Terry Trueblood Outing Today or How to Find Hearts Needing a Home

We had enough of bad news on the web, so we went out to Terry Trueblood Recreation Area today. Good things are happening around here, including what we found at Trueblood. Sena ordered some items last week. One is a clock, which we’ll hang somewhere and then not look at. Another is a chair that I will put together, and which will probably give me a reason to use up at least some of the oversupply of band aids.

The best deliveries, in my humble opinion, will be a couple of brand-new sets of juggling balls. One reason for buying them is that my other juggling balls are already starting to leak their millet fillings.

Millet is bird seed. I first noticed it on my hands, and then saw it on book shelves and my chair. I practice juggling every day, and see to it that they get banged up as much as possible, even if that happens to involve impacts with my head. Many juggling balls are stuffed with something: plastic pellets, sand, dandruff from extraterrestrials—no reason to avoid millet.

The new juggling balls will be bigger and heavier: a little over 2.5 inches in diameter and around 130 grams. I’ll probably knock myself unconscious dropping them on my head. One set of 3 will be as close to Iowa Hawkeye colors as I can get: black and yellow (which is what black and gold usually look like to me). The other set will be multicolored and have 12 panels. Balls covered with leather or other material have to be sewn shut and some say that the more panels, the more the impact will be spread, possibly reducing the risk for breakage. On the other hand, I can’t help wondering if there are more seams, wouldn’t it be more likely they’d be split when (not if) I drop them?

I’ll think about that later. We had the best time today at Trueblood. In fact, a lot of people were having a great time out there. The weather was fantastic; the temperature was in the fifties. One trail walker claimed she saw 16 bald eagles! I took this with a grain of salt, but then we saw at least a half dozen, though they were flying too high to get good photos. There were plenty of shore birds.

The best sightings were the quilted hearts hung on several trees. They are from an organization called “I Found A Quilted Heart” and you can learn more about the people who got this started at their web site www.ifoundaquiltedheart.com. Volunteers place the small quilted hearts in various places, often local parks. The sole purpose is to brighten your day. That beats the daily news any time.

What we didn’t know was that we could keep the quilted hearts we found. We saw 4 of them. We’re going to let others find them and share the joy.

Author: James Amos

I'm a retired consult-liaison psychiatrist. I navigated the path in a phased retirement program through the hospital where I was employed. I was fully retired as of June 30, 2020. This blog chronicles my journey.

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