Funny funny...classic spooky spoof

My Plain Jane
by Cynthia Hand, Jodi Meadows and Brodi Ashton

From the online reviews it seemed that a lot of people who loved My Lady Jane had a hate on for this. I don't get that at all! I cracked up multiple times during the reading of this and thought it was even better than the first.

The only excuse I can make is that maybe the readers absolutely adored Jane Eyre and had a daddy envy going for Mr. Rochester. Me, I always thought he was kind of creepy...and now I know why.  (kidding!) But seriously, why should a healthy, strong young lady want to marry a lying old fart? How happily ever after was that going to be? ...until he kicked the bucket and left her all his money.

So as you see, I absolutely loved the first part of Jane Eyre and greatly disliked the ending, so you can expect that a riotously supernatural parody would appeal to me. And it did. Loved it.  And the authors' habit of stealing lines freely and frequently from a certain movie just made me happier.  After I groaned out loud, I smiled.  Isn't plagiarism the greatest compliment?

McGee Creek, last lovely day

I "overslept" again and didn't get up until 7:15; the sun beat me up as usual.

Damn! It was cold!

Okay--seriously chilly. In preparing for this trip, I'd reviewed the forecast. Saturday and Sunday would be hot but not extreme (highs around 85); then a cold front would come through and highs would be around 80 and lows around 65.  Huh.

I'll have to double-check the actual low, but we knew it would be low enough to open all the windows and sleep with the air flowing through.  But of course I had to leave my window shade down--stupid lights!

In packing, I'd brought home the lightweight hoodie from work and left the heavy one behind. I put in only one pair of long pants--lightweight cotton ones. Luckily I'd packed two pairs of socks.

So my morning attire was tee-shirt, hoodie, pants, socks and sports sandals.  Walking the dogs up to the "comfort station" soon warmed me up.  I suspect Americans are the most uptight people in the world about calling a loo by its name.  In airports, they're simply labeled "Toilets" and I haven't seen a single person refusing to go--oh, the shame! The stigma! Going into the toilets!  Our friend Greg refers to his travel trailer as his sh**ter.

Of course we have our own comfort station in the RV, but whenever it's convenient I prefer to use the park toilets. Plus it gives me a destination for my morning dog walk.

When we first arrived I was thrilled at the song of the orchard orioles, but by the third day it was getting to be the norm. Not an annoying norm like the cardinals or the Carolina chickadees back home, but a pleasant, ever-changing, ever noticing norm. A couple more days and I'd probably be ready for a change.

After a quick breakfast of poached egg with leftover beans--there are few better breakfasts than egg with beans, rice and soy sauce--we headed to the fishing hole.  I decided not to fish at all but to aggressively watch birds  instead. The day before, the wind appeared to have blown all the birds into their nests. But on Wednesday morning, I walked away from the pier with two dogs and a pair of binoculars, and I found the scrubby woods alive with little birds.

So alive that I had to run back to the pier to get my bird book. There was this odd little bird with a beak like a nuthatch's, but he was much more active, foraging up, down, sideways all along the pine branches. And he wasn't colored like a nuthatch at all--he had a dullish brown head, a fairly white but not pristinely white breast, and an odd white spot at the back of the head. From the book it was clear--brown-headed nuthatch in "tired" (post-breeding) plumage.  I wish I'd taken a picture, even if it was just with the phone. Next time, picture!

I also saw three red-headed woodpeckers practically all at the same time. Their plumage is never tired! 

What ate the bark off this dead tree?

Eventually Zack went back on the pier for a nap and Izzy and I walked in big circles through the unimproved campsites. We didn't see any more birds; when we returned, the nuthatch, plus the chickadees and titmice, were gone. I never got a good look at a peewee so I didn't record it. Or the chipping sparrows.

I believe that was the morning when we saw a doe with fawn at the side of the road. We'd been seeing the doe when we drove back and forth between the campsite and the fishing dock (it was three miles), but this time she had a tiny, baby fawn with spots on it--according to Ed; I was driving and didn't get a good look.  On the trip back, suddenly he said, "Frog." A split-second later, "Snake." The frog was on the right side of the road; the snake was crossing left to right. He heard or felt the car and reversed course.

Was the snake after the frog? Probably--and probably we interrupted the course of nature by denying poor snakey a meal.  He was a long, thin black one, fast-moving and quite lovely.








Departure time soon arrived. We left our campsite at 12:35-ish and circled the loop to get to the boat trailer parking lot, where there was plenty of room to hook up the car. This procedure took exactly 30 minutes. We then stopped at the park store for a bit and left at 1:42. Arrived home at 3:54. No stops other than traffic lights. Traffic was normal; lighter than it had been on Saturday, but always with us.





NOTES:
1. Get a camera with at least 40x optical zoom. When I went to ebird.com to report the brown-headed nuthatch, the web page said it was "rare" and suggested that I should document the finding with a picture. They were wrong, by the way. Yes, it's true my bird book which called them "common" is about 20 years out of date. But I looked at other sightings in the area and they've been reported often in the last few years. Still, I felt bad.
2. Fruit that is messy (mangoes; peaches) needs to be pre-cut at home. For the later days, take fruit that's easy to eat without special preparations (cherries, apples).
3. Make homemade frozen burritos for travel days. Try refried beans with potatoes, bell pepper and onion; pesto with spinach, dried tomato, bell pepper and mushroom.  Make cilantro-jalapeno pesto from https://ohmyveggies.com/garden-veggie-freezer-burritos/
4. Always check the campsite length before reserving it.
5. No more 30-amp power when hot weather is forecast. I've already broken that rule by making a reservation in Arkansas for August, but never again.

Mammoth's Monday at McGee Creek

Note: On Sunday night the noise of the bedroom air conditioner bugged the crap out of me. it's just too darn loud. I finally went to bed with my finger in my ear, the way I'd learned to do when Ed had a snoring problem. I hope we don't have to use it very often.

We woke to one thing we never expected--a cool snap!  It was chilly and very, very windy.  58 degrees with a 9 mph wind gusting to 30 mph. Straight from the north.

Ed was not meant to have minnows this trip. His traps were only minimally effective--I think he got a few small perch in them. But the guys next door brought minnows from their pond and they gave us some, several times. The first time they were all dead, so Ed fished them to little effect. Then the second time, he left them in the minnow bucket in the lake but the wind blew it over and the lid came off.  And then, as the people were leaving, they gave us all their remaining minnows. After the day's winds died down Ed put them out in the lake...and then the morning gusts tossed it over again.  Ay!

While I was taking the dogs on their morning walk, Ed saw a couple of animals swim by going north, then later, one of them swam back by in the opposite direction. According to our next door neighbor, they were beaver. Very likely, but from the look I got at one next morning, not conclusive. But they were clearly larger than muskrats and possibly larger than nutria, which range up to 24 inches long. But neither of us got a good look at them.

A lot of people cleared out that night. All that was left nearby were 2-3 campers and the campground host. The host, it turned out, was the neighbor with the incredibly annoying colored and white lights that prevented me having my windowshade open at night. What kind of moron does that?  If we ever come back here, don't get sites 1 or 2 just on the chance that the same moron host is there with the same stupid outdoor lights. We'll go further down the row.

Despite the wind, we fished. I caught a tiny perch of some sort; Ed caught a small catfish and while we were trying to decide if it was big enough to keep, it finned him so badly, he ended up throwing it off just to get rid of the pain. And of course the fin carved out an even bigger slice of his hand. Ouch. Can't blame him, though. The father of the family fishing with us looked sad to see a nice fish like that thrown away.

Aside: this family, that we fished with three days in a row (off and on), were superb. Not fancy; not demonstrative; just home folk. Like my family. There was a father who was as dedicated to fishing dawn to dusk. He kept the kids in line, but in a soft-spoken way. An older boy had a spinning reel with a lure; he was also serious fisherman. Then two girls and a boy, of mixed ages. If I'd had to guess it would be girl-boy-girl. One of the girls was as into fishing as I used to be at that age, and on the last day she got her reward--a lovely little catfish!  She--and her sibs--were thrilled.

The mother was nice and kind of quiet; we only spoke briefly on the last day. She asked me if I was looking at birds and I replied, deprecatingly--yes, looking, but not finding much. She reminded me of one of Edward's friends' moms--smart as a whip, but shy about it.

Coolest thing--a kingbird attacking a pair of crows at water's edge, and then the attack was joined by a scissortail! They teamed up and chased off one of the crows and the other followed along.  I also saw an immature eagle flap/soaring across the lake. He looked and flew exactly like the adult bald eagle I'd seen the previous day, but he was mottled tan and brown.

At suppertime it was still a little too windy for enjoying Hibachi-style barbeque, plus we hadn't thawed any of it out. So we took a break from cooking outdoors and had Kielbasi and potato salad and canned pinto beans.  Excellent supper and the sunset was out of this world. It was copied straight from the screen of 2001 A Space Odyssey or one of the many animated SCI FI movies I've seen. Sometimes sunsets are majestic, putting you in the mind of gods, kings and magic castles, but not this one! It was all lines and geometrics and colored super nova...distant galaxies when the aliens have hijacked your spaceship and are pulling you into danger...

McGee Creek, Sunday

I slept pretty well, falling asleep after only one potty run and waking up surprised that I'd actually been asleep. It was awfully hot and we expected to be able to run only one air conditioner, so at bedtime we shut off the front one and only used the one in the bedroom. We followed the advice of a neighbor to switch the water heater from electricity to LP and that seemed to make things much better.

The bedroom A/C is extremely loud but that seemed to help me sleep. I started off with the sheet, the comforter and a blanket, but ended up casting the blanket aside. No nightly noises were heard, but that's just what you have to expect sleeping in an electrified tin can. (Sorry, Mammoth)  The problem with all that sleep was that I didn't get up nearly as early as I'd hoped. Normally we open the shades on the east-facing window but when I tried, our neighbor had some sort of white outdoors lights that made the bedroom bright as day. People should think about their light leakage.

It would have been good enough to open the other shade, the lakeside one, but we forgot. Nevertheless when I arose Ed had already gone through the first pot of coffee and the sun was fully up, but the pine covered slope to the east kept our patio well covered.

As we breakfasted out on the patio, the clouds were building up and the humidity intensifying. We hastened to load our fishing stuff and pop over to the covered fishing pier.  A sweet family of about six were there but were fine with me bringing my dogs on.  So I did.  We fished until the rain came.

Yes, again. Rain.   Of the sixth trips taken so far--this was the seventh--it's rained on three of them and this one made four. I will redub our machine, Mammoth the Rain Magnet. Or maybe Mammoth Rainmaker.


The rain continued until three o'clock or so. Watching TV, Ed napped in his chair.  The clouds cleared out gradually, and by late afternoon a breeze and bit of sun had dried off our picnic table and most of our patio. It was too nice to sit inside, so I guilted Ed on accompanying us around to the restroom and the boat launch. I would have liked to go farther, but our feet just turned us home.

Red-headed woodpecker, several. At fishing pier, chickadee and titmouse and an odd little bird in the low trees, long beak, active but not frantic, white wingbars but otherwise drab.  Could have been a female pine warbler--plenty of pine trees there., both tall and short.

I did see an almost certain chipping sparrow by the water. They're common as mud back east, but we don't have them at home. I'd been hearing them. And later a bald eagle flying across the lake. The day before a flock of five egrets--probably great egret--on the other side of the lake. One stopped on a dead tree but the others flew on, and soon he hastened  to join his flock.

Turkey and black vultures. One turkey vulture stopped on a dead tree nearby and the sun hit him beautifully. I never realized how brilliantly red their head was, nor how white the beak. He was a beautiful bird.

Notes: This campground is nice, but there's no fishing on this side of the lake. It would be a good place to do what our neighbors did--launch their boats at the nearby launch, then tie them up on the single remaining pine tree between the campsite and the lake shore.  There were a lot of tree stumps near the water--I assume the park crew had to cut them because they posed a danger to campers. I hope so, anyway. If they did it to create an enticing view, they blew it.

The other campground, Buster Hite, was way too crowded--it's not worth trying. But at this one (Potapo), any of the sites by the lake would be great and even the ones across the road would be okay. Love the patios! I think the big thing here is family reunions. At the Buster Hite campground every campsite seemed to have at least three vehicles. Usually a 5th wheel or trailer, a boat, and three pickup trucks. We're like the only "singles car family" around.

The covered fishing pier is nice, but on the weekends too crowded.  We eventually gave up and went home, grilled veggie skewers and steak, made baked potatoes in the microwave, and lounged.  Best kind of evening.

McGee Creek State Park

8 June 2019  Home to McGee Creek State Park

We took US-75 north until to OK-3 east, then the McGee Creek Lake Road into the park. The Saturday morning drive up through Sherman sucks only slightly less in an RV than it does in a car. In a car you're having to constantly change lanes, trying to keep moving and avoid being hit, but in an RV you just slog along in the right lane and try not fall off the narrow overpasses with only a sidewalk curb between you and disaster.
1. Planned distance: 119 miles
2. Map time estimate: 2:03
3. Adjusted estimate: didn't calculate
4. Actual distance: 121 miles 
5. Actual time:  ~2:15 (minus stoppage = 2:00 driving time)
6. One bathroom break
7. Average mph trip: 58

First of our summertime trips; first trip out of state; and first trip in hot weather. Here starts Mammoth, all cleaned up and ready to travel:

We pulled out at 10:44 with the odometer at 37514.4. It was very sunny, but since it was a Saturday, lots of traffic. No slowdowns, though. We took a very quick pit stop at the Choctaw Welcome Center just across the border. Tried to stop at the Texas center but we missed the left turn under the highway to get over there. It was very poorly marked.

I didn't even realize that this was our first trip outside of Texas until Ed remarked on it. Amazing, huh? We've been east, southwest, southeast, and west, but this is the first one straight to the north. (and just a little bit east)

It was 2:30 when I next noted the time. But--that wasn't the arrival time. We couldn't find our site at first and drove all around the campground circle. Then we unhooked at the boat dock and drove on in. Ed did his usual superb job parking in spite of my help. Then he did the electric and water hookups and I got the dogs a drink...and only then did I note down the time.


We will see if this trips turns out to be our first total disaster. For one, the sites are really close together. For another, the reservations page had said, size of RV plus tow vehicle 31 to 50 feet. I didn't realize that meant some of the sites were only 31' long. We are 32' and just barely squeezed in.

We have a lake view, which is great, but it's a westward view.  With the sun going down in an almost clear sky, it became unbearably hot out there. Not so hot by the thermometer, but miserable by the sun and humidity. Anytime after 4pm we have to retreat inside. But until then....

Even though it's crowded, each site on the lake has a little paved patio with a picnic table. Nice!  I couldn't wait to sit outside in the morning, watching the sun rise over the lake and hearing the bird song. And the concrete slabs are nicely level.

Our neighbors to the right have a small party boat moored  right where I want to stare over the water. But it's easily overlooked.

At first the circuit breaker kept flipping but after an hour or so that stopped. It helped when a neighbor suggested we switch the water heater to LP.  The air conditioner--just one of them because it's only a 30amp hookup--ran constantly and only just managed to keep it cool inside. After an hour inside, Izzy was still panting.  Later we discovered that our outside freezer had completely thawed out...apparently some of the outlets are shut off when running on 30amp and it was plugged into one of them. We later discovered that the same thing applied to a few of the indoor outlets including the one I use to charge my computer and the one in the bathroom. I didn't realize how much we relied on that air freshener in the bathroom before.  Also the Direct TV DVR is not working. That could send us straight home.

Shortly later...yeah! After four reboots and a fifteen minute break, the DVR started working!  The trip was saved--except for the heat. I couldn't get enough signal strength to look at the weather on my phone...which was odd because talked to my brother on the same phone. I gave up and sat inside in the air conditioned comfort and waited for the sun to sink down...just...a...little...lower. Then I'd go outside to take pictures.

We have tons of Eastern Kingbirds here. But I saw one chasing a smaller bird--not nice! I've heard Carolina wrens but not seen one. There's a very annoying mockingbird that likes the one tall pine tree between us and the water. I've also seen scissortails, grackles, and purple martins. And Canada Geese down by the swimming area. But best of all, an orchard oriole came by and serenaded us!  Walking around, I'm almost sure I saw peewees (and heard them, of course) but didn't like to write it down. Bird watching with dogs can be difficult sometimes.

History, England, domestic, 1940s--yo!

Minding the Manor
by Mollie Moran

Great, simply great. It's good that I was listening to the audiobook instead of reading words on paper, because the audio version slowed me down and didn't allow me to race through the good parts.  Funny thing, too--all the time I was listening to it, I thought it was fiction.  But from her obit (she died in 2014 at the age of 97):

Last year, after Penguin books finally persuaded her to tell her story, she found herself – aged 96 – a best-selling author. 

Another quote from the obituary:

She particularly enjoyed telling interviewers where Downton Abbey gets it slightly wrong. “I laugh when I watch Downton,” she told me.  “When you were in the kitchen you didn’t see the people upstairs.  I was answerable to the butler and the cook who were far more obsessed with class and position than any of the gentry. Most servant girls could count the number of times they saw the boss on the fingers of one hand.”

Because of the time and place where she lived and worked, her memoir gives one a feeling of "Forrest Gump deja-vu " sometimes. She was there for the silver jubilee celebration of King George V and Queen Anne, and then for King George's death and the coronation of Edward VIII. She actually saw Edward's American woman--Wallis Simpson--on the street one day. Which was after her disastrous dating of a handsome Black Shirt fellow, so she was there at two of their rallies.

I can only wish she'd taken the book farther than her marriage to an RAF airman. She did finish out those events in the afterward, so we know where everyone ended up. But I'll give her liberty to stop when she did--it was plenty long enough to be satisfying.

Wonderful!

Another great working dog book

The Possibility Dogs
by Susannah Charleson

Her other book Scent of the Missing was absolutely riveting, and this one only slightly less so. There wasn't the action, thrills and suspense of the many practice exercises, test, and actual searches that she undertook with search and rescue dogs, nor was there the excitement of her adoption of Puzzle, her own search and rescue dog.

But there was suspense of a sort, about the dogs she trained and helped train as support dogs.  Dogs can do a lot more than help a blind man across the street or sweep a house for threats to a PTSD sufferer. And it's exceedingly fun reading about them doing it.

YA enjoyable by a OA (old adult)

The Unexpected Everything

Morgan Matson does action very well! She had me so caught up in a scavenger hunt that I lingered in the toilet at work well after finishing my job but unable to find a pause point. She does young adult chick lit very well too, but if she ever got an urge to do mainstream suspense, I'd give her a try.

But that's okay; I'm game for YA from time to time. In this one she takes a student of high school age (probably 17) who has a close, supportive group of friends who help her break out of her control-freak overachiever habits and "go wild" once in a while. A very tame "go wild" that involves drinking alcohol in moderation and kissing boys at parties. Her father is a congressman and so she can't be caught doing anything really iffy, plus she wouldn't take a chance on messing up her admission to a pre-premed summer program.

But when her father's career takes a bad turn, her plans for summer all go wonky.  With unusual and very enjoyable results.

ps Don't be fooled by the dogs on the cover. They're only bit players in the action.

Better than most cozy

Tea With Milk and Murder
by H Y Hanna

My third "cat mystery" series. Loved it. One heroine who runs a tearoom, one best friend who is annoying head-over-heels in love with a guy the heroine dislikes, four snooping old women (the "old biddies" as she calls them), one mother who just discovered the joys online shopping and persists in buying useless presents for her daughter, and one pesky little cat who escapes his leash to lead the heroine into sneaky places....

Yes, I know you have to abandon your skepticism about coincidences when you read any mystery novel, but this one is a doozy. She's like "the master or the coincidence." I know this is a small town and all, but sheez!  There's a clue around every corner.

And still...I liked it. And it was somewhat funny. Smilish, one might say.

Second (for me) of the series

The Silence of the Library
by Miranda James

I was about to condemn this book in disgust. After forcing us to read numerous ever-lengthening passages of a melodramatic girl detective novel from the 1950's, she didn't even include the imaginary book's ending. But on second thought, I decided I was grateful not to be subjected to it. She wrote a synopsis of it, just enough to explain how the detective (a part-time librarian) used it as a clue to figure out his own mystery.

So this book, the second of my three "cat mystery" series to try, is getting a solid B rating from me. Good enough to read another, but not good enough to seek another one out.

One point in its favor is that the cat behaves like a cat. The first series I read had a cat that exhibited strongly un-catlike behaviors.  But this cat--Diesel--acts just like a real cat.  He sleeps, begs for food, scratches on closed doors, and trips up people when darting out after a thrown toy.  About the only improvement I could ask for is that he throw up from time to time--on the good furniture, of course.

Cat in the Stacks review

Arsenic and Old Books
by Miranda James

Great mystery--kept me guessing until the end. The author did have a tendency to draw out the suspense by having her detective take a break at key moments. Instead of rushing through the old diaries at breakneck pace, he'd get a headache, feel the need to stretch, or let his cat's appetite be a reason to knock off for the night.  Or, when faced with two sets of evidence to examine, he looks at the least interesting one first and then gets interrupted before he can review the second.

I noticed only one minor howler...maybe...but it's hard to describe without letting things slip.

I'll definitely read another one or ten of these.