waking up in the irish hills looking out on the frozen lake
after a night spent bringing in the new year with special people.
—
“in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter,
for in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.”
-khalil gibran
“the holidays drape us in magic and give us the hope
that we can do better than we have done in the past.”
― toni sorenson
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image credit: bryan david griffith (former engineer who became a nature photographer)
—
credits: terry gross – fresh air/npr radio, google images
pretzel rod, the albino leopard gecko (pre-odyssey).
last weekend
i stayed with the grandies
while their mom and dad were out of town
and
for some reason
during the last hour i was there
the two friendly house cats
decided to make a snack out of p-rod.
i had no idea this happened until i got home and got the call:
“the cats somehow got the screen off of the top of his terrarium and ate the gecko!”
imagine how badly i felt
that the murder had happened on my watch.
grandie f had just gotten this young gecko
for his birthday 6 weeks ago and was very sad.
he had replaced pretzel,
the tiny, twisty snake who was let go in the backyard.
the next day i picked him up at school and we planned
to make a memorial stone for pretzel rod to put in the garden.
we talked for a while about love and loss and pets and nature.
imagine my surprise when i got a call late that night that he had been found!
he must have crawled into the boys’ dirty laundry
which was on their bedroom floor
to escape the cats
hid out for 24 hours
then was scooped up
unknowingly
put in the washing machine
with the laundry
where he was washed, rinsed and spun.
what?!
he had survived
a feline attack
a day in smelly boy pants
fear
starvation
and
waterboarding?
he was washed, spun and rinsed
but there he was
sitting on the bottom of the washer
and after all of this, he was alive!
f yelled out over the phone:
“and he’s getting stronger by the minute!”
mom and dad said he looked rough and didn’t know if he’d make it
but he was indeed alive.
my task the next day was to get him some special treats
wax worms
(the big macs of the lizard world)
from the pet store to see if he would eat.
sure enough, he had some dinner
the first he’d eaten in a few days.
hopefully he’s on the mend
and we won’t have to go through a ‘second death’.
he looks a little lighter in color,
has some bite marks from the cats,
and doesn’t move as much
but he is alive and that is amazing.
—
“it is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― leon c. megginson
Cuba offers rum to pay off $276m Czech debt
Cuban rum is a popular tipple in the Czech Republic. Cuba has come up with an unusual way to repay its multimillion dollar debt to the Czech Republic – bottles of its famous rum, officials in Prague say.
The Czech finance ministry said Havana had raised this possibility during recent negotiations on the issue.
Cuba owes the Czech authorities $276m (£222m), and if the offer is accepted the Czechs would have enough Cuban rum for more than a century. However, Prague said it preferred to get at least some of the money in cash.
Havana’s debt dates back from the Cold War era – when Cuba and what was at the time Czechoslovakia were part of the communist bloc. Cuba now does not have much money but it does have lots of rum – hence this unusual proposal, says the BBC’s Rob Cameron in Prague.
The Czech finance ministry said repayment was possible either with rum or pharmaceutical drugs. But Cuban drugs lack EU certification, so repayment with a more traditional medicine – popular in the Czech Republic – may be easier to arrange, our correspondent adds.
—
“the best solutions are often simple, yet unexpected.”
-julian casablancas
—
credits:bbc news, reuters,
kinders watch
to see when the birds will come
to eat the treats
they’ve made for them
and hung up high in the trees
so they don’t go hungry in the winter’s snow.
—
“be grateful for luck. pay the thunder no mind – listen to the birds. and don’t hate nobody.
-eubie blake
before he was an astronaut,
john glenn served as a military pilot during world war II and the korean war.
before leaving for combat missions, he always told his wife annie,
“i’m just going to the corner store to get a pack of gum.”
she always replied, “don’t be long.”
—
” the return makes one love the farewell. “
-alfred de musset
–
farewell john glenn, one of my heroes.
—
credits: cnn.com, mental floss, washington post
—
image credit: purple clover
it’s december 5th
happy national comfort food day
make the most of every minute.
