the grass is always greener…

guardian of the clothesline, originally uploaded by hockamama.

the warm, wet morning grass under my bare feet
the cool, damp clothes on my shoulder as they await their turn for the pins
the washin’ powder-fresh smell
starshine sniffing my legs, gently nibbling my ankles
she watches me from her place in the sun
the occasional slight breeze
the birds calling

this is why I love to hang clothes on the line. it’s therapeutic, and calming

I received this email the other day, and I wondered how many people fall for this scam.  who wouldn’t like to believe that this could happen to them?

 Dear Friend,

Your Sister,
Deaconess Rosilyn Dyer

gee, should I reply?  guess not.

I finished it wednesday morning.  three days longer than it would have taken me had I not had to share it, but it’s finished.  now I’m melancholy.  I enjoyed it immensely, couldn’t wait to get to the end, yet I hated for it to end.

I won’t say anything about it, so as not to spoil it, but if you’re considering reading it, definitely do!  it ties up a lot of loose ends, some characters are lost, unfortunately, but I was very happy with the ending; hopefully you will be, too.

all morning I’ve been checking the front porch and the garage steps, hoping the ups man has come to bestow upon me the most anticipated book of this millennium-harry potter and the deathly hallows! and while I was looking the other way, the mailman brought it. rich was mowing when the mailman pulled up, so he took it upon himself to relieve said mailman of his burden. then, the sneak proceeded to stand in the garage and read the first chapter!!

in the past, I read harry while rich is at work, and then he reads when he gets home. since I read rather quickly, it isn’t much of a problem. however, this time, rich happens to be on vacation, so I have entertained the idea of purchasing a second copy, but so far I’ve held back. hmm, maybe I’ll just run into town here in a minute…

last night we finally made it to see harry potter and the order of the phoenix! we have a long standing tradition of going to see the harry movies with tammie and linda, and they were in the mountains all week, so we had to wait till they came home yesterday. it was a real struggle, waiting for days. we thought about sneaking and watching it early, then going with them when they came home, but we thought tony might snitch on us, so we just sucked it up and waited.

I was so excited to see the movie, that I made us some shirts. leastwise for tony and I, because rich wouldn’t wear one in public, so I didn’t make him one. tony’s has a phoenix on it, with the words dumbledore’s army. I screenprinted it. mine has a picture of snape, and says misunderstood.  I made mine with an iron on.

we got lots of comments of them. and, even though quite alot of the book was left out, it was a great movie. I understand that they have to leave alot of things out of the movies in order to make a reasonable length, but I would gladly sit through a 5 hour movie, with an intermission. I think we’re going to go see it again next week, and take maddie with us. I can’t wait!

my bruddas, originally uploaded by hockamama.

ben and stuart. neither of them like to have their picture made, so I had to trick them, which they like even less. the shot was worth it, though. ben and his wife and twin girls were down for their annual visit over the 4th of july. that’s the only time we see them.

it’s so hard to wrap my mind around my little brothers having kids of their own. it doesn’t seem that long ago they were kids themselves. stuart was 15 and ben was 10 was jessica was born, so she grew up with them. well, more with stuart, since ben didn’t live with us. that’s why she doesn’t treat them as uncles, more like the pesky older brothers that she wishes she had.

it’s been quite awhile since I’ve posted; things have been a little hectic around here.

my brother ben, his wife anne, and their girls kimmie and anna came down for a visit last week.  they came in on the 4th and stayed till sunday the 8th.

they brought madison home with them; she had been in indiana for 6 weeks.  the original plan was for her to stay 2 weeks with mandi’s mama, then mandi and her mama would meet in charleston to get her back home.  but judy (mandi’s mama) had some health problems, and each time they tried to work out a trade time, she just didn’t feel up to driving so far.  so, 6 weeks later, she came home with ben.

tony and maddie wait all year for the twins to come down, and they play until they drop.  we have huge family meals while they’re here; altogether there are 15 of us.

it’s nice to take one day while they’re here and have a girls’ day out.  anne, mandi and I go yard sale-ing or shopping, whatever we can fit in.  once a year I have both my sisters-in-law in one place.  I think if we had more time together, we could probably get into some trouble.

daddy love, originally uploaded by hockamama.

how sweet can it be? this is perhaps my favorite of all the shots taken during the family gathering. she’s got her piggies, her daddy’s attention, what more could a girl want?

helen tagged me for a 10 random things about me meme, so I struggled to think of 10 things I haven’t already blabbered to y’all about.  hopefully you’ll find something interesting in here:

1.    when I was a kid, I was introduced to a book series, “the happy hollisters“.  five siblings who solve mysteries.  I decided that hollister must be my real name, and that holly was my nickname.  I could never figure out how to shorten holly, so this worked great!

2.    people assume that because my name is holly, I must have been born at Christmas time.  not so; mama loved Christmas so much, that even though I was born in the middle of summer, she had to have a holly.  stuart lucked out, if he’d been a girl, his name would have been noel.

3.    I tend to make projects much harder than they need to be.  when I throw a birthday party, I go extremely overboard and get very stressed out.  everyone has a great time, and the decor is always a winner, but does it really matter that the gift bags have the guests’ names hand embroidered?  unfortunately, when I’m in the throes of planning, and until the point of execution, I don’t think about the unnecessariness of triviality.

4.    I absolutely adore crisp, clean sheets.  I finally discovered the luxury of quality sheets, and I’ll never go back.  I love to hang them on the line to dry, then at night, I jump in bed and squirm around like a fish out of water.  rich used to get really annoyed with me, but I reckon he’s grown fond of resigned himself to tolerating this charming stupid little habit.

5.    I used to spy on people when I was a kid.  I would lurk around corners and eavesdrop.  my favorite pasttime was to hang out in the aisles at the store or library and peek around the corner at people. I also liked to sit on the benches downtown and watch people as they loitered around.  I used to think I wanted to be a detective when I grew up.

6.    I don’t care much for dogs.  we’ve had several over the years that I’ve liked, but in general, I’d rather have 8 or 10 cats (kinda like we do now) than 1 dog.  I saw a sign in a pet store the other day that says it all: ‘dogs have owners, cats have staff’.  there’s so much truth in that, it’s not funny.

7.    I crave beef more than any other food.  most people crave chocolate, or ice cream -and sometimes I do, too- but most times I’ve got a hankering for something, it’s a steak or a burger.

8.    I am a shy person.  only people who have known me forever would understand that.  I am an extrovert, and love to meet new people, but inside is an introvert.  one time during a bible study class, one of the women at church gave us some kind of personality test, and I was evenly balanced between extro- and introvert.

9.    I love to read.  reading has been my savior and my downfall over the years.  in school, I would get into trouble because I would read a book instead of doing classwork.  I frequently neglect my duties to read.  I love the escape it brings me, and I hate for a really good book to end.  as a kid, I would feel such a connection with the story and characters and a profound sadness to leave them.  I have always liked fiction-novels and mystery, no romance, unless it was a side part of the story.  lately, I’ve found biographies enjoyable.

10.    my favoritest books are the harry potter series.  that is a story that I could really escape into.  I think if I were a character in harry’s world, I would be molly weasley, ron’s mama.  I would like to be ms. mcgonagall, but I think in reality I’m more like molly weasley.

I wish I had a picture to show y’all, but you’ll have to picture this in your minds…my kittens -big cats now- have a love affair with an angora sweater of jessica’s.   they carry it around, crying pitifully.  it’s the funniest thing, to see one of them with a mouthful of sweater, trying to drag it without tripping over it.

a baby will carry it into some room, usually the one I’m in, and snuggle with it.  then another baby will come take it away.

this has been going on for several months now.  jessica will see it lying in the corner, or under the dining room table, and pick it up.  of course, after it’s been wallered all about, it must go back into the laundry hamper.  after it’s washed, she’ll wear it again, then leave it lying somewhere and the cycle will start all over again.  sometimes they will actually take it out of her clean clothes basket, since she never really puts her clothes away.

I’ve tried to snap a picture of this sweet act of love, but every time they realize I’m behind them, they drop it and run.  the image of sweater dangling from kitty mouth will never leave me.