This is a "not so great" cell phone shot of a forlorn gator in the lounge area of the local community college where I have been taking a class in Microsoft Excel. The class is offered to local businesses through some kind of state grant program. The bookkeeper in our office and I were the only two people to take advantage of this opportunity so we are the teacher's pets and will "graduate" as the top two in the class. Of course, we will also be the bottom two in the class. I suppose it is all a matter of perspective! I'm still putting in applications for civil service jobs and hoping eventually to convince someone to hire me. I am so ready to move on from the environment I am now in.
I was out trying to take pictures for my last photography class and we were stopped at the red light, right beside this gator so I decided to get his picture. There are plenty more to be taken. I just have not gotten out and taken them. You can see the magnolia on his nose and the pelican on his belly. 
Well, cher, this is the last of the Mohicans, er, gators, if I do not get out sometime this week and snap some more photos. Maybe I will and maybe I won't.I know I've been quiet lately. I am in a bit of a negative and depressed (and contemplative) funk at the moment. (Silence--an unintended consequence of growing up with principles like "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all".)One of the fun things about blogging is that you can write about intelligence tests in January, and wonder about the answers to some of the seemingly silly questions on those tests, and wake up on a morning in September, nine months later, to find that someone named Anonymous has taken the time to answer your question in your comment section. Thanks, Anonymous!Which brings me to another thing I have been wondering about. Some bloggers know where their readers come from, and what kinds of search words/phrases people use to find their blogs. How do they do that?
Chef Gator, ready to add a little spice to someone's life. (Twice I have tried to upload a photo I took of a dead gator that was on the side of the road last Monday, but it does not seem to want to upload. I guess that is a cosmic sign that it is just too gross to display.)
I am fixin' to* have to go take some more photos of these "Gators on the Go" statues if I want to continue my series. Secretly, I have been marking my time to see if Princess of Everything (and then some), who was my inspiration for this series, runs out of fiberglass cows before I run out of alligators!
*fixin to, a quaint Southern expression that I tend to use too often-- fixin to--the real trouble is that I am always fixin' to do something and never quite get around to getting it done. What do other people say when they are going to do something, but have not yet done it?
In honor of my youngest daughter's first high school marching band performance. No, she does not play the piano, though she does play something almost as unwieldy, the trombone. She's nervous about trying to play and misstepping.
The show is all Eagles songs. I have told her I will probably cry when they play Desperado. The lyrics bring out the melancholy side of me....Come down from your fences, open the gate
It may be rainin', but there's a rainbow above you
You better let somebody love you(let sombody love you)
You better let somebody love you
before it's too late
Last week's GatorBaby, all grown up and steppin' out.
In honor of
Captainwow's recent announcement...This gator stands in the courtyard of the local women and children's hospital. Ain't she cute?I'll have to remember to post her "all grown up" picture next week.
And, BTW, my son's hand is looking much better, and yes, Regina Clare Jane, you were right in suspecting sloppy reporting on my behalf, he was actually pinched by the claw of the crab and not actually bitten by the crab!Thanks for all the kind words regarding the process of "letting go" of my son. It's an ongoing process, and never totally, or perfectly done, as I am sure all parents come to realize.
Is it Friday again, already? Here's a gator who stands in front of the Bell South building. It's not a real good photograph. I should have moved around and somehow gotten an angle where that window was not directly above his head. Oh well, if only bad photography was my only worry...My son was bitten on the thumb by a crab last week. (He's been crabbing with my father-in-law a couple of hours away from here, in an effort to keep him "clean" and out of trouble.) He was home over the weekend and complained about it hurting, but it did not look bad. Yesterday my father-in-law called and said he had taken him to the doctor because his hand was swollen and infected. Son had to have a tetanus shot and some antibiotics and goes back in two weeks. Father-in-law says it is nothing to be messed around with, says it is a bacterial infection, says he has seen people lose hands and die from it when not treated. Last weekend, he busted his forehead when he put his face too close to a rifle he was shooting. After the fact, the adult he was with shows him how to hold the rifle so the scope will not hit him in the face. It was a nice little gash, that left his flesh on the scope of the gun, for which my son apologized, but it seems to be healing well. The boy can have the weirdest little accidents, even when he is clean and sober. The hard part is being here when he is there, and knowing he is hurting, and not being able to "ta-ta" him in person.
Things have been a little slow around here, but I have been inspired. First there was Friday Cat Blogging, and then, from the great state of Texas, The Princess of Everything (and then some) came up with the idea of Friday Cow Blogging. I am following in the footsteps of The Princess of Everything (and then some) and offering a new feature for your perusal, Friday Gator Blogging. I can most probably guarantee at least six weeks of exciting gator action, because I know I have at least six gator statue pictures on my computer. After that, I'll have to get out and take more pictures. I wonder if the Princess will run out of cows before I run out of gators? I'd also like to challenge SpookyRach to start a series of Friday Tombstone Blogging. Anybody else got anything interesting they'd like to expose on Fridays? It's an easy post, one where you don't have too think much.The gators all have a theme. I think this guy is standing next to a pirogue, and the mesh/wire looking thing is a crab trap. He is wearing a pair of the classic white rubber boots (Louisiana "Reeboks") that crabbers and shrimpers wear. In many of the coastal areas, these are the kinds of boots you see stuffed between the cab and bed of pickup trucks (In the rural parts of Louisiana, where most of my family is from, you would see cowboy boots or leather work boots).
The businesses along our main drag have no hopes of doing any serious business today, except the two drive through daiquiri shacks. The banks are closed for the day, and all sorts of characters are walking the streets. There will be a parade at 5:30 with costumed revelers throwing beads to the crowds who have gathered to celebrate my birthday Mardi Gras.
I thought I’d go take pictures of the party, but I think I’ll stay home and avoid the rowdy crowd. Besides, I am tired. It is exhausting work, coming out of the “age” closet. I guess I have to accept the fact that I am basically an old fuddy-duddy.
I wonder, would it be an oxymoron to say that I am a fun fuddy-duddy?
In one of my classes, we have been looking at the design elements of various web sites. One of the ones that caught my eye was the highIQsociety. Later that evening I checked the site out more closely and though I already know I am no genius, I had to take a couple of the tests, just to see what kind of questions they would ask.
I have never been any good at the questions that show you triangles with dots and colors on them and then ask you to choose which drawing would be next in the pattern sequence. It annoys me that I cannot see straight away what the pattern is and thus, can't for the life of me figure out what comes next.
Then there are the questions like this one:
Bloody sock is to ______ as festering ankle sore is to a) Yossarian, b) Pirrip, c)Prynne, d)Raskolnikov, e)Meussault
And this:
What word can be added to each of these to create new words? --Fish, Board, Glaze--
Looking at it now, I can see that maybe what they want is one single word that could be added to each of those words. And I bet the answer would be immediately obvious to any genius seeing the question. There is one small problem. I am not a genius.
And I have no patience with silly little details like that. On those questions, I simply make something up and go on to the next question. Even though I guessed at half of the questions (at least), it turns out I am normal, high normal (as if that is any consolation). I did not even bump my head on the ceiling of above average, dang it. I am just plain old normal, high normal.
But here is what I thought about. What if---what if I did not have that annoying habit of not taking those tests seriously, what if I would actually try to answer the questions, instead of dismissing them as stupid, (the nerve of normal me) might there be a budding genius lurking deep inside me that just needs a little nurturing? Is the problem that I am not applying myself? If I tried harder, would I at least qualify as above average instead of just plain old normal? I know in my little heart that the answer to that question is unequivocally, "no".
I had a friend once who had a habit of peppering his speech with the occasional "f-bomb", and when he was going to meet my mother, I asked him if he thought he could "be good" long enough not to use any words that might insult her. His answer was that he would have to study for it. Apparently it works to study for being good, because his vocabulary was as clean as my mother's, if only for the time he was visiting with her. But I don't think it would do any good to study to become a genius. Trying harder will not make me taller, nor make my feet smaller; trying harder will not make me a genius. It is sort of like being pregnant, either you are or you aren't. And I am not (I am not pregnant, nor am I a genius. I am smart enough to recognize that the previous sentence, "And I am not" was ambiguous, and have here clarified said sentence).
Sometimes being just normal, even high normal, bugs me. It just seems like I ought to be able to understand the concepts of higher intelligence. It is one of the things that frustrated me in my attempt to pass my Algebra class. I thought I ought to be able to understand Algebra, and having passed the class, it seems I ought to be able to move into even higher mathematical ground. But mathematics ain't for everybody.
I happen to know a mathematical genius type person and he sent me a copy of one of his published papers on higher mathematics to peruse. I am no genius, but I am perpetually curious about how these people of higher intelligence operate. He wasn't bragging or showing off. I asked to see the thing because I was so sure that if I just read the paper, I would understand at least a sliver of the concept they were writing about. Well, I was wrong. I don't know how they got that paper published in the first place. It was full of gobbledy-goo.
So, yeah, I know it is a burden to be a genius, just like it is a burden to be rich, or beautiful, but sometimes I just can't help myself, I wish I could be a genius. I think part of the reason for that is the desire to be something above normal in some area of my life, a need to be outstanding in a field, rather than being relegated to simply being out standing in a field. Did you geniuses catch that play on words?
