jakorte's blog

2/22/13
Has this ever happened to you?

I’m sitting on the couch on a wintry Friday morning post surgery.
I’ve established today’s goals: Stay awake and upright all day; cuddle up on the couch with cocoa, and a blanket; watch a few movies to engage my brain. Also floating around in my mind but not committed to: making banana bread, cataloging trading cards (haven’t heard that one in a while, huh?), catching up on email – especially the real estate related ones.

Yep, sitting on the couch, watching the snowfall, two things occur to me.
1. Snow is in fact very pretty flitting down if you’re calling the couch your home for the day.
2. There is a rather large dead tree outside my picture window – but far enough away that I don’t need to worry about it crashing through my porch or window. In the crook of its large-limb reaching “V” is a weather worn likeness of Joseph Stalin.

Since my phone is right beside me I super-zoom and snap. Yeah, well, there are a couple of window panes and a screen in the way. I try to take one out the back door but sticking my arm out in the snowfall but my body and eyes don’t bend that way. Determination has led me thus far and I really want a picture of the Stalin Juncture. I step off my hospital issue sticky-sole socks; the ones with the little grippers so I don’t wipe out on linoleum floors, at least not easily. Swing the screen door open again, and barefoot, yep, barefoot… I toe-step out on the porch. Hovering in the wet-but-not-white section, I super zoom again, taking five pictures at various angles to get the light just right.

Accomplished, I head back inside, thinking about how my feet weren’t really that cold. At least not until I hit the warm carpet, then.... ok, cold toes! Shaking off the snow, I excitedly return to the couch wrapping my feet in the blanket that is right where I left it when I started this jaunt. I check my work. No Stalin. I put on my glasses. No Stalin. I flick the screen to enlarge the detail and for some reason my detail is one of those square composites choosing not to be clear. I check the tree. Stalin is still there.

Befuddled, but still determined, I email them to myself in hopes of manipulating them in picture edit, so everyone else can see what I see. I don’t see it, at least not on the computer screen. From my repositioned view on the couch, I still see it on the tree, though.

Well, huh, knock my socks off. I am still on the sparkly pain pills….
Yeah, well, I don’t care; it still looks like Joseph Stalin, or maybe Freddie Mercury wearing a fur cap.

Oh, wait! Now there’s a gorgeous big breasted flaming red cardinal sitting in the “V.”
Yeah, I’m not falling for that again.