Forget Me

Today I was bored. Key word is was. But I'll get back to that. This weekend has been full of friends and family and graduations and all that goes with them. We had a graduation in the family (not mine) so I have been busy cleaning and preparing for over a week. The actual weekend of graduation, I had several parties to attend, so I did plenty of hugging, hand-shaking, and punch-sampling. (That's sampling punch, but I needed it to fit my roll.) I won't relive the gory details (more for my sake than yours) because the basic point is that today, school is out, parties are over, guests are gone, and I had too much energy to stay in the house and watch the wind wreak havoc on our yard. I wanted to be a part of it. So me and Little Bro borrowed a theme from Megamind and my mother's baton and went dandelion hunting.

We used the "Forget-me Stick" to make dandelions our first victims of Sudden-and-Unexpected Amnesia Syndrome. It felt good to go out and goof off like a kid again. (Some of you are wondering if I ever stopped. Be quiet and don't blow my cover, ok? Ok.)

I had to run inside to get my camera...a camera....my sister's.

Rusty waited for me on the front porch!

Bro advances on the dandelions. You can't see the baton, he's twirling it around his wrist.

Bro's knee forgets him.

Bro forgets himself.

"Forget me, Dandelion!" Told you this would be juvenile.

Mid-swing on a dandelion! Ahhh. This was such fun.

Searching for new amnesia victims.

Bro finds a final victim. The fragment of cup on the right is mid-air! Mwahahahaha.

Timber Wolf Trail

There is a road near our home that I love. The road arcs higher than the fields on its flanks, and its appearance of being a high road is magnified by the enormous ditch on the South edge. The little highland road, as I like to think of it, is surrounded mostly by fields but in one place on the North side there is a charming bit of woods. On ideally common summer days, it's easy enough turn the amassing clouds into white-topped mountains that rise from a distance and display snow-clad slopes above the tree-tops.

Note in passing: The entrance to the road says "Minimum Maintenance Road: Travel At Your Own Risk" and the sign is shot out with bullet holes.

I don't know if it was that or some other reason, many moons ago, my neighbor told us that when she was young (a while back) and spunky (always and forever) her and another named that road Bear-tooth Pass. I grasped at the name and hung on to it. What could be more perfect? Thereafter I would tolerate no other road for my walks. Why should I? Until last summer.

To be perfectly honest, I walked there quite a bit last summer. It wasn't until August that I heard that another of our neighbors had trapped a bear out of those woods. *Gulp* But then it was too late - the bear was already long gone when I heard about it. So I shrugged and kept walking. Until yesterday.

Mom walked there yesterday. What she saw, she kept to herself until evening. A family friend came out and rode his horse down that same road. What he saw, he told none but Mom. I was blissfully ignorant of anything out of the ordinary, until my mom revealed to me what she'd seen: wolf prints.

"So don't walk there anymore, Gianna," was her only overall point. I gasped and grinned simultaneously (it's easier if you don't practice) "Really? Wolf prints! EPIC!!!" "What do you mean? I don't see anything exciting in that." "Mom! It's like, a wolf! That is EPIC!" Needless to say, she didn't see things through the youthfully stupid lenses I wear.

Just FYI, these are almost as large as a man's hand. Not your average doggy.

Maybe a bit menacing even.