Hag-On-A-Hill - Blogithttp://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/OutaBreath/1--Free servings of good full-bodied whines 2--Hope & grit as perspective of age 3--LIFE: A Joke? 4--Recipes, good n' easy food to love 5--Weird thinking 6--Taking out the trash 7--Wildlife in my yardhourly12000-01-01T12:00+00:00Bas Relief or Bah! Relief!http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/OutaBreath/656715I've been pondering the Children's Librarian's advice. Several simplistic picture book ideas occurred to me, based on single aspects of the longer, more complex, character-developed story I had in mind (as an Early Chapter Book). Happily, I congratulated myself on understanding what she meant, as...Unibrow, The Children's Librarian, and a Jiggle-Toyhttp://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/OutaBreath/656386I was busy making Nick's lunch this morning when Dooley pulled open the door and trotted in, rubbed his wet fur against my legs; I looked down to see that he had a black unibrow--like filthy car grease. We (the old man and I) had a hearty laugh at his 'ruffian' expression as the cat happily ate...When the Cat Behaves Himself...http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/OutaBreath/655879I don't know whether or not to feel trepidation this morning, but something, surely, must be afoot. The cat is behaving. No sooner had he finished his morning meal, neatly for a change, than he ran for his human-approved daybed, a bench, rather than fighting me for the computer stool. Could this...The Comments of Othershttp://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/OutaBreath/655510Today I say, like Blanche in ‘Streetcar…’, “I’ve always depended upon the kindness of strangers.” I haven’t, always. Not ever, really—not until now. ‘ Depended upon ’ isn’t the best wording, except my intended meaning is: ‘am upheld by’, ‘am welcomed in by’, ‘you choose to be gracious and I thank...Ghostly Encounterhttp://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/OutaBreath/655141In pre-dawn dimness, I went to toss my trash into the dumpster. Moseying back toward my driveway, I scanned the sky—it was featureless cloud cover. Not so much as a lantern shone up there to guide the moon on its eternal circuit. Looking at my own path, I saw a low slow-moving shape, with a tail,...Kaleidoscopes for Eyeshttp://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/OutaBreath/654938I should make it easy on both of us and sum up the previous week (during which I anticipated my friend’s visit to the point of paranoia, and then my paranoia was proven right by the sewage problem) by saying that it all got solved in the nick of time, and the entire visit turned out better than...It does roll downhill, but will we laugh, later?http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/OutaBreath/653618It doesn’t require an entire hand to count the people I’d welcome as houseguests. At the tippy top of that short list is a writer friend with whom I’ve corresponded for, uh, 25 years? We met in Seattle, but she and her husband moved clear across the country so he could work at Boston General..."What have you learned, Mom?"http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/OutaBreath/652688In the near-dark this morning I took out the trash. A shining moon, not quite round, as if hand-drawn, watched my progress from behind black silhouettes of fir trees. In the trees, waking bird families were singing, their notes liquid and lovely in the mild air. I barely noticed traffic swishing...It was a dark and stormy . . .http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/OutaBreath/651859It is a dark and rainy morning. We would be crass indeed to complain. Somehow we became Mother Nature's favorites. Our weather-ball has been rolled as the world turns, and yet every time we've come up winners. Yesterday, just to confuse those of us who haven't a good grip on time or place, it was...Oddly Bluehttp://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/OutaBreath/650895We have the loveliest day--for writing out here... Makes me wish I was deep into the heart of some new work-in-progress. But I shan't whine. Who am I kiddin'. I will whine. I babied myself by doing nothing except to watch a library DVD. When I grabbed it from the library shelf, I didn't have any...