Green Spider on Pink Rose

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

Hummingbirds and Roses

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

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?

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

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.