Time flies when you’re not paying attention—and even when you are

 

                Recently, we who worked the polls were kept apprised of how much time was left in our long day: “Five hours and 26 minutes,” he’d call out. “Two hours and 14 minutes.” And so on. That was one time I was glad that time never stops.

                Searching my computer files, I found something even more indicative of how time flies: saved-for-later documents. This proves how easily we make plans, how creative our intentions.

 And then living happens.

                I found this: IDEAS from journal entries, July 2012. TWO YEARS AGO! Permit me to use them this week. And perhaps add some commentary.

1. WRITE ABOUT grandson Billy’s comments concerning people having NO manners. Like standing when a female leaves the room; not wearing a hat inside, expecting the date to pay half… “I don’t know; maybe I’m odd, but if I take a woman out, I expect to pay.” He called it “mannerisms” or “manner-something.”

This sweet-grandson-o’-mine was 22 at the time. Makes me proud. I wish he’d come around to my way of thinking about sending actual paper-and-pen-and-stamped-and-addressed thank-you notes when he’s given a gift. He thinks that if you say it to the giver’s face, that that should be enough. Sigh. This grandmother likes to receive written notes. (Oh, I know this is a different time, etc. etc.)

2. At 3 a.m. one night, when Billy opened the door to my room--letting me know he was home-- he reeked of cigar smoke. “I like the smell of a cigar,” he said. And he didn’t even know his great-granddaddy Noah, who in my memory ALWAYS had a stogie in his mouth or his fingers.

3. IN THE NEWS, May, 2012 (going backward through the journal): “Otis M., 23, who is charged in an undercover sting operation in North California that ended in gunfire, has been ordered released on a $150,000 bond on the condition that he spend an hour reading and a half-hour writing each day as he awaits trial on robbery and assault charges. SMART JUDGE! I wonder if it helped.

4. Write a piece from a dad’s viewpoint about finding the book, Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel, while in the attic looking for Where the Wild Things Are. “This book started me on my career,” my near-to-retirement-age son said. “I loved the big machines that moved dirt.” I gave him the book.

5. Funny image: “They (protesters) were closely watched by nearby patrol cars ….” Do cruisers have eyes? If so, where are they located?

6. Tongue twister: Beginner knitter (Heloise).

Another document—this one entered the last day of 2011—is titled COUCHWOOD UPGRADES IN 2012:

* Add 2 overhead lights on front porch—one over the porch swing, one off the south fascia to light the steps/driveway. As of mid-June 2014, NOT done.

* Repair/ replace dining room fan & back bedroom fan & light. NO

*Clean carpets. BETTER: dirty carpets ripped up and new laid down. YES

* Refinish hardwood floors. This is my next project. I’m on Travis’s list for some time during July. However, since it will mean moving and storing three rooms filled with books, glassware that’ll have to be moved from TWO cabinets, writing necessaries . . . .
I have asked the company if he would do one room at a time. If so, I’ll only have to devise a way to get into the bathroom area when he does the dining room.
Maybe I can jury-rig a stile through a window. #

~~

The more I read, the more I discover what I haven’t read

Hydrangeas and tansy from Couchwood,

photo by C. Hoggard

~ ~ ~ ~

 

 As is my wont, when there’s no bee in my bonnet for a post, I pull down a book from the antique shelf (found in the attic, put back together, refurbished) behind the computer—my resource shelf, I guess one could call it.
 

So I did. I'd picked up “Annable’s Treasury of Literary Teasers” by H. D. Annable for a half-dollar in 1997 at a regional writers’ conference. It became my inspiration du jour.
 

 On the last page of the chapter called AUTHOR! AUTHOR! were eight questions about poets and famous authors. I guessed at this one: “Can you name the Italian author of “La Vita Nuova,” “De Vulgari Eloquentia” and “De Monarchia”? Then where was a hint: “He wrote a very long, very famous poem, too.” Aha! Could it be Dante?  YES! Thank goodness for hints.

 

 The next section, was STAGE AND SCREEN. I doubted I’d know even one of these, but, because I’d just re-read the first chapter, I knew the answer to this: “George Kaufman did two very successful musicals with a collaborator other than Moss Hart. Despite ‘The Royal Family’ and ‘Stage Door, she is known primarily as a novelist (one of her books was set on a showboat, another in the oil fields). Who was she?” Edna Ferber.

 

Now, I know friend Dot H., being an actress and a collector of plays, would know the answers. I knew only one: “Who created the character who sang: ‘I’m called Little Buttercup—dear little Buttercup /Though I could never tell why’ in ‘H.M.S. Pinafore’”? I wrote in pencil, Gilbert & Sullivan. Gilbert was correct.
 

I knew none of the next page of questions. So I called Dot. She knew this one: “What three Shakespearean characters open a play with these lines: ‘When shall we three meet again/ In thunder, lightning, or in rain?’ and what do actors call it instead of its title?” Answer: The 3 witches, The Scots Play (Macbeth).
 

The other teaser—there were eight in all—that Dot knew was this: “Name the sophisticated British actor and playwright of ‘Bitter Sweet,’  ‘Private Lives,’ ‘Cavalcade,’ and ‘Pomp and Circumstance.’” Noel Coward.
 

So much for stage and screen. Let’s see what’s next. FIRST AND LAST. First question: “Name the author who began a poem, ‘Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright.’ Oh, I know! I know! Robert Blake. Grandson Billy has a book of that poem, only Tiger is spelled Tyger.
 

One down, seven more to go: “The first line of the poem is ‘Oh my luve’s like a red, red rose.’ Who wrote it?” Robert Burns!
 

The only other one I knew on that page was: “The first line is ‘The sun shines bright in my old Kentucky home.’ Give the author and the title.” Stephen Foster, “My Old Kentucky Home.”
 

On the next page of 8 questions, I knew only two: “Who wrote, ‘When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself.’” Thoreau, Henry David, from Walden.
 

Finally, the other one you’ll know from the get-go: “Who’s the author of the long poem that begins with the words, ‘I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear’”? Walt Whitman. Ah, yes.
 

 

So much to read, so little time. Sigh.