Vacay

July 24, 2014

We managed to slip away last week.  The stated reason was to attend Uncle Dave's 90th birthday in Amarillo.  That, of course, was fabulous.  But if you have already made it as far as Amarillo, why not jump off into New Mexico?  And we did.

First, we stopped in to see our great friends Carla and Larry just above Santa Fe to admire their new place, get to know their new dogs better, and share their view.  I will put a photo of their view here soon.

Then we headed to Taos.  Here's our view of Taos Mountain:

Walter and I come to New Mexico mainly to soak up cool air (52 degrees on the balcony this morning during coffee) and to hike.  I picked the hike today:  The Italianos Canyon Trail.  It had numerous water crossings and some rather challenging switchback courses.  Walter and I had quite a discussions about whether a donkey could get up the trail to carry chain saws and equipment to clear felled trees and such.  We decided "no."

All along the way, I thought we were on a "moderate" trail, and I kept thinking how poor my wind was and how out of shape I was, and how I probably couldn't make it a mile on some of the "strenuous" trails any more.  It turns out that that kind of thinking was very similar to what I experienced when Davis was born.

And, in fact, there may be a definite advantage to hiking a strenuous trail while thinking it is only moderate.

I labored for about an hour and a half and couldn't imagine going another 22 hours like the birthing coach said was typical for first moms.  He was born after a total of an hour and fifty minutes labor.

The rating for Italianos Canyon is, in fact, strenuous.  I feel better now.

One of the things about Taos, is that they know how to do doors.  This is a small sample of the dozens of doors we walk by in the three or four blocks between our hotel and the plaza.  I suspect that anyone could be an optimist if you lived in a place where the possibilities of opening a door was this appealing.

This is the way my life has been, especially the last few years.  A door shows up waiting to be opened, and invariably,  I walk through.  Although it is the subject of another post, here is my most recent door:

Lost

June 20, 2014

When your child dies from cancer,  you focus moment to moment.  You might have been told it was coming, but you didn't believe it.

You wonder if you can I bear to move the sneakers away from the backdoor where she always kicked them off.  What about facing the grocery aisle with the favorite Del-Dixie baby dill pickles or green, NOT PURPLE, Gatorade?

Moment to moment turns into day to day.  Can I face Mother's Day?  What about Halloween with no costumes?  How do you work up to putting the Christmas ornaments on the tree?

You heal and you grow and you love your child who isn't there.  Then one day you read that the average age of a child lost to cancer is 8.  Erin almost made it to 12!

You also read what that means.  71 YEARS OF LOST LIFE WHEN A CHILD DIES OF CANCER.

So here I sit on Erin's 17th birthday, no longer struggling with the moment to moment or even the day to day, but wondering what we lost over the last five years--classes, friends, drivers' ed, soccer, prom.  And wondering even more what the world lost by her missing the next six and a half decades.

Folks, we have to do better.  We can't just go throwing decades of life away, when there is a chance to invest in more effective treatments, and it would cost much less than many of the things we currently spend on as a nation.  #StepUp.

Go Spurs Go!

June 16, 2014

Happy Birthday Mom!

And because it is Monday, your featured Map (states that support the Spurs v. states that support the Heat):

As you can see, this morning, slightly over half the states, and probably a much larger than 50% portion of the basketball watching country woke up knowing they backed the wrong team.

Go Spurs Go!

Walter, Davis, and I won't take complete credit for the Spurs win last night or for the series, but we did our part.

Starting with hand-made, silk-screened fan gear (thanks Davis!):

We were also disciplined and dutiful.  We followed out game day rituals, eating the right foods and getting the right attitudes on.

Game time was even more crucial.  Walter watched alone, so he could bring his laser focus to bear at critical moments.  

The other five of us (me, Davis, Teddy, Willie, and Lyndon) became role players channeling whoever was on the floor at the time.  Teddy makes an incredible Patty Mills, and her encouragement on his three-point shooting last night almost required umbrellas all around to protect us from the shots that were raining down.   And if you think that Manu Ginobili could have racked that monster dunk to ignite the Spurs recovery without channeling Willie's inner fierceness, you may be mistaken.  Lyndon was best at BoBo Diaw, always on the move and helping everyone out.

Davis and I did bench squats during time outs and commercial breaks just to demonstrate our mind was right (did you notice the bad start?  Davis was distracted by his cell phone and some lively texting exchanges and did not do the requisite exercises.  I know Pop was relieved when Davis remembered his role on the team and got caught up on his squats.)

Walter wouldn't let us join him upstairs until things were completely in hand.  We tried with three minutes remaining, but he made us wait a couple of possessions more, JUST TO BE SAFE.  In the end, we all howled together, except for Lyndon who, like Kawhi Leonard, may not have learned how to celebrate yet.  He's young.  He'll figure it out.

Map It. . . Monday

June 9, 2014

I know the world (or at least the subset of the world that entertains itself with social media and online photo sharing) has special days of the week.  Who doesn't want to spice up their otherwise mundane Thursdays with embarrassing or personally revealing pictures of themselves from years past, a la Throw Back Thursday?  Until I looked it up, (#hashtag for every day of the week), I didn't actually know that I could have been chronicling this blog and my Facebook and twitter accounts in a much more systematic way all these years.

But considering that I'm a pretty poor photographer and that I haven't historically carried a camera NOR REMEMBERED TO USE IT IF I LUGGED IT ALONG in the first place, I don't have a huge ready stock of photos to share.  Did I mention that my elegant and precise system of filing all my hard copy, pre-digital photos involves packing boxes and my personal promise that one day I was going to scan, label, add snappy captions, and place them all in acid-free photo albums, EMPHASIS ON "ONE DAY"?

But I do like the idea of a little structure (Katherine Luquette, stop snickering!) and I am crazy in love with maps, so I am implementing Map-It-Monday.  Here's the first installment, which is a visualization of the ratio of bars to grocery stores in the United States.  It's easy to see Wisconsin.  Which Texas dot do you think represents Brazos County?

You can explore other Nathan Yau's similar maps of other countries here:  http://flowingdata.com/2014/05/29/bars-versus-grocery-stores-around-the-world/.

Sleep and Share

May 29, 2014

Little known fact:  

If you are highly motivated, you can sleep on a cot, with a beagle, with phone alarms set for 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. and the next day believe you had a restful and an unremarkable night.

Drive

May 26, 2014

I know this sounds too bad to be true, but for the third time in the last 21 months we are in Columbus attending Davis's knee surgery.  ACL repair tomorrow.  Report to check in at 5:00.

This time it's a little different.  I don't know if you have heard, but Walter and I have a new business partnership:  the Doggie Summer Camp and Orthopedic Rehab Service.  Davis and Lyndon are our first customers!

As soon as they are travel ready, we'll head back to Texas.

We have spent the last two days driving for the pick up!  I can tell it was about 21 hours in the car because I'm a bit stiff through the hips, shoulder, and neck.  

And, with apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, I can tell I drove through east Texas because I saw:

• a bank advertising on a billboard with a picture of a ginormous chicken and the words "we delight in poultry financing."
• a second billboard $895 CREMATION as the only words besides the company name.

I can tell I drove through Tennessee because there were more Cracker Barrels, Waffle Houses, and Shoneys than there were Starbucks.

Also, can anybody tell why Ohio farm houses are white and Ohio barns are red?

Final Thought:  I think people in Brazos County should pay me to go out of town.  When we went to Galveston week before last, it rained 5 inches in Bryan.  I understand that the rain started today at noon and has already rained a couple of inches with more expected tomorrow.

Win

May 24, 2014

Before I ever donate any books that may have come from Fort Stockton to the Friends of the Library book sale, I always have to check them for goodies.  Janice, Walter's mom, was an absolute demon for tucking things inside books whether they were related to the book or not.

Here is evidence, found tucked into a song book for children, published in 1938, that the Walter L. Buenger, Sr. family were a creative force in Fort Stockton.

From the Fort Stockton Pioneer, 1969--"The front door of the Walter Buenger residence at 705 N. Missouri presents a holiday welcome which won first prize in the door decoration contest judged here Sunday night by members of the Fort Stockton Garden Club."

A Gift Redux

April 11, 2014

Sometimes gifts come in threes, in addition to these two:  http://erinbuenger.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-gift.html on April 11, 1988 this special gift came into my life:

Happy Birthday, Davis!

A Gift

April 9, 2009

Some things are a gift, like Erin, and like this slideshow with fresh lyrics that my cousin and special friend Marcia created for my mom, Walter, and me.  

Picture slideshow made with Smilebox

Thank you for both.

Pack and Clean

February 23, 2014

Things you find behind the television, when you pull it out to disconnect the VCR (yes, VCR, not DVD.  Not Blue Ray--TRUTH IN BLOGGING DISCLOSURE:  this tv is in the living room and is the main unit we watch).  Before you guess, you have to know that no one has watched a video on this machine for a looonng time.  I think the last attempt was The Blues Brothers.  Erin and I started it right around this time of year around five years ago, and the movie that I thought she would laugh her head off to, turned out to be a few laughs with a lot of long boring yawns in between.

Anyway, back to the question:  name the things (besides copious piles of dust) that you find behind the television when you pull it out.

From left to right:  

• a Ritz cracker sleeve (believe me when I tell you this isn't the most surprising place I have ever found one of these waxed wonders.  It was Davis's after school snack--34 crackers in each one--almost every afternoon after school for most of his life).
• a $10 gift card from Best Buy with the bonus that it has not expiration date and not fees
• a piece of Davis's junior year in high school ID card.  Students have to buy a replacement card when lost or broken, so as pieces chipped off he would just punch a new hole and wear a smaller and smaller piece.  This was left by the end of the year.
• a picture of Erin framed with craft sticks from when she still had her baby teeth.  I'm guessing this is on a school field trip about a month after transplant in 2003.
• a long unfound Easter egg, with candy still intact.
• Walter's bumper sticker

I would also like to point out, that when I packed the loft bookshelves, I tried to do it in a systematic way, so that books in similar broad categories (classic fiction, theology and religion, joke books, etc would end up in the same box, so that when we eventually unpack the boxes our bookshelves will end up fairly organized.

Doing that naturally helps uncover duplicate copies.  Of course, there are many reasons to own more than one copy of a book.  It might be treasured.  You might have a well-worn copy and a newer version.  You may occasionally buy the same book twice on accident (this happens to me sometimes when I read a book series out of order).  You could own a book and receive a duplicate gift copy.  

You may can imagine other scenarios, but for the life of me, I can't explain how I ended up with three copies of.  .  . The Bobbsey Twins in the Country.  I'm pretty sure the only time I ever read it, I checked it out of the library.

Teddy knows that a good supervisor is always on the job.

Blast (as in . . . "from the past")

January 2, 2014

After the bedroom, I tackled the loft office, which has/had lots of potential for thinning and shedding.  You ALL know what I'm talking about.  Did you really think you were going to look something up in a textbook you kept from that beloved class you had as a second-semester sophomore that was so meaningful and made you know that you had FINALLY become an adult and worldly, too?  And does anyone need the warranty and the receipt for the toaster oven you bought in 1987 (and has long since warmed its last tortilla).  

But, the damper on the spirit of "toss it all" is that there could be a treasure tucked in with the crap.  And I didn't need to consult the Antique Road Show to know the value of these finds:

First, from inside the seven-volume Complete Works of William Shakespeare that originally came from my great-grandparents' home (and maybe somewhere before that because that house was built in 1905 and these books were published in 1887) came these three gems:  

Behind Door #1 (alternatively, "Inside Volume Number 1")--A complete stranger (any help from family members reading/viewing this?) standing in party attire next to a Model T decorated as a parade float.  

I think this would be an excellent entry for a "Best Caption Contest."  

How about  "Really dear, I promise I took your car out for a spin every few days while you were gone to keep the battery charged, just like you asked me to."

Behind Door #2--A handwritten note to my great grandmother Mabel Octavine (and you wonder if I am sad that I was named for my Grandfather rather having to explain why I was named "Octavine" or  some other fabulous family name?)

If you can't read this marvelous Palmer penmanship, it says:

Mabel--
    I want to see you before you go home, so please come by after you go to Mrs. Lucas'.  You can tell her for me please that I am awfully sorry not to be able to come, and I am, but the truth is that my front tooth is out & I look like my Grandmother, & I couldn't go &  have the women saying "Don't she look old"-- Kitty

And I can't imagine the story behind that missing front tooth.

Finally, Behind Door #3--the worship bulletin from the Easter Service at the M.E. [Methodist Episcopal] Church, South, April 7, 1912 that features my great-grandmother, Mrs. J.B. Channing, singing alto and my great-great-granmother, Mrs. E.R. Ford singing in the flotilla of sopranos.  Ah to be Mr. Walter Wainwright in the chicken party.

Two other prizes I knew I had, but have to decide about (you know, the pressure to give in and hoard):

My grandmother's mahjong set, which celebrated its 90th birthday last year:

And something I don't have the technical skill (or further time to waste) to show you:  three Kodak, Ektachrome transparency slides of the Astrodome in November 1963.  My grandfather, Fafa (married to my grandmother Momo. . . what kind of warped people choose grandparent names that will be totally ridiculous to say out loud when you turn 14?) was one of the steel estimators for the construction of the Astrodome.  These three slides show the building skeleton, completely constructed with no "skin" or "innards," just like a framed house only much bigger and with an igloo shape instead of a peaked roof.

I also have about seven slides of my grandmother in some sort of community theatre performance but little information beyond that.