sitting in a beautiful focal point

This post is not a "Giving Tree" knockoff. Yes the Giving Tree stump was a good place for an old man to sit but that's not what this is about.

In the last three houses my wife and I have called home, we had some wonderful places to sit. We had leather couches, oak floors, entertainment available at the flick of the remote, snacks within easy reach, etc. But that wasn't good enough and I could not be content until I had another place to sit. So I began to create picturesque places to sit and enjoy looking at beautiful flowers, trees, little birds freeloading out of birdfeeders and drinking out of the birdbath (birds don't seem to mind drinking their bathwater). These were places that were created with elaborate landscaping requiring great effort on my part including the following: mulching, fence installing, pergola building and all manner of outside decorating with with stones, driftwood, and outdoor furniture.

The picture you see before you is the most recently completed place to sit. It features a custom built bench from Waverly, Illinois. The wood in the bench is from a locally grown Catalpa tree which fell to the saw to make room for the new town Firehouse. I didn't know Catalpa trees were good for anything, except my wife once tried to smoke a green Catalpa bean.

The cobblestone under the bench is from the Menards in Avon, Indiana. The Arbor Vitae evergreens are from Lowe's in Avon. All told, everything on sale, the total cost of this seating area was less than $300. I've been told it's pretty. I've been told it is a focal point for the landscaping. But I've told myself that I have once again built a wonderful place to sit, but in which I will seldom or never sit.

I've decided I am just not the type of person to sit in beautiful focal points. I like to build them, they're a lot of fun to plan and create but instead of sitting there I'd rather create another place to sit. Yes, the next place to sit will be a patio just outside the back sliding doors. But I won't sit there either, just admire it from the kitchen while eating my supper.

The funny thing is I don't see anybody else sitting in their focal points either. I drive by homes everyday where I'm sure there must be wonderful places to sit, but in spite of that, the homeowners have added on a screen room or sun room, then a patio, then landscaping with a beautiful seating area in an "outdoor room."

I even have books with dozens of pictures of benches in focal points and nobody is sitting in those published pictures of places to sit. There might be an occasional cat sitting on a bench waiting to maul a poor little unsuspecting, freeloading bird but there are no people there.

What is it? Do we admire the concept of sitting? Do we long to sit? Do we fantisize about sitting in a beautiful focal point? Maybe I'll figure that out as I'm building the next place to sit.

what did you say about Hoosiers?

I'm told that people who live in Missouri define "Hoosier" (the nickname of Indiana residents) as anything that is "hick" "hillbilly" "redneck" etc. Things that might invoke the "that's so hoosier" epithaph might be:

a bearded grandma spitting tobacco into a spitoon,
6 "parts" cars stored in the weeds in a front yard,
12 dogs living under the front porch
a couch and wringer washing machine in permanent residence on the front porch

The implication is that people living in Missouri are so cultured, refined and sophisticated that "hoosiers" are somehow beneath them.

So what would you call a Missouri license plate tied onto a motorcycle with string?

you get a big blue card

Some friends invited my wife and I to attend Monday night's Colts vs Rams at the RCA Dome in Indy. It was a great game and I am still smiling two days after the game.

In the days leading up to the game I wondered if I should get jerseys to wear at the game. After shopping at two Wal-Marts, a Target and a sports store in a mall it finally occurred to me that I didn't need a jersey, I was going to get a big blue card. I had read in the paper that every fan upon entering the stadium was going to get a blue card to wave during the game. What a great solution. I could satisfy some of the rabid fan(atic) criteria and it wouldn't cost me $50 bucks for jerseys.

We got our cards immediately after being frisked. Yes everyone was frisked. It became instantly obvious that the cards were not popular with every fan. The floor was littered with occasional blue cards all the way to our seats, Rams fans... ya think?

The card was roughly 16x24 inches, Colts blue on one side and white on the other with instructions for its use. Some of the instructions included the following:

1. Hold the card on both sides and shake the card up and down at these points during the game:
a. For Colts player introductions.
b. During the opening kickoff.
c. On EVERY third down play when the Colts are on defense.
d. After the Colts score (touchdown or field goal).

2. Please make sure the blue side of the card is facing away from you. (That's my favorite instruction.) (Duh.) Our goal is to turn the RCA Dome into a sea of blue for the Monday Night Football cameras.

3. Be loud and proud to show the rest of the NFL why Indy has the greatest fans in football and why the RCA Dome is the loudest stadium in the National Football League.

It didn't take people long to figure out that if you complied with the instructions by holding the cards up, you wouldn't see the game and no one else would either. A few more cards hit the floor.

I will say that it was very impressive to see thousands of blue cards waving around the stadium at the start of the game. Then the Colts stumbled, muffed the ball, missed a field goal, and in general scared all the fans half to death. Why do my wife and I always assume at this point in any game that our presence at the game has brought the team bad luck? Meanwhile the Rams scored again and again and again and the blue cards were nearly forgotten, until the game turned into a blowout and restless fans realized that the blue card would make a wonderful massive blue paper airplane whose flight pattern could reach the field.

My blue card is sitting on my desk at the office. I waved it for everyone in the office the next day. Yes, I gloated over being at the game, and getting to witness the Young and Rice record fall to Manning and Harrison. The game delivered everything from fear and surprise to joy and triumph.

I think I'm going to take my blue card to church on Sunday. It would be great if everyone in Indy took their blue card to church and shook the card up and down during the congregational singing, the offering, and if the preacher said something really funny. But be sure to hold the blue side facing away from you.

the weird uncle

There is a weird uncle in every family. You can spot them right away when the whole family is together at a major event like a funeral or a wedding. I am not a wedding crasher but I end up at a lot of weddings and funerals and there is no escaping the weirdness.

Let me be quick to say that I don't think any of my siblings are weird and none of my kids or their kids are weird but somehow the weird gene shows up at big family gatherings.
My other disclaimer is that the weird uncle may be a pretty nice guy and in other groups he might be the most normal person, coolest, nicest, most intelligent, and most astute person out of a hundred. But he is with his family for this occasion and within his family he drinks out of the other side of the cup. He's in a close talking family, or a loud family, or a country family, or a city family, and whatever his family is, he's not.

I'll give you some examples: You go to a funeral and you quickly recognize that most of the men are follically challenged, they are bald, really bald, bald as a billiard ball bald. And then there is the one guy who is loaded with hair all over his head and he has it pulled back into an enormous pony tail. He is the weird uncle. He just doesn't fit. Where did he come from? At other gatherings where people have heads with hair, long beautiful hair, shining, gleaming, streaming etc. etc. hair, he wouldn't be the weird uncle. He would just be another hairy person. In that gathering the weird uncle might be the one guy who has a number 3 or 8 on everything he owns. He has a jacket with automobile part and lubricant advertisements all over it with a matching hat that he never takes off.

Sometimes there is a weird aunt in a family crowd who dresses all in black, mostly leather, has her hair slicked back, and hangs out with the guys. Again, there's nothing wrong with that and in many settings she would not stick out except she happens to be related to a lot of symphony loving, opera attending, polo shirt wearing, pastel looking people sipping lattes.

Occasionally there is a weird friend who shows up and the friend probably takes the rap as the weird uncle or aunt just because most people at the family gathering don't know who they are. I once saw a woman who fit in that category in my mind because I didn't know who she was and she had brought her pet snake to the occasion. The snake made its home in her bra and was sticking its head out of her cleavage and flicking its tongue like snakes do. I don't remember much of the wedding but I do remember snake woman. This woman was quite noticeable and yet wouldn't have stuck out so much at the viper of the month club or the snake handling society, or the living snake attire folks.

The funny thing is, if you go to enough family gatherings, you are probably going to end up as the weird aunt or uncle. And you're normal, go figure.

grandpa's cabinets

One of the best things about being a little kid and going to your grandparents house is the occasional snooping that you get to do. I'm not talking about modern grandparents who are ruining a favorite grandkid pastime when they live in a condo on a golf course without any interesting old stuff to rummage around in. Old time grandparents like my grandparents had strange decrepit houses with creaky stairs and musty basements filled with a stained cardboard boxes and stubborn dresser drawers. If you got a chance to sneak a peak in their stuff, and you always did, you saw things that made you think your grandparents had been spies, criminals or were running an illegal landfill.

I still can picture some of those cherished moments of snooping. It was usually dark and dingy and I would carefully slide open a squeaky drawer and see foreign money with writing that looked Chinese, shotgun shells and Indian arrowheads. One of my grandpas worked at an amunition plant and he collected every kind of ammunition there was. When I opened his big old wooden cabinets in the attic it seemed to me that he had about 20 or 30 guns. Forget Narnia's woods between the worlds, this was a stockpile for the WAR between the worlds.

Still, it was the little drawers in those cabinets held the most fascination for me. They held cloves that smelled really good, stamps and postcards bearing trivial tidbits of information. There were pockets knives and watch fobs and strange looking razor blades, tools and fishing lures. It was a boy's paradise to look in grandpa's cabinets.

I've decided that I'm going to start collecting interesting odds and ends for my grandson to snoop out. What a travesty it would be to have cabinets that contained only fingernail clippers, half used tubes of Chap stick and a few pennies. What kind of lousy grandpa would that be? I want to be the kind of grandpa that evokes awe and amazement on grandchild snooping expeditions.

So I have a miniature replica of a mummified cat, a necklace with five sharks teeth, some interesting sea shells, an Australian penny (which is huge) rattlesnake rattles, a wooden cross, a few small motorcycle parts, just for starters. I can't wait till the little rascal starts to snoop and I get to call out, "Where are you little Z? You're not snooping in grandpa's cabinets are you?"

the dummy sweats......Lord of the Rings

Museums can be pretty stuffy sometimes, especially with all that talk about billions and billions of years ago there was this cosmic mud and then presto... chango.... You know what I mean?

But recently four of us went to see some real fantasy come to life with the Lord of the Rings exhibit in the Indiana State Museum in Indy. 10,000 square feet was devoted to displaying 649 objects, such as costumes, swords, spears, a cave troll, some hands on displays and lots of behind the scenes information.

The workmanship that went into each tiny detail was truly remarkable considering you don't get that close of a look at 95% of these things when you're watching the movie. I've heard the saying, "The devil is in the details" but I didn't see anything very devilish, just a lot of really hard work and careful thinking.

If you love the books, and if you love the movies, this exhibit is worth the 14 bucks for an adult admission. We spent over two hours there and had to leave because it was 11 pm and the museum staff wanted to go home.

All of the items in the exibit except two were actually used in the movie. They have the deceased Boromir, stretched out on his back in the elf canoe, with his weapons, exactly what we saw in the move. If I remember right he's made of silicon or some such thing and he looks so lifelike it is uncanny. We were told that when the exibit arrived in Houston, a few months ago, because of cold and heat, there was condensation that had formed on Boromir's face. When the museum staff unwrapped him, it looked like sweat and they screamed.

If you have a chance, check it out, but do it before January 3 because then it's headed back to New Zealand.