Ok, move along…nothing to see here. Just a boxer in some goggles…looking uber cool, I might add! This is Chloe. I met her and her human, Kelly, at Point Park yesterday. All weekend I’d been poo-pooing this whole eclipse madness as though the entire world had gone ‘round the bend. I was on my way back to the farm yesterday…fully intending to go home and mow, when I got a call that something I was having repaired was ready for pickup. I hadn’t gone far out the two-lane so I turned around and headed back. Mr. FixIt called and when he found out where I was, he came to join me. (Mr. FixIt would crawl through glass to see me. He told me so. ?) So, there we were, nothing to do, with a nearly total eclipse about to occur. And…I went silly!

Well, no…it’s not. I read a tweet yesterday. Teachers announced to the children there was going to be a total solar eclipse and the entire student body looked up and yelled, in unison….“NOOOOOOO!!!!!” I had dinner with a dear friend last night. He said one of his granddaughters is scared to death about the eclipse. She is convinced something horrible is going to happen because all she has heard is the urgent warnings not to go outside and look up.

They’ll chase an eclipse…clear across the ocean if they have to. They are umbraphiles. The Shadow Lovers. In 1972, Marcy Sigler chartered a ship, gathered 830 of her closest friends, and took off across the waters from New York to Nova Scotia to chase the eclipse and make it last as long as possible. There won’t be another total solar eclipse viewable in the continental United States for 180 some odd years so there are, as you well have seen, a gazillion umbraphiles coming out of the closet.

This is not my photo, but isn’t this a magnificent creature??? Mr. FixIt and I went for a short walk after supper last night. It was just getting dusk and we heard the familiar trill of the screech owl. Their name is misleading as they do not screech…they trill and whinny. I’m including a link to a YouTube video where you can learn more about them.

I received an e-mail from Camping World late yesterday afternoon. TOW-Wanda is fixed and waiting for us to come get her. I refuse to go Monday as that is heading right into eclipse country and I don’t want any part of that craziness. I saw a photo of what to expect in our area as far as coverage of the sun and it’s pretty darn close to complete so I’m not too worried about staying here. There is also a forecast for cloudy skies. So, there ya go. We’ll go Wednesday and come back Thursday.

Ok, this eclipse thing is like, a really huge deal, apparently. I’ve been hearing for weeks that the swath of land cutting through the middle of the country where the total eclipse can be seen is going to be crazy. I mean, crazy…like, gridlock, no food or water, insufficient restroom and health facilities. Mayhem…THAT kind of crazy. When someone tells you something’s gonna get crazy, it’s hard to imagine just HOW crazy. But, this? This is really certifiably over the top. This picture is just the “early ticket holders” on private land where the Oregon Eclipse 2017, or QE17 as it is known, is getting up to speed. This is just the “early ticket holders”! Holy cats!

There was a time in my life when I didn’t think much of my home town. I considered it terribly backwoods in comparison to the metropolis of Denver. To my chagrin, I recall making disparaging comments about Parkersburg, and West Virginia in general to anyone and everyone. It’s a wonder they didn’t revoke my home state status and mark me down as “hatched from under a rock”. What can I say? I never rebelled as an adolescent. I saved it all for long after I should have known better.

You know what they say about curiosity…it killed the cat! I don’t know what Kitty Boy was after, but something sure had his attention yesterday. This old stump is what’s left of a poplar tree my Pop-Pop planted when I was a teenager. Poplars grow fast, tall, and straight as an arrow but they are pretty fragile in a storm. Long after Grandma died, my aunt was living here alone and a bad storm blew up. She said that poplar tree was twisting in a circle and she was just sure it was going to come down on the house so the next time her brother came, she had him cut it down. I understand why, but it broke my heart to see it gone. Thoughtfully, they left a tall stump and we use it for the rain gauge…and occasional cat perch. I noticed as I sat and wrote this last night, the rain gauge needs emptying. It’s at five inches. It hasn’t been emptied since before I left for Colorado in early July. I’m sure there has been some evaporation, but I know we had a lot of rain while I was gone.

Even though it is only the middle of August, there is a definite change in the air. There are leaves changing already and the woods have taken on the “tired green” of late summer, having spent their glorious stores of chlorophyll in the peak of summer. Yesterday dawned cloudy and relatively cool and soon the sky gifted us with a gentle rain that lasted most of the day. So much for mowing the lawn.

I have some really great friends who look out for me. They each seem to have a role. My longest term friend “feels” when something is wrong and she needs to reach out right away. Others send articles for my reference and give me a heads up when I have a typo in a post. They know I cannot STAND typos. One sends me the funniest memes I have ever seen on the internet and spends equal time kicking me in the butt when I need it…which is more often than you may imagine. My old high school chum, Marion, sent me an excellent article the other day about what the first year of widowhood was like for Jodi of the blog Extra Grace Required. She listed the important things she learned that first year. If memory serves, I’ve written a few of those missives myself. We live and we learn and we grow as we crawl our way along on this grief journey.

I remember a time when “date night” involved a little black dress and makeup. But let me tell you, a trip to Lowe’s or Rural King will do just fine, thank you very much. Last night was date night. We started out with a trip to the mall to run a couple errands and walk some laps. Sitting in the truck too much the last few weeks has taken its toll on my fitness level. We tried to eat at our favorite BBQ place but the wait was over an hour so we went for a quick bite at Qdoba. Then we headed for Rural King. Oh, I love that place! We had to clean out the bird seed barrel yesterday and throw the old seed out. It was filled with thousands of weevils. Something took off with my big bird feeder…raccoons more than likely but it could have been a bear. I got a new feeder and fresh seed. I also bought a handheld infrared thermometer to monitor my hub temps when I get TOW-Wanda back. That was a very expensive lesson.