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I HAVE THIS HABIT (or I'd sure like to develop it) OF RUNNING OFF for a few days without much warning. It's just for a few days, after all. Before you know it, I'll once more be too far from the Atlantic Ocean to hear it roaring in wind-tossed agitation.







It's a great place to be...visiting the Outer Banks of North Carolina. How was I to know a storm would come rolling in with me and Caroline? What luck! I love the sight and sound of it!







And it doesn't prevent us from eating seafood,





































or going to the movies with Shishe and seeing "Julie and Julia" and eating other things that could also be considered fine dining...







...although I had to stop Shishe before she fell headlong into the popcorn and M&Ms.



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IT WAS THAT TIME AGAIN...Yesterday it was time to build a bonfire for the annual Harvest Moon Festival, a.k.a kielbasi-roasting time for extended family.


Due to the exceptionally early date of this year's event, we got some exceptional advantages--not only was the weather a very perfect temperature for bonfire-circling, but we also obtained an extra hour for eating before darkness set in. Furthermore, yesterday not only were we celebrating a holiday, but, get this...it was the birthday of the Bonfire-Builder!



Since the Bonfire-Builder gets a great satisfaction out of constructing bonfires, especially when there will be numerous loved ones to encircle and appreciate it, and the Bonfire-Builder's wife (uh, yes) is always delighted when there is an actual full moon for the Harvest Moon Festival, getting this date--all things converging--seemed to be a real coup.



















So, to be brief, (unlike the H. M.Festival itself) yesterday the bonfire was built and it matured. The guests arrived and the kielbasi was roasted, pans and bowls and platters of food were eaten and the lawn games were played. Darkness fell and the birthday cake was served and the moon came up. The chatter around the bonfire was loud and lively. Meanwhile, the bonfire kept sending up its lovely sparks.




And the group kept sending up its lovely laughter.
On and on and on, right to the very end of the Bonfire-Builder's birthday!




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I HAVE AN AWESOME GIFT!  I'm sure there are many other persons with such a gift, but there are many more who do not have an LTF. You likely don't know what that is, an LTF.  In fact, you may be puzzling over this right now, asking yourself if it would possibly be a Little Tiny Frog or a Lovely Trailing Fern. Maybe a Luckily-won Trip to the Fiji Islands! You can't see me shaking my head and rolling my eyes just a bit, but you're not even close. Now, on the other hand, if you were to think: It must be a Long-Time Friend, you would be verging on wow-you're-right!

What I have isn't just a long-time one, but a Life-Time Friend. It's very special to possess such a gift because you realize, Dear Reader, that if you do not get started at the beginning, it's impossible to back up and make a Life-Time Friend out of anyone--dear and well-loved as they may be.  It's imperative that they started the journey with you.  (If this were a James Michener-style book, I'd be taking you back to life at conception, and the friendship with my womb mate.  But he is my twin, my brother.  This LTF is a girlfriend of mine). Yes, Sylvia and I have known each other since our names hung side-by-side on the Cradle Roll at church, since she was a one-month-old, since we toddled. Long before we started school together, we tea-partied with Malinda under the ancient, majestic Oak in the field by her house.  (Perhaps it was an Elm? It is long gone, but never to be forgotten). At school we jumped on the jumping boards together, hula-hooped, huddled around a radio in the classroom as Russia sent up Sputnik. We thanked those mothers, busy cleaning up after serving the school lunches, for the good good good good good good good diiii-ners. Sylvia and I, we turned an empty rabbit hutch into our secret playhouse. Summer after summer we went to Bible School. We learned of Little Wang Foo in China. Sunday after Sunday, (it nearly goes without saying) we went to Sunday School. And my LTF, she asked the teacher What does fornication mean? The poor teacher blushed and stammered; she did not answer the question. We slumber-partied. Oh, how we slumber-partied. We pondered the tragic deaths of our classmates, Joe and Milton and Susie. We walked for miles on Sunday afternoons, and schemed and dreamed together. Oh, how we schemed and dreamed. We listened to the Beach Boys. On Friday nights we followed Robert's Rules of Order (Dear Reader, this was during meetings of the Literary Society, and I would explain, Reader Dear,  if ever I thought I could do it in ten thousand words or less). We sunbathed on the pier. We listened to the Beatles sing I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Glad All Over. At Ferguson High, we read El Camino Real for Mr. Cox, and listened with horror one November day as Mr. Byrd, our English teacher, burst into the classroom and exclaimed "The president's been shot! I'm not kidding--the president's been shot!" We wrote volumes of notes to one another during the classes we did not share, and passed them back and forth in the hallways. Watched TV on her family's set, constantly fiddling with the color dial to give the orange-faced people a decent human hue. For our senior year, we moved away from home and into the dorm of a private high school miles and miles away. We listened to The Mamas and the Papas. We then went to college together when it was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Ah, and there is so much more. So much more to the story of my LTF and me! All that I've written would be but a blurb on the dust-jacket of the book we could write together.

As it turns out, it's only the blurb on the Happy Birthday blog I'm posting for her. It's been a few years since our days on Colony and Lucas Creek Roads, but I won't tell anyone how many. I'm just going to say: Happiest of birthdays to you, my dear LTF!





(Oh, and of course--there was also Joan Baez,
who sings my wishes for you)
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LAST WEEK I TOOK A TRIP TO AMISH country.





I am so very sorry to confuse you, dear reader---you must know by now that I live right in the middle of Amish country.

Ah, but you see, there are other large Amish settlements and the man I live with is very interested in all things Amish. Well, perhaps just Amish horse-drawn things. Hmm, maybe only Amish horse-drawn farming things.

Now that I think of it, the interest may be mainly the horse-drawn farming aspect of it, Amish or otherwise. But you see, whatever the case, I ended up in some interesting little towns in Ohio-- with not only the man himself, but two good friends traveling along.























We were entertained by lots of charmingly old-fashioned scenes,




















and interesting Amish stores stocked with Amish necessities.










Sorry, no photos of the Amishman who showed us all around his horse-equipment manufacturing shop. In fact, too bad, no photos of the shop either. Employees had gone home for the day and the building was clean enough to sit on the floor and eat. (Well, it looked that clean. We didn't try it out.)



We checked out cheese shops, locally-made cheese being a big item in that area. And we looked at Amish-built furniture.

We improvised at least one great little dinner with the cheese and wine that we collected.














One town, set among the "mini-alps," featured all things Swiss, including some handsome and sturdy little
donkeys and goats with their tinkling cowbells. (Hmm...I do hope I'm not offending them, it's just that I've never heard anyone make reference to a goatbell or a donkeybell.)




Interestingly enough, we got more chances to buy cheese when, en route home, we spent our final afternoon in Pittsburgh's Italian market.


But before perusing the market,
one member of our group was on a mission. That church up the block--was it Greek Orthodox?




He knocked on a door,
worked his charm on a
very trusting keeper
of the key. It was the
key to getting us in.
And so we took a tour.
The church was not Greek Orthodox.
And it certainly was not Amish
(You're right. I knew you'd know that).
















It was very old and very Catholic. Thus we began our trip with a study in simplicity. And ended with a study in ornateness.

And all of it was fascinating.





























(And fun)
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IT'S QUITE AMAZING THAT I'VE already got another personal Guinness record to tell you about--the second such in less than a month! This fact about which I'm reporting is undoubtedly a record for me, and I have a sneaking suspicion it'd be a record for you, as well. But I'll just let you be the judge: I have wooden shoes on my doorstep that are the largest pair of wooden footwear ever to sit outside my door. For sure.


If truth be told (and since, Dear Reader, I suppose the truth in this case is already a grave suspicion, I feel it best to go ahead and blow away the notion that there's been much competition in this category) the pairs of wooden shoes outside my door have only ever numbered two.

Still...it is rather extraordinary to see 14-1/2" (yes, I measured them) ones resting on the porch. They are the footwear of a quite delightful Dutch guy. The runner-up pair belongs to his equally charming friend and traveling companion. These two guests from the Netherlands have been in the U.S. for three months, the final three weeks of which their shoes have populated this porch of ours (mine and the man who lives here and houses his seven Belgian horses in the barn).





Ties and Jelmer, you see, are nearly as enamored of working with equine as that husband of mine with his barn full of them. The two have crossed the country working on (mostly Amish) farms and learning to speak English quite fluently.





I'd have to say, even more impressive than their shoes is the pleasant congeniality of these two, the way they each make us laugh with their fine sense of humor, and their earnest desire to work and learn.









We've gotten accustomed to having them around. When they leave next week, I will miss hearing those (record-breaking) wooden shoes making a pleasant clatter on the porch.

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