Oh, I Think So

I have the whole week off and thinking about it makes me wild.

The flower on the cactus from last week?  It doesn't just open and stay open.  When the sun is striking it, the flower is open.  Later in the day, it closes up.  The escargot begonia and the cactus are still alive.  Also doing well:  Sansevieria (to be specific, the bamboo shoots snake plant), orchid, two succulents, staghorn fern, Christmas cactus, aloe, and air plant.  Questionable survival:  fiddle leaf fig, the plant that convinced me I could again have plants.  What's my fave?  I am digging that little cactus and the staghorn fern but I want there to be no more death throes of plants chez moi.  Let those whose green has crossed my threshold remain green and larger and with me forever.  Amen. Yes, I watched the Royal Wedding. What was Oprah thinking when she got that dress for the ceremony.  You have all the money in the world, my friend; can't you get something that doesn't make you looking like Last Year's Senior C...

Yesterday, there was a lovely trip to the a greenhouse way out on the edge of the prairie in Grant Park, Illinois. This year I was very restrained in my purchases, acquiring an escargot begonia and a little cactus.  This morning, I looked at the cactus and a tiny flower on it had bloomed.  Lovely! Tiny cactus, tiny flower

For the past two and a half weeks I've been having such fun with a runny nose -- no significant congestion in either chest or head, just plenty of nasal racing.  On Wednesday, I thought I had turned the corner and it was getting better.  On Thursday, I woke up with some laryngitis and some less-than-attractive phlegm and made an appointment with my ENT.  On Friday, it was full-blown laryngitis and things on the hawking up front were grostesque.  People kept asking, "You sound terrible!  Why don't you go home?" I'd answer, "I feel fine.  Why waste a personal day when I don't feel sick?"  On Saturday, it was significantly still laryngitis and, yes, that other stuff was gross.  I visited my ENT who gave me not just antibiotics but told me I had to take Musinex Maximum Strength and a particular nasal spray. He also told me I had to drink eight glasses of water a day. I got the prescription filled and decided to go home and rest up.  I hacked the ...

Yesterday afternoon I went downtown to shop and fetch a book at the library.  When I was arrived, the library was in the throes of Poetry Fest.  Poets were sitting at typewriters, clacking away, creating a poem, free of charge, that they wrote on the spot on the topic of your choice, part of something called "Poems While You Wait."  Write down your name and topic, go away for almost a half hour, and when you come back, the poem has been completed.  You have the name of the author who has also initialed it. I figured I could kill time at a library and put my name on the list.  What topic?  What topic?  Others had requested a poem about love, about hope, and the little girl in front of me asked for something about ducks.  My mind went fucking blank and what sprang out of the pen?  "Expository writing."  When the gentleman who was in charge of this table of six poets -- there were three more in the lower level -- saw my request, he said, ...

Waiting for Godot?  Not comin', man! There is a grocery store a block and a half from my house and I usually go there when I get off the bus when I come home from work, the library, or shopping downtown.  This particular night, I'd had dinner in Pilsen with sister, brother-in-law, and niece and stopped at the store close to their closing time to get some bananas, parking on the roof.  Who is waiting at the back door?  This guy or perhaps gal. Geese can be ferocious, feisty, determined, and strong and just in case he/she was in a mood, I didn't want to be on the business end of that beak.  Turns out he/she was not interested in the skanky likes of me as when the electric eye saw me and let me in, he/she didn't budge. He/she may have looked at me through the door but I didn't stop to ask.

I am not going anywhere near this mess until they come up with more sand and bulldoze the water back into the lake. There was a lot of wind and there was a lot of rain and Foster Beach is flooded!  There is a second lake at Montrose Beach.