House a fire! Are you prepared?

Think fast! Your house just caught on fire. Where's the phone? Where's the kids? Where's warm clothes? Shoes? Where's the pets? Their cages? Flash lights in case electricity goes out? Laptop carrier? No time to rescue desktop, keepsakes. Where's car keys to sit in car until the firemen arrive?

Though I didn't have to think about kids, everything else had to be taken care of before I got out the door.

I will be better prepared next time. Those kitty cage doors are remaining open from now on. Not out in the garage, but in the spare room, where they will be easy to access.

Can't see sh*t to open them without flashlight. Lucky my cats were all in the same dark room and don't bite or scratch when I shove them in.

Forgot to mention where's purse in the above. ID and credit cards, VERY important!

Light in hallway exploded (for lack of a better word). One of those curly lights that are supposed to last 25 years. HA! It vibrated the light fixture. There was burst of light, and sparks fell on carpet.

If I hadn't been there, I hate to think what would have happened. I stomped out the sparks, but kept smelling something, so I called the non emergency fire number because I saw no flames or smoke. Didn't think it was emergency but didn't know why it happened and figured they would decide if it needed investigated.

So they came out and looked at the wiring through the ceiling with some kind of device and measured the temperature, which would have been higher than normal if there were a problem. Wiring was cool.

They explained the smell was probably from the fumes of the curly bulb. Great! I've inhaled mercury vapor???

Anyhow, before they arrived the fire operator told me to wait outside. I was in pj's, had to find clothes, had to gather cats. Damn! It was cold outside, raining, too, etc. etc.

Close call. Got to have a more efficient emergency exit strategy!!!

See my cats blog to read Bambi's side of the story.   She explains the circumstances so much better than I.

The Chrismouse Meme

The Chrismouse Meme

My friend, Jan, has challenged me to do a Chrismouse Meme. This is what she says, and I am following through.

"The Twelve days of Christmas have been celebrated since medieval times ~ traditionally beginning the day after Christmas Day (now known as Boxing Day) and ending with Twelfth Night.  And since the festive season is upon us ~ I thought it might be fun to do a Christmas meme!"  So without more ado:

Rules:

1. 
   
   
   Copy the delightful Chrismouse picture to your post.
   
   
   
   
2. 
   
   
   Copy these rules and the explanation of the meme (above).
   
   
   
   
3. 
   
   
   Link the person who tagged you.
   
   
   
   
4. 
   
   
   List 12 things: either about Christmas present or memories about Christmas past (or a mixture of both)
   
   
   
   
5. 
   
   
   Tag as many or as few people as you like!
   
   
   
   

I tag: brian and Aaron and Adrienne (But I’ll understand if any of you feel Bah Humbug, or haven’t got time to waste,  or just simply can’t  be bothered! OK?) 

I wish more of my friends had blogs, but it seems they all prefer Facebook instead.

1. 
   
   
   I'm presently in the Bah Humbug stage, and have been for a few years! So, I apologize ahead of time for my "Blue Christmas" meme.
   
   
   
   
2. 
   
   
   I still send presents to family, usually books. We all love to read.
   
   
   
   
3. Two years ago I gave all my Christmas decorations to my housekeeper, who has 5 children.
   
4. 
   
   
   I avoid going to stores from Thanksgiving until New Years. Don't like the crowds or the noise or music.
   
   
   
   
5. 
   
   
   I don't purposely listen to Christmas songs, and turn it off if they are being played on radio or TV.
   
   
   
   
6. 
   
   
   Okay, well, sometimes I will spend a day listening to Christmas songs, and singing along. The spirit has to strike me.
   
   
   
   
7. 
   
   
   Last year, I didn't send out Christmas cards, and gave away the large collection I had.
   
   
   
   
8. 
   
   
   I do send out Christmas e-cards. I think they are very nice ones from Jacquie Lawson's site.
   
   
   
   
9. 
   
   
   I have friends and a couple family members who are, for lack of a better word, Pagan, and practice Solstice rituals. I found them enjoyable for a while. But, they do them outside and my bones ache. I like summer Solstice better. My birthday.
   
   
   
   
10. The year I decided to stop putting up Christmas trees is the year I won a tree and 200 dollars worth of Hallmark ornaments.
    
11. 
    
    
    One year, I was single with my six year old daughter. We were so poor, someone donated an artificial tree to us. We decorated it with the jewels from the Burger King paper crowns that they gave away that year. My daughter tells me now, some 35 years later, it was the best Christmas ever, though there were no toys.
    
    
    
    
12. 
    
    
    My son would circle everything in the catalog. I want this. I want that. then be so disappointed that we didn't get everything. He was older then, and had learned the truth about Santa a year or so before this. I made a deal with him. I would give him the full amount of money that we would normally spend on Christmas if he waited until New Years to spend it. He was wary at first. But, then so happy and excited that he could get double the toys after everything was on sale. This lasted until he grew up and left home, then one more year. I still give him a stocking with little boy toys. He seems to like that. My daughter likes socks in her stocking.
    
    
    
    

Photo Friday - Patterned View

  

Something I saw in the hardware store.

Florist shop warehouse ceiling. 

Pleated lamp shade while light is on.

 

Odd plastic lampshade from inside looking toward center

Beauty in the Mind of a Child

There is no one thing that stands out in my mind as more beautiful than any other.   All the beauty crowds around me like a room filled with bright little children.  “Me! Me!  Oh, please tell about me!”  They all clamor for my attention.  So, one at a time, I line them all up in chronological order and let them be remembered.

     At eighteen months, I recall the pretty blue enamel paint on my metal stroller-walker.  And the wild roller-coaster ride on which it took me, bumpety-bumping down two flights of stairs into the basement while my horrified mother and grandmother helplessly grasped, too late, at empty space, as I giggled past them.  I loved speed then, but not now, unless, of course, it is on a roller coaster.

Then, at two, the beauty of the Niagara River as it flowed past my backyard on Cayuga Island where Dicky Culp drowned as I watched his pretty pink face so quickly disappear under the water and downstream.  He didn’t even struggle.  I didn’t understand.
  
Wintertime, not being allowed outside, I remember watching as Jack Frost painted his delicate filigreed fern leaves on the windows when I was three.  No matter how hard I looked, I could never catch a glimpse of him, even though I could clearly see the palm fronds he created wondrously growing before my eyes.
  
Except for the lovely soft fur of Tabby, the cat and Cubby, our dog, I recall the world as a sad dark place for the next few years.  Then one spectacular day, spring dawned beckoning me to look outside my upstairs bedroom window. Suddenly the world was beautiful again, as I watched the First Robins frolic in my frosty front yard. Each passing day, they bustled about singing and crooning, carrying bits of dried grasses in their beaks until the completed nest cradled between the three thick main branches of the elm tree beside the road not twenty-five feet from my curiosity.  Budding in tiny lime greens, the leaves miraculously grew with the lengthening days, luxuriously covering every view of that robins’ nest except for mine.  I saw the babies thrust their necks and winced as they frantically screeched for Mama and Papa to feed them. Gazing, transfixed, I spent a lot of time kneeling in worship at my windowsill that spring, Until the day, Pinky, my tomcat, removed Mother Nature’s gift before I could even open my mouth to scream.  I guess Pinky saw another kind of beauty there. I loved Pinky enough to forgive him.

Beauty of Light and Dark

That summer I fell in love for the first time, with the big weeping willow across the street in the park.  Her arching boughs reached the ground enclosing me behind her leafy emerald skirts.  Hidden within the fortress of her shade, I played with my dolls, had tea parties with Maria, read “My Weekly Reader” books, and sometimes just talked with her.  She always smiled and lovingly responded to me.  She was my mother, my sister; my best friend all rolled into one.  And she made a great swing!  At thirteen, her thick trunk held me as I pressed my back onto her while necking with my first boyfriends.
 
    At fourteen we moved away from Niagara Falls to live at the mouth of the Eighteen-Mile creek on Lake Ontario. That was the summer I really learned to swim.  The water seemed so pristine and clear back then.  Holding my breath as long as I could, I lazily floated, face down, eyes open, to watch the movement of tiny creatures and the dancing reflections of sunlight and shadows glinting on the velvet sand beneath me.
 
    After that, another long period of dark gray sadness oppressed me, except for a few pleasant memories of heavy snowstorms blanketing the world in crystalline.  And a few hormonal stirrings that suddenly made beautiful, the muscles rippling beneath a boy’s shirt. Breathtaking!  My history grew so dark after this that beauty did not seem to exist. Except for the captivating deep warm brown of my first-born baby’s eyes and the tender pink rose petal luminescent quality of my second born. Was she an infant or a flower?