Dirt, Dirt, Everywhere!

          You know I recently visited the ruins in Greece.  Athens has a cool museum where the floor has clear sections that let you look down to a dig below, and see dwellings of a long-ago village, being unearthed.

          It’s remarkable how high the “new” civilization is from the old one. All around Greece and elsewhere, you find such discoveries and they’re always a good 30 or 40 feet below today’s level. 

          So my question is: Where does all this dirt come from, that buries things this deeply?  Sure, there could be one or two places where a landslide covers things. And a volcano buried Pompeii. But all of these places, everywhere? It’s astonishing.

And my next question is: Once you know a scientific wonder is beneath your feet, why do you go ahead and build on top of it, instead of digging it up and finding out what was there before? Have you no curiosity?

I blogged about sleeping just inches from a Viking Graveyard, freshly discovered, here, and if I lived there permanently, you can bet I’d be out there digging with a spoon if I had to.

So I researched this abundance of dirt and here’s the answer: Dirt is constantly in motion. Who knew? Wind, rain, waves, gravity, temperature, and human activity wears away everything—even rocks. This erosion creates “new dirt” that builds up on the old dirt.

Lots of stuff is decaying, as well—trees, dead animals, fungi, leaves, and that fills in as well. Silt near rivers and floodplains builds up fast, and the next thing you know, you have artifacts waiting two meters deep.

I say we start digging. You could have a golden throne in your back yard! (And no, I don’t mean an outhouse.)

Meanwhile, check out my youtube mom videos, filled with quick life hacks you’ll love!

The Perfect Vacation?

     I’ve told you I love mishaps. Not every disaster in life is a good thing, but if you write comedy, the little ones are like gold.

          Take our recent trip to Greece, with our grown kids. Day one: There’s a cab strike, so we have to walk multiple miles from our hotel to the Acropolis, arrive sweaty and exhausted, and remember--  we still have to climb the darn thing. And walk back.

          Day two: A downpour. Rushing through the rain for miles again, and getting absolutely soaked. The archeology museum has a line 50 yards long.

          Day three: We take a ferry to Mykonos. Brandon gets a 24-hour flu.

          Day four: Poor Melissa goes to the hotel breakfast where a woman is repeatedly throwing up into a large cup, as if this is an everyday thing. Melissa turns away, and there’s a man mixing fruit into his scrambled eggs, then eating it.

          Day five: Brandon and Melissa leave all their toiletries in Mykonos as we fly to Santorini. Then their blow dryer blows up.

Day six: Brandon has planned a surprise--to propose to Melissa-- but doesn’t want a big crowd. Everywhere we go there are tourists. Finally he hears that the sunset is beautiful at the other end of the island by the deserted lighthouse, so we go to sit and watch this private and romantic scene. Except everyone else has also heard about this nice view, so there are at least a hundred people on the slope above the place where he plans to propose. It looks like Seal Beach:

 

          It couldn’t have been more public if he had chosen a stadium. (The good news is that they all cheered and clapped, which was cool.) Needless to say, this was the TOTALLY perfect and redeeming part of the vacation.

          Day seven: Bob gets sick—stomach flu, fever, lots of fun.

Day eight: We head back to Athens where the hotel bathroom is made entirely of marble. This sounds beautiful until you realize the floor is also marble and the shower has no door. The entire bathroom floor gets wet, and wet marble is a 10 on the Slippery Scale.  Oh, well. Safety Third, right?

Day nine: As St. Bob and I head back, I contract Covid. The others go on excursions to Turkey and Rhodes. (More to come, folks.)

          But you can find travel tips and all sorts of life hacks in short videos on my Youtube Mom channel! And be sure to subscribe.

 

It's All Greek to Me

          If I had lived in ancient Greece I would never have married. It isn’t that I’m against Greeks. It’s that their traditional proposal of marriage was to toss an apple to a girl and if she caught it, she accepted.   

              Are you kidding?  I’ve never caught an apple in my life. I recall catching one baseball when I was ten, but that was by accident. I held up a mitt and the ball fell into it. Seriously, I had nothing to do with it.

          The other night we were Zooming with friends and playing a trivia game. Ancient Greece came up again. What two animals did they believe created the zebra? 

          Turns out it’s the horse and the tiger.

          Okay, I have a problem with this. Ancient Greece gave us the top philosophers of the world, right?  Yet they’ll believe anything, apparently, because I guarantee NO ONE tried this breeding experiment before swallowing this implausible union as fact.

          

          And where do people in Greece get tigers, anyway? Tigers live in Asia. Zebras, I do believe, are native to Africa. Not only that, but one of these is the predator of the other one. Good luck getting a little romance going between those two, long distance relationships aside.

          Say what you will about the brilliance of Ancient Greek ideas, but suddenly I don’t feel quite so bad about not being able to catch that apple.

However, there is something else that's magical about apples. Check out my short Youtube Mom video here and see what apples can do!