What an incredible evening last night at the beach. The weather was mild, the water was smooth and clear as glass, and it was warm enough to roll up my jeans to the knees and go wading. This all made for a most perfect evening for hunting treasure. I came home with 2 pocketfuls of the little buggers, several which winked at me and are near perfect specimens. I'm still in awe that I can find treasured Petoskey in my backyard. Who'd a thunk it?

So, I'm running a silent feud with my mother over cell phones and family portraits. I need a vacation....

Construction at the Gordon's coming, possibly next week. We're replacing the patio door and jamb, along with adjoining siding and flooring. Actually, I'm not totally clear on 'the plan' for the flooring. There goes the new patio furniture.

Hoping to scoop up trays of annuals at the farmer's market on Saturday. There are oodles of clay pots on my patio, waiting to be made beautiful again.

Happy Trails to Leonard. Life was an adventure.

And they lived happily ever after.......

Happy Friday and Happy Memorial Weekend too!

Spent time with CoCo this morning. Breakfast was, as always, at Wolfgang's in Eastown where we gabbed and caught up on life in general. We then toddled across the brick streets to Eastown Antiques, where I purchased a 1909 first edition of Gene Stratton Porter's A Girl of the Limberlost. Carol invested in a wonderful bit of bling. I swear it must be an Albert Weiss brochure/earring set, although it is unmarked.

We then breezed through Moonshadow on Diamond. I drooled over a large window that had been covered in a mosaic of broken colored glass -- predominately greens and purples. Hmmmm... It's heavily discounted to boot! Then, our usual final stop at Encore Consignment on Plainfield, where I acquired 2 shirts; 1 trouser; and 1 lovely funky green vintage brooch which matches one of the shirts, perfectly. Everything 25% off except for one of the shirts which was already a rock bottom price of $3.10.

Having fun playing with my new phone. I discovered another benefit of ditching the land phone -- I have more room on my kitchen counter.

Twas another beautiful day 'round here.....

Bought myself a new cell phone today. Now, everyone has their own cell phone at our house. Thus, I plan to eliminate all home phone service tomorrow. Of course, my mother had to point out that she will now need to call long distance whenever she wants to speak with me. Oh, well. It saves me $50/month to make the change. I guess she'll just need to be brief and to the point. Yes!

Nick's office...

No less than 4 people, upon returning from lunch, announced in horror that they saw gas for $3.65/gal. Egads, I am below a half tank. How far should we be traveling these days? Scary thought as I think about vacations. Gawd, I need to go north! I mean, I NEED to go north!!

Thursday an installer will bring me a new dishwasher. After several repairs on my 4 year old, I refuse to invest another dime in the lemon. Thus, I am thankful I chose to restrain myself from purchasing the patio furniture. I may not be able to veg out on my new Bosch, but at least I won't be standing at the kitchen sink this summer.

Not to mention the fact that the gas powered trimmer bit the dust this weekend. 1.5 months out of it's 2 year warranty and the shaft breaks in two. Repair bill will be 2/3 the price of a new one. Shit! Jury is out at the moment on this. One repair/replace situation at a time, please.

On a lighter note, HUMMINGBIRD ALERT in my backyard today -- May 22 at a feeder. Not to mention 3 rambunctious chipmunks who stuffed their cheeks full with peanuts and birdseed leftovers this evening.

Another frenzy of fireworks....

Lazy Sunday. Hiked, groceries, doing laundry, cooking, resting, pacing. Too chilly and overcast to catch rays. Napped briefly. Boring...

We had our family portrait taken today on Windmill Island.


Waiting for the photographer.

I was pleasantly surprised recently to find a built in card reader in my laptop. Duh!















This afternoon, Jeannine and I were discussing avian sanctuaries in our yards. Some of us feed the birds, while some of us feed the cats.

Last count, 10 feeders & 6 houses. Cat bit a tire a couple of years ago.

I find it rather amusing that there are segments along the eastern time lakeshore where one's cell phone registers central time, picking up towers in Chicago.

And in response to Julie's comment, I introduce you to Double Zout. Yum!

Wilfred Sykes came by my house today.....

I'll leave you with that while I force myself to go buy shoes on-line.

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers in my life.

I've often wondered if anybody is out there. Turns out I have a new friend in India and Mr. Tom commented recently. It's nice to know I'm not just talking to myself.

Oh, my, what an incredibly cool day I had yesterday. It started with an early morning phone call from my pal Daisy, asking if I might be interested in joining her and her bud Arnie at the parade in the afternoon. I poked my nose outside, saw the beginnings of a perfect parade day, and enthusiastically announced 'yes'! So glad I did too. Turns out Arnie's sister Karen marked a bit of turf directly in front of the Peanut Store, front row center, downtown Holland. What a deal.












Of course we had to pop in to see the Fabiano's working diligently to serve the bazillion customers who needed a sugar fix. I was disappointed to find they were out of my favorite French Burnt Peanuts. I settled for Boston Baked Beans and Dutch Salted Licorice. Yum. This, of course, was supplemented later by a freshly shaken lemonade and a monster elephant ear, balanced precariously while winding my way through parade goers.












The best band, in my opinion, was the Benton Harbor High School Band. Rhythm, dance, good music. Behind them came Unity Christian High School. Literally and metaphorically, the difference between night and day!



































I offer a variety of parade photos, including some real cool vintage auto photos. I found the 59 BMW Isetta the most fun.
























Girls need a ciggie and a rest after winding our way through mass quantities of parade goers.















The end of a perfect day..... County Park near Pier Cove, Fennville, Michigan

Saugatuck Dunes State Park













Boring evening, nowhere to go....laundry chugging away. Bore, bore, bore.....

I should pay bills.

Nahhh.....

I'm staring at a mountain of paperwork on my desk here at home. One word comes to mind: 'yuck'. So, I revert to an immature method of dealing with the situation -- avoidance and procrastination. Thus, I offer this evening, a series of photos taken last weekend at Oval Beach. Just in case you've never seen a sunset, here you go. I had all I could do to remain still, balancing the camera on the roof of the car for stability during heavy winds. Maybe if you scroll down real fast you'll get the full effect.

Friday night was fireworks, the official kick-off for Tulip Time. Wandered down to the fire dock around 10'ish and awaited the first boom. Photographing fireworks always produces an interesting result. As good as the fireworks were, they can not be compared to Thunder Over Louisville. Thanks, Tom, for the video -- it was worth waiting for!

Saturday evening was spent at Central Wesleyan, enjoying 2 hours of Bruce Hornsby, a man alone with a piano, by request. Sat 4 pews back -- great view, great music. Gonna Be Some Changes Made..........geeze, I can only hope....

Tulip Time ~ 2007

'Splendor' by Catherine McClung

May 9 Wed 2:00P Volksparade (1.5 hrs)

May 10 Thu 2:00P Kinderparade (1.5 hrs)

May 12 Sat 2:00P Muziekparade (2.0 hrs)

Consider that a seat must be found no less than 2 hours prior to parade start time. Even if said seat is located towards the end of the parade route. Typically, if I plan to attend the Saturday parade, I trot my buns down to Holland High School about 7:30 Saturday morning, find a few square feet of open grass, mark my spot like a dog and pray nobody pilfers my blanket. Gee, you'd think it was the Rose Parade.

Since I no longer have a child marching with his class in the Kinderparade, I recommend the Saturday parade, with prayers for no rain. I've been fried in the sun, miserable from the heat but I've also been frozen stiff, miserable in near freezing rain. Ya never know! Saturday is not only a bigger parade, it's also longer. I always park at Aunt Trudy's, or Brother Tom's house. They both live about 3 blocks from the end of the parade, which is at Philip's school. The bad part about this is that the marchers are pooped by the time they get to us but they do rather well nonetheless. It's a good spot. Many folks in the crowd at the end of the route are there because they're picking up a parade participant -- everybody knows everybody -- fewer tourists. And, it's an easier exit.

Finding that I am frequently kicking myself for not having the camera for that 'Kodak Moment', I need to go back to a bigger purse. It's much more pleasant to include a photo of the day. Otherwise it's just blog, blog, blog.....blah, blah, blah.....

Thus, another Parrish....'Waterfall'

I went patio furniture shopping tonight. Egads is that stuff expensive. I REALLY want comfy & practical stuff on my patio but I REALLY don't want to pull the wad out of the bank right now. Timing's never right to splurge. However, the patio IS, in truth, another room of the house in the summer and it is definitely one of my personal happy places. Sunshine, moon, stars, birds, squirrel, chipmunks, rabbits, raccoon, lake sounds and scents -- SUMMERTIME! It also does NOT include a TV and is, for me, an escape. Yeah, okay, it's justified. Besides, then Connie can have my Fiskars chaise lounge, for which she has been searching the world over.

So, what do I do with the 2 really cool, perfectly good, vintage metal lawn chairs that could be wonderful if somebody chose to be handy? I really want to keep them but....I also have 2 vintage wrought iron table bases with no glass tops & 2 matching chairs. What to do with all this stuff??? I need a barn. A barn with a work bench. Someday maybe, baby! In the meantime, the shit's still gotta go. I think of 2 piles: Donate or Dump.

I've been enjoying new tunes this weekend -- Greatest Hits of Lynyrd Skynard, as well as Molly Hatchet. This brings the ipod library to 2,569 songs, or 9.66GB of files, or 1/3 consumed memory, or 40.2 days of listening pleasure. Someday I'll pop it on 'shuffle' and let er go till done. We tried this once and couldn't keep from cheating. You're not supposed to skip ahead!

Bets started a few weeks ago in my neck of the woods: Tulip Time or Stem Fest? Stay tuned.....

New schedule posted for Indacoda Blue.

Tom: Update! Hint..hint...got Thunder photos?

Julie: Your mother cooks/bakes, I clean up. I don't do dough!


Think: Evening Thunderstorms; Daily Sunshine --

Twas a picture perfect weekend. Started out Saturday AM, just me, the Jeep, and tunes, heading toward Indiana. I spent the day with my dear bud Connie, dodging Amish buggies, bikes and horse shit piles in the road. It was a gorgeous day to toodle the back roads of Elkhart and LaGrange counties. We procured baked goods, assorted bird seed, peanuts for squirrels, a Martha Washington geranium for mom, and an Amish lunch for us. The country was alive with people and critters, including a tiller pulled by 8 Belgians, harnessed 4 abreast. It was a great day but a lot of time in the car.

Are you aware that cookie dough tastes better in the rough than it does baked?

80+ degrees today with no clouds. Awesome day. I am enjoying a tingle to the pink tone acquired on the patio this afternoon. Ahhh, heat.

After spending time this morning cranking out a couple loads of laundry, as well as focusing on a couple phone calls from the office, I spent time with two of the most important people in my life, Frank and Barb. I love and respect these two people dearly. I think we've reached a resolve with each other, to some degree. As time moves forward, what is truly 'important' is what ultimately prevails, despite the delta between our lifestyles and beliefs. Somewhere, however, we ultimately find communal ground.

Looking at the umpteenth condo with them over the course of 10 years, I have a feeling that what we saw today may finally be the last hurrah for these guys. They've got more patience than I do, tis for sure. We'll see how the deal goes down but I'm hopeful that we can help move them into the next phase of domicility (is this a word?). Zeeland would suit them well.

So, why is it that my ultra conservative, Calvinist parents, virtually adopt the local baker boys who don tattoos, earrings and long hair, but yet they can't tolerate their daughter's long, kinky do? Nor can they understand same daughter's seemingly indifference to her child's rather skanky locks. Why get your tit in the wringer about something that shall pass? As the Wise CJ Oz would say, ' ya gotta pick your battles'.

This afternoon I had the rare pleasure of sharing a few hours & 2 bottles of wine with a very special friend. I had a rare opportunity to let go; to free myself of an honest reality weighing heavily within for so long. It helped.

This evening I found Petoskey, sea glass, and a few other assorted stones at Oval Beach, as the sun was setting. It was a lovely evening with a very calm lake. After 2 bottles of wine I found no issue with finding a discrete spot along the beach to do what I needed to do.

Walleye at Spectators this evening. I'm finding a pattern to Friday nights. Somehow we seem to end up here. Decent food; good music; sports bar. And close to home.

Saw deer at Saugatuck Dunes State Park again this evening.

Plans are for me to visit with my bud, CJO tomorrow in Indiana. I am so looking forward to it. See ya 'bout 10A, darlin.

All in all, a rather full day, wouldn't ya say?











Lake Michigan from Alligator Hill, Glen Lake, Michigan - July, 2006

During my formative years, this was quintessential to what life was about. Every Friday, beginning about 3P, LAV-FM played what became known as 'the Friday Song'. It took me awhile to find it. Wish I had a wav file to share.


Shanty - by Jonathan Edwards

Gonna sit down in the kitchen and fix me something good to eat.

Make my head a little high and make this whole day complete.

I’m gonna lay around the shanty, mama, and put a good buzz on.

Well, pass it to me, baby, pass it to me slow.

We'll take time out to smile a little before we let it go.

We’re gonna lay around the shanty, mama, and put a good buzz on.

Well there ain't nothin' to do and there's always room for more.

Fill it, light it, shut up and close the door.

We’re gonna lay around the shanty, mama, and put a good buzz on.

Gonna sit down in the kitchen and fix me something good to eat.

And make ourselves a little high and make the whole day complete.

We’re gonna lay around the shanty, mama, and put a good buzz on.

Every night and day!

We’re gonna lay around the shanty, mama, and put a good buzz on.