Chicken Fest......

T’day is Chicken Fest Saturday.....the third annual, ackshully.....’n our little ol street has been filled with cars ‘n trucks ‘n people pretty much all day...parking, unparking, searching for a parking spot...Crestline is really only one block long, (the alley don’t really count, don’cha know)...we’ve had people walking up the hill ‘n back down, kids ‘n kids in strollers ‘n kids on skateboards....young people, old people, people who should know better.....all come to gawk at Fair Oaks Famous Feral Fowl....sheesh!
Rusty ‘n Willie have been busy all day, running from door to door, barking ‘n growling, doing their job of protecting the manor house from the hoi poiloi....(hoi poiloi is French, I think, meaning mass of persons)...
We didn’t take an early walk t’day, too many persons of interest...I took ‘em out in the south forty instead....but they are so used to the evening stroll that we had to take it.....Willie was so excited that I tho’t he'd blow a gasket, he fairly danced at the end of his leash ‘n I couldn’t let him all the way out....’course, that had Rusty on edge also.....the chickens were already upset, sort’a like celebrities with paparazzi, I guess ‘n the evening cat was nowhere t’ be found...on the plus side, the skunks were in hiding also (ev’ry cloud has a silver lining, they say)......
I didn’t bother t’go downtown....the music was much too loud ‘n I don’t like crowds anymore now than I did last year....Millyrose went however....ackshully, she went twice....she’s a lot more sociable than me....
I didn’t used t’be unsociable ‘n I really don’t think I’m actually unsociable now, it’s just that I prefer friends in smaller groups these days.....
Ah well, t’morrow is my b’day....I never tho’t I’d last this long but since I have, I think I’ll try ‘n emulate the wonderful one-hoss shay....’n that lasted a hundred years ‘n a day.....Happy B’day t’me.....

Apple Hill......

We took a trip to Apple Hill on Friday...not quite like stepping back in time....there’ve been a lot of changes in the years we’ve been going there...mostly in the highways ‘n housing....lots more people now....bigger, faster highways but just as much congestion in Placerville as ever there was.....the freeway, highway 50, cuts thru Old Hangtown but it ain’t non-stop...two or three stoplights gaurantee that everybody slows down...
all the growth is outside of Placerville, the surrounding area looks like the surrounding areas of every other California community but Placerville itself, Old Hangtown, Old Dry Diggin’s, whatever y'want'a call it....looks much the same...same narrow street running along the bottom of a canyon, same crowded buildings...I didn’t see the hanging man ‘n I don’t know if they still have him there or if they bowed to the pressure of political correctness ‘n removed him...
Apple Hill is still the same narrow, crooked roads...lots of new homes, they seem infected by the same McMansion fever as ev'rywhere else.....more vineyards than ever but, that’s California...if y'got a big enuff yard, plant a vineyard...that bubble'll burst one 'a these days too.....
We stopped at the same places that we usually stop with only a couple exceptions...We skipped Larsen’s ‘n whichever one it is that has the maze....we tasted apples, bought a couple gifts, some fudge at the Fudge Factory next door to High Hill ‘n stopped at Boa Vista to buy a box of apples....Millyrose is busy at this moment cooking apples for apple butter...also, a half-flat of strawberries ‘n a few freestone peaches...
Y’don’t save money by going to Apple Hill...kind’a pricey this year...guess it wasn’t the best year for apples that they’ve ever had but, it’s the trip that counts....forty miles each way on a relatively new divided highway...I was recalling the way it used t’be when we first went there....two-lane blacktop back then ‘n a lot of the back roads were gravel....’Course, Apple Hill was just getting started back then...didn’t have near as many vendors peddling the same stuff that y’find at ev’ry little street fair ‘n festival.....a lot fewer locations back then also...
It was smaller, homier, I guess you’d call it....folks there are still friendly, the apple desserts are still good ‘n the visitors still seem t’be enjoying themselves.....
Autumn is a good time of year.....

October surprise!!!!!

The Dems have been promising an October surprise...
many people think it has to do with Sarah Palin but many people are wrong......the Dems October surprise will counter Sarah Palin ‘n the boost she’s given to the GOP..
the October surprise will be Joe Biden withdrawing from the race...(health reasons....yeah!) ‘n being replaced by Hillary Clinton as Veep.....’n it might work.....maybe....
‘Course, it might work better if the Dems ran Hillary on the front of the ticket.....
Ah well....hope I’m wrong...I’m still gonna vote McCain/Palin.....

September song.......

and the days grow short......

Time passes, y’know, whether you have fun or not...
the tide rolls in, then it rolls out again....on the old Howdy Doody show. there was Princess Winterspringsummerfall.....at least, that’s the way I think her name went..... the only time I ever watched any of the show was when I stopped at Denver Mullin’s house on the way to school in the mornings and his younger brother would be watching.....Rodney, his name was ‘n he was a friend of Willy.........
Anyway, it’s almost seven o’clock in the morning ‘n it’s still not quite daylight yet plus it’s getting dark earlier in the evening now....the days are growing shorter here in the middle of September....
It’s a nice month as months go here in northern California....coolish nights ‘n pleasant days.....Kellye just had a b’day ‘n mine is upcoming....we had a fam’ly celebration at Serratella’s Red Devil Pizza.....there was a banner on the front of the restaurant that they were celebrating forty years of being open.....it’s prob’ly been thirty years since the last time Millyrose ‘n I ate there..
That would’a made me around forty then.....can’t recall exactly why we quit going there...sumthing about their hiring practices, I think...made Millyrose angry ‘n she boycotted them.......
I don’t boycott many companies.....pretty much only Nike ‘n that’s becuz they’re easy to boycott ‘n it don’t really cost me anything.....
Brother John boycotts Shell Oil, not becuz of their current policies which has a lot of people boycotting them, but becuz of their billing practices years ago...’n us Smith’s have long mem’ries...’n we carry grudges....
I think carrying a grudge is prob’ly not a good idea...it’s prob’ly better to forget ‘n forgive.....I just find it easier to forgive than to forget ‘n of course, if I remember someone doing me a wrong, well.......I don’t have to go out of my way to get even but I don’t have to give them a chance to get me a second time...Karma is a bummer ‘n I believe in Karma.....that’s why it’s a good idea to apologize to people that you’ve wronged (if y’can, if y’can’t.....watch where y’step)
Oh, just for the record.....I don’t believe that hurricanes, tsunami’s ‘n cyclones ‘n other weather disasters are cosmic payback....
Also for the record......re a recent discussion about evolution vs creation......I think evolution has been scientifically proven but when ‘n how did it begin?
Quoting King Mongkut, “T’is a puzzlement.”

Monday mornin' sugar fix....

...or not

Monday, Monday.....
....went to the Dentist this mornin’.......he’s working hard on making me some new teeth ‘n he wants ‘em to fit....
well, that’s kind’a important....he has a small office, him ‘n one assistant ‘n a Receptionist/Office Manager (or reverse).....I think I’ve mentioned before that he looks like the actor, Christopher Walken....that in itself, is durn near scary...heck! most dentists are scary anyway...
I think that’s why so many of them over-compensate by affecting a super-nice persona.....on the other hand, it c’d be that they really are super nice people ‘n it’s just my inherent fear of dentists making me think that they’re over-compensating....
Anyway, his R/OM (or reverse) is very flirty, always with a big smile ‘n perky-cheery demeanor.....that’s alright with me....I’m from the south where almost all the girls I grew up with were flirty.....Heck! Most of the southern US is like that.....
On the way home, I tho’t I’d stop by Mirabelles ‘n pick up some pastry so I called Millyrose ‘n asked her what she’d like.....she wanted a Russian teacake ‘n I got a huge, beautiful cinnamon roll.....Mirabelles is a Russian tea ‘n pastry shop ‘n when we first began going there, it was because they had all these awesome pastries....one of the first times that I ordered a cinnamon roll, they took it out of the case ‘n then refused to sell it to me because it had gone stale.....I was impressed ‘n we went there fairly regularly for a long time....we haven’t been going so often of late because of the cancer ‘n other reasons so I tho’t t’day would be a really good day for a cinnamon roll......As I stated, it was huge ‘n beautiful ‘n too much for me to eat so I cut it in half....’n found out that it was stale....I nuked it for a few seconds which softened it a bit but it was still too stale to eat ‘n I threw it away.....Millyrose said her cookie was stale also but she ate it anyway....I guess we won’t go back to Mirabelles anymore.....kind of a shame ‘n I imagine if I went back ‘n complained, they would try ‘n make it good..
But I’m not gonna complain, I’m just not going back.....

Laidback Autumn.....

Autumn in northern California kind’a sneaks up on you...
it’s very subtle, y’know....a California thing....the laidback lifestyle...the leaves are very shy about changing color as tho’ they don’t want to give up on summer...they do it reluctantly as if they’re embarrassed, clinging to the tree ‘n only letting go in the middle of the night to float to the ground ‘n lying there as if they’d been there all along ‘n nobody had noticed.....
The days are still warm but the nights are cooler, coming earlier in the evening ‘n hanging around just a tad longer in the mornings.....it makes it harder to get up or easier to lie in bed, your choice.....
But Autumn is coming...you notice it in little ways, like the hesitancy to shave in the mornings.....must be a primal thing, needing a beard to keep warm in the long winter ahead.....and storing all the nuts ‘n berries (figuratively, of course) necessitating a trip to Apple Hill for the baskets of apples ‘n jugs of cider, gotta snug up the old cave against the winter rains....
Yesterday evening when we went for our little stroll, there was almost a full moon, almost a ‘Harvest Moon’ dipping lower to the horizon......Yep, Autumn’s coming, I c’n feel it in my bones...

Monkey on my back.......

Everybody has some kind of ‘monkey’ on their back....
Sex, drugs, ‘n rock ‘n roll.....dope, alcohol, whatever.....or maybe something as mundane as chocolate covered peanuts or soda pop...
Actually, quite a lot of people are addicted to Coca-Cola or Pepsi-Cola...or the sugar ‘n caffeine they contain.... American soft drinks used t’be made with cane sugar but that’s been replaced with the ubiquitous high fructose corn syrup which is a fancy way of saying ‘corn sugar’ as opposed to sugar from cane or beets.....corn sugar is, or has been, so cheap that companies added it to almost everything, not only soft drinks but cereals, candies, cookies, breads....pretty much you name it....and it tends to be addictive, y’know, and what manufacturer wouldn’t want his product to be addictive....I don’t care what all those tobacco companies testified to Congress, cigarettes were made more ‘n more addictive as the companies used more ‘n more additives.....I mean, if you grind up a little tobacco ‘n wrap it in a piece of paper, why would you add more expense by putting other stuff in.......ah well, I used to be a smoker so I know a little about addiction, cigarettes were hard to give up....I always said that I’d quit when the doctors told me to quit....’n after they told me, it took me five years.....remember that classic line, “I c’n quit anytime I want, I just don’t want to.”.....or one of my long-ago buddies that told me, “Marijuana ain’t addictive. I’ve been smoking it for twenty years ‘n I ought’a know.”
Y’know, I went for a long time without drinking soda pop, patted m’self on the back for having kicked an expensive ‘n (bad) tooth-decaying habit.....To tell the truth, I was feeling a little superior (maybe)...ah well, pride goeth before a fall ‘n I’m back on the juice.....not quite sure how it happened but it did.....I’ve been drinking diet Coke with Splenda....a couple almost ev’ry day...on the plus side, my coffee consumption is only averaging about six cups a day (most days).....
Y’all know, of course, that the way to kick an addiction is to replace it with another addiction....of course, you knew that......
I like old movies....’course, you knew that too...and in old movies, people smoke.....I also like Brit shows ‘n I’ve been watching one called ‘Gavin and Stacey’....and Brits smoke....a lot....I haven’t smoked in a long time, ten or fifteen years at least but in a dream t’other night... guess what?.....I was smoking....
Now, smoking in a dream has a lot of advantages over smoking in real life...it doesn’t hurt your lungs....’n you don’t have the odor...you don’t have to clean out the ashtrays....’n you don’t have to go stand outside ‘n have passerby’s sneer at you.......
And when you’re doing something that is as politically incorrect as smoking is t’day, you just know that everyone that passes you by is sneering at you....you just know that behind their bland appearances, their feigned indifference, they’re all looking down their noses at you...
And deservedly so ‘cuz you’re a wimp that can’t quit smoking.......
“She says, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side...”