person. She sat at our table. Hailey's class works on flower arrangements for outside projects like charity events and weddings and funerals too. That gives them more flowers to work with and experience with doing commercial work. They made the flower arrangements for the tables at the awards. She got to take home the flowers from our table...not the ones she did in class though.

Macro Photos

2010-04-12T22:42:00.001-07:00

Hailey went swimming...

2010-04-10T08:17:00.000-07:00

and I took out my camera...

Thinking about it...

Trying the slow way of getting all wet...

Back on the board...

Going for it.

It was a lovely spring day in So Cal. This is my favorite time of the year. In a couple of weeks I will be having an operation...nothing to do with my heart but very needed. It was scheduled for last month but put off because I'm taking blood thinners. Too soon to stop taking them the doctor said. I'm looking forward to being able to get into the pool myself. Maybe by June...

Easter Weekend

2010-04-05T06:23:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter a little late...but hope everyone had a great day. We felt the earthquake from Mexico and the aftershock from Imperial California. I was sitting on the glider near the pool talking to Elizabeth and felt the earthquake as the glider started swinging sideways. Hailey came outside. We just laughed about the shaking. The news made a big thing out of it.

Early Saturday morning...a little after 2am a speeding driver took out a light poll near our house and we had no power for about ten hours. The poll was cut in half and if it hadn't hit a tree it would have landed on a house. Our part of the road was blocked off all morning but they let us drive through. No way to cook breakfast so a trip to Jack's for something to eat.

My daughter was stopped right after the accident. She was on her way home from work and was not too happy until they let her through. She got to hear all about the accident from the cops. Both tires on one side of the car were sheared off and one of them rolled down to our drive way. The car's driver ran off and so did his passenger. Hailey woke up an we sat around in the dark talking for a couple of hours.

Saturday about 10am Elizabeth and Hailey walked down our drive and talked to the electric company repair men and got some more information. They caught the passenger hiding in some bushes. He had a broken jaw. I did have a bit of computer withdrawl until the power came back on.

Borrego Springs

2010-03-13T09:56:00.000-08:00

The flowers bloom every spring in the desert. This year because of the winter rains the flowers are everywhere. A lovely sight. We drove over yesterday morning and spent a few hours seeing and photographing them.

A little snow left on the top of the mountain.

I've photographed the metal animals before, but couldn't resist taking these.