Fresh, homemade strawberry jam made with the best, freshest strawberries of the spring qualifies as, if not love in a jar, at least joy in a jar.

I’d write more, but this is really just an initial test to see if I can make a flickr image link work.

Walter is a truck.  A 3/4-ton Chevy long-bed pickup.  Original straight-six 216 engine.  Four on the floor with a granny gear.  Crash-box transmission from the days before syncromesh.

Top speed 50mph.

Interesting things happen when your truck is over 60 years old and your top speed is 50mph. When you have to think about every shift.  When you feel and hear the engine and the road.  You see more.  You hear more.  You listen to the engine and transmission to know when to shift.  You smell oil drips burning off the old block and you can gauge the truck’s temperature and its health.  You crank down the window (or even crank out the front windshield—the original air conditioning) and feel and smell the breeze. 

People smile at you and your slow old truck. 

You can feel the appreciation of the old timers as memories flood back.

You can see younger people’s eyes light up as they discover the visceral appeal of art deco curves and shiney chrome. 

All of a sudden there’s no destination—only a journey.

There are three rules in this household plus a few simple words of advice:
1) Don’t ride with anyone who’s drunk (or drive drunk).  Ever.  Call home and you get a free pass on the punishment you think you deserve for getting in the situation in the first place.
2) No heroin.  Ever.  (Expanded for 2008 to include no meth.  Ever.)
3) Do anything else and I’ll pretty much let it slide so long as you never get less than a B+ mid-term and an A- in any class.  Your grades go down and your ass is grass so do drugs, sneak out and party accordingly.

The advice is: drugs and/or alcohol lead to real stupid decisions about sex - don’t mix ‘em until you’re old enough to fully appreciate the importance of this advice.

That men are still closer to the monkey than women, I haven’t a doubt.  Men’s sexual impulse is triggered by the eyes, an inheritance from those simian ancestors whom the female summons when she is in heat by means of a noticeable change in her intimate parts, which turn red and take on the morbid appearanc of a ripe pomegranate.  For some reason, this works like waving a red flag at the males, should they not be paying attention.

Among humans, visual stimulus is equally irresistible, which explains the success of magazines filled with half-naked women.  Attempts have been made to exploit the same publishing market among female readers, but images of well-endowed youths unfurling their charms on full-color pages have been a fiasco; they are more often bought by homosexuals than by women.  We women have a better developed sense of the ridiculous, and besides, our sensuality is tied to our imagination and our auditory nerves.  It may be that the only way we will listen is if someone whispers in our ear.  The G spot is in the ears, and anyone who goofs around looking for it any farther down is wasting his time and ours.  Professional lovers, and I am referring not just to lotharios like Cassanova, Valentino, and Julio Iglesias, but to the quantities of men who collect amorous conuests to prove their virility with quantity—since quality is a question of luck—know that with women the best aphrodisiac is words.

Sounds like a good reason to try to hone my skills en-blog this year. 

No running water.  No electricity.  No refrigeration.  Outhouse.  Had to hike in at least half a mile through the snow in winter.  (Despite popular belief, it was uphill only one way.)

It seems about 1000 years and a million miles from my life today.

Looking at my kids, I can’t say they’re any happier than I was.  And looking at myself, I don’t think I can claim to be any happier than my parents were then.  Life’s different.  Far more complicated.  It’s full of lots more material crap.  But strangely, it’s not “better.”

[/rambling]

Tree
It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

Even in this
one lifetime
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books -

Already the branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
- Jane Hirshfield

-------------

There is a large 80- or 90-foot tall redwood which shades half of the back yard at my new home.  Sometimes we wish it wasn’t there so we could have more light.  Sometimes we give thanks for its cooling shade.  Always we are awed and made small and insignificant by its great calm being.

If you haven’t yet, and if you can afford to help, please go to her site and sponsor her.

You should be able to navigate from her site to the Blogathon sponsorship pages and make your commitment.

Without further ado, and with no hope whatsoever of identifying all the ... er, stuff… in that fridge, here’s Before:

During

and After (If you look carefully, you’ll see there’s plenty of room for more food in ther for a creative packrat like the esteemed Mrs.

The real story, however, involves removing cabinets to make room for the new fridge, widening the kitchen entry, since the old standard-depth fridge no longer intrudes, and moving the 700LB (700LB!!!) fridge around the house, through the patio doors and into position—which involved removing the kitchen light fixtures in order to have a higher-than-8-foot tipping radius to get the new fridge upright.  No wonder I sometimes see these monsters listed on Craigslist as “New / didn’t fit.”

All said and done, this is the best fridge ever, and since Mrs. ‘mouse is pleased and enjoying trying (unsuccessfully) to fill it up, I’m ecstatic about the change. 

P.S.: the bruises on my legs have faded to a dull yellow and my back may actually recover one of these months.

P.P.S.  Look at all that icemaking (read “margaritamaking") power there in the freezer!

Edit:  For the true voyeurs, here’s the link to Flickr where you can see the partial inventory and a picture big enough to read the labels.

The genesis of all this thinking is my new home.  I’m spending endless hours and huge amounts of mental and physical energy fixing up the place --removing overgrown shrubs, planting trees, moving the pool equipment to a better location, acquiring new furniture, thinking about remodeling, big or small.  The last few days (and the next several) will be spent using most of my free time to give a thorough cleaning and polishing to a heavy-duty stove I picked up cheap on Craigslist. 

It’s easy to say the stove is about saving money, satisfying my wife’s love for great cooking equipment, looking forward to years of future meals and family time.  At the same time, the stove owns me.  I’m the one up to my elbows in chemicals, sticky with grease, reaching into corners with a toothbrush, slicing knuckles on sharp metal corners.  I’ve got to move a gas line and re-route 220V electical for this stove. 

Stoveless, I’d have time to swim.

Poolless, I’d have time to garden.

Gardenless, I’d have time to read.

Bookless, I would be free.

Strange how truer words were never sung:  Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.