Awesome Movie!

LAST night I had time alone and watched the DVD of "Revolutionary Road."
Wow! I was in another world after the movie ended. (Don't even think of watching this one if ... .) Well, I can't say anything. I just hate it when folks give away what the movie's about.
So, suffice it to say that Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Sam Mendes and the screenplay author - Justin Haythe - based on Richard Yates' book, did a great job. In my eyes, anyway. I sometimes go and read Rotten Tomatoes Web site and see what others liked or objected to. Surprising. I am still thinking about the movie and the dialogue and the ideas it presented.
Tomorrow we're going camping in the woods and it's been raining off and on all day today (Friday). Things don't look promising, but we'll go anyway. Build a big fire and toast our toes. Bring the waterproof tarps and laugh at the weather - femminismo

Steak Dinner Around the Campfire.

TONIGHT the Mister and I drove up to the property for dinner. August is getting on and the days have been getting shorter since June 22. The sun hadn't set by 6:30 p.m., when we drove down the road, but the tall trees made it pretty shady. It was much darker down along the creek and our recent rains had dampened up the ground quite a bit.
We had planned to go camping tomorrow, spend the night and come home Sunday afternoon. Now there is rain in the forecast for Sunday. Will we wake up in camp to showers? Sheesh! It's August for crying out loud!
Anyway, we started a fire, got good coals going and cooked a couple of steaks with big slices of Walla Walla onions on top. Very, very good. Also had a green salad. Since we weren't staying overnight I packed real dishes, forks and steak knives. It was dark by the time we ate and the stars had come out. The campfire felt very good.
Now we are back home (sleepy but blogging) and still planning to get things together so we can go up camping tomorrow. The Mister has set up a table there again so I can do some altered book painting and journaling. I wrote in my book tonight as I sat around the campfire waiting for dinner.
He has also fixed up an older model Honda Aero motorbike (small engine; I forget how many cc's) that he's going to teach me to ride. By myself. Just me. Me turning the throttle and grabbing at the brakes on the handles. I think we should take a first aid kit with us tomorrow ... just in case. Better safe than sorry - and all those other overused idioms, too. Like, there's no fool like an old fool? Yeah, like that one - femminismo
p.s. I have an August 15th moon to show you. (I changed the size of the photo: This is per the agreements of my new upfront honesty policy.)

Can You Stand Some More Pictures?

I TELL YOU, since I learned how to post photos along with the words on this blog, an entry without photographs seems pretty blah. So I hope you like pictures.

Our camping trip was fun. Exhausting, but fun. The weather was perfect, and in Oregon you can't ask for much more than that. The Mister and I slept under the stars without a tent. I was disappointed when I awoke in the middle of the night to find it had clouded over. I couldn't do much stargazing.

A son, daughter, stepdaughter, a daughter-in-law, two significant others and four granddaughters - I'm not counting puppies - were all there for a short overnight campout. It was a lot of fun to show them what we had discovered on the property.

Peter cut up some branches for the fire. One of the first things we did was bring up rocks from the creek for the campfire. This really odd rock (above) - a petroglyph, I guess - showed up. Pretty neat, huh?

Shey is shown here with Monique, the mama, and Uno, the baby, who was born with only one eye. He found good owners with this crew.

Leesheea discovered something extremely tiny in the creek when we put on boots and walked along the water. "A lizard!" she shrieked. "The tiniest lizard I ever saw!" She was brave to pick it up and then shared it with her cousins, Cassie and Zoe, who admired it and passed it around. It was a tiny, baby salamander.
Walking in the creek was fun although we stirred up the mud a little. It's not usually this brown looking.


Ruth went out on the balance beam - the giant fallen Doug fir log. Pretty brave, huh? She has always been my adventurous child.


Breakfast was something else, with everyone pitching in food and talents. Peter was turning out pancakes as fast as we could eat them and the Mister had a flat piece of metal for a cooktop. Yum yum!
Bacon and eggs seem absolutely harmless over the campfire.

As you can tell by the look on Zoe's face, as she walks along the creek, it doesn't get much more fun than this!
There was so much to discover.


After everyone left on Sunday the Mister and I did some work on the property. Trimming, raking, pulling out ivy and berry vines.

And then it was time for a reward. You guessed it: food!
Ooey gooey s'mores: chocolate graham crackers, Hershey chocolate bar and marshmallows - femminismo