Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Random Thoughts
I was marveling at our children tonight. Every one of them has the skill of self-occupancy. They can do things alone and enjoy their own company. That's a great skill, one that will come in handy as they move into adulthood.
Hubby and I rode the motorcycle out to the house of friends. It's been mighty warm here today, so I was wearing (am still wearing, in fact) a shorty, skirty shorts outfit with wide legs. Try wearing that on a motorcycle sometime. Weeeeee! Wind! I had to hold it down to keep it from going all Marilyn Monroe on me. As we were approaching our friends' house, we passed under a giant agricultural sprinkler that was hitting the road. We got a little wet, but the wind dried us off within the space of a mile. Cool.
Hubby and I rode the motorcycle out to the house of friends. It's been mighty warm here today, so I was wearing (am still wearing, in fact) a shorty, skirty shorts outfit with wide legs. Try wearing that on a motorcycle sometime. Weeeeee! Wind! I had to hold it down to keep it from going all Marilyn Monroe on me. As we were approaching our friends' house, we passed under a giant agricultural sprinkler that was hitting the road. We got a little wet, but the wind dried us off within the space of a mile. Cool.
Labels: children, husband, marilyn monroe, motorcycle, weather, wind
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Sitting Zazen on a Motorcycle
Hubby and I went for a motorcycle ride today. The ride was a benefit for a nonprofit organization. Benefit rides are quite popular among motorcyclists, with so many being scheduled during pleasant weather that you could go on one every single weekend through the summer if you like. When hubby and I first starting riding motorcycle, I felt so European on the back of the bike. Now that we've been riding for several years, it feels like I'm sitting zazen. When I'm on the back of a bike, I can't get out of the position I've willingly put myself in. I can barely move and my muscles cramp up. I stretch as much as I can, but mostly I have to just live with the discomfort. (Ever get an itchy ear when wearing a full face helmet?) Couple the usual physical discomfort with today's stickety-stinkin' heat and you've got the makings of a great zazen practice.
The mind rolls with the miles . . . look at the cows . . . watch out for the road kill . . . someone piled rocks from their farm field in a long pile by some trees . . . just like in Shawshank Redemption . . . ice cream . . . if I could create a Ben & Jerry's flavor, what would it be . . . Mary, Mary, quite contrary . . . Mary, Mary, Quite Raspberry . . . Crocodile Hunter . . . not the young one, Steve Irwin, the other one, Crocodile Dundee . . . didn't he marry his co-star after the movies . . . oh, we just crossed a river . . . check out the sunflowers . . . what am I going to blog about . . . Ben & Jerry's . . . sitting zazen on a motorcycle . . . God, my shoulders ache . . . .
By the end of the ride, the mind empties and you can't think of anything anymore. The wind just keeps rushing by.
The mind rolls with the miles . . . look at the cows . . . watch out for the road kill . . . someone piled rocks from their farm field in a long pile by some trees . . . just like in Shawshank Redemption . . . ice cream . . . if I could create a Ben & Jerry's flavor, what would it be . . . Mary, Mary, quite contrary . . . Mary, Mary, Quite Raspberry . . . Crocodile Hunter . . . not the young one, Steve Irwin, the other one, Crocodile Dundee . . . didn't he marry his co-star after the movies . . . oh, we just crossed a river . . . check out the sunflowers . . . what am I going to blog about . . . Ben & Jerry's . . . sitting zazen on a motorcycle . . . God, my shoulders ache . . . .
By the end of the ride, the mind empties and you can't think of anything anymore. The wind just keeps rushing by.
Labels: ben and jerry's, blog, buddhism, discomfort, husband, ice cream, minnesota, motorcycle, weather, zazen
Friday, July 27, 2007
It's a Car Wash, Ladies & Gentlemen!
It was cooler and less humid today, after yesterday's rain. It made for a good day for a car wash, but this didn't happen of my own self-motivated accord. When I returned from dropping my daughter off for a birthday party, I found my Lovin' Spouseful out scrubbing his motorcycle. He had a bucket full of sudsy water and a hose at the ready. The suds were the result of Armor All Car Wash Concentrate. It's an eye irritant, but it smells mighty fine. I didn't experience the eye irritant effects first-hand; it just says so on the bottle, so I'll take their word for it. The washing of the motorcycle looked so fun, I simply had to grab the bucket, brush and hose and have at my Mazda. Oooh! Shiny! And most of the bug guts are now gone off the front. Bonus!
Labels: armor all, car, car wash, husband, mazda, motorcycle, weather
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
The Rattletrap
I wish I'd had my camera with tonight when we went out for pizza. Parked a couple of car-lengths ahead of our car was a motorcycle with a trailer and sidecar. I use the terms motorcycle, trailer and sidecar loosely here. Very loosely. The motorcycle was old school in a way that was dinosauric. The whole setup was cobbled together, but just barely.
Now, I'm all for recycling and the creative reuse of things, but this was danger incarnate. If you're an adult and want to risk your life on a rickety cycle that doesn't come anywhere near road safety requirements, fine. It's your life. What was horrific about the contraption was the sidecar - which appeared to be four unfinished pieces of plywood held to a metal frame by no more than chewing gum or bandaids. (I'm exaggerating about the chewing gum and bandaids, but not much.) Inside the sidecar was an infant car seat so old that it was no longer road-worthy. Actually, the sidecar looked like a mini-trailer filled with junk, which is all I'd transport in it. But, no . . . a CHILD got into it. Thankfully, he was wearing a helmet, although I'm not sure how much good that would do if the whole thing gave way. The situation makes me shudder and pray, for the child's sake, that the thing is better constructed than it looked. Honestly, when it comes down to the safety of children, get something street legal.
Now, I'm all for recycling and the creative reuse of things, but this was danger incarnate. If you're an adult and want to risk your life on a rickety cycle that doesn't come anywhere near road safety requirements, fine. It's your life. What was horrific about the contraption was the sidecar - which appeared to be four unfinished pieces of plywood held to a metal frame by no more than chewing gum or bandaids. (I'm exaggerating about the chewing gum and bandaids, but not much.) Inside the sidecar was an infant car seat so old that it was no longer road-worthy. Actually, the sidecar looked like a mini-trailer filled with junk, which is all I'd transport in it. But, no . . . a CHILD got into it. Thankfully, he was wearing a helmet, although I'm not sure how much good that would do if the whole thing gave way. The situation makes me shudder and pray, for the child's sake, that the thing is better constructed than it looked. Honestly, when it comes down to the safety of children, get something street legal.
Labels: children, creative, danger, motorcycle, pizza, recycling, safety
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Craptastic
Although it isn't legally summer yet, yesterday was one of those perfect summer days - good for motorcycling, sitting outside drawing, bonfiring and tenting. Sunny, warm (70-80 degrees Fahrenheit), some puffy clouds, which almost seemed to threaten rain in the morning, but decided against it.
While the kids were occupied with friends (sleepovers have been the thing to do now that school's out), Husband and I went for a motorcycle ride around a nearby lake. Gorgeous, although Husband took a bug to the ear at one point.
When we returned, Eldest Son and Husband sat down to watch a little TV. SciFi channel was playing the movie "Lake Placid II." Eldest said that it was craptastic movie day on SciFi. Isn't craptastic a great word? Eldest was referring to movies with plots so predictable that you know what's going to happen before the movie even starts. All you have to do is insert your favorite mutant animal and you've got the storyline. The Lake Placid movies are about giant, killer crocs. After "Lake Placid II," the movie "Ice Spiders" was in cue. It was so craptastic that the guys didn't even bother to watch it.
Meanwhile, I sat on the back step listening to music and doing some of the drawing exercises out of "Keys to Drawing with Imagination," the book I mentioned in yesterday's post. I filled about three pages in a drawing pad; some of the results are above. The first image is of the exercise "Take a Line on a Walk." In this exercise, you draw a quick doodle first, a line that hooks up to itself. Don't think about this too hard - it's a doodle. The next step, what Bert Dodson calls noodling, is to fill in the doodle using various techniques. The first one I did is the large shaded one at the top, followed by the one just below it with the spiralling lines.
The second image above is a portion of a page on which I continued more exercises from Dodson's book. I didn't care for how much of the page turned out, but I did like the rabbit, cat, and flowers I came up with. The cat is the outline of Rotten Spotty, who kept sneaking out and dashing off every time the back door opened yesterday. Little bugger.
The third image is from the "Building Blocks" exercise in the book. Drawing bricks or stones (or stubbling, dotting, or stippling), you're supposed to stack them up until you have another image. This is one of my favorite exercises because I've always loved mosaics. I've drawn these sorts of trees before, but I particularly like the stone one here.
As for the bonfiring and tenting I mentioned in my opening paragraph, last night Young Son Number Two had a friend over. We started a fire in the fire pit. It wasn't really a bonfire, although the kids like to call it that. It was a campfire. It took some doing to get going because we didn't have enough small kindling to keep the fire alight after the paper burned up. When we finally had a decent fire going, we had the requisite s'mores, although we prefer to eat them disassembled. Afterwards, Young Son and his friend slept out in the tent. Ahh, summer. It's anything but craptastic.
Labels: bert dodson, craptastic, doodling, drawing, fire, husband, minnesota, motorcycle, movie, music, rotten spotty, scifi, sons, summer, weather
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Beautiful Day
It's a gorgeous day in Minnesota. Eighty-some degrees, sunny, no bugs to speak of . . . the perfect day for taking a nap in a hammock. Not gonna do that, though. Don't have a hammock. Going on a motorcycle ride with the husband. Perfect day for that, too.
Labels: beauty, hammock, husband, minnesota, motorcycle, weather
Saturday, April 28, 2007
In the Zone
Oh, what a glorious Minnesota spring day! I was up-and-attem, ready to go this morning. My first task was taking our pile of recycling to the landfill - no, not to dump it in with the garbage, but to put it in the recycling containers. We've found this to be much easier than waiting for the city to collect it. The city collects it every other week, but we can never remember the day and they are quite persnickety about how we prepare it, so we'd rather load it in the car once a month and go for a little drive.After the recycling, I decided I'd take on some yard work. I'm not much for gardening, but the herb garden was filled with leaves and long, scraggly, dried-up herbs and the job didn't look that strenuous, so I got to work on cleaning it out. What you seen in the photo is the end result. Turns out that herbs grow beautifully in our sandy soil, while most other veggies and flowers do not. We created this herb garden a couple of years ago using bricks left over from remodeling. (We're hoping the herbs come back. If not, it's time to replant.) The bricks are a local variety from when we had brickyards in town between the 1890s and 1920s. They are quite soft and not at all appropriate for landscaping as they flake and break easily. The one saving grace about this is that the bricks came from the ground and they're going back to the ground - another form of recycling.
While I was working in the yard, I figured I could get some thinking time in. I'm trying to imagine a character's home and belongings for a short story and thought that gardening would free my mind for the task. Not so. The more I worked, the less I thought. I slipped into a zone of no-thought, which was quite meditative. The same thing happened later, when the hubby and I hopped on the motorcycle and went for a ride. It's my first of the season. The hubby's been out a number of times already. I don't have a motorcycle endorsement, or a cycle of my own, so I'm always a passenger. It's fun to sit and let someone else handle the driving. Without having the worry of watching the road, I immediately slip into the zone, which is enhanced by the buzz of the cycle and the rushing wind. The zone is so relaxing that after being on the bike for about an hour, I have a tendency to fall asleep. This is not a good thing, for obvious reasons. Maybe, if we had a massive touring bike with armrests, I could get away with this. I have to concentrate really really hard to keep from falling asleep. If I do start nodding off, my body slips a little and I jerk myself awake. My husband jokes that I need to have bungie cords strapped around me to hold me on. I just pray that being in the zone won't cause an accident one day.
Labels: bricks, characters, garden, herbs, husband, minnesota, motorcycle, recycling, short story, sleep, writing, zone
Friday, March 23, 2007
The World's Fastest Indian
The hubby, Young Son Number Two and I just finished watching the movie The World's Fastest Indian. All I can say is that Anthony Hopkins is one of the best actors of all time. Dang! It was all I could do to keep from bawling. Fabulous.
Labels: acting, anthony hopkins, husband, indian, motorcycle, movie, son
