Wings and Things

I promised Victoria a day of Lego's, Play-Doh, blocks and making cool stuff with snippers, stickers and stamps but suggested that if she would trust Grandma, I had something extra fun in mind for the morning. With a stash of crayons and a sippy cup of apple juice handy, we buckled ourselves in and headed up the road a bit to the Reiman Gardens Butterfly Pavillion in Ames.

It was our first visit. What a cool place to hang out on a cold morning!

The Pavillion is a domed, high-ceiling sort of botanical center with tall, exotic tropical plants and a diverse resident army of butterflies of every size, color and shape. As you approach the building from the outside you can see them flying around inside amongst the treetops but their flitting images beyond the glass are only the gentlest of hints as to the magic that lies beyond the pavillion doors.

This is Mr. Shaw.

Mr. Shaw is a docent at the pavillion, knowledgeable in all things winged and fluttery. Before one can enter the pavillion there is a short list of rules that all visitors must review. Entrance to the world of butterflies is through a lock system of two sets of doors. In addition to the safety of curious and wandering butterflies, the door system is a security feature required by the FDA. Apparently some exotic little butterflies can carry exotic little things out into the world on their little wings and feet.

But don't feel bad for them. Life as a butterfly at the Reiman Gardens Butterfly Pavillion is pretty sweet.

Here is where it begins.

When you first enter the buildings, there are several butterfly nurseries behind huge plates of glass where you can stand and observe all sorts of cocoons and chrysalises (chrysalii???) in various stages of development. There were several butterflies hatching at the time of our visit.

Butterflies are seemingly peace-loving, harmonious creatures as the various species are hatched in common nurseries. Apparently the main thing on the butterflies mind, once hatched, is to spread it's wings and grab a bite to eat.

This fabulous giant moth hadn't reached his full wing capacity yet. Most of his neighbors had long since hatched and found their way into the pavillion where they were enjoying the plants and some nice sunlight from the windows.

And long, cool drinks.

The pavillion is a magic place for a wide-eyed 3-year old.

The larger the butterfly, the more trusting they seemed. While the tiniest residents flitted around like sparks on the 4th of July, the larger species seemed quite comfortable with close inspection. While we were not allowed to reach out and touch the butterflies, lest we damage their powder-coated wings, it is permissible to let them land on you and, when coaxed by a docent, they even feel safe and content enough to sit for a time on a tiny finger.

The butterflies have a great life in the place. Overhead misters keep their habitat warm and steamy. Down amongst the plants and flowers is a small pond and random watering dishes.

Cool use for a scrubbee, huh??

>

The butterflies are obviously healthy and happy in their little world. Entertaining and even comical in the way they flit and dance throughout the place, I raised my camera several times to get a group shot-----but the little things just move too darn fast and are perfectly camouflaged against the variety of plants and flowers.

There are at least 15 butterflies in this picture, if you click on it and see it larger, you can see some of them more clearly.

But the best way is to see them up nice and close, something you can easily do inside the confines of the pavillion.

We stayed for a long, long time.

Holding the attention of a little person for that long is a credit to the entertainment skills of the butterflies. For those who tire in the heat or just want to sit and enjoy the color bursts around them, there are cozy benches throughout the pavillion.

But some of us were just too busy checking out all the pretty wings to sit in them.

It's hard to beat Lego's and a great collection of stamps and stickers at Grandma's house, but I think the visit ranked right up there with good stuff we'd definitely like to do again.

"How was the butterfly house?" Daddy asked when he got home from work.
Victoria told him it was a great idea.

Me and my Grandma spent alot of time looking up.

ROOMIES

I have two roomates.

I gave birth to one of them 25 years ago. She's cute as heck and lots of fun but pretty much rarely seen in person, with the occasional wrinkled towel or missing bottle of Frappuccino as the only tangible evidence of her actual existence.

The other one was born some years later on a Marine Corps base in Virgina and came to me via short stops at Camp Pendleton in California and an old brothel-turned apartment in Kansas City, Missouri. Yeah, Mr.Binks the Cat has led a pretty interesting life. The two of them are great friends.

The subject today is the health of Mr.Binks, specifically his runny nose and sneezing. The physical symptoms developed this spring. I was worried and dutifully took him to the vet. After the expected pokes and prods, the vet confirmed Mr. Binks had allergies or perhaps a virus, neither of which would be cured by any drug. The diagnosis and conclusion took about 5 minutes.

We were trapped in the vets office for another 20 minutes as he sternly lectured me on the state of Mr. Binks physical presence, specifically his girth and weight of some 23 pounds. Clearly, he implied, without specifically accusing me, you are guilty of overfeeding Mr. Binks and he needs more exercise.

Well don't we all.

I took his advice to heart and agreed to the suggestion of my children that perhaps the answer was to invite a younger and more soulful, playful and energetic roommate into our home as a companion for Mr. Binks. So we got a kitten. Adorable. Playful. Energetic. Just what the Dr. ordered. All of us envisioned that the hours that I am gone for work each day would be hours of endless play and excercise for Mr. Binks. Yes, the pounds would melt away, he would be long-lived and all would be well.

I can't deny that the two of them were cute as heck together.

They actually looked like father and daughter. After the first few hours of hesitation and hissing, it really seemed like the whole thing might have been a great idea. There were a few cute and cuddly moments.



But they were precious few.

Over a period of 2 weeks the new little kitten went about doing what little kittens do. Running, jumping, climbing, hopping (like a rabbit, that is why I named him Bunny)and generally frothing up mayhem around the place until Mr. Binks was just about driven to the edge. Mr. Binks hates to have his tail touched. Bunny the Kitten discovered this and spent hours and hours each day hanging from it. She waited until he was sound asleep and then would pounce on his fat tummy, an activity that she clearly found delightful enough to repeat over and over. He was not quite so amused and after a week or so, he started hissing. Eventually I heard a few little help-me squeals from the furry Ninja-kitty and I knew Mr. Binks had endured enough of wearing hanging kittens as some kind of ornament.

Bunny the Kitten did not discriminate in her play and hung also from Sara and I. From our ears as we slept, from the backs of our heads as we tried to watch tv. She stalked us from beneath chairs and left multitudes of tiny scratches and bites all around our ankles. I showed up at work one morning looking like I'd been on a date with Edward Scissorhands. My hands, wrists and arms were a maze of scratches all of which matched nicely, the scratches on my neck, cheeks and ears. Both Sara and I took to sleeping completely under the blankets with our heads wrapped and covered in self-defense.

I don't understand it. Years ago I had a houseful of kids, cats, dogs and a variety of other furry things in cages. I went about my business, did the laundry, cooked dinner, got everyone off to school.........it seemed to work.

Not sure why it worked then and it doesn't now, but I know one thing for sure. It doesn't. Bunny the Kitten went back to live with her furry little brothers and sisters. I wish her well and bet she'll grow up to be a really swell grown-up cat.
Just not on my watch.

The dilemma then was.........how to engage Mr. Binks in some sort of aerobic activity and shed a few of those pounds the vet is so worried about. How, I had asked him straight-out, do you get a sleeping cat off the couch and into an excercise program?? Just pick him up and throw him on the treadmill????

I'm not sure we've found the final answer, but I bought Mr. Binks a new buddy that he seems to like alot. And the cool thing is that his new buddy doesn't hang off his tail, hang from my nostril while I'm trying to sleep or bite Sara's toes when she's walking up the stairs. He doesn't fight at all.



I'm no veterinarian nor expert, but I highly recommend a floating scouring pad in the sink as a great (and cheap!) companion.

Mr. Binks still has a girth-problem.

But he is blissfully happy as the sole and reigning King of the House.

Are you undecided????

Word has it one of the presidential candidates supports a movement to outlaw pack-tripping in the Himalayas. Yeah. You read it here first.

An Alien World Below

A short drive from the Saturday morning downtown Farmer's Market in Des Moines is a turn-off that leads to a gravel path. Follow it past the weeds, keeping an eye on the power lines, and you find yourself in a different world.

My son works on billboards and tells me of the interesting locations and sometimes difficult terraine he has to negotiate to reach them. "All you have to do is follow the power lines, Mom...."

So we did. We followed them alongside railroad tracks, rows of which run under the East 14th Street bridge, a bridge that I've crossed hundreds of times over the years I've lived in Des Moines. I just never gave much thought to the world below.

I gave it some thought last winter when he called and mentioned that the billboard on which he was working had just "leaned" in the wind. Leaned????

"Well, it just sort of gently started to tip..."

"While you were on it??"

"Yup. It stopped, though."

"So it just started to lean and then it stopped??"

"Right."

"And what did you do???"

"We got the hell off there, that's what we did."

I didn't ask how high up in the air he was when the billboard began to tip. The leaning had stopped. He was safe on the ground. Really, how high could it have been??

Really, really high. REALLY high. I took this photo from the ground below the bridge.



Taken with my zoom lens, this is the same billboard that started to lean while Mike and his crew were changing the picture. The board itself is 40-some feet ABOVE the surface of the East 14th Street bridge.



And the expanse below is like an alien world.

Aliens with spray cans, that is.

See what I mean? I kept thinking someone was going to pop out of the weeds and ask me to take them to my leader. It's spooky down there. It's a world of broken bottles, random castaway car parts and suspicious paths leading off into the woods through which, if you squinted and parted the leaves, you can make out the shape of tents fashioned from tarp.

This is also a world of mosquitoes. Zillions of mosquitoes, all of whom lie in the weeds in wait for the next unsuspecting warm-blooded entree.




Mike assured me these are the bones of a deer. Maybe I've seen too many episodes of C.S.I. but I wasn't interested in sticking around long enough to find out. We hiked back to the car with a new understanding of the phrase, "the other side of the tracks."

See that dark little block off in the distance, the one that has a little point on the top?

That's 801 Grand.

SIX MONTHS LATER.........Todd and Shaylon WHERE ARE YOU.....

After two years of weekly lock-ins in a classroom, it's been nearly 6 months since they turned us loose. Coordinating schedules for a reunion beer is a trick they never taught us in the Edgewater Building but a bunch of us managed to find our way to the perfect place ------ TR's on steak fry night.......





..........where our Molly is working nights as our favorite Irish bartender.









We're still fun. We're still a little goofy.



Nothing much has really changed. A job change here, a new baby on the way there. The grandbabies are fine,Jerry is on his way to Mexico again, Kelli's brother will be home on leave soon. Patrick has started Kindergarten and Justin is concerned about the estrogen in his junior-high lunch milk.






And things still get a little blurry as the evening wears on.)(NOTE TO SELF: WEAR YOUR GLASSES, DEB) Paula and her hubby left before I brought out the camera, but they were there to laugh with us too. And now we all want Lindsey to tell us how we measured up to the descriptions she'd gotten from Kelli...

Great to see you guys!!!
XOXOXO

POSTCARDS from the ROAD

I travel quite a bit for work.
People ask me all the time.....what exactly do you do when you're out of town??
Well, I usually spend two out of four days in airports. But once I get into my rental car and hit the road, the scenery is pretty nice.







This past weekend I worked in Incline Village on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe.


I didn't take my camera out and start snapping pictures the first day. The first day it was sunny and beautiful and the water was an unbelievable turquoise blue.

I was too preoccupied with driving on the mountain roads to do much looking, much less pull over and shoot pictures over the edge. Mountains and cliffs scare me mostly. After driving on them for a couple of days I'm ok, but those first few round-the-bends at high altitude pretty much are white-knuckle moments for me. (Have I ever told you about the first day I trained as a tour driver in Glacier Park????)


I finally got out of town and out into the open spaces to take some pictures my last day at Tahoe. It was a bit rainy, overcast and grey. And it was still incredibly beautiful.





The purpose of my travels is to work with clients who own American Craft Galleries in various parts of the country. Each one of them is similar in that they carry my company product line, Sticks. Each one is unique in that they carry a variety of works by other American Craft artists. I spend my free time wandering around their stores mumbling to myself, "I really need to redecorate...."

They are fabulous stores. Each of them reflects not only the regional style of the local community but the unique personality of the stores owner.






Saturday these two little shoppers stopped by to browse. Dressed like pirates with homemade eye-patches, they explained they were on their way "to a REAL pirate party!!!" but still had time to sit and play some chess on one of our tables with custom-carved chess pieces. I don't think they really had a clue how to play chess. But they sure were cute and had plenty to say about the exciting day ahead of them.



This weekend the owners of the gallery for whom I was working made reservations for me at a very cool bed and breakfast. I had my choice of rooms, each one with it's own balcony overlooking fabulous stands of tall pines. It's hard to tell from the photo but this bed is about as high as my kitchen counter. I felt kinda like a princess sleeping in it, but I had to take a running leap from the far corner of the room just to get into the thing. It was a lovely place. All that was missing was a mountain-style cabana boy (maybe in a flannel shirt???) He could say mountain-guy kinds of things to me while he dried my back after my shower. Stuff like, "Tomorrow I'm going to chop down a tree" and "Yeah, those scars on my neck are from wrestling a bear." I like it when guys say stuff like that.

Uhh-hemmmmmmm.....I digress......

The first measurable snow of the year had fallen at Incline the day before we arrived and everyone was excited in anticipation of ski season. I checked out the weather back home before I flew out of Reno where it was a brisk (but lovely to my Midwest skin) 40 degrees. Hearing it was nearly 90 degrees and humid like summer in Iowa, I just had to stop and take one more picture of autumn in the mountains.



It took a full day of travel through two airports to get back home but thanks to United Airlines choice to run in-flight episodes of The Office and The New Adventures of Old Christine I laugh (perhaps to the mild annoyance of my napping neighbors) allllllll the way home.

WHY on a perfect, blue-sky Saturday??????

It's a perfect late-summer day.

I am driving along, minding my own business in the WalMart parking lot when.....perchance crosses my path, a man driving a little silver Honda. He turns wide the wrong way, into the very one-way aisle in which I am driving, the correct way.

The man in the silver Honda is now blocking traffic, but that's ok. I have to drive very very slowly and carefully to get around him but that's ok too because it's a beautiful day and I am especially forgiving on days when the sky is so blue. As I slowly move past him and since we are going in opposite directions through the same space, our drivers windows pass within inches of one another. Our windows are both open.

We're close enough now that I can see the man in the silver Honda has a mean and somewhat troubled look on his face. Puzzled, I harken back to advice from some Internet forward that tells me "when someone doesn't have a smile, brighten their day by giving them one of yours!"

It seemed to me good advice at the time I read it and surely this is the perfect moment to put it into practice. I am nothing, if not a day-brightener.

We are now passing close enough to one another that I can see the hairs on the arm hanging out his window. I look straight into his eyes (behind their cheap sunglassses), smile really big and I mention to the man with the mean face in a happy and pleasant voice as I pass, "You are going the wrong direction, honeybee."

Yes, I DID call him "honeybee". I did. But only as a term of generic endearment and remember, I used a very happy and pleasant voice too. I said it loud enough so that he could hear, but I emphasize that I did not shout.

As his wife smiled, waved and offered pleasantries from the passenger seat (I could be wrong, it happened really fast....) the man in the silver Honda responded by calling me a F---ING B-TCH.

I am still aghast at the response. I was, after all, just driving along minding my own biz. I'm not smiling brightly anymore. The man in the silver Honda is not only mean looking but he is also stupid. Quite likely a result of global warming. Damn that Al Gore, anyway.

In review for the Honda-driving gentlemen in my community:






This is a directional arrow.It is painted on the WalMart parking lot surface to help people who are directionally challenged know which way they are supposed to go.







Here is another shot of the arrow, close-up. Interestingly, the arrow does not change as one gets closer, it always points the same direction.


This is how parking lots work. The arrows are big and yellow, just to make sure everyone can see them. In general, these arrows pretty much keep people with anything larger than a pea-sized brain going in the right direction.

In the absence of any comprehension of directional arrows, one can also observe the manner in which cars are parked in the aisles as an indication of which direction one should be driving.








It's a pretty good system. One aisle parks this-a-way and the next aisle parks that-a-way. They use it lots of places. For example, in nearly every parking lot in the entire United States of America including Alaska and Hawaii and Puerto Rico which isn't a state but wants to be because they think we have such good parking lot sytems in place.



I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the man in the silver Honda does not get out much. Perhaps the man in the silver Honda was not really mean. Perhaps he is a dumb-ass that should have his license taken away. Or, perhaps he was just trying to find his way to the OPTICAL Department at WalMart for a pair of new driving glasses.










So close...........and yet so far away.
He was driving down this very aisle in the wrong direction. Keen observer that she undoubtedly is, I'll just betcha his wife noticed it, too.



Seeeeeee??????????? I was right, honeybee.

Scary Bugs and Political Correctness

The buzz of the Cicada's has returned to the trees. I love these big locusts. The sound of them is a song of summer to me. I remember plucking the crunchy abandoned locust shells off the gnarly bark of the trees in my grandmother's front yard and collecting them in a shoe box for Show and Tell in elemantary school. Officially, according to the Entymology Department at Iowa State University, this years chorus is officially known as Brood XIII. We last heard from their parents in 1990. While the song of the locusts buzz a continuous daily background to the close of my summer, all is not peaceful in the world of the locust. As is often the case when you navigate the world with multiple legs and red eyes,it is not easy being a bug. Having noticed plenty of these huge, menacing wasps hovering over my driveway and patio my ears perked when WHO-radio took a call from a listener on the subject this morning. I knew they were called Cicada Killers. Apparently there is a movement underway in the bug world to bestow them with a kinder, gentler name. Knowledge being power, I've done my research and heretofore I shall refer to these critters by their new name, Cicada Hawks. Seems weird to me. While they are big enough to be a bird, they are not a bird. However, with not a single class in entymology to my name, I defer to the folks educated in all things segmented and thoraxed. Cicada Hawks, they shall be. Perhaps you have ducked and run into the house just like me, when one of these Cicada Hawks buzzed your yard. Not to worry. They are docile, non-aggressive wasps and perfectly (sort of) harmless (depending on whether you are a non-threatening being of the human variety arriving home from work or if you are a Cicada Locust just winging your way through the neighborhood looking for a nice shade tree). Cicada Hawks reportedly are discriminating diners and human flesh just doesn't suit their taste. They are also dedicated parents and the whole nasty business of attacking my beloved Cicada Locusts is all in the name of healthy offspring. This is where it gets ugly. The Cicada Hawk stings the Cicada. This paralyzes the locust but does not kill it. Then, in a gesture that reminds me of some demented serial killer dragging his drugged victim through the night streets down into his subway lair.........the hawk drags the locust down into the ground and tucks it in near it's pupa (baby cicada hawks, in bug-worldese) where............I warned you it was going to get ugly......the babies will eventually eat the locust while it's still alive. Yikes. As with many horror stories, all this takes place underground so we can just pretend it's not happening and go on about our merry way. Just know that if you have Cicada Hawks buzzing about your flowers and bushes, there is some nasty business going on beneath your feet. The tragedy of it all is the life cycle of the Cicada Locust whom emerges from the ground ONLY once every 17 years. It seems to me a particularly unwelcoming sort of gesture that my yard would be filled with herds of their Cicada Hawk nemesis and especially ironic that instead of killing the locust, they simply sting them and drag them.........right back underground from whence they recently emerged. The whole seris of events reminds me of Season One of "24". Speaking of nasty...... In the spirit of National Geographic nature specials, killing cicada's isn't the ONLY thing Cicada Hawks do. For more fascinating (seriously, it's a GREAT site) photos and info on bugs, check out www.whatsthatbug.com where they honored the Cicada Killer....er, Hawk....by naming it July 2007's Bug of the Month.

I had hoped to add a video clip to this post but the dance between me and technology is an awkward one. We have yet to find synchronicity or grace in our relationship.
I'll continue to practice. In the meantime, check out the clip at this web address, I found it completely by accident when searching for info on cicadas and it made me laugh out loud. It's really great. http://campjinx.pictureshowfilms.com/index.php/archives/225

Taste of Summer

I'm pretty good with a glass bowl and a wooden spoon, but notsomuch with appliances that plug into the wall. I remember watching my uncles take turns standing in the basement of my grandmother's house, one foot on the top of the ice cream freezer, cranking it manually until the sugary milk inside turned to ice cream.

Now I just call my boys over and ask them to take care of the technical details.

Later we noticed a parade of little red ants marching across my patio. I don't mind red ants, really. I don't see them very often. They seem to keep to themselves.
Reflecting back on days at the creek in Bondurant,Mike points out that when provoked, little red ants will attack and bite the heck out of you.



These were especially tiny little guys and really seemed to be minding their own biz?? Bite???? Nik and I are not convinced.





OUUUCH!!!!!! Ok, so I guess it's just best not to provoke them, huh?

Homemade ice cream and ant-stomping : the taste of summer in Iowa.