They send me these catalogues, but I don’t look at them . . . because I scope out the website daily. I love it when they have 30 to 40 dollar shams on sale for $1.50, not to mention all the other sale stuff. But, now I am thinking of paying (gasp) full price for some clothes for summer. To justify this, I will have to go back to my habit of changing my clothes in regard to what I am doing. Well, that’s not so bad. I’m going to look now and pick some stuff out . . . and then maybe I’ll head over to LL Bean. I feel like it should be a rose and yellow year – not together though. I think I have been a red and navy person my whole life long – it’s just so darn practical. Well, we’ll see; we’ll see. On the other hand, I’m always up for khaki – especially when it’s vintage (safari days) Banana Republic. Hey, better check ebay for “found in the attic” goodies.

Ghurka – that’s another ebay search.

As far as my feet are concerned, I already have my beach trekkers.

Into the Wild – That’s a Redbox movie – one dollar a night rental. I got it without knowing anything about it and my husband said it was supposed to be fairly good. It was about a young man who graduates from college – Emory – and heads off on a “tramp – vagabond – hobo” adventure without telling anyone where he is or if he is alive. I believe, according to the narration provided by his sister, he was sending his parents a message. Were they really so bad they deserved that? Is anyone ever so bad they deserve to be left with a big unknown that goes to sleep with you and then lets you wake up for a moment unawares until it says, “Remember me.”

My grandfather was 50 when my mother was born and so we have sort of a chronologically skipped generation in our family. His name was John Shimp and he had a sister Elizabeth who married Floyd Skirvin and moved to Oklahoma. She had three little boys and one day – one very hot day – two of them turned up missing. She ran all the way out into the prairie to find her husband and then collapsed and died of heat stroke. I don’t know if if my grandfather was in the group of her brothers who went out to bring her body back to Sturgis for burial or not.

She’s there in the 1910 census (her first name was Sarah after her mother) with her husband and three boys, Earl and Glen and Ross; she is not in the 1920 census. In that census, they are back with their dad’s folks in Michigan.

Anyway, I have heard that story all my life as a warning about exerting in the heat, just as I cannot remember being cautioned about rusty nails, since an ancestor in another family branch hit his foot with an axe and wound up dying of lockjaw.