Random Thoughts

The golf game last Thursday was a disaster, I was off my game nearly the whole round. The ninth hole was my best, it was like I finally woke up. On the other hand I played yesterday and actually made par on the fourth hole – I couldn’t believe it. My first par. On the green in two and so close to the hole it just went straight in when I tapped it. Of course on an earlier hole I shot a twelve – seven strokes to get the ball in the cup. I don’t know why that happens. It’s one example of why I love golf and another of why I hate this maddening game - in the same round!

Buttons and Bones continues to trot along. It’s very satisfying when a story just about writes itself, I put my fingers on the keys and things start to happen. It’s almost like what people who don’t write think it’s like for people who do.

Have any of you ever seen pole bending at a horse show? They had a competition of it at our State Fair and it just happened to occur when a friend and I went into the arena to watch the horse judging. Pole bending is a timed event during which a horse and rider run up a row of six poles about twenty feet apart, weaving in and out as they go. They make an impossibly sharp turn at the far end and weave their way back down again. The competition we saw was for female riders fourteen and under – I think one rider was only six years old and I know another was only eight. One child rode a very tiny pony lickety split and finished third. The poles are set on small, round bases and they tip over very easily – the lightest touch from a horse going by would set a pole wobbling. If it fell over, the rider was eliminated. The fastest times were just over eleven seconds – first and second place riders were thousandths of a second apart – the slowest something over seventeen seconds. I could probably do it in a minute and a half. What was interesting was how many of the horses came into the arena dancing with eagerness to have a go.

Right on schedule, some of our maple trees are starting to show their brilliant fall colors. Autumn is my favorite season, even though I know it means winter is coming hard on its heels. I’m not as eager to embrace it as I’ve been other years, because we didn’t have a roasting-hot summer, but a rather cool one.
Attendance at our State Fair set records on several days because the weather was so pleasant. Normally sticky-hot, there were early mornings when a jacket was actually welcome.

My eyes are just about healed. The right eye is about as good as it can get, the left is still lagging, but much improved. I am so relieved and grateful!
　

Short Subjects

Yesterday I found out that I will need eye surgery on both my eyes. Fortunately, it is a fairly common surgery, with a fairly safe bet of sailing though it with no problems at all. I found out a couple of years ago that I have glaucoma in both eyes, but the eye drops I’ve been using are not bringing the pressure down enough to stop it from damaging my optic nerve. So they propose to cut tiny "trapdoors" in each eye to release liquid and ease the pressure. The surgery will take place on March 19 and April 2 and I will wear an eye patch for a few days after each procedure. Suitably ornamented with sequins, I assure you.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, a season of repentance, reflection and renewal. I wonder how many people caught up in the wildness of Mardi Gras understand it used to be a last hurrah before the stern period of Lent? I consider myself a Christian, but I’m not going to throw myself into all the stern ways of marking Lent – heck not even half of them. But then I didn’t get to go to Mardi Gras, either. :)

I want to take a long train trip early in the summer of 2010, from Minneapolis to Seattle, then down along the coast, then east to Salt Lake City, where I’ll be the speaker at a an Embroiderers’ Guild of America Convention. If anyone out there knows how to go about organizing such a trip – I’d like to stop along the way and do book signings and also take a couple of days to explore Yellowstone – please contact me. Thank you.