Upside Ann

  Indianapolis Children's Museum.  Looking down upon the dinosaur exhibit.  August 2025.  While Zupe might have preferred the sports activities or the Black Panther exhibit, I have a soft spot for dinosaurs.  If you feel the same way, I can recommend the oppotunity to watch and speak with the volunteers who are cleaning fossils.  NOW, I have a future goal.

Weeks ago - weeks! - I congratulated myself on only getting punctured on one side of my thumb from the bite of a small, unhappy dog who was maybe tired of folks complaining about the amount of periodontal disease in his mouth. The other side was shielded by my nail.  Woohoo! Since that time, the puncture healed as did the slice I made into the meat of that thumb whilst cutting a lime in half (to make that Cuban pork, mind you).  The nail side bruise just keeps getting bigger and uglier.  I don't understand why the "dead" blood in that tissue doesn't get cleaned up.  I could research that - but I could also be washing laundry or scanning photos or fixing lunch or sweeping the deck or reading my book (I have 5 waiting in the wings) or....

 I always liked this catchy tune... but OMG - the video.  WOW. "All I'm saying.... it takes a lot to love you" I'm sure he was thinking of me.  

When they were kids Barry Dodds had told him that when he'd knocked his grada's body over at the wake, it was like being buied under a dozen frozen turkeys.  Mind you, he had also told Paul that groping a woman's breast felt like squeezing a roast chicken.  Come to think of it, that kid had a werd obsession with poultry. Quick paced. Economical. Cinematic. Very, very funny.   Paul has "one of those faces", the kind of face that everybody recognizes as someone they know/knew.  He's doing his best to scam his deceased Aunt so her estate will continue to give him a very meager allowance.  He cannnot have a job.  He cannot be in trouble with the law.  He has to do 6 hours a week in volunteer work.  Mess up and all the money that remains goes to a home for wayward donkeys.  I have not actually ruined anything for you here.  This is funny, yes, but it is just a tiny bit of backstory.  You WILL still enjoy the book - and we can all ho...

Without a doubt, my mother is rolling in her grave looking at the way her yard is walking stepwise away from stability, from civilization, from uniform greenness.  What can I say? I don't like pesticides and my heart gladdens at the sight of dandelions - whether in cheerful yellow bloom or wistfull, wishfull, ephemera.  Today- Spring on Harrison - looks at the chaos I've wrought.  Smile.

 I'm thinking if I set myself up with a plan for each day - save maybe Saturday and Sunday when I'm less likely to have time to myself - I'll be more successful with sticking with this project.  So, Wednesday Zoop - which might refer to child or a recipe.  The inspiration for this: Eric Carle's book "Today is Monday". Zupe: Christmas open house in history museum 2026.  While you might not recognize the whiskery face, the medical glove hands should be a dead giveaway.  

 As my travels this year have been confined to tutoring appointments, speech therapy, and a botched up bird buy, I shall begin this series going backward in my photo roll until I hit something fun...which takes us all the back to October. Stillwater Prairie Reserve.  I needed a fall print to hang on the wall.  This is what I chose.  I like the texture of the bridge floor and the dramatic vanishing point.  The leaves invite you to walk across.  And what a blue sky!  Wish you were here.

Last spring I experimented with growing ginger.  Once again I had a hunk of ginger that was starting to sprout - so I placed it in a moist environment and then, later, planted it.  It was not an attractive plant- splindly, ragged-  until summer came and I moved it outside where it received much more light.  Over the course of the winter, once again in our dim house, the stems dried up, the leaves fell off, the plants died.  Last week I took the pot out to the flower bed, turned it upside down, and removed the soil and roots solid.  Washing, scraping with my finer, rinsing, soaking. My harvest, above.  It is nothing if not horrific.  I'm waiting for it to skitter away into a dark corner.  Anyone hungry?

  I look a lot hipper here than I actually am.  That torn knee?  The pants are just worn out.  After I became a mother, I had trouble keeping the knees in my jeans.  They make boy pants with padded, extra-strong knees, but not mom-jeans.  I try to pass this off as stylish- though anyone who watches as I invariably stick my toes through this hole when trying to don my pants knows better.  

  A year ago, I bought Zupe a parakeet, Po, named for the pilot in the final trilogy of  Star War  films.  I searched and found! someone hand-raising babies and we drove across the state to the farrrr North-East corner to pick him up.  Would have been helpful if the breeder had shared that he was very, very shy.  Zupe - not shy.  Not a good combination.  So, Po has not bonded with Zupe (or me) and I have gotten a bit over his unrelenting expression of affection for his mirrors. It has moved from PG to pretty hard R around here. My solution - he needed a buddy. My thought was to get a second male bird.  I did not want babies - mostly because I was horrified at having an egg-bound female.  (I do not know that this is a common problem in the species- it is just one of my medical nightmares.  See also IMHA, blocked tomcats, HBC.)  But- since I was getting a near baby, I worried, "What if Po became aggressive to him?"  (Finn,...

  no tiny boobies.... just a long leg- circa 1985.

Granted. This is NOT probably the best time to be reflecting on what Zupe brought home from his Halloween jaunt last October - that time was, I don't know, November 1st?  And yet, it really needs to be shared because- yeah - it just does.  I didn't go out with Zupe this year.  Kevin must have.  All I know is that when he came home, I opened up the bag and found this.   You should know that Zupe is not big on candy.  He doesn't eat chocolates.  At all.  He likes gummy candy and suckers.  And, I guess, he's discovered a fondness for - yes- you see it now, don't you?  Potatoes. I guess someone left a cauldren on their porch from which the little beggars could take their pick.   And my little beggar chose the spud.  

  I want to wear something new  but not shoes or a dress. I want to put on some reckless joy that is MUCH too big for me and  so  brightly colored that I become unrecognizable. jkkennedy note: photo from the Indianapolis Children's Museum August 2025 

  "Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick The one that makes me scream", she said" You're just like a dream..... 

Despite the brevity of this work, it is quite a short story, I walked away with multiple connections that felt significant.  And a desire to explore other works by this author.  This is always a welcome outcome.  When they were arrested, the boy and the girl claimed that they had spent the night inside, but the indignant guards swore that such a thing was impossible because they patrolled the premises tirelessly.  Furthermore, they security camera picked up everything down to a person's inner most secret thoughts. Being locked in a museum - yep- very romantic - though in my experience - no wedding dress nor naked "boy"- much more PG rated than the night this couple enjoyed.  Of course, we didn't spend the entire night locked in the museum.  Yeah, but stll, no wedding gown. He didn't get modern art; he preferred bucolic landscapes with cows. LOL.  When I took my first teaching job, at Urbana University, the psychologist I replaced was "interesting"....

 As Alexa keeps warning me that frost or freezing temperatures may be coming, I have harvested lilac blossums.  I am fairly certain this is Miss Kim.  I know it was planted by Renee and Sam on the south side of the house.  Unlike the old fashioned lilacs around the deck, it gets lots of sun.  Unfortunately, it is very much NOT protected from wintery turns in spring and often we have no flowers.  This year it is full.  If you stop by before that expected freeze, I will share.

When I moved from Columbus to Fayetteville, I transplanted a few starts of the beautiful peonies that grew in my garden.  Red. White.  Pink.  Beside the deck one of the plants thrived for a short time.  Zelda, as her want, would meditate under the heavy blossums.  Maybe the shade grew too deep, but the peony died.  The bonus violets, however, have thrived.  They are all over the yard here now.  They fill my heart in the spring.  (Free starts for everyone!)

 one of my absolute favorites.   "Who knows how long I’ve loved you You know I love you still Will I wait a lonely lifetime If you want me to, I will " It is just too short.  

Delightful! Good fun!  Thumb's up!  Second book in Jasper FFord's Thursday Next series.    First meet the Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat - formerly known, prior to the movement of county boundaries, as the Cheshire Cat.  He is the librarian for Jurisfiction.                The Cat's eyes opened wide and the grin fell from his face.  He looked up and down the corridor for a few moments and then inquired:       "Me?"       I stifled a laugh.        "I don't see any others."        "Ah!" replied the Cat, giving me another broad grin.  "That's because you have a temporary form of cat blindness ."   "I'm not sure I've heard of that."                "It's quite common," he replied airily, licking a paw and stroking his whiskers.  "I suppose you have heard of kni...

  I'm not sure the sheer joy of this yellow green is adequately captured here.  Come visit.  You will smile. Plus, after far too many years locked in a vault first in Cleveland and then in Columbus, my sister's Warhol-esque cocker spaniels are once again on display.   Yay.

  and hoping to do better this year. Despite constant battles (which I invariably lost) with rabbits last year, I did manage from 3 closely guarded sweet potato plants to harvest this mighty load.  Two potatoes.  The largest measuring NEARLY 2 inches. Are you not jealous? My ginger crop might have been better.  I just haven't turned my pot over to pull out the tubers.  Until I do so, I can imagine very great things. Bah.  Rabbits.  I planted $7 worth of violas last night.  Anyone care to wager how long before the plants are all eaten level to the ground - their tiny blossums safely tucked into some lagomorphs tummy.

 I found these notes from a book I read in 2023.  I am not sure how or when this person was peering over my shoulder.  I do not recall their shadow.  And while I remember the title, I don't think I remember these passages.  Haunting.  As a Ghost Club should be.                     The Saturday Night Ghost Club by Craig Davidson 2018                                  Read 10-17-23   In the hallway of a hospital two hundred miles from my childhood home.   I stood cradling the most precious object I would ever hold—a child I already loved more than he would ever be capable of loving me back—as scared as I’d ever been.   It wasn’t the fear I’d known as a boy: that onrushing smash-cut terror of a monster leaping from a closet.    This was the gnawing fear of possibility, the ...

listen to the man in the liquor store....