A Murder of Crows...A Blizzard of Buzzards

What do you call a flock of buzzards? This picture was taken by my friend Waldo Schmidlpt of an old tree by the cemetery that was just filled with buzzards. An eerie bird at best, but when hanging out in a gang like this, downright spooky!

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Today, I finally learned how to make a link from this blog. A simple thing to most people, but despite instructions, I have the hardest time with html. All those little carrots and slashes and quotation marks drive me crazy. I have new respect for dark daddy, my web designing friend.

Last year, clay guy talked me into taking a pottery making class. It was a logical request, me and Pap love pottery and have a large collection on top of the fact that pottery is our regional product and we actively promote its sale. I'm creative and kind of artsy, I thought I'd love it. I didn't. I hated everything about making pottery from the uncomfortable position you must assume at the wheel to the feel of the clay squooshing between my fingers. I hated having to remove all my rings, I hated that my long fingernails made it almost impossible to smooth things out properly. I quit the class, but, I gained a whole new respect for the potters who make my dishes and art pottery.

While you may be thinking the previous paragraphs were as random a bunch of thoughts as could be, they connect on the level of "things I once took for granted". I used to believe I was pretty smart, then I realized a three year old could stump me in under thirty seconds (smart people should also have answers for the illogical) and I don't know what a flock of buzzards is called. I used to call myself a quick learner, then the internet came along. Things I once presumed were easy, turned out to be hard, hard things turned out to be easy... I have learned that life has very many more dimensions that I had previously believed. That's cool, and it's inspired me to make a list of things I want to do and see before I die. Luckily, I have many, many years to work on this.

Top of the list: I want to tour Scotland, my husband's, families homeland. I want to learn how to use oil paints, train for a marathon, write a play and see it produced, teach my grandgirls how to walk with a book on their head, build a straw wall, raise a chicken, design a new house, learn to ballroom dance, see a financial report for the lottery, watch a concert from the first row, mediate a debate between a minister and a wiccan priestess, visit my girl in Australia... to be continued somewhere else....