Coyotes, raccoons, and foxes, oh my….

….by the light of the shining moon.

It’s 3 a.m. The full moon lights up the roads and paths as we zoom around Leisure World on our bikes.  My hair streams behind me in the wind.  It is early fall and warm, but the hot summer nights are behind us.  The air is refreshing, invigorating.  We are alone….the night is ours.

The world is silent, except for the night birds calling to each other and splashing in the ponds.  We are cycling together in the middle of a metropolitan area with a population of five million people.  There is no one else, just my Danny and me.   It feels surreal, as if we are the only people left on Earth, in an empty city filled with vacant houses, streets, and buildings.  

But we are not alone….we are cycling with wild animals who are hunting in the moonlight. A raccoon with four half grown babies huddled around their mother as she herds them into the safety of a bush.  A fox dashes in front of our bikes, than runs beside us on the grass towards a pond.  

Suddenly, there is a young coyote in front of us.  It stops, curious to see who is invading her hunting grounds.

Nonchalantly, she trots off to find a morning meal for her cubs.  

We marvel at the amazing world of wildlife that we find at night in the middle of this endless city.  We know that it is a valuable gift that is given to us, and we treasure it.  This gift pulls us from our embrace in our cozy bed….so we can be part of the magic that is only experienced in the dark of the night, hidden from the world of humans.  

Our Youtube channel: Who wants to watch old people dance to old music?

We started it a few months ago, posting videos of us dancing to oldies.

We can't believe how many people have watched these videos and have liked them.  Why would anybody take the time to watch two mid-70-year-olds dancing to old music?  

Our dancing is seriously affected by our porch.  It is narrow, so I, as lead, have to get Vicky in the correct position on the porch so she can show off her moves.  If it was a regular dance floor, all of the moves we use could be used in any direction.  So, sometimes we have to "waste" a move so I can lead Vicky to the right spot to start her next move.

Makes it more challenging, but that sort of is more fun in a way.

In addition, the porch surface is AWFUL to dance on.  It's uneven, and sometimes we even trip on it.

But we don't care.  We aren't professional dancers.  We just want to show the joy of dancing, and the joy of dancing in one's old age.  

Here is the count of visitors to our most popular dancing video, as of today.  It is of Roy Orbison's In Dreams.  Nobody had a voice like his.  And few people had as tragic a life as he did.  He lost his wife in a motorcycle accident when she ran into someone's car door who had unexpectedly opened it.  He lost two children in a house fire.  And he died at a young age, 52, of heart problems.

He has been gone for 35 years now.   We feel like we are still honoring his talent by dancing to his beautiful music. 

Five days later we have passed 20,000 views.  By far the most for any of our videos.  It's not even our best dance.  

Five-six days later:  30,000

A week later:  40,000 views.  

Merlin is a true magician

Merlin is a bird identifying app that we discovered, and it’s amazing!

We’ve had a blast identifying birds that we’ve see and heard singing as we hiked from our cabin in Pine.

These are the birds that we saw and heard in one afternoon while sitting on the deck at our cabin.

We took a beautiful walk on the paths at our Leisure World home in Mesa and all these birds sang to us as dawn was breaking.

The vultures nest in the tops of all the eucalyptus trees that surround the golf courses in the fall.  They don’t sing to us and we’re glad.  We don’t want their song of death.  

But they are beautiful as they soar through the sky and spread their wings to dry off and warm up after hunting in the early morning.

Merlin identified this bird for us while we were on our pond walk.

You see….Merlin truly is a magician!

When we returned home there was more magic in our very own garden.  This cactus blooms only at night, and each blossom only lives for one night.

 

Nature is truly the most magical of all!

 

Two wonderful days with Candice

 

For Candice’s 200 consecutive ultramarathons.

Walking around the ponds…..

And just hanging out together—talking for hours on end.  A simply wonderful two days!

Our Letter to the Editor about the article in The Atlantic titled "Don't let love take over your life."

 The article:

 

Here is the article:

Love-life balance 

From the article:

"If you build a life with your relationship at the center, everything else gets pushed to the perimeter. There’s a way to maintain what I think of as “love-life balance,” to preserve your identity and autonomy while nurturing a caring partnership. Losing that balance can be damaging for a person, for a relationship, and for society."

The rest of the article elaborates on this argument.

We read this article going "wow."  

Very little of the article is actually about "love."  It is mostly an argument that one should cultivate a meaningful life outside of one's love interest.  And to not do that is dysfunctional.

The author also makes the specious claim that to absorb yourself with your love means abandoning your "identity" and "autonomy."  Really?  

And is "damaging...for society."

So we wrote a letter to the editor.  Won't get published (I don't think The Atlantic publishes letters to the editor), but we felt better pointing out the flaws in Faith Hill's argument.

For one thing, she never mentions something that people who fall in love want--

AND THAT IS TO STAY MADLY IN LOVE.  

Look at movies, at music, at poetry.  There is basically one theme:  Love.  Either acquired or lost.  How many movies and songs are about the excitement of feeling a need for "outside" relationships?" Or about preserving "your identity and autonomy while nurturing a caring partnership?"  

A "caring partnership?"  That's what a marriage is?  That's what falling in love and feeling the power of love is?  A partnership?  How many Valentines say "I want you to be in a partnership with me?"  That sounds like a couple of people forming a small company together to sell shoes or something.

So, with that, here is our letter:

It is interesting that in an article on "Love-life balance," that the major issue isn't even addressed:  How to keep the love in a marriage.  Instead the article focuses on how to develop your life outside of marriage so you won’t be “dysfunctional."  

We are in our mid-70s.  Married 12 years.  We do everything together.  Everything.  We don't even make a trip to the grocery store alone.  We can even make a trip to the grocery store for milk fun.  We wear matching shirts....always (by the way, people LOVE it!  We make so many people happy that way).  Every day we review what we did 12 years and X months ago during our courtship…to remember and feel again what it was like falling in love.

What we see is that people are fine with developing outside interests/friends during their marriage, but that the reason is that they have lost that "intensity of experience" of falling in love and therefore of being madly in love.  We haven't lost it a bit.  It is still as alive and strong as it was over 12 years ago.  

Issues such as autonomy, etc., don't come up.  We both do what we want to do.  We just want to do things together.  So, in our "senior" years we have traveled 55,000 miles in our pickup camper, camping in dispersed sites all by ourselves (not campgrounds....around other people...yech!), cycled 31,000 miles, hiked 4600 miles (mostly off trail), and have become decent if not better ballroom dancers (we even have our own Youtube channel showing two old people ballroom dancing to the "oldies.").

Our "outside" relationships are our children and our AWESOMELY WONDERFUL grandchildren.    

We are role models of a marriage for our children, and even our grandchildren tell their parents how much Grandma and Grandpa are in love.  

It really struck us that in an article about marriage nowhere is addressed the idea of how to maintain that intensity of love that people have.  It's what most people desire above all else.  Yet not even any of the "experts" who are cited talk about it.

It's about being in love.  IN LOVE.  And if you are, then you are never bored around your spouse.  You can't get enough of them.  

Sincerely,

Dan and Vicky Graybill

 

 

 

.....so, because there aren't any songs that have been written about how powerful the feeling of having interests, friends, and activities outside of marriage are, we are proposing some wonderful old love songs be "modernized" and re-recorded:

 

Outside interests is a many splendored thing… (Ray Coniff Singers)

You’ve lost that outside-interests thing  (Righteous Brothers)

I just called to say I friend you  (Stevie Wonder)

Greatest friendship of all (Whitney Houston)

I Can’t help falling in friendship with you (Elvis)

She wants you (as a friend) ya ya ya (Beatles)

I wanna dance with someone (who likes me) (Whitney Houston)

Outside relationships will keep us together (Captain and Tennille)

Roses are Red, my friend (Bobby Vinton)

To know him is to be friends with him  (the Teddy Bears)

Crazy little thing called outside-friendships (Queen)

I can’t stop liking you as my friend (Ray Charles)

 

This Magic Moment (of bowling with my friends!)  The Drifters

I will always be friends with you  (Dolly Parton)

 

Be my friend (The Ronettes)

 

My Friend (the Temptations)

 

When a Man is Friends with a Woman (Percy Sledge)

 

I only have eyes for you...my friend (The Flamingos)

 

My Baby just cares for all his friends (Nina Simone)

 

It had to be you....and you....and you...and you  (Harry Connick, Jr)

 

Hallelujah I like my friends so!  (Ray Charles)

 

Sea of Liking Friends (Phil Phillips)

 

 

 

Nature gives us peace of mind

 Four nights ago, while in bed, we heard a crash.

We went into the living room to figure out what had happened and saw that there was a chipmunk trapped in one of our mouse traps.  They are too big to be killed by the trap, and it was strong enough to pull itself out and get behind the fireplace rock wall.

So we set some more traps and went to bed.  Nothing else we could do.

Awhile later we heard another noise (scraping and clanking), and went to the living room to find the chipmunk was running around.  Again, it had a trap on its leg, which it quickly got rid of.

Vicky opened the back and front doors so I could use the (vintage) yard stick to "invite" it out, while Vicky attempted to herd it towards the door.  She also had our heavy gloves on so she could grab it.

If you have ever tried to coax and herd a scared, fast-as-lightning chipmunk out a door, you will know that it doesn’t work.  So I proceeded to chase it around the living room while swatting and batting at it.

I was missing it by a mile, with the yardstick, but then I got lucky (or unlucky) and hit it.  

I was afraid I had killed it, hoping that I had just stunned it.  Why would I feel so differently about a chipmunk than if we had killed a mouse in a trap?  

But I did.

So I scooted it out of the house and onto the front yard.  

The next morning I found it.  It was dead.  

For a day or so I was really bummed out.  We don't like killing any creatures.  I know there is this thing called "nature" where animals are being killed all of the time for food (yes yes including by us who are carnivores).  But this one seemed unnecessary, and wasteful.  The chipmunk wasn't doing anything wrong.....our best guess is that it fell into the chimney and that was the first sound we heard.

Two days later, with the DEAD chipmunk in the grass in our front yard we spotted three Turkey Vultures circling overhead.  

Vicky quietly staked out the most aggressive vulture for about 20 minutes...standing motionless with her camera at the ready.  She took over 60 photos as the vulture surveyed it’s prey from every angle and distance.  

Then it landed on a tree branch, and seemingly just stared out into space, like it was resting.

Then it flew down to the ground and walked toward us, and the chipmunk:

And headed right for the chipmunk.  What incredible eyesight these birds must have.

It made short work of the chipmunk.  A minute later the Turkey Vulture had eaten it all:

Then it flew away...without even leaving a tip for its server.

I am reminded of the Alfred Lord Tennyson poem:  Nature Red in Tooth and Claw.

We have fashioned our lives so we are out in nature almost every day.  There is a beauty to it that is unmistakable, and which we love and need.

But it is also brutal in many ways.  

In an odd way I feel slightly less bad about having killed the chipmunk, rationalizing that the Vulture also needed to eat, and that is also nature. 

Our two year Cabinversary

Today is two years since we bought our cabin and moved into our mountain home.

Here is my dear Danny “carrying” me over the threshold of our cabin two years ago.

To celebrate our two-year Cabinversary we danced….

Had fondue on our deck….

And then we snuggled in bed, ate chocolate chip cookies, and watched a 37-year-old police movie set in the historic, colorful, city of New Orleans.

What a wonderful, lazy way to celebrate two years of blissful life together in our cozy mountain cabin that’s nestled beneath the Mogollon Rim!

Playing with our Georgia family…..

 ….and celebrating Emily’s first day as an Associate Professor at Rutgers University!

Every year we look forward to spending Labor Day weekend with Emily, Sean, Soren, and Sebastian.  For several years when our grandsons were little, we camped close to their home at Stone Mountain.  But ever since 2018 we have driven north into the mountains of Georgia stayed in the same cabin at Unicoi State Park.  

This is a magnificent destination vacation spot for us, and it is now our family Labor Day celebration tradition.  We get to play together all day, every day!

The first thing we always do is go tubing on the Chattahoochee River.  You can be assured that with a river named Chattahoochee that it’s going to be peaceful, fun, and, at times, exciting.  And that you’re going to end up off your tube and in the river!

After almost three hours of tubing we were off to explore the quaint and strange German-look-alike town of Helen.  Even though we have been here several years, we always discover new fun shops and attractions.

We saved the best in Helen for last…..Betty’s!

 

It’s hard to explain why Betty’s is the best, but this little grocery store is just the best.  You have to spend some time browsing among the isles to understand.   

A few years ago we bought a wine cup at Betty’s and whenever I bring Dan his wine in this cup, we both smile as we fondly remember Betty’s and our days at Unicoi with Emily, Sean, and our grandsons.

September 1st was Emily’s first official day on her new job as an Associate Professor at Rutgers University.  But she wasn’t at Rutgers. She was vacationing with us.  So dear husband Sean made a proud and loving toast congratulating his wonderful wife on her well deserved new job.

And we all toasted her with Champagne and sparkling grape juice.

We spent an afternoon watching Soren and Sebastian getting refresher training courses on compound bow and rifle shooting.  Both boys were rapt listeners, very safety conscious, and adept at hitting their targets!

Then we headed out to play on the lake….

Every evening we walked around on the path around the lake to get ice cream bars.  It’s part of our Unicoi tradition.

On the way back home we just had to stop at the Cabbage Patch Babyland General Hospital. Last year Sebastian adopted his second Cabbage Patch baby.

This year Emily said that Sebastian wanted to get Christmas outfits for his girls.  Dan and I weren’t sure who was having more fun shopping for the outfits—Sebastian or Emily.

We got out picture taken in front of the Cabbage Patch Baby Birthing Tree.  Not every grandparent (or I guess great grandparents of two Cabbage Patch babies) has a selfie like this!

It was very special for us to get to wave goodbye to Emily as she headed to the airport for her first day as an Associate Professor at Rutgers University.  It reminded us of waving goodbye to our children 40 years ago on their first day of school.

We are very proud of her.  She has worked so hard and accomplished so much in the last 20+ years.  She deserves this.  She has earned it, and is totally qualified!

All too soon our time with our dear family was over, and we had to say goodbye to Emily, Sean, Soren, and Sebastian.  But we have so many sweet memories of playing, laughing, and talking together this past week. 

We will hold these memories in our hearts forever.