Two thirds over

You might be a redneck if you ever encouraged your grandmother to enter an eating contest.

Well, I guess I don't fit the redneck category for September cuz I don't have grandkids. The grandmother barf-o-rama scenario is featured on this month's Redneck calendar. I turned it over earlier this morning, just as I did the Appaloosa calendar, which features a photo of a baby horse.

Yup, 2008 is two thirds complete, and we've got just four months to make it a good year. Annie brought home the DVD "The Bucket List" this weekend and then bought us a new DVD player so we could watch the movie. Well, I'm gonna have to give the movie a third try because I've dozed off two nights in a row while watching.

My dozing has nothing to do with the movie because it's excellent, and I'm sure it's provided an overwhelming inspiration to a lot of people who usually just sit on the couch and watch or doze through movies.

Get off the couch and make something of your life before you croak, a typical redneck might say.

By the way, I received the Redneck calendar from a young man who's never needed The Bucket List to use his time wisely. Yup, Bryant Jones sent me the calendar earlier this year---the same year that he got featured in the New York Times as one of the thousands of young volunteers for Sen. Barack Obama's Presidential campaign.

He also completed his Master's from George Washington University, and last I heard he was working in the White House Executive Office. Bryant and I were going to get together during his month-long visit here, but it never worked out for either of us, so I'll just keep in touch and look forward to my next Redneck calendar and updates on how his bucket list is doing.

We talked about the bucket list last night while Bill, my sister-in-law Mary, her daughter Laura, and I sat in camp chairs at the back corner of the new storage shed, which was on our list for this year's "to do's."

Occasionally, a 4-wheeler UTV rolled past the door filled with triplets who will enter first grade tomorrow, driven by Annie who heads back to Seattle today and escorted by speeding Border Collies, one of which, Miss Kea, turned 1 year old today.

Inside the storage shed, there was talk of Laura joining Annie in her quest to climb Mount Kilamanjaro. Mary's bucket items include a lot more traveling the world, as she and my brother Mike have done most of their adult lives.

I mentioned my dream of going on the Appaloosa Chief Joseph Trail Ride some day and the truly ultimate goal of going back to New Zealand---this time with Bill along so he can look at all those Kiwi trees.

With the year two thirds over, I'm pretty pleased about my goals set for this year, though I do worry about the culmination of the garden project. I really worried last night because that temperature dropped so fast that I encouraged everyone to move into the house, lest they get too frigid to enjoy the huckleberry sundaes while watching Annie's Mount Rainier photos.

This morning the garden lives on. Thank God.

This morning there's also weather worry in the South about that hurricane. Bill's sister Margaret called last night with great concern after seeing the storm's pathway headed right through their hometown of Oakdale, Louisiana, where they still own their family home. It seems the major concern is flooding, so time will tell if they have to be concerned about major damage to the house.

Time marches on as does the weather. There's not much we can do about the weather, whether it wants to destroy our homes with ravaging winds and rain or kill the fruits of our summer labor with a few hours of bitter cold.

Though there are no guarantees, we can do something about our time allotments. As we see each day slipping away and continue to turn over those calendars---be they redneck truisms or esthetic Cenex farm scenes---we can look ahead and get busy, remaining fully aware that our opportunities to mark those items off our list become more limited each day.

So, I guess I'll take my own advice, get off the couch and go pick some more beans and tomatoes. I'll say a prayer that all goes well for the inhabitants of hurricane land. And, finally, I'll count my blessings that the one-year-old grandpuppies probably won't enter me in an eating contest!