On the Road at Sunrise is for this weeks photo challenge The Golden Hour. I know I skipped last weeks challenge, sorry.
Here are a few beautiful sunsets on the water taken for last months challenge Fleeting.
That is an odd sounding word, isn’t it? It is also the theme for this week’s photo challenge. Michelle was pretty clever with that wasn’t she?
So why squirrels and a tomatoes you ask? Because of the companionability!
Believe it or not squirrels and I are quite chummy. We have many likes in common and get along very well. Well, until they get greedy with the tomatoes and then we have dumplings in common.
If vehicles were books…
If words were miles…
If cracked leather upholstery could speak…
If frogs had wings they wouldn’t bump their ass every time they hopped. 😉
I snapped a few shots as they readied her to travel yesterday and said goodbye to the 1996 Chevrolet Blazer but I wasn’t prepared for such nostalgia!
Seventeen years ago I was totally in love with that piece of machinery but it hasn’t been driven in over six months and it was taking up space. It was old and out of style, it had become temperamental and needed repairs and maybe it reminded me too much of something else. The melancholy definitely goes much deeper than a defective starter, a dented bumper or Kool-Aid stains in the rear compartment and I was just thinking…
She has seen her fair share of asphalt, dirt roads and white rock. From daily commutes to long trips, from mountain tops to sandy beaches…
Our oldest son vacationed in it when his first child was just an infant. They traveled to San Antonio. That infant is a sophomore in high school now. The oldest daughter borrowed it from time to time when she needed reliable transportation — when her babies were literally babies. Our youngest two children learned to drive behind the wheel of the hunter green hooptie and I’m sure they entrusted more than a few secrets to her, I know I did.
If The Mean Green Traveling Machine were a novel she would be epic. The odometer read 220,771 miles. Actually it was 220,771.4 when the man winched her onto the trailer.
Here’s praying the donation makes a positive difference in someone’s life and hoping the hooptie doesn’t gossip.
Don’t expect to see the #1 son and the husband. They hid in the shadows drinking Dos Equis because they are the most interesting men in the world. No really! I had a few of those lovely green bottles and I must admit it was pretty exciting. 😉
We went fishing Saturday and my oh my how the time flew by.
Okay the truth is the guys fished while we (my granddaughter and moi) took pictures. We of course caught a lot more of what we were after. As a matter of fact the two of us snagged nearly two hundred shots yet three men with six tackle boxes and four rods couldn’t catch a single fish! Not even a catfish! In a lake as large as Tawakoni that takes some real lack of skill. 😉
My husband says I shouldn’t poke fun being as I have a serious case of lack-a-jerk. True, the fish are usually too fast for me but a desperate fisherman resorting to the ritual of the frog dive, that I can catch.
The dive left the fish laughing so hard they couldn’t bite. Have you ever tried to laugh and eat at the same time? It is hard to do. It is hard being a fish, I understand these things. It’s also illegal to be on the water at night without the proper lights (which we had left in the truck) so we turned starboard heading to shore and watched the sun set on another beautiful day… another fleeting moment in time.
See how time flies…
How time flies
I have no photo of my head in the sand, which would be appropriate while admitting I do not want to deal with my current reality. My mother is ill… critically ill and I am a “mama’s girl” which I admit without shame.
She is/has always been my touchstone, my constant reminder to move forward despite obstacles, my assurance that ‘this too shall pass’… Tonight she lays in an Intensive care unit fighting for her life and I long for a quiet place in a green meadow beneath a sunrise to remind me how marvelous nature is even as life takes its course . Pleading to the heavens not now… not now. Let me sit on the green meadow and meditate on the rising sun of hope. Let me find the courage to endure whatever the future holds. I can hear her gentle whisper,”Keep your obligations. Move on and do not look back except for a glimpse and a smile.”
Longing for serenity
I am trying mother. And here is my submission for this weeks photo challenge : Escape.
Sara Rosso posted a beautiful example for this weeks photo challenge.
This weeks theme is Pattern. I have been doing a little sewing (a little is all I know how to do) but that is not the pattern Sara had in mind. Shucks! I had just relearned how to load the bobbin.
Oh well, look at this cool Polyphemus I found last week.
And this is what he/she looked like in November. Not the same pattern but lovely still. 
Alas I ate a portion so you could see the pattern here. Yum Hmm, the sacrifices I make. 😉 
We went for the annual camp-out this past weekend. I expected a small crowd and a somber mood considering it was our first gathering on the lake since my dear aunt left this world last June and this was her thing, she loved it.
Only thirty five or forty of us were in attendance so the crowd was small but the mood was far from somber. I should have known better than to think that.
We do not dwell on sorrow. No, we mustn’t… we cannot. And we did not. Instead we laughed and reminisced about our rambunctious youth spent on the shores of Navarro Mills. A time when our numbers were more, a time when strength and stamina ran hard through our veins, a time when we were too confident to recognize the gift.
Remembering makes us aware of our weakness but we remember anyway because it also brings us comfort. These are my memories:
I remember tents dotting the landscape, fried eggs on an open campfire, horse shoes clanking, blankets of bluebonnets, chasing birds along the banks and walking for miles in the sweltering heat. Swimming in the murky water, boat rides, the smell of roasted marshmallows and fishing along the shoreline. I remember crystal clear nights and counting stars until we fell asleep, long walks to the toilet, frigid dawns stealing slumber, and anxiously awaiting the next sunrise so we could do it all again.
With nostalgia I watch our children and grandchildren between sneaking stares at the last man standing (my father’s baby brother) and hope they understand what this gathering silently implies, these things you must remember.
The Real Janna Hill in 