"There he is."

This ad makes both TG and me laugh out loud.

It's that moment when the possum jumps up and hisses at the kids.

I know, right? We should maybe think about getting out more.

Happy Monday!

Runway Rascals

So! How are you? Fine I hope.

My babies have gone home now but what a time we had.

Yesterday after swimming and lunch, while baby Andrew had his long nap, Erica and I staged a fashion show with hyper-willing participants and ad hoc models Melanie and Allissa.

Those girls have a mad passion for fashion. You drag out the costume jewelry and sequin-studded apparel and hatboxes full of scarves (and millinery) et cetera, and they don't have to feign enthusiasm.

Shirts became dresses and headbands became belts. Hair was curled and necks were draped with bling. Bracelets clanged on skinny wrists and nascent feminine mystique emerged.

They know the camera will be trained on them and they act accordingly.

After about ninety minutes, at least four outfit changes, and nearly two hundred pictures, Allissa was well over it.

Melanie on the other hand, clothes horse that she is, would have played for another hour. She especially enjoyed her Parisian "look" and we all agreed it suited her best.

Here's a slide show. You know the drill! You may either watch it here or double-click to take it all in over at SmugMug.

Happy Weekend! Happy Bastille Day!

There goes the neighborhood

Look who's here.

He came to see me.

He brought his sisters ...

... and his mother.

They are not pictured here because ...

... I only have eyes for Andrew.

I report. You deride.

Did you miss me? I've been very sick! Acute bronchitis! But I am all better now. Thank you.

OK so I am going to tell you three weird things and invite you to tell me at least one weird thing.

Because it may be that I (and various other family members) are occasionally slipping into some sort of third dimension.

At the very least we may be flitting about on the outskirts of paranormaltown, at about the time they roll up the sidewalks.

Three weird things! Maybe more. It could be more and who's to argue?

The first thing happened a month or so ago.

I was sitting in my favorite chair in our family room and Erica was also in that room but some distance away.

She was poking at the embers on her Kindle Fire and I was using my laptop for some online research.

Neither of us could see the other's screen and in fact we had ignored one another for the better part of fifteen minutes.

In other words we weren't conversing about the stuff we were looking up.

Thing One: Christmas in June

Specifically, I had decided to look up the Web site of a church because I had an appointment to interview its pastor about their cemetery.

While perusing the church's Web site I noticed some links, and one of them was to transcripts of sermons.

I'm not sure why -- except that I sort of like sermons if they're cooked properly -- but I clicked on that link.

I checked out the titles of the sermons and saw that one had been given on Christmas Eve. Since I love the Christmas story in all its iterations, I decided to read the sermon.

Or at least glance at it.

So I clicked in and had just begun learning about Mary, Joseph, and the Baby Jesus on a long-ago night in Bethlehem when, without preamble, comment, or warning, Erica's Kindle Fire proceeded to emit music.

As in, from its wee on-board speaker began to emanate the unmistakable opening bars of The First Noel.

I looked sharply in Erica's direction. As you might imagine.

"What are you doing?" I said.

She looked up. "Shopping for a Christmas CD," she said.

?????

"In June?" I said.

"Yeah. What are you doing?" she said.

"Reading a Christmas sermon," I said.

"Seriously?" she said.

Seriously.

Explain that if you are able.

Thing Two: Yeppers

OK the next thing took place within days of the other incident and it is downright macabre. For that I apologize in advance.

This time I was not even in the same room with the other person when the very weird thing occurred.

I know you'll think I'm making some part of this up so that it'll fit, but trust me: I'm not.

The following is exactly how it went down.

I was sitting at my desk in our sunroom, studying a few Find A Grave memorials on my computer.

TG was in the next room, which is the aforementioned family room.

He was sitting with his back to me at least ten feet away, and there was a mostly-closed set of French doors between us. We could not see one another at all, and if we'd wanted to talk we would've had to raise our voices.

He was watching the news.

That's when I clicked on this picture.

I'd almost finished reading the plaque -- in fact I was on the very last line -- when TG (who often talks loudly to the TV, especially during an election cycle) must have agreed wholeheartedly with whatever was being said because without preamble, comment, or warning, he said:

"Yep! Yep! Yep!"

That is a verbatim quote.

As each "Yep!" rang out I waited for the next one. Not breathing!

Three.

Chills ran up my spine and branched out to my extremities until they were all goose-bumpy and then my hair stood on end.

Explain that if you are able.

And as you do, bear in mind that the little girl whose grave marker I was reading, who in her short TV and movie career once played a little girl who in real life was murdered by her father, was herself murdered by her father. At age ten.

The quote on her marker is from the movie The Land Before Time, in which her voice-over character, Ducky, was inclined to the peppy slang triple-affirmative.

Thing Three: Clowns getting around

A few days later I was telling Erica about the eerie yep incident.

"OK I've got another one for you," she said.

?????

She proceeded to describe a dream she'd had awhile back. A dream about clowns.

"Only, I hadn't seen any clowns or read about clowns and I wasn't thinking about clowns," she said.

In other words there was no explanation for the dream. Not even too much onion on a hamburger.

But then? The very next day after having said dream?

"I was at a traffic light and I glanced in the rear-view mirror and behind me was a whole vanload of clowns," she said.

"A vanload of clowns?" I said.

"Yep!" she said. "I thought maybe I was hallucinating so I looked down for a second or two then checked again."

"And?" I said.

"And they were still there. A whole vanload of clowns getting ready to turn."

If you can explain that, I'll give you a balloon and a lollipop.

Then I'll squirt you in the face from a special flower on my lapel.

Happy week!

Smart lads, to slip betimes away

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

~ A.E. Housman ~

~*~

Freedom is not, has never been, and never will be free.

While we who are fortunate enough to live in the greatest country that has ever existed or ever will exist, attempt optimism in the face of those freedoms being systematically, methodically, and diabolically removed from us, Americans are still fighting and still dying in Operation Enduring Freedom.

That's what you call ironic.

This post is dedicated to three South Carolina men who lost their lives at the evil hand and mind of a suicide bomber and his barbaric minions in Afghanistan on June 20, 2012.

The photos were taken by me at the funeral of First Lieutenant Ryan Davis Rawl in Lexington, South Carolina, on June 30, 2012.

Ryan Rawl died alongside his buddies JD Meador and Brad Thomas. Five more members of their unit were grievously wounded in the attack.

The men leave behind three widows and five children in addition to many devastated moms, dads, brothers and sisters, other devoted relatives, and scores of friends.

The soldiers were/are attached to the South Carolina Army National Guard 133rd Military Police Company out of Timmonsville.

Rest in peace, young brave handsome soldiers.

~*~

~*~

In the quiet misty morning
When the moon has gone to bed,
When the sparrows stop their singing
And the sky is clear and red,

When the summer's ceased its gleaming,
When the corn is past its prime,
When adventure's lost its meaning
I'll be homeward bound in time.

Bind me not to the pasture,
Chain me not to the plow.
Set me free to find my calling,
And I'll return to you somehow.

If you find it's me you're missing,
If you're hoping I'll return
To your thoughts I'll soon be list'ning
And in the road I'll stop and turn.

Then the wind will set me racing
As my journey nears its end,
And the path I'll be retracing
When I'm homeward bound again.

Bind me not to the pasture,
Chain me not to the plow.
Set me free to find my calling,
And I'll return to you somehow.

In the quiet misty morning
When the moon has gone to bed,
When the sparrows stop their singing,
I'll be homeward bound again.

~Marta Keen Thompson~

~*~

Happy Fourth of July!