Aging Gratefully

What animals ARE these?

2012-01-25T06:00:00.007-05:00

I do not live with two poodles.
I live with two ferrets in suits of poodle.
Ever watch a ferret for fifteen seconds?
It's up and over and all around, nosing here, darting there. In constant motion, in search of God knows what, but certainly not whatever's easily found.

All night long, the poodles want to get under the blankets. When they've accomplished that, they want to get out from under the blankets. Max has lost every sense he ever owned except a slight bit of scenting ability, which does not help him find the top of the blankets. He roots around, whanging his head upward every other step to knock the blanket out of his way, the whole circuit of the bed. While I lie not breathing, pretending that I can sleep through this. Finally, I open the blankets wide. The fresh cold air rushing underneath next to my warm body allows him to get out.

When I arise in the morning I have One Thing That I Must Do, and that is to medicate the poodles. I tried for a long time to pry their tiny jaws open as I was bent down to their height. It's physically easier to hide the quartered or eighthed pills in bits of butter, or liverwurst, or (and this is the result of lengthy and expensive research) Turkey and Turkey Gravy Gerber Stage 2 baby food.

No matter what I use as disguise, they find the substance that they must ingest for continued health, eat the expensive and carefully applied disguise food, and spit out the infinitesimal bit of medication.
Afterward they go to the door, stare out and bark at nothing. They don't want to go out; they want me to get up and attend them. They don't need anything; they just want to know that they can make me come to them.

They don't want the food I've put before them. Each wants his brother's food. Same food, same dishes . . . his is different and better.

I've done it to them. I have done it to myself. I know this.
And this is why I must never get another puppy. I must only ever get grown up dogs Who Know How To Act.
I am too easily trained.

Stupid Glue

2012-01-22T06:57:00.000-05:00

This is not my oven; I borrowed the picture from This is Broken. I have a microwave oven that looks just like this, except that at the moment mine has no handle on the door.

You know households where nothing is ever broken for more than a half hour? My impression of many of my usual commenters is that they live in households like that . . . that they live lives of Absolute Tidiness and Good Maintenance.

I and my household are not like that.

More than a year ago, the handle broke off the microwave oven. That is, the bottom of the handle broke loose from the door. We grew accustomed to pulling at the top of the handle, and quite forgot that there was anything amiss, until, of course, the top of the handle finally broke.
As they always do, eventually.
The final bond always tears loose, once the separation process has begun...

I waited for Husband to fix it. In the Rule Book, husbands are supposed to be the small appliance fixer people. He didn't fix it. After sufficient time had passed, I went to the store, bought some Super Glue (Husband calls it Stupid Glue) and reattached the handle. It's worked fine for several months now. Last night Husband broke it off again.
This morning I came downstairs and started the coffeemaker. Idly, I picked up the microwave handle to see if I could fit its broken pieces onto the broken pieces remaining on the appliance's door. Voila! It clicked into place without my feeling the first prickle of sweat.
Amazing! Going to be a good day! I'll just get the Super Glue from the kitchen junk drawer and do this baby up and I'll be a heroine.
And that's when the trouble started.
I have a couple of junk drawers in my kitchen . . . in which are stored more batteries (a few C size, forty AAA, sixty-four N) than in the junk drawers of any twelve people you know. Some of them are in the sealed original packaging. Quite a few are rolling around loose, and yet others sit alone in the blister pack that cozily held two, one of which is now in service. I found four film canisters from a camera I can't even remember owning. I have been saving them for eventual developing. This morning I threw them all away. All the photos are probably of Lake George and the boat we had twenty-five years ago, and little black poodle BeauBear in his white sailor cap and sailor collar. I remember all that quite well enough and don't need pictures (that probably wouldn't develop anyway) to remind me of happy times past. I found several tubes of household adhesive: stuff that needs to be mixed together and applied with a putty knife. I know what that stuff looks like when the [admittedly failsafe] repair is complete. There's a black line that forever shouts, "This is where this thing was broken and got plastered back together!" I found a ring of keys on a keyholder that I loved while I used it. It was a four-inch-long piece of leather with a snap hook on one end. There were four keys on the ring. I have lived without those keys for more than five years; I suspect one of them is a key to a restaurant I worked in, and a couple of others might be to the old Village Hall, which long ago reverted to a private residence that's been owned by, I think, three parties since I worked there. I threw away that whole mess.
So.
All this, and no tiny tube of Super Glue. I did find an unopened package of Lock Tite . . . an unspillable bottle with a brush the size of a nail polish brush. That's what the picture looked like, anyway. When I opened the package, and then the bottle, the brush was stuck in the dead dried up glue, so I never got a good look at the actual bristles. I remember hearing a comedian saying that you could only ever use Super Glue once because you'd never be able to get the cap off again. I laughed long and hard over that; the truest things are the funniest.

Before I started to write this, I Googled for a photo of a GE microwave with a broken handle and found messageboards full of messages from people with broken microwave handles who had unscrewed one end of the handle, couldn't find how to get at the lower screw attachment and were looking for help. The ensuing discussions got into how to remove and replace the rubber bumper that seals the door and blahblahblah. What?!?!?! Those are people who like the fixing and not the fixed. I guess that's how one fixes things properly.
I can't be bothered.
I'll make a run to the store later, get another tube of Super Glue, stick the thing back together and call it good. We need milk anyway. After I've used it, maybe I'll put the Super Glue in my makeup bag or somewhere where I'll run across it from time to time and know where it is when I need it again.

About once every blue moon I wear false eyelashes.
The tube of eyelash adhesive is about the same size as the Super Glue tube.

Better rethink that.

Sunday morning, winter

2012-01-15T06:06:00.002-05:00

Finally, winter weather. The blinding brightness of sunshine-on-snow is emotionally strengthening. I would not say that I had been wishing for snow cover, but in these first few days, it's pretty and not yet treacherous. After some time, after it's thawed and frozen, thawed and frozen, and it all becomes ice . . . then I'll want it to be gone. I am reserving lots of wood ash for traction. For now, with two more days of a long weekend, lots of wood for the stove, the cold and the howling wind makes me feel cozy . . . like a mouse cuddled up in my nest.

Image from "Old Balls Please" BBC Nature & Outdoors

The presence of the bright full moon has disrupted my hibernation mode. I have closed all the bedroom shades, but I can't stay asleep for more than two hours. Part of that is Max's doing . . . even with his diaper/belly band, he must be lifted to the floor to . . . feel better . . . and then replaced in bed. Part of it is that my brain train won't stop steaming down the track. Far too often I feel, as I lie in bed in the dark, in the quiet, that I am suffering a bout of Irish Alzheimer's, that is, forgetting everything but the grudges. What a weight to drag around! Jacob Marley, adrape in his chains, has nothin' on me in these full moon nights.

I have cinnamon raisin bread in the bread machine. It will be ready in about two hours . . . a long time from now. It does not yet tantalize with its yeasty warm aroma.
I have the scatter rugs flopping and thumping around in the dryer upstairs. Putting down freshly cleaned scatter rugs makes me feel inordinately virtuous.
I paid the property taxes yesterday . . . drove down and around the hill to the Town Hall and handed over my check and that confusingly arranged tax bill. If not for my exposure to tax bills through Morning Job in Small Pond, I wouldn't have the vaguest idea what amount was required of me. Happily, the amount due is a few fewer hundreds of dollars this year. Thank you Agriculture Credit!

You might remember that last year my middle name, about this time of year, was Sparkles. I was obsessed with pearly sparkly jewelry, nail polish, lotion... I'm back to that now, but my focus seems to be narrowing onto my fingernails. I have a new toy: a crystal nail file. I love it. I keep filing my nails just for the fun of using the pretty thing.

I'm reading nothing but trash. Escapist goop. It suits my mental status in these winter months.
All right. I have the wood stove going well, I have bread baking . . . I'm going back to bed.
Because it's Sunday morning and I can.
I never claimed that I got any smarter or more ambitious in the wintertime.

Waitress anxiety dream #4031

2012-01-08T08:36:00.005-05:00

It's full moon time again, kiddies, and we all know what that means: June has her epic nightmares and shares them with you. You might want to keep a half a Xanax handy.
Last time I saw the podiatrist, back when my toe was still broken, he said he'd always wanted to wait tables.
"It's hard work," I said.
"Well, that's what everybody says, but I don't see what's so hard about it," he answered, the innocent. I wonder if I should share the following with him. It's a dream . . . a nightmare, but its parts are certainly real enough. I worked through many . . . many shifts like this.

Out of clean dishes, although there are plenty of dirty ones in the stacks. The heavy coffee mugs have pieces of food stuck and dried inside them. The dishwasher water heater gave up the ghost last night and nobody on the closing crew left a note so we could call the repair person before the store opened. It'll be washing dishes by hand in the bar sink all shift.
On the floor a pile of potato peels. One of the managers sees it, says, "What the hell?" and goes off, I think, to arrange for removal. But it's busy, he never comes back, so we all just step around it over it on top of it to get done what we need to get done.

No more pre-measured coffee packets for the Bunn coffeemaker . . . partly used bags of No-Name ground coffee here and there in the waitstation.
"How much to put into the filter?"
"Just so it looks about right."
And where is the coffeemaker? Oh. Up there on the shelf an arm's length above my head. A maker but no warmer, so that once the pot is made (brewing while customers grit their teeth and tap their fingertips on the tables waiting for their cups) it sits and loses heat, which it does very quickly, necessitating brewing a new pot. ...if you can find enough raw materials and the few seconds and the room, among the coworkers darting here, reaching there . . . five of us with our trays in a twenty square foot floor space.

No conversation in the waitstation except

"Is this still hot?"
"Barely."

"This empty?"
"More coming."

"What the hell is THIS???" from a waitress staring into a coffee cup with a dried bread ball stick inside it.
"Mm. They're all like that."

I find one of the white crockery cups with the smallest flake of dried red sauce halfway down the inside, wonder for half a second if, untouched, it might just float off in the hot coffee and go down the customer's gullet unremarked. I chip it off with my thumbnail, and pour a cup of coffee from the half-filled brewing pot. Whoever comes after me will have watery coffee, but I have MY customer's, and I'm off out of the madhouse of the back of the house into the diningroom. White cloths, barely enough space to get between tables without my butt knocking over water glasses.
The guests have no idea what the back of the house looks like, sounds like, smells like.
Happy guests.

And now here come some disgruntled customers into the waitstation, coming after their coffee. Young men, soft and spoiled looking.
"What's the problem here? Why have I been waiting for ten minutes for a simple cup of coffee? I'll get my own!"
I am furious, stern-voiced: "Get out. Get out of here."
They were going, but my hand on one's polo shirted shoulder hurried him along. Part of me wished that his heel would find a drop of water on top of the greasy quarry tile and he'd go down, the pushy arrogant prick.

People at tables outside my station start to wave at me. "Can we get our bill?" One of my fellow waitresses has left. Her shift is over: she's gone. Never mind her coworkers or her customers. I'm in the diningroom . . . on the stage, as it were, so like a mother bird, I lift my wing and make comforting welcoming noises, gather them underneath. Finding their checks, getting them more . . . what?
"More coffee? Sure! I'll just whip up a fresh pot for you. It'll take just a few minutes."
Turning, scanning tables, scanning heads, to see what else I can do on this trip. Anyone close to me would have heard, despite my lips moving not at all, "Oh God. Another flocking pot of flocking coffee."

Somebody orders two entrees and there is only enough left of one of them so that I have to take it out as a side, and lie to make it sound as if the cooks chose to present it that way because of the flavors or aesthetics or something.
You don't want to admit that you've run out of food, clean dishes, coffee.
You don't want to say, "We can't find our coffeemaker."
You want to preserve, for the customers, the image of peace and competence.

And at the end of the shift, you'll go out and have pitchers of beer with your coworkers and laugh and laugh about sliding on a potato peel and nearly cracking your head on the counter edge. Somebody will say, "Why didn't he just go get me a broom so I could stick it up my ass and clean 'em up while I'm pouring drinks!" Laugh so hard you can't breathe . . . about the handle of the full-of-precious-hot-coffee pot coming loose as you reached way up there for it. Laugh about June pushing the customer out of the kitchen: [PUSH]"You can't be back here. [PUSH] We don't want you to [PUSH] get hurt!"

La Belle Langue

2012-01-04T20:39:00.001-05:00

I studied and loved French for many years in school. I got pretty good at reading it, even aloud, but to converse with someone was always beyond my comfort level. Years ago when Husband and I were at Terre des Hommes in Montréal, we enjoyed a ride in a little cart pulled by a strong young man on a bicycle. I tried to ask him if our little jaunt was free and I think I might have asked him if he had stolen the bicycle. He was very gracious in his correction of my error.

So my audible French is limited to reading aloud, preferably to non-French speakers.
And there are some words that I especially enjoy saying...
aucune
grenouille (or any "gr..." word, really)
Montréal (the way Montrealers say it . . . Ma'real)
le pêcheur
les étoiles
soixante-dix-huit
Connecting those words into any reasonable semblance of conversation is not only beyond my comfort level but at this point far far beyond my level of capability as well.

My father was in Brussels in World War II, always wanted to get into France, but never did, I gather. By the time any war stories would have been sensible to me he was dead so what daddy did during the war is a little sketchy. I do recall his speaking French with what sounded like a very authentic accent, though, and when I was first exposed to the study of the language I aspired to sound the way he had. I remember my high school French teacher telling me that when she went to France the muscles of her face hurt for a week from the unaccustomed exercise.

Several years ago I met a young French exchange student who was staying with friends. I felt very shy about speaking her language to her, but it seemed only fair . . . after all, here she was having to speak American all the time! And O Joy! she told her hosts later that I had a very good accent.
It remains one of my proudest moments.
I like to think that Dad would have been pleased.

Happy January 1.....

2012-01-01T00:01:00.001-05:00

Counting blessings

2011-12-30T04:03:00.002-05:00

My coworker's brother has MRSA. It's a horrible horrible illness, causes pain that's off the charts. The patient is receiving a cocktail of antibiotics, his sight might be coming back slowly . . . and so the family waits to see how the recovery will proceed.
Or not.
Yesterday, Alan said to me, "It's a lesson: Don't sweat the small stuff. And it's all small stuff."

I woke up this morning thinking, "Only three hours of work today and then another long weekend. Then I thought about Alan's brother, and my viewpoint changed. The three hours of work became a little piece of my life instead of a whole hunk of my day that I just had to live/suffer through before I could resume what I want to do when I want to do it.
I have a little pain . . . my back is stiff . . . but boy! Compared to the pain some people deal with, I'm kickin' up my heels.

There's no doubt that today I am aging, but I sure am more grateful than I was yesterday.

'T'is The Day!

2011-12-25T03:35:00.008-05:00

How much do you know about Christmas? A quiz.
I am unaccustomed to doing so poorly on quizzes that I choose to take for fun. 55%? Come on!

Yesterday the vet gave me a good gift. She pronounced Maxie "not ready to give up yet."
He has a little UTI and some antibiotics to take care of that, and he has some muscle relaxer medication to make his back feel better. He hasn't complained, but he's been walking around hunched up like an inchworm. Medicated, he seems to feel much more comfortable, and he's very nice and quiet: he's sleeping a lot. Maybe it's so very restful to have some relief from what has apparently been ongoing discomfort. Dogs are stoic. Even the ones (Max) who seem like crybabies . . . they're stoic. They bear things that they don't need to bear . . . if only they would tell me!
On Friday night I moved something and a lost tennis ball rolled out; Max was all over it. Not quite up to Fetch, but very happy to see Good Ol' Tennis Ball. And outdoors, he's still prancing like a Saratoga thoroughbred. So the vet's pronouncement was not unexpected, but still very welcome. I guess we'll have him for a while.
Nice gift.

So here I am, up at 3:00 on Christmas morning, watching my fire in the woodstove, listening to Angus snore next to me. Max never got up out of bed to come downstairs with us . . . he is still a small lump under the blankets upstairs in the bed. MiMau is toasting nicely in her spot in front of the stove.
Later Husband will fix the prime rib. I'll make whipped potatoes, or maybe twice-baked, and some salad, and we will feast and give the dogs bits of beef, and then we shall all nap at will.

I have no desserty material, unless I make another chickpea/chocolate cake, which I could whip up in five minutes or so. Honestly, it is an absolutely delectable item, which must be eaten in small portions. Chickpeas are just chockful of fiber. Trust me: I know . . . now, after having eaten two-thirds of the cake in one sitting. I was so annoyed, last Monday night, that I was required to go back to work for a meeting that promised to be long and awful (and turned out to be, in fact, four long hours of tedium and tension) that I scarfed down, in one of my more memorable eating binges, what was left of the cake. I was . . . uncomfortable . . . for three succeeding days and nights. I cannot stress enough how important it is to control one's portion size of that particular delicacy.
Wow. The memory alone is enough to give me chills.

I hope you all have the kinds of Christmases that you want, whether that's peaceful, exciting, child-wondrous, spiritually rich, or some variation/combination thereof. May you be blessed today in whatever way you wish to be blessed, and may you have the kind of joy that is so evident in this video from the Richmond, Virginia Animal League: Operation Silent Night.

Merry Christmas.

Peace

2011-12-24T04:48:00.000-05:00

Ah. It is 4:30am, it is Saturday, Christmas Eve. I have no evergreen tree in my house. I have no Christmas lights, nothing to indicate that it is The Festive Season. Husband and I will exchange no gifts. And yet, you know...? It feels different here right now. I feel content and at peace.
Nothing has changed. Max is still old and feeble, I'm still fat. It's still gray and dark outdoors.
But still, I feel different.

Somebody asked me yesterday if I believed in God. First, I answered with the Correct AA answer: I believe in my Higher Power. Then I said, raising my arms to indicate the cosmos, "I believe in Something, some Plan." I don't need or care to delve into it any more deeply than that. I'm content for it to be Solstice or The Nativity or whatever.

It feels so good.

Ah, Monday. Yet again.

2011-12-19T07:24:00.004-05:00

Pay day. That's good, although the thrill is lessened by knowing that the funds were transferred on Friday. Pay day is no longer the Christmas morning that it used to be when I got cash in an envelope. I should just shut up about that and be happy I get a paycheck, shouldn't I?

Weather's supposed to be good today. Right now, it is 24 degrees, and feels like 15. Every time I think of the "feels like" temperature I think of L from Florida scoffing that "If it's _______ degrees, it's _______ degrees. Never mind what it FEELS like." Easy to say when you live in Florida where the temperature is currently 52 and will top out today in the 70s. How well I remember her shuddering and shivering, wrapped in her coat and an afghan on a balmy October evening when we sat outdoors enjoying an unseasonably warm temperature for the northern hills. "Feels like" ought to get a little more respect from someone who's experienced such an evening.
Every year the same discussion: She wouldn't be able to stand the northern winter and I wouldn't be able to stand the humidity of a Florida summer. We have finally agreed on that and no longer speak of it.

This evening I will have the pleasure of returning to the office to take notes at a meeting between some volunteer board members and a few representatives of the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants. The proposal is to raze and rebuild. This is the second meeting of the parties. The first was long and labored. Our civic volunteers' comments bordered on the rude: late in the evening the man in the suit who wanted to invest in the community thanked the chairman for a single smile.
I can hardly wait to experience a second parley.

Sunday morning: relaxation cds, "Max's issue," and food

2011-12-18T06:09:00.004-05:00

Some weeks ago I bought four or five relaxation cds to play next to my head for night-time going to sleep purposes. I don't need things like that in good weather when the windows are open and I can hear the crickets and the katydids and the owls and the wind sighs through the screens and slides its chiffon sleeves across my legs.

~image borrowed/stolen from One Man's Wonder

But now that the windows are closed and the only sounds I can hear are the snores and groans (and mutters and growls) of the poodles I'm finding these cds to be wonderfully soothing. I have quite a variety of sounds . . . windchimes, and one called "Sounds of Nature" that includes a disturbing sound of some insect that sounds like a buzz saw or an old-fashioned hand-cranked airplane propeller: click-click-click-click-wwwhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnne, over and over again. My favorite has been the thunderstorm that moves in from the distance; thunderstorms always soothe me straight to sleep. Last night I tried a new one called "Golden Pond." Wonderful. Sounds of oars sloshing in the water, crickets, frogs. It was so comforting that I wanted to stay awake and listen to it, but it put me to sleep anyway. Somewhere I have a hypnosis tape . . . it might have been a stop-smoking hypnosis tape . . . that had new-agey music on it and was very relaxing.

My hair appointment yesterday was at 10:00am. At 8:30am I left a voicemail for my hairdresser asking her to call and comfirm the time. She called at 9:50am to tell me I was due there in ten minutes, not forty, and could I come at 11:30 instead of coming late for the 10:00? I agreed to that change, and mentally reaadjusted the hair/shopping sequence, muttering to myself about how I could have been there had she called me back earlier. It was my fault, though, for having lost the appointment card. The new one is stuck into my car's dashboard where I will see it every time I check my vehicle's velocity. By the time January 21st comes around the card will have become invisible to me. I need a secretary. Or a parent.

I fear that thes Max Issue is going to become a minefield between Husband and me. He seems to feel that Max's increasing issues are no more objectionable than Angus' cavalier attitude toward similar issues. Max knows what to do and can't do it; Angus knows what to do and chooses not to do it. I know the whole issue is disgusting and in deference to your sensibilities I won't go into more detail. Husband removes himself from the problem, leaves the whole thing to me and then recoils from my scent of parfum d'urine de chien. I have a feeling of No-Can-Win.

The man has his redeeming qualities, however. Last night he prepared a delectable repast of fried shrimp. He made cocktail sauce for his dipping, mine was sour cream and salsa verde.

To die for.

That's another difference between Husband and me. A small supper at my hands is leftover baked potato sliced and broiled with cheddar cheese on top; his is breaded shrimp. He's far more willing than I to go out and buy the shrimp and get his fingers all gicky with flour and egg and crumbs, and he makes shrimp dishes while I make peasanty potato-and-cheese dishes. It might have something to do with the cleaner-upper duties and the person responsible for same.

A post . . . just to keep my hand in

2011-12-17T04:40:00.002-05:00

It is 4:40am. The snow is flurrying with exactly the same everywhere-but-straight-down motion as in the "clever piece of technology" in the last post. Max is up with me, has been outdoors, is now considering eating his carefully prepared breakfast kibble. And now, he has tasted a few nuggets and declines the rest. His Enacard, hidden inside the dab of butter, got into him; I don't care if he eats more than that.

For a few weeks I have been considering that Max's time with us might be limited to the easily foreseeable future. His kidneys grow more dysfunctional and the symptoms grow more intrusive. If I had not had the mother I had, I might have disposed of Max long ago. I did have that mother, though, with whom I had no choice but to contend, and that bent the twig of my young self in the direction my mature self has grown. That is to say that many many times I fantasized about dealing death to my mother and being free of the tension and emotional pain she caused me, but I didn't do it, and I probably won't put Max down either until he's much sicker than he is. So far as he knows, life is good. He gets lifted up, lifted down, carried outdoors. Only once have I seen him staring into a corner for a few minutes, but he was calm and not frantic or lost. He found his way out. He's doing about as well as lots of old people who walk around taped into their Depends.
My psychiatrist says, "But there's something wrong with Max."
My friend says, between the lines, "You are a craven wretch who cannot bear to be an adult and take adult decisions about your pets and your personal way of life, and it will take a crisis for you to do what any normal clean-living person would have done months ago."
And Husband says, "He's happy. Outdoors, he runs around interested in things, enjoying himself," and then, "It's too sad. I can't think about it."
When the day comes, it will be Mom who does the deed.
We have an appointment for an examination and blood tests on . . . Christmas eve at 9AM.

I'm pretty sure I have an appointment for a haircut this morning but I can't find my appointment card. My recollection is that I am to present myself at 10:30am, an awkward time in my Saturday routine. I should be at the supermarket at 10:30, but I don't like to hurry through my early Saturday lazy coffee-drinking time to get to the salon at 9:00am and I don't like to crowd my late morning with appointments. I don't know how much, on a given day, I'll enjoy strolling around the grocery store, examining packages, dreaming up recipes. So I always choose 10:00 or 10:30 for the hair. And I always have this discussion with myself. I think I might have left the card in the console in the car. That's handy, with me here in my nightgown and the car out there in the cold outdoors.

There are things that people say about me, to me, with which I cannot argue but that I do not like.
When someone says, "Poor little Max..." and I say, "What about poor little Mommy?" and the first speaker says, "First, Mommy isn't so little..." I can't honestly take issue with that since it is absolutely true. Compared to almost anyone I know I am . . . the larger of the two. But I think it's a little mean-spirited to say so.
Someone says, "You have a unique relationship with your pets," and I know she means I treat them as if they are humans and not as four-legged servants to my pleasure. It stopped my complaining, and Stopping Complaining is a worthwhile end.
Someone said about one of my last winter's posts that it was clear that I was not a "happy bunny" in the wintertime. No question about that. I determined, after that comment, that I would not post anything that wasn't upbeat, uplifting, smile-worthy. The determination lasted for perhaps two weeks; au fond I am not a Happy Bunny sort of person. The only time of year that I am reliably a happy bunny is early summer, and that only if I am free from the office for several days on end.

Christmas Day rushes hither. I have piles of Christmas gifts in a sack upstairs. Perhaps this weekend I will wrap and mail some. Perhaps I will do that next week or even next month. Husband and I shall have a quiet day with our faces sunk into prime rib (although he tells me it's almost impossible to get prime now and likely it will be choice rib), no revelry, no guests.
A day of peace. What better?

It has taken about an hour to write this. I'm going back to bed with a bagel and my book. If there's one thing that brings me closer to happy bunnydom than waking up on a Saturday morning, it's having a bonus wakeup on a single Saturday morning!

For sharing at will

2011-12-15T18:27:00.003-05:00

Click on the link below.

When it opens, drag your mouse across the picture.

Positive changes at your command.

It's from an Estonian company!

Stupid Sunday

2011-12-11T18:05:00.001-05:00

Click here: Draw a stickman

Snowflakes of the e-kind

2011-12-07T00:01:00.000-05:00

Here's something that might use up several hours of otherwise productive time.

Popular Front Snowdays

Poodle boyz photos

2011-12-05T05:25:00.002-05:00

Max, pre-haircut

Max, post-haircut, aka Popsicle stick creature

I knitted that sweater for the boyz' predecessor; he was a little bit bigger than they are.

The boyz have changed my life such that I have been unable to pursue a similar project

to create a sweater that would fit either of them.

A very unflattering photo of Max in front, Angus in back

I was practically standing on my head so I wouldn't have to get down on the ground . . .

I don't get back up so good.

Poodle boyz also aging gratefully

2011-12-04T02:15:00.001-05:00

The poodle boyz went for haircuts yesterday. Kim had told me that, in the middle of Max's last two grooms, he had suddenly burst into full cry, and had quite dramatic bladder and bowel events . . . on the grooming table . . . while he spun in circles, apparently horrified at his own behavior. So when I made this appointment, Kim and I discussed at length how best to handle Max's "do" for his maximum comfort in the short and long terms.
We decided that this time she would avoid the hairdryer since that seemed to be the factor that set him off. It could be his hearing . . . I know it's failing . . . maybe there's a tone in the hairdryer motor that hurts his ears or something. So Max got a very close shave all over, except for his puffy little ears, so that he could air dry. He will be wearing his turtleneck sweater for the next several months, poor thing. But he didn't pee and poop all over the grooming table, and he came home much calmer than he has from the last few appointments.
We live in a winter environment suitable for Samoyeds, and here I have these two little poodles, one of whom looks now like a creature made out of popsicle sticks, with all his little old man age spots showing through his thin little fuzz.
Max's kidneys have been not good for years and they aren't getting any better. One of the things that happens, the vets says, with "bad kidneys" dogs is that they begin to use up their muscle tissue. I expect Max will grow increasingly thin unto near-transparency as time goes by. But in the meantime, he's eating and drinking (oh boy! is he drinking!) and enjoying his life, so onward we go.

When I went to pick up the dogs, Kim was indoors. I went into her shop, clipped her check to the grooming table so she'd find it easily, and got Max out of his crate. I set him on the floor. I reached for the latch on the crate that held Angus, and heard Kim come in. I turned around to say hi and heard a crash. Angus had jumped out of the crate, the floor of which is about at the level of my collarbone . . . and had landed on the floor. He broke a plastic bin as he passed it in his descent of five times his height to a tile-over-cement floor, but he was none the worse for wear. No limp, no bruising, no cuts. Kim and I both watched him closely for a few minutes but he was gamboling and strutting in his usual fashion. I can't believe it. I think he might be indedoggystructible. Knock wood.

Husband thinks that the weaker Max grows, the more energy Angus sucks up.

Winter, holiday bigotry, country talk, and other things

2011-12-03T05:26:00.002-05:00

I have given in and had the snow tires put on. Much as I would like to believe that the weather will continue as unseasonably warm as it has been, we're bound to get winter sooner or later. The roads are clear and dry now and I can feel my tires' metal studs wearing down as I drive. It almost makes me wish for snow. Almost, but not quite.

When I was very young and lived on the way out country dirt road, we would always speak of the paved road at the bottom of the hill as "the state road." I wouldn't have been able to think of the route number off the top of my head, but recognized it when somebody else identified it that way. The reminder was Club 29, a bar with a pretty-colored neon sign that I passed every day on the school bus. As I recall, it was almost next door to the Catholic church. In hamlets, that's the way things are: everything is cheek by jowl with everything else.

Now once again I live on a way out country dirt road and my travel is mostly on or near or across two-lane paved state routes. The roads have names, but the names change as you travel along from hamlet to hamlet, so in conversation, everybody uses the route numbers to identify locations. "Up (or down) 145...", "...over on 443," "Down 30...", "Y'go over 7, up 145 to 10, follow 10 to 162, turn on 165..." Maybe somebody should devise a game, something between Bingo and Uncle Wiggily, just for the local denizens . . . sales of it could be a fund raiser for flood relief.

Somebody sent me an email two days ago with a link to an evil little song discouraging Christmas shopping in non-Christian establishments. The issues I have with the song are many. I deplore the Us and/versus Them premise, but the thing that really pisses me off is that the lyrics indicate a certain willful ignorance. The last lines of the song, "Now let's see, if not for Christ's nativity . . . " there would be no Christmas tree, no dolls and trains that Santa brings, no mistletoe, no this, no that, etc.

I am no religious scholar, but I'm pretty sure that Christianity made use of existing traditions as it moved up into and around Europe. I love Christmas lights' colors as much as I loved that neon Club 29 sign . . . but I think pretty flashing Christmas lights out in the snow don't necessarily have a lot to do with the sacred birth of Messiah. So if I'm going out to buy multi-color lights to celebrate the Savior's birth I guess, if I wanted to, I could buy them from a Jew or a Muslim or whoever offers the best price, and not have my eternal salvation suffer from the transaction.

You know . . . what if your Christmas lights aren't actually "out in the snow"? The people who live where there isn't snow in December had better be a little watchful about their celebration habits, or the American Christian Life United folks might be knocking on their doors.

To tell the truth, the first thing that set me off, as I watched the youtube video, was the line that included, "...tryna sell..."

Tryna?

Is that shorthand for "trying to"?

Whenever you want to raise the rabble, the first step seems to be to dumb it down reeeallll good, so that those who are ruled by emotion rather than any intellectual discipline can say, "They're jes' like us'ns!"

We will now return you to your regular winter holiday celebration programming, whatever it may be.

Seven Good Things in no particular order

2011-11-27T05:20:00.002-05:00

Lying in bed and having a small poodle nestle his warm body against one's slightly arthritic lower back.
Finally clearing up a pile of things dropped in one spot for moving elsewhere "later." I have an antique student desk at the foot of the stairway. It's in a little nook and the perfect place to drop things for later travel upstairs. Except that things seem to grow roots there. Yesterday I bestirred myself to clear out the whole mess.
Listening to a Great Horned Owl calling out there in the dark.
Being in the middle of a book that wants me to come back to it.
Seeing all three animals cavorting and exercising their instincts. All of us outdoors. In complete comfort. In late November.
Knowing that I need not go out among the maddened Shoppers who are armed with pepper spray and worse.
Sitting and conversing with Husband about news stories or acquaintances or the tractor. Such comfort.

Post-Thanksgiving Saturday

2011-11-26T02:43:00.003-05:00

A fairly recent phenomenon: I often wake myself up talking to my dream companions. Husband told me the other morning he could hear me singing in my sleep. He didn't recognize the melody, he said, "but it was tuneful," a choice of words that made me laugh. As I poured my coffee and fed the dogs I had Helen Reddy singing Delta Dawn rattling around in my head. I never cared much for that song; it's hard to believe that, in my sleep, having no one but myself to please, I would choose to sing it.

Thanksgiving Day
A smaller group this year than on any holiday in recent years, but what a combo. Husband invited friend Joe, I invited friend Barb. They'd never met and I had a great deal of fun watching them preen for each other.
Barb brought her dog Moby with her and Angus, who, you will recall, loves new friends, did his best to drive his guest mad with attention. Moby is an elderly, gentlemanly dog, however, and finally, after increasingly stern admonitions, made it clear that he preferred to watch undistracted for falling food. Angus stood back, tail all a-twitchet, quivering with happiness, but . . . back.
Food holidays belong to Husband and he is always extremely ambitious with his array of menu items. It's a family tradition that something gets forgotten. Usually it's the bread or rolls; this year it was the cranberry sauce. Practically treasonous, isn't it, to forget the cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving? But there it is, still sitting virginally untouched in the fridge.
I put away almost more food than we put out. We really have to talk about downsizing his offerings. He thinks maybe it's time to begin dining out on Thanksgiving. Fine with me. I'll be days cleaning and putting away every dish and cooking pan and utensil we own. And that was for four people.
By the time we got to dessert . . . two pies, a two-layer carrot cake, and cookies . . . I was nearly passing out from food overload. Most of the sweets are still nearly intact and I happily nibble between dishwasher loads.

The weather is unbelievable. When have we ever had such a stretch of sunny, near-sixty-degree days in November? I adore it; I am out walking more now than I was when it was Official Good Weather time.
Yesterday I thought I had lost my camera. I looked upstairs and down, in all the places where I put things so I won't forget where they are. It was in none of those places. Aha! There it was, among the Keurig cups on the kitchen counter! Who would not have looked there first? I'm just relieved to have it back again. I thought the gremlins (or that goddamn Jim D---- . . . a story for another time) had taken it.

Late on Thursday evening I was once again reading about the benefits of apple cider vinegar. One site advised that if you drink water all day long, it's as well to add a splash of vinegar at every fill-up rather than add two teaspoons in one "dose." I tried the "adding a splash at every fill-up" yesterday. I do not recommend it. I needed a Pepcid at bedtime, which altogether defeats the purpose of the vinegar.

Damn the peppers!

2011-11-25T08:44:00.000-05:00

Who needs peppers for clearing out the sinuses? The fresh horseradish in Husband's shrimp cocktail sauce did the trick.
I have the sensation!

Clearing out the sinuses

2011-11-21T00:03:00.000-05:00

The week before last, Husband went to New Jersey and brought back a head cold. He stayed home and slept for half the week. On just the day he announced that he was feeling better, I began to sniffle, and took a day and a half off from work to tip over into sleep. Our household has, for the last couple of weeks, been a house of sleeping shifts.
This New Jersey cold seems relatively painless. It knocked out each of us for seventy-two hours and now sits quietly in our sinuses, not dripping, not hurting, just there. It did not sneak down into my bronchi and morph into a chest cold. You can't imagine how grateful I am for that favor.
Over the weekend I made a pot of chili con carne. I wanted it very very spicy hot. I bought fresh jalapeno peppers and chopped up several of them, making sure to throw in every seed. It fell short of my hopes. It was very tasty chili but it did not sear the linings of my sinuses, making it necessary for me to hold a paper towel at my nostrils while I ate.
Sunday evening I baked russet potatoes for supper with a little buffet of various toppings, one of which was chopped fresh jalapeno pepper. With the seeds. Delicious. But still not paper-towel-at-the-nostrils material.
Perhaps what I need is to stuff the peppers with potato and eat that.

A friend recommends Ponaris, which for some reason I keep remembering as Peloponnesus. I'm not sure I wouldn't prefer to keep experimenting with food.

News flash: Bad things happen to children

2011-11-20T05:43:00.000-05:00

I was sixteen. My sister was away at college.
My mother had started going to meetings of Parents Without Partners. My sister and I were pleased with that development. Mom had never been a joiner, and it was a relief to know that she was getting out and about with people. It was a great improvement over her sitting at the diningroom table drinking and playing solitaire. I didn't know what the point of the organization was, but it was, apparently, a sort of dating service.
So Mom met this man and she went on a date with him. I think he came to the door to be introduced to me and they left. I watched television and went to bed. I woke up to hear some clumsy noises on the stairs . . . giggling and tripping. The man had brought my very drunk mother home, got her upstairs and poured her into bed. She passed out and he went downstairs. I stayed in bed for a few minutes, but I didn't like the idea that he was downstairs alone in our house. So I got up, in my little flowered jersey nightgown, and I went downstairs.
The lights were on. He was sitting on our couch. I perched on the edge of a chair. I wanted him to go. I didn't want him to be hanging around. We didn't have anything that he would steal, but I didn't like him there unsupervised in our home at midnight.
He and I conversed. I think I got him a cup of coffee. He glossed over the drunk mother part: Your mom had a little too much to drink. I said that that was not an infrequent occurrence. He noticed my high school picture on a side table.
"Is that you?"
I nodded.
"Do you know what I see in that face? ...in that chin?"
"What?"
"I see . . . determination."
I liked that observation. I felt flattered. I probably made one of those noncommittal indecisive head and shoulder motions that sixteen-year-olds are wont to make.
"May I kiss you?" he asked me.
I thought for a minute. I didn't know how to say no, or indeed, why I should. A kiss isn't a terrible thing in and of itself. "Okay," I said.
So, anyway, he kissed me. On the lips. It was a pretty chaste kiss. He didn't lean me over or mash his mouth into mine, but it lasted longer than I felt comfortable with, and he was all trembly. It was creepy, and I withdrew and said I thought he'd better go.
He thanked me and, shortly after, got up and left.
I locked the door and went back to bed.
I didn't tell my mother. Mom couldn't handle troubling news.

A year or so before, I hadn't told her that the assistant manager at the cafeteria where I worked after school had taken me into the walk in cooler, his regular choice of trysting places. What with the surprise of it all, the short notice, the nerves, our meeting was just a lot of writhing and sweating, no actual sexual activity, but our few minutes' absence from the rest of the closing crew was noted. His old girlfriend, an older woman of seventeen, was jealous. I was fifteen and flattered.
He was forty-two.

When I was fourteen I was sure I was pregnant. At breakfast one morning I broke down in tears and shared that fear with my mother. "That isn't possible," she said. "You haven't done anything that would make you pregnant. Do you know what happens to make you pregnant?"
It was 1965. What world did she think I was living in?
She stood up and hugged me. She was shaking. She pressed her hand against my body and said, "There's nothing in there. There's nothing in there." A few days later I knew that I was not pregnant.
That was all we said about that.
Ever.

So I guess my point is that probably most kids have experiences that we would all be scandalized to know about. Adults have probably been hitting on kids for as long as there have been adults and kids. I don't think it's particularly healthy or recommended as a way for people to live, but it happens. Adults don't always have the best interests of children at heart, just the way no human always has the best interests of any other human at heart. Adults are not always trustworthy with children, just the way people, in general, are not always trustworthy, period.
I think it's too bad that adults are afraid to touch children who need a hug. Maybe if kids could get hugs when they want them, they wouldn't be so ready to take them from people who shouldn't give them.

2011-11-20T04:53:00.000-05:00

It is Sunday at 4:37am and I am awake and growing drowsy. One of the reasons I love to get up in the wee hours is the fuzzy foggy fading that precedes my return to bed and the floating return to sleep. Ah, going back to sleep is one of my life's great pleasures.
One morning I toddled back to my pillows with chilly toes. I arranged myself among my pillows, pulled the covers up to my ears, made sure my nose was well out into the air. My drift off to sleep was plagued by those cold toes. "I wish I'd fall asleep!" I thought. "My feet always warm up when I fall asleep."
My consciousness had nearly gone away when a wave of warmth rolled over me from shoulders to feet. It felt just like a bolt of warm cloth moving down my body, enshrouding me in pure deep comfort. It felt so good that I smiled into my pillow, there all by myself, and the thought came to me: "I bet this is how it feels when you die."
Wouldn't it be just something, and not the least bit surprising, to find out that dying feels good?

I read something long ago that pointed out that the human body is designed to enjoy everything that it has to do. The functions required for ongoing life feel good. Eating, sleeping, digestive functions . . . they all feel good. It would make sense that dying would feel good. Not the getting ready to die: I don't mean that. I mean the final moment . . . the giving up of life.
Maybe it feels good.
Maybe in the last seconds, there is a flash of, "What was I so scared of?"

Sunday evening

2011-11-13T19:26:00.002-05:00

It's so nice to have people reading my ramblings and thinking, "Oh, me too!" It is nice, isn't it? Or does it indicate that I never have an original thought? That idea bothers me far less than it would have when I was younger. Especially now that I've reached nearly the middle of Sarum. Believe me: Excepting the occasional interpersonal kindness there is nothing any one of us can do that will amount to a hill of beans a hundred years from now. The things that take up so much of our thought . . . wars, standing stones, wildly successful careers or the lack thereof . . . well, perhaps not standing stones, since I hardly ever think about them . . . in a hundred years nobody will even know what any of it was about.

It's been an incredibly mild and warm weekend, and I've spent a good deal of time outdoors.
This afternoon I went around and picked up every one of the solar lights that I put out at the beginning of the Warm Time. About a quarter of the things have stopped working. Maybe the solar batteries have worn out or maybe there isn't enough sun these days to charge them. I put all but two of them into the cardboard box in which they arrived, and put the box in the barn. It was dark enough inside the box that almost all of them began to glow. I closed the flaps so that the light wouldn't escape enough to creep me out should I go out there after dark. The two that I did not put away are on either side of the front door. I like the way they look, and now that it's dark by 5:00pm they'll give me a clue where the house is when I get home from work.

In response to comments:

School taxes are just another kind of property tax . . . a percentage of the value (as judged by the town assessor and his board) of one's home. School tax bills are sent out by the school district or by the school district's agent (a bank) and the funds are for use by the school district, as distinct from regular old property taxes which pay for everything else.
Those pictures are House-And-Barn. One property, two buildings. Three if you count the little garden shed . . . the red thing in the pictures with the poodles.
We have the boyz trimmed in the very most practical and comfortable cuts we can get. Angus gets close-cropped because he's chubby and has silky hair that grows into mats; Max's body grows weekly thinner and he needs extra wool to help keep him from being shivery. So they both look round and roly-poly, but only one of them is. I had to trim Max's bangs yesterday because they were getting so long that they were irritating his eyes. Now he looks like an opossum. It isn't his best look, but he's more comfortable.
Where neighbors are close enough to wander across a property line, there would be fences. Here where we hardly see a neighbor from one month to the next, and then only as we wave happily . . . they enjoying their morning walk while my vehicle careens down the hill past them on my way to work . . . we leave it to big fields to provide insulation.

It's Sunday evening.
Eight workdays until the Thanksgiving holiday.
Let the countdown begin.

Random thoughts early on a Saturday morning

2011-11-12T02:05:00.001-05:00

I am horrified and incensed at the number of people who seem intelligent and engaged with the world who do not vote.
Ever.
I know somebody who was running for local office (she lost) and her list of eligible voters revealed that an alarming number of people are not even registered to vote, and that many registered voters never vote. I just can't believe it. With all the brouhaha that goes on about politics . . . everybody I meet seems to have an opinion and why wouldn't they all since opinions are like that other thing that everybody has . . . and a lot of these yahoos don't step foot into their local polling places.

Woolly bear caterpillars are apparently more of a weather predictor than I ever imagined. I used to work with a man who knew how to read them, or said he did. He would look at one and say, "See? It's going to be an early winter!"
And I'd look and say, "Hunh!"
I don't remember if the following winter turned out to be early or not.
I can't remember two months ago.
I just remember that I love the light and warm months and I'm sleepy in the dark and cold months and that's how I go on. I might as well be a prehistoric woman.
Except that I vote.
Every time.

A friend of mine, years ago, told a bunch of mutual friends that I had not repaid a small debt to her. I had repaid the debt, not an hour, not a half hour, after having incurred it. You know . . . that slander bothers me so much that I think about it in the middle of the night. When I learned of it, it was a long time after the event . . . so long that I didn't know what in the world she was talking about. By the time I remembered, so much more time had elapsed that it seems small of me to be so bothered by it. Let it go, I tell myself, but here I am.

Husband traveled for a good part of last week. I loved it. I made noise in the middle of the night, I ate odd combinations of food, I slept and rose at odd (even odder than usual) hours. Right up until he drove in the driveway I was thinking how nice it would be to have a husband who paid the bills and dropped in once every week or so. The minute he was home, the air felt more comfortable, colors seemed to have more depth, my body felt more comfortable. Everything got . . . right . . . and I hadn't even known I was off kilter.

There is a slight coating of snow on the stone wall, on the picnic table in the front yard. It's supposed to be a sunny Saturday, so it will go away. And Sunday's forecast is "mostly sunny," so that's good. And then the whole week falls apart into gray wet mush. I need to get my snow tires on before the gray wet mush becomes white fluffy mush.

I am reading Sarum and enjoying it. It is so long that it might be the last book I ever read. And the print in the 1100+ page paperback is so small that I might lose my sight before the last page. But it's a story that rolls right along. It reminds me of a social studies book I had when I was in fourth grade. It was about the Piedmont region of the US and was narrated by the children of a family who lived there. My sister ridiculed it: "My social studies books are history books, not storybooks like that one!" I'll bet I remember more about the contents of my "storybook" than she does of her dry old histories of which she was so proud. I do just fine learning my history from stories: nearly all of what I know of World War II is from having read The Winds of War.

I am restored.

2011-11-07T07:00:00.003-05:00

The beautiful and sunny weekend restored me.

Angus and Max poodled around among the fruit trees.

You can just see Angus' little sprout of a tail at the left among the shrub branches.

Angus is subject to sudden bursts of joyful Run Back To Mom energy.

Max realized that now he was down there all by himself . . .

. . . and trudged back up the lawn.

The wood man dropped off two cords of firewood.

We're all set for this winter and next; this represents future warmth and security.

Two more loads will come before winter sets in for real.

Husband called Neighbor Farmer: "Does your kid want to stack some wood?"

The young man, in his early teens and therefore eager to establish himself as strong and able,

will be along this week to stack all that.

Farm kids are the best.

Husband puttered with other things.

I wandered up the field and took pictures.

I hardly ever go up in that direction. It certainly offers a different perspective.

It makes us look like Little House on the Prairie folk.

Weekend. At last.

2011-11-05T00:01:00.001-04:00

I have written lyrical, pretty prosey posts. This is not one of those.

I am so glad it's the weekend I could plotz.

For most of the week . . . no, for all of the week, I wrestled with one of the cops' "times used" in order to get it right for reimbursement from the workers compensation insurer. He got his finger broken while subduing an evildoer on June 13, and came back to work on September 8. What with hours used from accumulated Comp time, Holiday time, Personal time, Vacation time, Sick time, and 36 hours one week and 44 hours the next week to make several two-week, eighty-hour pay periods, the project just about drove me around the bend. It's about as done now as I can get it. If I have to go back at it again on Monday I might have to cry or vomit or just get up and come home. Or go to the bus station and wait for the next Greyhound no matter where it's going.

My heart is warm with friends I make,
And better friends I'll not be knowing,
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
No matter where it's going.

My right eyelid is red and puffy. Just the lid, not the eyeball. I believe it is the fault of my makeup or my facial cleanser having gotten into my eye. This happened before and it healed itself in a few days. At that time I determined not to use the cleanser around my eyes and not to overdo the makeup too close to the lash line. I broke both of those rules and the next day? You guessed it. I went to work yesterday with my Quasimodo eye and no makeup, hoping somebody would say, "You look sick and should go home immediately." No one did. No one even noticed or mentioned it until I was walking out the door at 4:30.

Did I mention I'm glad it's the weekend?

On the way home I stopped at the bank, withdrew funds to pay the school tax and put the check in the mail. It is due on Monday: perfect timing. Then I stopped and picked up a greasy delicious pepperoni and onion pizza for supper. At this rate, what care I about the numbers of my cholesterol and my bathroom scale? It is the weekend and it is all mine. Mine, mine . . . all mine. I even believe that the sun might shine. If I die before Monday, at least I will be current with my school taxes.

Morning after the storm

2011-10-31T07:20:00.001-04:00

Winter begins

2011-10-28T07:16:00.001-04:00

People in the Northeast always say,

"I live here because I like the change of seasons."

Looking up the driveway October 10, 2011

Looking up the driveway October 27, 2011

I think, however, that winter could wait a little while longer to begin.

John Chancellor Makes Me Cry

2011-10-26T17:52:00.000-04:00

In addition to avoiding celebrity bios, I'm really not much into non-fiction in general: so much of what I have sampled has been dry and completely without artistic imagery. But I have enjoyed every Anne Rivers Siddons book I've ever read . . . which is to say, all of them except her newest, Burnt Mountain, so I tried her very first published book (of essays), John Chancellor Makes Me Cry. And loved it. I laughed out loud and found phrases and descriptions worthy of underlining on nearly every page. I liked that in a couple of the essays, ARS revealed some pretty disagreeable aspects of her own personality; it isn't everybody who'd do that.

I seem to be in Book Review mode lately, so this is my recommendation for today:

I believe it's out of print, so a used book store or eBay, or, of course, the library, is the way to get it.

"Me" by Katharine Hepburn

2011-10-23T08:59:00.001-04:00

Floridagirl said she was disappointed with it.
I was too. I kept reading and reading and waiting for some revelation of . . . something. The most touching part was, I think, the last chapter wherein KH wrote about Spencer Tracy dying. It was touching, but not exactly revelatory.
I might have enjoyed it more if I'd read it while it was new, while KH was still alive, while I still revered her. There is no question that the writing is her voice, her cadence, her style.
The fault is mine for waiting so long to read it.

I don't read many celebrity autobiographies. They always seem to wilt into a listing of what famous people were where when. In my squirrel-like gathering of used books I picked up Beverly and now I'm afraid to read it.

Sometimes, dreams mean absolutely nothing.

2011-10-22T08:42:00.002-04:00

I had a dream that I met the Obamas at my office.

They were seated in theater seats watching some performance while I stood next to them running a postage meter.

Michelle was beautiful and I stared at her. She smiled back, friendly. I leaned over and whispered, "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure," she said.

"How many pairs of false eyelashes are you wearing?"

She burst into guffaws. "Twelve!!!!"

Sleep, dream, cat, book, and a good deed

2011-10-21T01:16:00.010-04:00

It is October: the Dark Time is closing in. I have begun to indulge my seasonal urge to go to bed very early, knowing that I'll have that first sleep/second sleep break at about this hour. Last night I was in bed by 7:30, ostensibly to read a recently-bought book that I've wanted to read since its 1992 publication. (When the flood rendered the local library unworkable, I began again to scurry about snatching up used books at ridiculously low prices. I gather the library has reopened now, and I need to return the four books that I've been holding onto since their late August due date. Not only is it a matter of conscience, but the librarian is no longer so taken up with refurbing the building, the shelves, the plumbing and heating systems and the computers, that she cannot take a moment to email an overdue notice. I hadn't wanted to take them back and add to her burden, you see, so I just kept them here . . . but she's onto me. The fines should amount to a generous donation to the rebuilding fund.) Anyway, the book I'm reading is Katharine Hepburn's "Me." I love the Katharine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy movies and general mystique, but it's taking Kate a long time to get to Spencer. I think we're almost there now. I read a few pages, in which she repeats many times how well she and Mr. (Louis B./Metro-Goldwyn-) Mayer like each other, and when I got to where she's just made her first movie with Spencer, "Woman of the Year," I was satisfied that we'd be getting to the good stuff soon, and turned out the light.

At midnight *ping!* eyes wide open. The pleasant fuzzy, warm, sinking-back-to-sleep feeling receded like the tide going out. Fifteen minutes later I thought about having a lovely toasted bagel, so I turned on the light and sat up on the edge of the bed. The dark makes perfect mirrors of the unshaded bedroom windows. I looked at my reflection in the black window and thought, "Oh good God, I look like that toy!"

I spent an uncomfortably long minute at my image, finally thought, "Well, if I'm that far gone, one more middle-of-the-night bagel won't make much difference," got up and bumbled down the stairs.

What woke me up was a dream. Naturally. It was something about updating a framed photograph at work. All the previous photographs were still in the frame so that it made a sort of historical archive, and the new one, a picture of a young woman, was to go in front of all of the old ones. I had the job all done, was ready to hang it back on the lobby wall, when somebody came in and asked what I was doing. I took it all apart to illustrate the history contained within the photo frame, and dropped the entire collection of pictures on the floor . . . and could not find the newest photo that was supposed to be displayed. I continued to look, with no success, so I woke up instead. If my dreams take me to another dimension, people there with whom I interact must be continually surprised at my disappearance when stressed. "She was here a minute ago . . . where'd she go?!?!"

When I got home last night, there was a black cat crouched in the sunny, wind-blown tall grass along the driveway. I stopped the car and we looked at each other. I opened the window on his side of the car and said softly, "Kittykittykitty?" He looked at me. Thinking to myself, "What are you doing???" I got out of the car with a plan to approach him, knowing that if I touched him I'd have crossed a line which should not be crossed. Fortunately for me, for MiMau and the rest of the household, as soon as he saw that I was coming to him, he turned and ran away as fast as ever I have seen a cat run. He's a pretty cat with emerald eyes. A little ratty, as you might expect. He's living a wild life, not the Best of All Possible Worlds life that fluffy soft MiMau leads. Apparently he prefers it to human companionship and care. Husband said, when I told him the story, that he'd seen the same cat as he came home. The cat was three quarters of a mile away. Big territory: good for him!
10/22/2011 ~ Early this afternoon I saw the little cat again, even farther from here. Between the two sightings is a nice barn full of warm cows, so I think I will not worry about the little cat during the cold winter.

I can afford this little mid-sleep break tonight because I need not rise early for work. I'm taking a vacation day to ferry a friend to and from her colonoscopy. A Good Deed . . . and a day off from work to begin the weekend.

Basically, a hermit

2011-10-19T05:13:00.001-04:00

Every now and then somebody blogs about fun times meeting other bloggers.

"We've known each other so long without meeting that

it felt very natural to sit down and have lunch and catch up."

"So nice to have a voice to go with the person I already knew!"

I like you all very much but I don't want to take a road trip and meet you in the middle or come to your town and meet you or have you come to mine and meet me. I don't even much enjoy getting together with people I've known forever, to whom I wouldn't be embarrassed to say, "You have a little speck of pepper on your front tooth." If you and I could meet in a scenic pull-off on a road somewhere, or in a parking lot, get out of our cars, look at each other from ten feet away, and say, "Well! So that's how tall you are!" and get back in our vehicles and go on our way, that would be fine with me.
I don't think I'm shy anymore the way I was in my younger years, but I am not a chatter. I can email with anybody all day long, but to have to speak, actually speak, with somebody while I'm still getting used to his or her voice . . . well, it just takes a while for me to absorb somebody's presence to the point that I could actually converse. Email allows me to, without a word of explanation, get up and refill my water glass, wander outside, visit the bathroom, move the laundry from washer to dryer, and not insult my companion. I think almost anybody would feel a little odd if I did any of that in the middle of a face-to-face conversation.
I used to be a switchboard operator. It was my first real job and I spoke with people all over the country. It was a lot of fun, and I became very friendly with some of those people. But I never wanted to get together and go shopping with them. It just isn't my style. Neither the getting together nor the shopping, alone or with anybody, either one. All the years that I waited tables . . . I developed real relationships with some of my customers, but the interaction stayed (with one disastrous exception) within the restaurant, hardly even extending to the parking lot, should we see each other entering or exiting our vehicles. I couldn't indefinitely support the waitress persona outside the diningroom.
Besides all that, you all already know more about me than any six people with whom I might interact on a daily basis. Why meet?

So if you're planning a trip to this part of the country, let me know when you'll be here.
I'll come out and stand by the side of the road and wear a red fleece shirt, so you'll know it's me. I'll wave as you go by, and we can say we met. Maybe the next time you're in the area we could actually exchange a few words.

An over-long cat tale

2011-10-17T04:57:00.007-04:00

As I have aged, I have become more and more convinced that pets should be adopted as they come to us. Foundlings, shelter and rescue animals are The Best. I love my poodles, whom we sought out and paid for, and whom I have served faithfully ever since. But the Met-By-Chance-And-Meant-To-Be Animals are special. MiMau was one such animal. I believe that I have not related the story of how MiMau came to live with us.

I have to start this story long before MiMau's arrival; please bear with me for a minute. When we were married five years and bought a house, we bought our first poodle. He was black, fiercely beloved BeauBear, ill with Addison's Disease from age 3 to his demise at nearly 11. Toward the end of his life, my sister acquired a new barn cat. A tiny kitten, she had been removed from a household where the toddling children had been manhandling her, dipping her in and out of mop buckets full of dirty water and the like. The poor little rescue was not successfully assimilating into the existing barncat population. She wasn't allowed to eat at the communal dish, not accepted into the group at all. Sister worried about her and begged me to take her. I had not had a cat for a long time, although I always loved them. The overwhelming amount of attention required by the sick dog made me a little leery of taking on another pet, but I met the little girl, a dark tortie, fell in love and brought her home. Named her KittyBear. BeauBear didn't like her, but she would cuddle up behind him on his bed at every opportunity, just to be near. She began to gain weight and to thrive, and by the time poor BeauBear reached the end of his road, she was well-established as The Beloved Cat.

We sold that house and moved to a rental home while this house was being built. KittyBear liked the big back yard, behind which was a new street full of new homes with big yards. Torties, I think, are nearly always great hunters because of their natural camouflage, and she often brought us offerings of mice, leaving them on the back step. For eight months, KittyBear was our only furchild. And then we brought home two tiny chrysanthemum-petal-headed baby poodles. KittyBear observed and hid and generally stayed out of the way while I overmothered the puppies and worked hard at housebreaking them. One night at 11:30, as I struggled back through the kitchen toward bed, after what I strongly hoped was Last Time Out, I caught KittyBear's eye as she lolled on the kitchen counter archly watching the two tiny dogs passing by below.
"You could help, you know!" I said to her. She stared back.

A few nights later, Husband and I were in bed. We heard thumping, sounds of merriment and activity, coming from another room. I got up, crept down the hall . . . to find our three pets sitting in a triangle . . . in the center of which was a small living mouse. KittyBear had undertaken to teach the poodles how to deal with small rodents. Angus loved it, learned the lesson and loved KittyBear. Max watched and didn't much care about anything except cuddling and fetching. When the poodles were six months old, I got up one Sunday morning and found a tiny deceased mouse on the back step. We never saw KittyBear again.

Max went on happily, playing with his toys and being cute. Angus looked for his kitty sister. When he would hear, in our conversations, the word "kitty," he would pay close attention until nothing further happened to produce an actual kitty. Husband felt sorry for Angus. "Angus wants a cat. Should we get him a cat?"
I put out the word to people: If you hear of an adult female cat who needs a home, let me know. Months went by. Angus continued to exhibit signs of wanting a kitty sibling. I would not go to the shelter. With two same-sex puppies from the same litter, I already had a lot on my plate, petwise. If a cat fell from the sky, I'd happily take it in. If not, Angus would be fine.

My friend Juanita, something of a Cat Lady, called me one afternoon.
"Are you still looking for a cat?"
"Yeah, I guess so. Why?"
"The prettiest cat I have ever seen just walked into my back yard. I've been up and down the street, and nobody knows who she belongs to. Why don't you come over after work and meet her?"
So I did. Juanita met me at her gate, wearing a dark sweatshirt thickly frosted with cat hair and holding a loudly-purring dilute tortie cat. "I think she likes me," she laughed. The cat had come walking confidently along the fence into Juanita's back yard, sat down and waited for a proper acknowledgment. Juanita's neighborhood was home to a number of college students. It was the end of the semester. We concluded that someone, knowing Juanita was a Crazy Cat Lady, had offloaded their young pet near her house, confident that all would be well. I thought the cat was homely. I'd never had a dilute tortie, couldn't make sense of her markings, thought she looked kind of blah. But if ever a cat had dropped from the sky, here, certainly, was one. I had no carrier, so I picked up the cat, got in the car, and started home.
My new little girl settled happily in my lap, curled up and was still: I took that to be a good omen. We were about two-thirds of the way home, twenty minutes' drive, when I looked down at my new pet. She was looking up at me with her green eyes and her tiny pointy chin. She lifted one paw, reached up and softly, softly, touched my cheek for a few seconds.
Ka-ching!
Cats are born knowing how to seal deals.
Now, of course, thirteen years later, I can't believe I ever thought she was homely. It must be living with us that's done it: she is the most beautiful cat I have ever seen.

10/18/2011 For English Rider, MiMau's photo added (from MiMau and the Importance of Keeping the Upper Paw). There's another fun picture of her at CamoCat.

I have no digital photos of KittyBear and no scanner available . . . but she was beautiful too.

I just don't know

2011-10-16T03:20:00.004-04:00

I am often confused about politics in general, and my own in particular.

I'm employed by the smallest possible governmental unit, and, of course, I see what I do as necessary to the general good. Somebody wants to build a fence between his yard and his neighbor's; the law says it can be no more than eight feet in height. He wants it to be as tall as possible and who are we to tell him a fence on his own property can only be eight feet tall? He has a deck and if he sits on his deck, he'll still be able to see his annoying neighbor. The annoying neighbor, on the other hand, will get No Sunshine on his property if the fence is as tall as our man wants to build it.

Small Pond, the village that employs me, had a little damage from the floods. Nothing in comparison to the village that I call My Village. After the flooding, Small Pond's authorities had a dumpster put in place for use by the one street of people whose cellars and cellar contents had been damaged by the water. A couple of officials went door to door to let that street's residents know the dumpster was there for them. There wasn't wide publication of its presence because it wasn't meant for regular ol' garbage. A Man Who Is Never Happy phoned and complained that the dumpster was too high . . . people kept wanting to borrow his truck so they could reach the top to throw in their ruined armchairs and things. "And what about the old people?" he asked. "How are they supposed to use it? In BlahBlah and OverThere, they had trucks go around and pick up from in front of houses."
"Yes, those would have been National Guard troops going house to house where entire houses had been swallowed up by flood water and were being gutted," I did not say.
"I had to replace my furnace twice in three days!" he ranted. "Do you know how much that costs?"
"Yes. Yes I do," I said, calmly.
He went on for some time, complaining that the dumpster was there, that it was unsightly, complaining that it wasn't accessible enough, complaining that the sidewalk on his street has a dip in it that still held water.
"I don't mean to be a pain in the ass," he said.
"Too late," I did not say.

People call every week on trash pickup days.

The truck [that went by at 7am] didn't pick up my trash and I put it out there as soon as I got up at 7:30!
The containers are too big for me to move from my garage to the curb! What am I gonna do? (To that person, I did say, conversationally, "I guess I'd ask my neighbor for help.")
The containers are too small for our household: we have nine people in our family.
The containers are too big: I don't fill it up in a week. Why should I pay the same amount as the people next door who have nine people making trash?

All of us who take these calls wish that Small Pond would get out of the garbage business. The group of people who make these decisions keep renewing the contract. The alternative would be to have individual haulers coming through the village every day of the week, with trash containers sitting out on the curbs here and there every day of the week. And the cost to individual households would be higher than the existing arrangement. And maybe some people wouldn't have a hauler come, and would let their garbage accumulate. And then there would be . . . vermin. Another can of worms. So to speak.

So, I think about these small-scale problems, and I think about people's dissatisfaction with the services that Government provides, and I know that there is no winning. Sometimes I think that this country is too large and too varied in need and custom for one government to perform services that make people happy. Even perhaps this state, with its great variation in population densities and lifestyles . . . for Heaven's sake, we have New York County (aka Manhattan) and Onondaga County in one state!

Everybody thinks the government should do some things for the public good. But it seems that nobody can agree on what those things should be.
Take care of the roads? Yes, of course. But what roads? If all the roads are partially demolished, in what order should they be repaired?
Provide education to minor children? Sure. The argument goes, "We all benefit from communities filled with people who can read and write." Do the schools need to provide basketball programs? Swim programs? And, well, you know . . . Husband and I have no children, but we've been paying school taxes forever.
I get a tax break because I own land that's used partially for agriculture. Why should I get any favors because we could afford to buy that much land?
I pay taxes that pay for the state trucks and other pieces of equipment that are dredging out the streams that the floods filled up with gravel and rocks and rootballs. But I'm on top of a hill: my land won't flood. At least not until the gravel and rocks and rootballs accumulate to a depth of four hundred feet. I guess that would take quite a while.

So here are the questions that I keep coming back to:
Should we just let it all go and let everybody get by as well as they can on their own?
Should we have no permanent dwellings where there might be floods, or tornados, or wildfires that start by lightning?
Maybe we should all migrate seasonally, garden with pointed sticks, live in houses partially heated by the bodies of large animals.

At night in summer and all day in winter the peasants shared their huts with their animals. Parts of it were screened off for the livestock. Their body heat helped to keep the hut warm. ~A History of Homes

My boss read the other day that the house of the future will have no livingrooms. Dwelling units will have fewer rooms, and those rooms will be multi-purpose. That sounds to me like a return to a way of living that worked for humans for a good many years. We'll all have multi-generational households, filled with fleas and the aroma of manure, and we might be stuck all together for weeks on end if the roads are impassable, but at least it would take our minds off complaining about government.

It's just what you do

2011-10-15T06:30:00.003-04:00

I've been feeling a little bit embarrassed about that last post. Some of you seemed to think I had gone above and beyond, and that makes me feel as if I was tooting my own horn. It took a long time for me to write about that day, although I knew I would. Melinda seemed to me so singular, such a character. She was the reason for the post. I have so much more memory of her than I wrote . . . sometimes I want to get the story told and I leave out details. Her direct brown eyes, her square jaw, her wide straight-line lips. The faint dramatic intonation: "Yes . . . mine is a lonely life."
What I want to say here is that that's how it is in the country. I always thought so, and now that I live here, I do know it to be true. Maybe it's true in the city too; I don't know because I haven't lived in a real city. Maybe it's true wherever one human being asks another human being for help.

A long time ago, before we bought this land, but after we had begun looking around for a country place, I spent a few hours driving around being happily lost on country roads. It was late fall, might have been Thanksgiving weekend . . . and in the 'burbs the roads were clear. In the country, of course, they were snowy, slushy, muddy. I was on a long, long, unpopulated road when I slid into the ditch. I don't recall the details now. It was not a very cold day. Cell phones hadn't yet been invented. I didn't know where I was, but I remembered having passed a house less than a mile back. I trundled myself down the road, thinking to call Husband for help. There was one person at home, a young man. Early twenties, I'd say . . . big and burly and blond and country-messy . . . which is to say, clean but surface-dirty from physical labor.
But get this: his job was driving a tow truck.
That guy got on his overalls, got his truck and his big heavy chain, and he got underneath my car in the mud by the side of the road and he pulled me out most handily. I felt so bad that he was getting so wet and dirty but he said he was used to it.
I had no cash to give him, and he didn't care.
I never saw anybody work so hard and smile so much.
I still don't know what road I was on, or what his name was, or how I ever found, on a long, long, empty country road, the one person who would know exactly what to do and how to do it in fifteen minutes.

So, you know... What goes around comes around.

Melinda at my door

2011-10-13T00:01:00.001-04:00

To the east, regions already suffering the aftereffects of flooding from Hurricane Irene almost two weeks earlier had those problems aggravated by 2–4 inches (51–100 mm) of new rain on saturated ground and rivers still swollen. TheWallkill River crested at five feet (1.5 m) above flood stage in Ulster County, and the village of Washingtonville in Orange County to the south was isolated as it had been after Irene by the rising waters of Moodna Creek. The Orange County Government Center in Goshen, just reopened a day earlier, was closed indefinitely. Roads were closed, including exits on the New York State Thruway in the Mohawk Valley and, south of the Interstate 84 exit at Newburgh, the entire road. Some businesses that had spent considerable time and money to reopen after Irene were once again flooded.^[52] Damage in Tioga County in the Southern Tier was estimated at around $100 million.^{[53] ~Tropical Storm Lee}

When the second inundation, courtesy of Tropical Storm Lee, was imminent, I left work early so as to get to this side of the creek before I could not. At home, I ensconced myself on the couch with my book. It was chilly. I thought about starting a fire in the stove, but it didn't feel as if it would be worth the effort. It was very quiet. The rain pattered against the windows, stopped, resumed.
I thought I heard a car's tires roll up the driveway, but from where I sat, saw neither Husband's truck, nor any other vehicle. After a few minutes, a tiny tap-tap-tap of a key on the glass of the door. I unwound my legs from among the poodles and got up, craning my neck around the end of the kitchen counter to see the door. A tall white-haired lady peered in, hoping for a human. I opened the door and she stood on the porch in the rain, telling me she'd been a mile from home and had gotten detoured . . . and lost. "I could see the church up on the hill there, you know the one, with the blue cross? And he wouldn't let me go on!"

She wore no coat, and her black sweater was soaked. I got her inside and settled on the couch, provided, with my apologies, a cup of coffee reheated from the morning, and put the afghan on her shoulders. We visited for a little bit, and I heard the short version of her life story. She's from Lubbock, Texas, had a husband who died, then a son who died. She went to school for architecture but then decided she didn't like it because she didn't want to have to work with men all her life, so she got a degree in interior design. She was in cohoots with builders and worked a deal in which she'd decorate the new houses that they built. Anyway, then her son died, and this man Bob somebody (who owned the place near here where she lives now) married her and brought her here and then "no sooner did we get here, but he died."

She was matter-of-fact about the whole thing, except a slight wonderment at all these people dropping dead around her, and I enjoyed listening to the Texas flavor of her speech. In the short time she was here we covered a vast amount of conversational ground. She said the women here have been unfriendly to her. I said, "Well, you know, there's that little bit of antipathy between Northern and Southern women." I mentioned Jeannie to her, who had said once, in one of her Scarlet O'Hara fits of pique, and probably quoting some romance novel heroine, "That's work that only niggers and Northern women would do!" My guest was aghast. "I was raised with ladies, you know. No one I knew would ever have used language like that!"

While we talked I checked the computer to see how to get her home.
She said, "I'd better write this down."
"You don't have to," I said. "I'm going to lead you there."
She did that whole upper-body recoil that it seems to me only Southern ladies do so well, and said, "You're going to lead me there?"
All little back roads and the poor thing had no idea where she was, I couldn't send her off into the rain alone to follow directions that included no landmarks. Some of the roads look like hardly more than somebody's camp driveway. But all told, it looked like only about seven minutes from here to there.

After a while I said, "Well, you finish your coffee and get your keys, and we'll go out and get you home. And you get into a hot bath and warm up."
"I will. I'll put on one of those things, you know, that you wear over your bra." I expect she meant a camisole. Another Southern lady thing. I would have put on my flannel jammies.
I wasn't real sure where I was going but I knew where we needed to end up, and I knew the general direction. Some of those roads were ones I'd never been on, but lo and behold, after a while, we came out on the other side of the big pond that was the state route and I delivered her to her door. We blew our horns, waved out our windows, she pulled into her driveway and I went on. I wanted to see the flooded road. I saw it . . . all covered in several feet of water, guarded by sheriff vehicles with red and blue flashing lights. Having seen it, I had to back into somebody's driveway and, anticlimactically, pass by my erstwhile guest as she stood at the end of her driveway, in the rain, talking to someone I took to be a neighbor. Getting more soaked as she did so. Excessively gregarious. Maybe that's her "Texas" coming out.
We waved again and I wended my way home.

I am not an Earth Mother type. I don't go around Doing Good Without A Second Thought. I would not be one of those women about whom people would say, "Oh, she's just an angel . . . help anybody." But it never occurred to me not to go out in the rain and take that poor soul home. I think it's just the way it gets to be when everybody's all together in a big uncontrollable mess and we find out we need each other to survive. When I look at it that way, it makes natural disasters look a little bit like blessings.

Drying out the village

2011-10-11T05:55:00.002-04:00

Last weekend I made my third and fourth drives through the village since it drowned. The pizzeria's neon OPEN sign is lit, the drugstore has a brave white paper with a handwritten "OPEN" on it in the window, but neither had any noticeable traffic; almost nobody lives in the village anymore. The parking spaces on Main Street were empty except for torn-out sheetrock and fiberglass. People wearing gloves and masks over their noses and mouths carried debris out of wide-open buildings. An old blue barn that had floated off its foundation and nearly into the road had one of its walls removed on my morning trip by, two by the time I went by in the afternoon. The building that housed my hairdresser's shop has its walls half-removed to take advantage of whatever drying the sun and air could accomplish.

The first time I went through the village, when it still looked like a war zone, it smelled like Death. The second time it smelled like heating oil from the storage tanks that had been knocked loose and had leaked their contents. The stench has dissipated. Now it smells less like Death and more like the old mildewy dust of country cellars.

Along the road between village and home, and between the other side of village and dog groomer's shop, the cornstalks that still stand rise from a foot of standing water; elsewhere in the same fields they are wind-flattened. All of it is useless.

There are houses with "For Sale By Owner" and Realtor signs in the front lawns. The mortgages on the ruined structures and the cost of rebuilding . . . some people are simply walking away, to live in apartments with newly-bought or donated furniture. Those who are brave and strong enough to hire contractors to tear down and start over run the risk of some mean SOB reporting them to the state Department of Labor for not having an asbestos survey done before they demolish . . . as if any asbestos that might have been attached to those structures wouldn't have been miles downstream by now.

A couple of weeks after the floods I had heard rumors of forgetting about maintaining the dam, allowing the valley to flood, some level of government taking the land by eminent domain. I haven't heard any of that recently, and I am relieved. I prefer that my house be "hilltop" rather than "waterfront."

Holiday weekend

2011-10-08T05:00:00.016-04:00

It is the early morning of the third day of a three-day weekend. It is Columbus Day, or rather the day of the observance of Columbus Day. I doubt that many people other than east coast Italians know anymore what Columbus Day is meant to celebrate. If you're going to the parade, it starts at Fifth Avenue at 44th Street at 11:30 this morning. (In a nice balance, today is also Indigenous Peoples Day. I didn't know that until just now when I looked for a link for Columbus Day.) I will not be at a parade today. I will be doing my civil-servant-on-a-holiday-Monday thing, which is to say, whatever I want. I've been counting the workdays (20) since Labor Day and I'll be checking to see the number of days between now and Veterans Day.

By happy chance, and perhaps a measure of God-knows-we-deserve-it, the weather has been glorious for the last several days. On Saturday I was out bright and early to get the dogs to an overdue grooming appointment, came home to do the Dance of the Washer and Dryer, mowed the lawn, sweating, cooled by the breeze while I filled my head and my lungs with the sweet yellow scent of freshly cut hay and the rich green billow of freshly cut grass. There was a particular area where, when I wheeled and faced west, the bouquet was head-spinning. The sun and the shadows, the aromas, the sight of the grasshoppers and crickets leaping out of my path, the small yellow butterflies arcing and dipping . . . pure intoxication.

After the mowing, after the clean and trimmed dog retrieval, on the final round of laundry, pleasantly sluggish as the windfall-apple-drunk wasps, I sat at the shaded picnic table and read.

What a gift is an eighty-degree day in October.

How Chantix worked for me

2011-09-26T08:05:00.003-04:00

A few of you who left comments on the "Moderation..." post wanted to know how the Chantix worked for me.
It worked as it was meant to: I haven't smoked since August 12. Six weeks, give or take.
I had just about every one of the side effects:

...suicidal thoughts or actions; new or worsening depression, anxiety, or panic attacks; agitation; restlessness; angry or violent behavior; acting dangerously; mania (frenzied, abnormally excited mood or talking); abnormal thoughts or sensations; hallucinations (seeing things or hearing voices that do not exist); feeling that people are against you; feeling confused; or any other sudden or unusual changes in behavior, thinking, or mood.

One of my friends knew I'd stopped taking it when I [mostly] stopped being mean.
Feelings of confusion are a common feature of my personality so I'm not sure I can blame Chantix for those.
The auditory hallucinations were barely noticeable and only lasted for a few days: they were, as my doctor predicted, like hearing the conversation of many voices from an adjacent room. That was interesting. I kept trying to hear what the nonexistent people were talking about, but never could make it out.
I stopped taking it when the occasional nausea became more regular. By then I was forgetting to take it anyway.

The loss of interest in food did not last, and the inability to resist the famously unhealthy White Food has dropped into place. Now I scurry away from the sight of blue and white Entenmann's boxes the way, six years ago, I began to avoid the red and white of Budweiser.

Just as Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, "It's always something--if it ain't one thing, it's another."

2011-09-25T03:03:00.000-04:00

I used to see this guy Bob in the rooms. Big guy, balding young. When he moved, he shambled, hunched over by the weight of the chip on his shoulder. He was a wrinkly, puffy mess, pouty about everything, always Poor Me coming out of his mouth. He hated his job, he hated his job, then he got fired and he was mad about that. When he shared, he'd pick one person to talk to, look down while he spoke and then up to check with his audience of one for . . . whatever he was checking for. Acknowledgment: let's call it that.
Like so many of us in those rooms, he was a little kid in a grown-up's body.
I haven't seen Bob in a long time.
I haven't been going to meetings.

A few days ago the mailman left a notice for me that I had a piece of mail that I needed to sign for. It would be held at a post office not my own. "Odd," I thought. The floods, though, have caused the mail, as well as many other things, to be off kilter. The next day I asked the mail carrier who delivers to the office why my mail might be at a different post office. She said that if there had been a substitute delivering mail on my route, he might have used the wrong call slip . . . on of his "home" call slips instead of filling out a blank one for my village.
"Call first," she said, "before you make an extra trip."
Of course I did not call first, but started my Saturday morning rounds with my home post office. The lobby, where the mailboxes are, was open, but the clerk's area was locked up tight. Through the glass door I saw that the walls are half gone . . . the studs are drying out before the sheetrock can be replaced.
Ah. No mistake then. I really did have to go to the other post office to retrieve my mystery mail item. Only a pleasant ten minute drive, past barns and pastures of cows, and over the creek that has come to resemble the mighty Mississippi in its new breadth and milk chocolate color.
I parked, went inside, signed the orange slip and handed it over to the clerk. While she flipped through a carton of packages, I picked up a small brass bell on the counter and looked inside it. The original clapper was gone, replaced by a paper clip. I waggled the bell and it tinkled faintly.
"How cute," I said. "Is it effective?"
"Oh yes," said the clerk. "I can hear it every time."
"Ears like a dog," I said. We smiled, I took my envelope and I turned to leave.

I pushed on the door; it gave way suddenly. A tall man was pulling the door open to come inside. We met in the doorway. "Oh! I'm sorry," he said, stepping back to let me pass while he held the door.
"Perfectly all right," I said. We smiled. "Thank you."
"Have a good day," he said.
"You too!" I told him. I headed for my car.
The car next to me began to back up. Then, a crackle-whump sound, like a cardboard box being run over.
"Oooo, that doesn't sound good," I said to myself. The car pulled forward again. I looked over my right shoulder to see what was going on. The driver and passenger, all covered with consternation, hurried out of their vehicle and went to look at the rear of a small green car parked behind them. The man who had held the door for me appeared. All three of them looked long and intently at the bumper of the car, which seemed undamaged, unmarked. Each of them ran their hands over it. Nodding and shaking of heads all round, readiness to accept responsibility, to forgive injury.

I backed up slowly and minimally. As I moved the gear shift from "reverse" to "drive," I heard the man say, in a comforting tone, "Noooooooo....." and then, "You have a nice day now." As I prepared to turn out onto the road, all three were getting into their cars. I looked closely at the man getting into the green car.
It was Bob.
A Bob all grown up, wearing neat clothing, wearing a smile.
Wearing his sobriety.

Now this: This was a nightmare.

2011-09-18T20:37:00.004-04:00

I'm at work, temporarily answering phones while the regular receptionist is out for an afternoon.
A man calls and says he wants to talk to the Chancellor or he'll send in a bomb.
I can't transfer the call because I don't know the Chancellor's extension.
The Chancellor himself calls me on an internal line, tells me, "If the man calls again, send him to me at extension 247."
"247 . . . 247 . . . 247 . . ." I mutter to myself nervously while I wait for the man to phone again. When he does, I try to transfer the call to extension 237, which does not exist. Now I have to deal with embarrassment as well as a real threat of true violence.
The security doorbell buzzes. I get up from the desk, go down the stairs, and open the door. A man puts into my arms a full-grown German Shepherd, "Here's Bob. He's loaded." The man leaves quickly, and horrified, I carry the beautiful black and silver dog back up the six stairs to the lobby, noting that he feels as if he has valises under his skin. In fact, he has explosives sewn under his skin; he is armed as a living bomb. I'm in fear for all our lives, not least the beautiful dog's. I'm on the floor, trying not to weep, trying to comfort the nervous dog, who in turn is trying to comfort me, when the Chancellor comes into the lobby and sits down at the receptionist's desk to manage the situation. With kind urgency, he dismisses me, and as I push open the heavy steel door to leave, a young and handsome dark-haired man grasps the edge of the door.
"Who are you!" I shriek.
He's frantic. "I'm Bob's dog!" he shouts. "I mean . . . Bob is my dog!" The Chancellor comes to the top of the stairs and tells me, "Let him in."
I leave the building and wander through the campus with tears rolling down my face, expecting at any moment to hear a loud explosion.
Sirens in the distance...

And, thank God, then I woke up.
If this doesn't stop soon, I might have to stop sleeping.

General update

2011-09-17T04:44:00.002-04:00

I just turned up the thermostat for the first time since I-don't-want-to-remember. The temperature outdoors (says the weather website) is forty degrees. I don't know what it was inside. It's uncomfortable, I'm up at 4am on a Saturday and I deserve to feel not scrunched up around the shoulders and neck trying to keep warm.

I got up about 3, I think. Or, really, 2:30ish. I woke up from another long and vivid novelette of a dream, made a trip to the Small Room, and got back in bed. Max started to wiggle around, settle, wiggle. I got up, carried him downstairs and delivered him outdoors. He is such a small dog . . . his innards must be crowded by his bladder, which has about a gallon capacity. I waited at the door for his gauge to drop to "empty." It takes a long, long time. Then he refilled at the water dish: a long slurpslurpslurpslurpslurpslurp. At least five minutes. MiMau interrupted him, he stood back. She drinks for a long time too; I think she's part camel. Finally, she stepped back and he resumed. A second trip out to make sure his bladder was completely void.
We went back upstairs to bed.

Angus hadn't moved: Ah, good.
Angus spent a day at the clinic last week, having teeth removed/cleaned, having his anal glands and his ear canals deep cleaned. His mouth has caused him no trouble in the aftermath, his ear canals are no longer itchy and painful . . . but the butt. Oh . . . my. My life for the last two days has been taken over by my black dog's butt and its discomfort and recovery. Twice a day I am to administer 1.5cc of liquid antibiotic. Mm-hm. We aren't doing very well with that, but I'm hoping that whatever remains on Angus' tongue, after he flings it hither, thither and yon, will do some good.
This is my life.
Last evening Angus was suffering quite some anxiety about issues back there. I put him in the bathtub with the handheld shower and washed him off with Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap. Immediate relief. We went to bed. He settled down, sighed, and we all went to sleep. So when I got back to bed with empty Max, and Angus still seemed comfortable, I thought, "Great, back to sleep until the light of the Saturday sun shines on my face!"

Two minutes later, Angus began to fidget. He moved under the covers with me. He moved out from under the covers. He wiggled and squirmed. He settled down at my command. Then the whole routine started up again. I sighed. I flipped the covers back, put on my robe, picked him up and tucked him under my arm and carried him downstairs, delivered him to the door. He went out.
I went to the dog medication corner of the kitchen counter and quartered one of Max's Tramadol tablets. While I was at it, I fixed some food, as Tramadol is supposed to be given with food.
Angus came back in, walked to a scatter rug and resumed his interest in his rear end. I picked him up and carried him to the couch, next to which I had, in his absence, surreptitiously placed the quarter tablet of Tramadol (he's a suspicious and observant little dog), and where I cornered him, pried his jaws open and shoved the medication down his throat. Honestly, you would think that I had given him poison. He spit and shook his head and thrust his tongue out and spit some more. And out came the Tramadol. I hadn't lost patience, exactly, but I was empty of my usual empathy and full of determination. I picked up the wet quarter tablet, pried open his jaws again, and while I leaned my body against his, pressing him into the corner of the couch, calmly pushed the pill halfway down his esophagus. I held his mouth closed with one hand, then the other when he wiggled his muzzle out of the first, and rubbed, with some vigor, every part of his head and throat. He performed the whole Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! dog and pony show again, but the medication did not reappear.
You know . . . I have swallowed Tramadol myself. It does not taste that bad.

While I was on a roll, I hid his thyroid medication in a half inch ball of raw hamburger and placed it before him on a small dish of microwaved-for-thirty-seconds-and-cooled kibble/water/hamburger. He ate the ball of hamburger, so the morning dose of thyroid med is inside him. I have a reprieve on that until this afternoon.
But we still have the morning dose of the liquid antibiotic.

He's snoozing now (thank you, Tramadol!), over there between his little dish of uneaten food and the far arm of the couch. It might be time to load up the plastic syringe with antibiotic. I won't have a better opportunity for hours.

A note to interested entrepreneurs: There might be a real market out there for this design in straitjackets.

Hell hath no fury like the dreams of a woman taking Chantix

2011-09-14T06:12:00.001-04:00

Carolynn's comment about violent dreams reminded me of a dream I had a few weeks ago.

Or so.

It doesn't matter when, really, although I do think it preceded the Tropical Storm Irene inundation...

...and the Labor Day inundation.

I think of the dream . . . and it felt like a dream, not a nightmare, despite the way it rolled out of my id . . . in relation to the storms only because I wonder . . . was I reacting somehow to the unsteadiness in the atmosphere? Or was it just one of the famous Vividly Violent Chantix Dreams? I can hardly believe that most dreams only last three to five seconds (something I read recently) because this one seemed to go on for weeks.

Anyway...

There were two of us in the dream: a man, familiar to dreaming me and unknown to my waking self, and me. He and I were close. Not lovers, not friends, but somewhere on the edge between the two. Throughout the dream, over and over again, I would begin to trust him and his good will . . . and then he would do something or make a remark that would cut me, humiliate me, leave me not knowing what to say, how to react.

At last, my hurt feelings turned to cold rage. He had one more chance. I knew he'd blow it and he did. He made yet another barbed joke at my expense.

I turned and drove a long two-tined barbecue fork into his throat even as he still smirked at me. I could feel the tines' sharp points passing through resisting tissues. He fell backward onto the floor and lay staring at me in shock, struggling only feebly. I was strong; I would not let him free.

I woke up, leaving my dream self holding him pinned to the floor by his neck.

BBQ fork by ~princess-distracto

Aren't you glad you don't live in my head?

Last night's dream

2011-09-13T07:29:00.003-04:00

I dreamt that I was a cat, the youngest in a colony of cats who all looked very much like me.
We were all pretty cats: black and gray tabby with white bib and paws and lips.
It seems as if the dream went on and on. There was lots of conversation among us, along the lines of: We are cats and may do as we please, whenever and wherever we please.
In the final scene of this dream, we were all gathered in a diner, all sitting like humans in booths.
It was a meeting of some type, and our patriarch said: "We are cats. We have no kings. Except humans, but that goes without saying, since humans rule everything...."
He went on with his speech, or announcement, but I was shocked.
It had never occurred to me that We the Cats had any superiors, least of all . . . humans.

In a scrap tacked onto this dream, there were a few Helpful Household Hints.
One of them was to use a curling iron to iron ribbons.

I don't know where my brain gets this stuff.

Moi, après le déluge

2011-09-01T18:52:00.005-04:00

I drove through the village this afternoon......thought maybe, since the road was open again, some places might be open for business. I thought I'd go and see if the Community Apothecary was open. I left a prescription there Saturday morning to pick up on Monday.
Uh.

No.

I had no conception, despite the pictures and the videos, of the immense reach of the flood. The little league fields at the outskirts of the village . . . the markings and fences are there. The creekside pavilion next to them is a hundred feet from where it was. The pavilion's picnic tables are upside down, way up next to the road....washed upward fifty feet, and hundreds of feet south of where they started.
The 300-year-old stone house is there, and solid, its front yard rail fence plastered with dusty matted waterlogged brush and weeds.
My drugstore with the windows and greeting card racks empty, my hairdresser's machinery and pedicure chairs piled up in the parking lot, the library with the filth matted against the caved-in latticework porch skirting . . . all dusted with dry mud . . . the antique camelback loveseat, from one of the little reading nooks, outdoors and all brown-murky-smeared, tipped on its back.
No way to turn around until I got to Bridge Street, now bridgeless and closed after the first block. The macadam that, in June, I waited in line for and detoured around, smelling then its fresh rich intoxicating oil and tar scent. I watched it being rolled and pressed beautifully smooth. It's all peeled up and washed far away. I turned and came up the back street with the big pretty houses. Muddy, filthy, soaked, formerly (five days ago) elegant furniture, and piles of lumber and torn-out hunks of ruined pink fiberglass insulation out in the yards.

Porta-potties here and there.

People in rubber boots and rubber gloves and filthy legs standing looking at the mess, carrying buckets up and down the street.

A big sign: "CLAIM INFORMATION HERE" and "VOLUNTEERS, THANK YOU AND GOD BLESS YOU."

The whole area stinks.

I don't know what the stink is. It isn't sewage stink, although that's part of it. The closest I can come to a description is: rot and silty creekbottom mud.

Beyond heartbreaking; stomach-turning.

A fire policeman whose left arm must have been so tired, pointing me to the detour up over one of the hill roads. Oddly, interestingly, the old, old plank bridge is intact, although I could see where the creek had surged right over it.

I have seen this stuff on the news, in Arkansas or Louisiana or someplace and I have thought, "Oh those poor people..." but this! These are places I know by smell and sound, and it's all a wreck from one end to another. Must I see every disaster first hand to feel true sympathy for others who've had these experiences?

If this is this horrible, what must it be like in places where it's been wearing down for tens, for hundreds of years?

I drove down the driveway and breathed deep breaths of spicy wet leaf scent. The house had had little bits of leaves stuck to it through Monday, but they've dropped off and blown away now. I drove into the barn and got out of the car, turned and stood a minute ignoring the dogs' hysterical hello barks from the front doors.

I looked at my nice clean dry house with a nice clean dry mattress to go to sleep on tonight, and I thanked God most heartily.

Marie Louise Schroeder

2011-08-23T05:50:00.002-04:00

About once a year, when Saratoga's in season, I get taken up by a fascination with Mary Lou Whitney (née Marie Louise Schroeder, Kansas City, MO). She's rich, her wardrobe and jewelry are gorgeous, and, you know, even now at eighty-something, she has an interesting face. Her decades-younger husband is, from all accounts, just crazy about her. Hers is a pretty classic Cinderella story, although I gather she was no blushing maid shyly offering her foot to a glass slipper held by a supplicating prince. Marie Louise' mama diddent raise no fool.

Marylou graduated from Southwest High School and went to the University of Iowa, but had to come home and get a job after her father died. She got the perfect one: flirtatious wartime disc jockey at station KCKN. "I created a show for servicemen called 'Private Smiles,' " she says. "We played Tommy Dorsey and Frank Sinatra, and it was very popular and made me kind of a star."

"Marylou wooed Sonny with her cookbook," claims one longtime friend. "She played the role of the simple girl from the Midwest who loved to cook. He wanted to be fussed over."~Driving Mrs. Whitney

The handsome prince in 1949, nine years before he married Marylou:
US Undersecretary of Congress Cornelius Vanderbilt (Sonny) Whitney

“When I first came here, I made a statement that made the town furious. I said to (late husband C.V. Whitney) Sonny, ‘Goodness, this is a dead town.’ You could roll a basketball down the center of town and not hit anyone. There was a bank and a drug store and there were a few places open … Skidmore was the only thing going. It was very hard to buy anything and most people went to Glens Falls or someplace else. I said, ‘We’ve got to do something about this town, get the shops open and get it busy.’ Sonny said, ‘You can do it.’ I said, ‘How?’ We knew it was the top place to go in the summer. I decided I would make it better. We started to have parties and brought people up here. In one of my first interviews here, I said ‘Saratoga is the summer place to be.’ Now, everyone uses it. No one gives me credit, and I don’t want it. I am glad they use that line. I just love it here.” ~Marylou Whitney

"A coterie of fine artists and society leaders create an atmosphere of elegance ..." according to the caption below this Palm Beach Daily News photo at Wally Findlay Galleries, perhaps more than 35 years ago. L. to r., Alejo Vidal-Quadras, Simone Karoff, Wally Findlay, artist Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt "Marylou" Whitney, whose artwork was being showcased, and Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney.~12/16/2009 New York Social Diary

~from The Saratogian newspaper, 7/11/2010,

but that picture of Marylou looks a lot earlier than 2010.

From 1960 until 2006 she hosted annual summer galas . . . celebrities galore . . .
her entrances were always the stuff of fantasy...

In 1992 Sonny passed away.

Five years later 1997 Marylou, 72, married John Hendrickson, 32.

It was quite the news story, but God bless her, I feel as if she's like our own homegrown queen.

"Pink roses especially remind me of Marylou and this one is classic and beautiful, like my beautiful wife." ~John Hendrickson

11/18/2009 Albany Times Union

I was going to joke about how her voice and speech changed from what I imagine they were in her midwest girlhood to the old money drawl, but she's so brave in this video of her January 2011 Eclipse Award acceptance speech, despite the apparent remaining effects of her 2006 stroke, that
I simply cahn't do it.

Cheerful: An addendum to "August 16, 1980"

2011-08-22T05:34:00.002-04:00

Years ago, I saw Beverly Sills interviewed on television. I think the question was, "Are you happy?"
Ms. Sills looked into the interviewer's eyes for several seconds, and answered, "I'm cheerful."
Cheerful is the whistling in the dark equal of happy.
Cheerful is making the best of things, not admitting to wishing you could do some things over, not ever [out loud] feeling sorry for yourself.
Most of the time, out loud, I'm cheerful.
Most of the time I don't give voice to the bleak depths of my horrors and the dreary sludges of my moods.

A friend told me that she wants me to remove "underachiever" from my "About Me."
I have a cousin who chairs a big philanthropic organization, another who weaves baskets of all types. I have a friend who is an architect at her office three days a week and spends the other four days raising her daughter, leading the Girl Scout troop, stenciling her walls, making floor cloths. I work with a woman who walks three miles every morning before work, bakes and needlepoints every evening.
I wait on the pets and, in between pet tasks, stare around me at the hills and the butterflies, and read and blog.
Thanks be to God, I also have a friend who feels that being and appreciating is enough.

When I reread my anniversary post, I thought, "It sounds as if it's all been uphill!"
It hasn't.
Around our ten-year mark, we found The Land. This land, where I sit now, with the hills and the sunsets, the crickets and katydids, the orioles and deer and fishers and the occasional black bear. Where I found, while the house was being constructed, a Luna Moth on one of the wooden studs of the exterior wall, where I had the thrill of having a grasshopper chew off a few cells of fingertip skin as I held him.
Husband gave me this dream life. He says I did it too, but he's the one who made it possible.
Being married to each other is what made it possible for both of us.
We are each other's cheerleaders. We've been, for each other, the parents that we might have had: we've brought each other up. I taught Husband the pleasure of reading. He taught me to be cheerful.

Moderation and the lack thereof

2011-08-20T08:33:00.003-04:00

Remember the revelation, several years ago, that a daily glass or two of red wine was good for one's heart? I took that as great news, although at the time I was not a great lover of red wine. Hell, if it was good for me, I'd drink it! My problem arose from my belief that if a little of the stuff was good for me, a lot must be better! And down that road I went, skipping like a drunk munchkin toward Oz. I drank red wine when available, and I drank other alcoholic beverages at [frequent and lengthy] other times. Hence my membership in the club to which no one aspires to belong. I don't drink alcohol anymore.
But still I don't know moderation.
I don't have the moderation gene. I don't know how people eat one slice of pizza, or one cookie, or smoke one cigarette after dinner. If I like something, I want it, I want a lot of it, and I want it until it is no more.

On Thursday someone gave me two chocolate truffles, brand name Moser Roth. I had never heard of the brand, but I knew they would be good. Each truffle was wrapped in cafe au lait-colored heavy tissue paper with a sophisticatedly discreet quarter-inch-square foil sticker. Packaging has so much to do with one's enjoyment of some things. As a courtesy to my donor, I unwrapped one and popped it into my mouth. It . . . bloomed gradually, spreading over my tongue in cocoa-y flavor and light yet rich texture.

I put aside the second little package to enjoy later, knowing that its life would be measured in minutes. And it was. And it was just as delectable as the first. If I had had two pounds of the things, they would have been gone, and I would have been ill in, oh, say . . . a half hour.

I have smoked cigarettes off and [mostly] on for the better part of forty years. No one but a complete fool [or an addict] would think that would be anything but a Very Bad Idea. I stopped for ten years. One day, I thought, "It's a beautiful day. I'd love to have a cigarette." And I bought a pack and smoked for four more years. Stopped again for four years, chewed nicotine gum the entire four years. The dental hygienist loved me. All that gum chewing kept my teeth nice and clean. One balmy early summer evening four or five years ago, I decided that smoking a single cigarette would be a nice way to spend a few minutes with Husband on the patio. And I was off again. I liked it, and if one of an evening was . . . nice . . . then two or three would just prolong the pleasure. Thus spake the addict.

Now I am taking Chantix and it is working. I smoked, and did not enjoy, the last cigarette on the twelfth of August. Chantix, you see, takes away all the pleasure part of smoking and leaves a person with the bad taste, the stink, the awareness of the toxic gases' immediate effects on one's digestive and other systems. Not only did I not want to smoke, but other previously irresistible items lost their gleamy, glistening, glowing attraction. Ice cream, carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, salty things . . . their reedy, wheedling little voices no longer called to me.

"I want to take this stuff for the rest of my life!" I thought.

See?

If it's good, I want it all and I want it forever.

The idea is that one takes this medication for a few months while one builds other habits to replace the after-dinner cigarette, the morning-coffee-and-cigarette cigarette, etc. And then one stops taking the medication.

I can only wonder, idly at the moment, what substance will click, like a coin dropping in a vending machine, into the empty space left by the absent Chantix.

The phrase, "Moderation in all things," is common extrapolation of Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean (as presented in his Nicomachean Ethics). His ethic works around finding the mean, or middle ground, between excess and deficiency.

It should be noted that Aristotle's ethic is often misundertood by its summary: moderation in all things. It is frequently reasoned by those unfamiliar with context that the common phrase means that a person should approach all things (whether healthy or unhealthy) with moderation; therefore, reasoning that a moderate amount of a bad thing can be indulged is not uncommon to find. This is an inaccurate representation of the perspective summarized in the popular phrase. ~Blue Letter Bible

Oh.

August 16, 1980

2011-08-16T07:31:00.000-04:00

Thirty-one years ago, I got me a husband.
I paid for the wedding bands because he didn't have any money, although he worked like a dog.
My mother wore black, my sister wore the dress I had asked her not to wear, the minister had my brother-in-law in his office and his hand out for money almost before we'd finished walking back down the aisle.
A friend of a friend took photographs and most of them were not great.
It took a year before we realized that being married meant something different than we'd thought it had.
It took five years to accept that difference.
After ten years, we had been through some fire together, and had escaped with some scars but no lasting damage.
At twenty-five years, we came to a bridge that appeared to be out. Only one of us could cross the river, it seemed. But we both ended up on the other side. Together.
The thirty-year anniversary was overshadowed by health issues, but we're still here.
Still together.

Old Friends by Roberta Wesley

Together. Still.

Mourning Cloak butterfly

2011-08-14T05:29:00.035-04:00

Last weekend Husband was giving the tour of his woodshop to a friend. I was there too because she's my friend. His too, but more and originally, mine. MiMau had trailed along after us and she and I heard the light tap-tap-tapping at about the same moment. I followed her alert gaze and saw a butterfly flittering against the closed window, trying to get out. MiMau was measuring for her jump to the workbench, preparing to inspect the situation a little more closely, but I beat her to it. I cupped the butterfly (a big one!) in my hands, and walked back out through the barn to a grassy place and set it on the leaves of a bush.

MiMau had followed and had stopped twenty feet away to watch.

The butterfly flew down to the grass, stopped to taste some leftover raindrops, then fluttered closer to the cat (have butterflies no sense of self-preservation?) and perched on the stone wall. I was about to perform a second rescue when it took off, went over the wall and stopped on the gravel of the driveway. MiMau was on it like a shot. One pounce. I shooed her away but the butterfly was still, flat against the gravel where her two front feet had caught it.

I felt awful.

But I thought it would be a good opportunity to get a closer look at this beauty, so I picked it up and tried to spread its wings. I was surprised that they weren't floppy; there was some resistance.

It was alive! Its little feet clung to my fingertip.

What a beautiful thing.

MiMau had gone away, but not too far away.

I carried my Mourning Cloak butterfly to the woodpile and while MiMau looked the other way, perched it/her/him on top of the highest log.

Then I came inside and found this picture that shows, so well, its richly colored mahogany brown wings with the glowing blue dots and the lacy-looking creamy yellow edges. I've never seen one before.

Later, I checked MiMau for butterfly breath.
I do have some hope that I made some contribution to seeing some of these beauties next year.

Mourning Cloak butterfly (called Camberwell Beauty in the UK)

2011-08-13T08:05:00.002-04:00

I was in the local drugstore, chatting with the clerk while I waited for a prescription. Absently, I registered the chime that accompanied the door opening, and on a wisp of wind a small older woman appeared to my left. Tidy and clean, gingham shirt tucked into belted pants, light auburn perm-curly hair held back from her face by a bandanna headband. Think perky Claudette Colbert in The Egg and I. Except older of course, with eyeglasses, and lipstick that had bled and dried only the tiniest bit into the creases around her lips, which were already in motion.

"Girls! Girls! Help me."
She bristled with commanding presence. Her blue eyes looked hard into both of our faces. She reached out and laid one hand on each of us. So great was her fervor that the clerk and I were transfixed. I thought she'd just had her purse snatched. I had a momentary vision of my running out the door and down the village sidewalk in pursuit of the evildoer.
"Do you know of a small . . . decent, you know what I mean . . . apartment for rent? Or even a house! A small house, because . . . you know what I mean.
"Here's why: I'm a recent widow... I'm not going to cry!"
She closed her eyes and tightened her lips for a moment.
"Do you believe in God? I do. Do you believe in God? I'm a Christian.
"What's your name, Darling?"
I told her and she repeated it. "It sounds so . . . show biz! And I was in the business!"
A soupçon of Brooklynese, or perhaps just the kind of larger-than-life confidence that I associate with downstaters, in her delivery . . . I did not doubt for a moment that she had been in Show Biz. She had mastered the art of the Dramatic Pause.
She said my name again, looking at me with her head tipped back slightly and smiling.
"Do you know what my name is? I'll tell you! Millie Teri! Get it? Military!"
She saluted, a little toy soldier.

"I'm a recent widow... I'm not going to cry... But I am, if you know what I mean."
Her head thrust forward toward the clerk, a Brave Smile armoring her face.
"Do you have any advice for me? Do you?"
Her hands were still on our arms, keeping our attention, clutching more tightly at emotional moments.
"I'm staying with . . . a friend. A very compassionate friend, who offered me a home. But I feel . . . limited. If you know what I mean. Not by anything she does or says. You know what I mean. I want my own space. And I love animals."
Each of us had offered possibilities (mine had been rejected for being on Main Street), and the clerk said, wincing, fearful of disappointing: "I don't know if animals are allowed in the apartment..."
"I said I loved them! I didn't say I had any! Tell me! Tell me! Where is it, Darling!
"What's your name? Oh, that's a nice name. Did I tell you my name? Millie Teri!"
She did the little toy soldier salute.
I stood in thrall long enough that my prescription arrived, the clerk swiped my prescription card for me and packed my small bundle while I stood riveted by Millie Teri (salute!). Millie insisted on giving me her name and telephone number. Her signature was flourished and large: an autograph.
"Don't forget me! Please!"
"I couldn't if I tried," I said, rolling my eyes with a laugh. "I have your phone number right here in my wallet where I'll see it all the time."
The transaction gave my rabbity instincts the opportunity to kick in and I was out the door. I could hear, behind me, Millie still imploring and demanding.

When I got home I contacted a Realtor friend, described Millie and her wish, gave her Millie's phone number. I hope Millie finds her apartment or small house. If I hear of something I certainly will call her. I hope, though, that she misses my call and I have to leave the information on an answering machine.

True [and other] crime

2011-08-12T06:24:00.007-04:00

A news story:

A 13-year-old local boy admitted in Family Court on Tuesday that he accidentally shot his friend to death last winter. The boy also said, when questioned by the county judge, that he understood why a loaded handgun is dangerous. The prosecutor said that he, the boy and his attorney, and the boy's parents had reached a plea bargain and the boy would be sentenced to nothing more restrictive than probation. The victim was visiting his friend’s home at the time of the shooting. The boys were alone in the house and found a handgun and ammunition owned by the defendant’s father. They started playing with the gun, loading it and unloading it several times, until it went off, police said. The dead boy's mother said not only is her son dead as a result of the incident, but her father as well. In January he visited his grandson's grave and, disoriented by grief, wandered into a highway and was hit and killed. The father of the defendant faces a charge of endangering the welfare of a child.

I read stories like this and usually stop and think for a few minutes about the sadness of it all. Maybe I mutter to myself a little bit about the parents' lack of foresight and how so many lives are ruined now. But I don't think about how the ripples from the act of a single moment spread to change circumstances so far beyond the original event.

Think about the defendant's parents as they move through the local store on a regular grocery shopping trip.

The boy will get probation, so he's lucky. But he'll be in school. He'll be the kid who killed his friend. For the rest of his life, no matter if he moves away, no matter if people around him know it or not.

Think about the truck driver who killed the grandfather. Is that guy having nightmares? Did the accident impact his employment? ...his marriage?

I recently read two novels, in the space of two or three days, that gripped and froze me in the experience of being close to tragic crimes. I recommend both of these, but include this caveat: have a happy book in reserve to follow!

Aftermath

Cage of Stars

Stopping by cow pasture on a sunny morning

2011-08-06T06:00:00.001-04:00

I have told you before about the obstacle course that my daily commute has become this summer. Considering the great change the state is making in the road, it's gone very quickly, really.
So it's almost over.

One day, when I had chosen the squiggly road option in lieu of the long-wait-in-the-dust state route, my heart fell (Here too???) as I rounded a curve and came on a ROAD WORK AHEAD sign, the feet of its spindly-looking metal standard held in place by dead woodchucks. They're sandbags, but they look like the corpses of expired large rodents. I drove a third of a mile and saw no ROAD WORK. Maybe it was a sign left up from the previous day?
But no . . . another curve and there was the young man standing in the road with his handheld pole with the sign at the top that says STOP on one side and SLOW on the other, and he was holding the STOP side in my direction, with a couple of cars already halted and obediently waiting.
On such a curvy road you can't see the reason for your wait and it seems pointless and neverending, but it was a pretty morning and I didn't want to ruin it by allowing myself to get frustrated. I looked around to notice things I might not have seen had I been traveling at the breathtaking speed of thirty miles per hour. Green fields that stretched up over the hill, a home that used to be a farm . . . I could still see where the cows had been pastured. There is a certain look that cow pastures have: bumpy, and growing not-quite-grass, with the odd mostly-buried rock poking up through the green, impressions of the cows' paths still meandering across and up over, however many years since no cow's hoof has touched them. I watched the man with the sign, too, and thought about what a drag it must be to stand all day, holding a sign, knowing that people are mad at you just because you are there, impeding their progress. He was a stocky young man, and tall, with a chubby face. The guy who holds the sign, I suspect, ranks near the bottom of the road crew hierarchy. Poor slob. He must have people being surly with him all day long.
While I mused, several more drivers accumulated behind me.

The young man held his big boxy radio close to his head for a moment, and then began to walk toward the first car in line, stopped and said a few words to the driver, nodded his head, moved on the second, said a few words, came to me. As he came close, I said, "How y'doin'?"
"Good," he said, "How're you?" and gave me some words of explanation that I don't recall. Before he passed on to the vehicle behind me, I said, "Lemme ask you somethin'."
"What's that?"
"How long did it take you to put all that duct tape on your shirt?"

Image source

I was pleased to see that he was nonplussed for a moment. He looked down and chuckled heartily, stepping away to the driver behind me.

Made me happy to have given the guy an amusing moment in a long day of standing in the sun, holding a sign, looking at people who wished he weren't there.

No thought Thursday

2011-07-28T05:50:00.001-04:00

All my life, I have loved kaleidoscopes...

...the magical colors, the infinite patterns that form and change.

So this is a joy to me!

I think if I stared at it long enough, it might send me off into dreamland,

which, it being nearly time to Get Ready For Work,

would be a Bad Idea.

Kaleidoscope

Son et lumière

2011-07-26T03:54:00.140-04:00

On Saturday afternoon and into the evening I could hear, from over the hill, the shrill happy sounds of teenage females: A Party. The cadence of the group sound was, at times, that of a chant, leading me to think of a roving gang of cheerleaders. Other times the wind carried to me the delightedly manic screaming that I associate with youth-in-swimming-pools. I turned toward the sounds, frowning slightly in concentration. BobbiAnn and Don have two daughters, one about the right age to have friends that would make those sounds . . . that carry across a couple of miles, across the hills and valleys, through the leafy trees . . . the same way coyote yips and howls do. About the same tones, as well.

The article that goes with this picture is a hoot.

I do not recall ever being one of those yippy little girls, abandoned to joy, carefree, confident in happiness.

I am glad that there are such children.

I am glad they were miles away.

solar lights somewhat similar to mine on a driveway completely dissimilar to mine

Last winter I shopped on eBay for solar lights, the kind you stick in the ground, unnoticeable in daylight, that come on all by themselves (the clever little things!) when it gets dark. I bought some at Walmart a few years ago and I liked them: they made me feel like Christmas in July, or as if I had fairies stationed around the yard. They were little decorative miracles of thrift to me. That first batch has worn out now and I wanted more. It was off-season and I got a good price on two cases of them. A couple of months ago, when the weather got warm enough that I could envision being outdoors after dark, I broke open the cartons where they were stored in the barn. After stabbing the copper-finished lights' little posts into the ground at intervals of three-four feet among the shrubs along the front of the house, I still had most of the second carton left over. I put a few at the sides of the two walkways off the patio in the rear of the house. Still, many left. I suspect the batteries in the things will wear out whether they're used or not, so I scouted for more nighttime accent light spots. Two in the daylilies at the far end of the front yard stone wall, two behind the front yard birches, two behind the back yard birches. Still . . . a layer of lights in the carton. Wandering around with as many of the fixtures as I could carry, I spied . . . crannies . . . in the driveway side of the stone wall, and discovered that those little holes were just the right depth and diameter for the stems of the lights. The effect is stunning.

I expect that some night an inexperienced pilot of a small airplane might mistake our front yard for a landing strip.

2011-07-23T21:24:00.001-04:00

I am at the tail end of my second of three summer staycations. All week I have had passing, flitting, flying thoughts of posting. I have been distracted from following any of those thoughts by the unceasing work of sweating. I have followed, instead, breeze and shade all day. The air conditioning in my car has been nonfunctional for two years; when I travel I open all the windows and drive as fast as possible to lower the temperature of the oxygen to a breathable degree. When I water the outdoor potted plants, I water my own arms and legs and air dry. I have depleted the supply of ice in the freezer's automatic icemaker. It has been desperate, I tell you!

Anonymous sweaty woman

The two books I've most recently read included passages about life needing to contain trouble. One was a long soliloquy by an attorney-gone-bad (some would say: Redundant!) in Scott Turow's... (oh now I have to get up and look at the title...) Personal Injuries. The other was in Kent Haruf's Plainsong, in which a female character tells two elderly farmers that she fears they will live all their lives without having enough trouble of the right kind, as she is offering them some of that trouble. I recommend both books. I felt the latter better than the former, the plot and immense cast of which confused me a little. Now I'm reading Jeffrey Lent's A Peculiar Grace, and again with the mention of everybody having their own bad times. Sometimes when I get these messages through my reading, one book after another, I realize it's something that I'm struggling with. I thought I had long ago accepted that into each life a deluge must fall, mountains must crumble and need to be rebuilt from a single pebble, etc.

Perhaps the cosmos is providing a refresher course for me, preparing me for some news. If so, ho hum. Tell me something I don't know.

The deer have been strolling, running, playing in the fields, the baby swallows have left the nest but not yet the barn. They sit in a three-bird row and peep vigorously. Mama and Pop keep a close eye on us if we enter to retrieve a vehicle and if swooping around doesn't chase us off, one or the other will perch next to the babies. I don't like to think what would happen to us if we went closer than we do. MiMau lies in the driveway and lolls, reaching up and swatting, as the watch-guard parents swoop over and dive at her, squeaking and veering off mere inches from her fluffy white belly.

While checking the vegetable garden one morning I found a skyscraper of a robin's nest with two dead babies nearby. Despite the sturdily built eight-inch deep foundation, the powerful wind knocked it loose from the maple tree. Mother Nature is a very stern parent. Rather than leave the poor corpses on the ground for the dogs to roll in, I picked them up by their limp yellow toes and tucked them in between the two trunks of the maple tree. I threw the nest into the garden. Such a waste, such a shame, for all that construction work to have amounted to nothing. I suppose the bird who built it doesn't even remember now; I doubt she's mourning. But I am, a little.

Early in the spring, or late last winter, Husband threatened two zucchini plants. He planted six. I am keeping pace, but expect to slip behind when I go back to work. Zucchini bread, zucchini pasta sauce, zucchini boats. Remember the "shrimp scene" in Forrest Gump? I feel like that about zucchini.

7" sieve: bee rescue and other uses

2011-07-13T08:17:00.000-04:00

photo credit: House Sparrow in Flight

My bee sieve is also useful for trapping the odd house sparrow that finds itself beating its wings against the inside of a window screen, wondering why it can SEE the big blue yonder but can't GET there.

Two little kings...

2011-07-12T05:11:00.002-04:00

...roaming their kingdom.

Random info:
The white post has something to do with the leach field. Husband has it marked so things don't get run over and crushed.
The tiny white spot directly above little black Angus in the first picture is one of the beehives, way way down in the corner of the field. The honeybees are very active this summer. I've discovered The Best Way to capture the ones that wander inside the house: a 7" sieve with a handle, used like a butterfly net without all the billowing.

Wednesday Timewaster

2011-06-29T07:24:00.000-04:00

Somebody sent this to me in an email. Take a deep breath and have a sip of beverage before you begin because you won't have time to do it during the test.

This is VERY FAST , so be prepared.

You only have 8 seconds for each question.

Click on the link, below, and have fun.

Smartorstoopid

The one that got away

2011-06-25T10:00:00.001-04:00

After lunch, after cleaning up, I returned to the picnic table with my omnipresent ice water and my book (The Love of My Youth) and settled in to toast in the sun, its heat relieved by a recurrent breeze. Every page or so, I'd look up and around to sigh happily at the green or to check the oranges for lunching orioles. The redwinged blackbird babies are out and about, closely following and imitating their parents' food-getting behavior and often, squatting down and fluttering like the babies they are, begging mom and dad for a morsel. An abrupt scuffle sound behind me pulled my head around to see a male oriole streaking inches above the lawn away from the shrubbery, MiMau not three feet behind him. If she had had a moment to gather herself, she would have jumped, reached, and caught him, but he flew hell-for-leather straight toward the driveway and off up into the trees beyond, leaving MiMau staring resentfully after him. "Lucky bird," thought I.

A little later, I related the story to Husband as he and I sat in the livingroom. Together we marveled at the cat's skill (despite this isolated failure) and at the luck of the oriole in escaping. I stood up to go to the kitchen. Husband said, "What's that on the wall?"
I stopped, looked. On the half wall between livingroom and the kitchen, a dried splotch and drip running to the baseboard below.
I turned to him. "Was there a bird in here?"
"Must have been," he said. "Look at this!" and he reached down to pick up something from the floor. "Feathers. And they look like . . . oriole feathers."

We both turned and stared at the cat, sprawled on the floor.

MiMau stared back through slitted eyes for a moment, rose and left the room.

What I Did During My Summer Staycation, by June

2011-06-24T15:00:00.003-04:00

I have been enjoying doing Ordinary Things.

Assembling and carrying outside the things necessary for an outdoor meal: the lettuce and radishes and cucumbers, freshly uprooted and picked from the garden and rinsed in the kitchen sink, the salad dressing and ketchup, two forks, two napkins...
Throwing burgers onto the grill when the fire is ready, or a little after that, instead of dancing from foot to foot waiting for the fire to hurry up and get ready...
Washing down the picnic table after the meal, sloshing sudsy water over the green painted surface so warm from the sun that it dries almost instantly...
Making the beds at my leisure, a stop on my way to do something else...
Cutting the orioles' oranges into halves, putting them all back into the plastic bag from the supermarket, and wandering around the side yard looking for good mounts...
Pulling a few weeds here and there as I alternately admire and worry about the annuals' ability to withstand the past two days of rain...
Doing errands as their own trip instead of wedging them into the drive from work, as I pant eagerly to get Home...
Making parts of meals throughout the day and pulling it all together at the appointed hour...
Watching at the end of the day as the clouds sink into the valley, obscuring the nearest hill...

Three days and counting

2011-06-15T06:15:00.004-04:00

Full Moon dates 2011
Year	Month	Day	Time	Day of week
2011	Jun	15	20:14	Wed

As I have mentioned before, the full moon does things to me. They are rarely pretty things. We used to have a boat, kept it docked upon a big lake in the Adirondacks. In a conversation with some new "lake" acquaintances, Husband told them, "On full moon nights, you'll see June down at the end of the dock. Howling."

The full moon makes my consciousness wispy, holey. It's an uncomfortable feeling, as if I'm dreaming in a world where everybody else is awake and a couple of beats ahead of me in awareness. The detachment and confusion have been moving in on me like fog since late last week. I blamed the rain, but no, it's the full moon. And it isn't finished with me yet.

By 8:14pm my incisors should be scraping my chin...

On Friday at 4:30pm I will be on vacation. I will be At Home. Most likely I won't be drawn off the property for anything other than books or food. I'd like to believe I'll accomplish some housekeeping chores that I have put off for unrationed time but if I'm honest, I probably won't.

My mother's mother used to call peonies "pineys." The first few times I heard her say something about "pineys" I had no idea what she was talking about.

One afternoon, some of my classmates walked by.

"Who's the darky?" she asked me.

"What?"

"Who's the darky?"

It was the mid-1960s, I had just read "Gone With the Wind," and I was horrified.

Horrified! to hear such a politically incorrect term from a blood relative of mine.

I believe I recall setting her straight, from my fourteen-year-old perch of moral superiority.

And I believe I recall her setting her lips so as not to . . . perhaps . . . cuff me.

She was a real old time countrywoman, that grandmother, born to farm life before the turn of the 20th century. She had borne seven children, one of whom died (a twin) and only the last of whom (my mother) was born in a hospital. In her younger years, she got up every morning and made a big country breakfast on a woodstove in the farmhouse cellar. Pancakes and pies, eggs and meat for breakfast. Every morning, for the men, her husband and sons, who would come in from milking and then go out afterward to do more of the everlasting work.

When they cleared out, she'd clean up the dishes in boiling water poured from a kettle on the woodstove into a metal dishpan, and start peeling potatoes for dinner. It seems as if all she did was cook and clean up after meals. Cleaning the house didn't enter much into the equation, and she stood me in good stead there.

Country dirt is cleaner than city dirt.

4:30 am Sunday: Miscellany

2011-06-12T04:51:00.001-04:00

Max has taken to needing "out" at 4:00 or 4:30 in the morning. I can usually outwait Husband and he tells me stories of the wonders he has seen while he waits for Max to come back inside. This morning I woke, without the Max Alarm, at 4:00am, and since it's Sunday and therefore a Nappable Day, I got up. I snugged Max under one arm (so as to get him downstairs before he felt urgency and let loose) and came downstairs, clicked the coffeemaker's ON button as I passed, and got the dog out the door.
There were no unusual sights out there this morning. Aside from the overwhelming lush greenness and the lively happy sounds of waking birds, nothing. No deer, no rabbits, no weasels skinnily undulating across the driveway. Husband wouldn't lie to me about that stuff, would he? ...just to get me to get up with Max...?

I did finish reading Man in the Middle. The ending did not justify the struggle. I don't know much about publishing, but the whole book had the feel of something written in a hurry, perhaps to sell while he was hot. There were failures of copy editing, a bête noire of mine. They made me want to write a letter to somebody, upbraiding him/her for his/her lapses.
I am now stuck in the middle of A Plague of Secrets. Maybe I'm just not in a reading mood. I plucked yet another book (The Genius, Jesse Kellerman) off the shelf yesterday. The first forty pages sound familiar: I think I've read it before but I can't remember what happened, which means that it was not memorable or more likely I read it with half my mind. Half my mind might be all I have left (memory of a coworker muttering "If I had half a brain I'd be a half-wit"), but the book might go back on the shelf.

It rained most of yesterday and was chilly unto fleece apparel in the morning. In the afternoon I couldn't stand being indoors anymore and went out to wander around for a while. I took a bunch of pictures, uploaded and deleted most of them. Things that look so gorgeous in person go into my camera as undefined blobs of color, or lose their mysterious thrilling come-hitherness in one-dimensionality. (See Ill. A below)

Illustration A

This, in person, is a lush, densely green and shadowed hidey-hole in the hedgerow. There is a flattened-out, fallen-down stone wall at the bottom . . . a floor for a wild playhouse, sheltered and half-hidden by overhead branches and hanging wild grapevines. I photograph it, and it becomes "brush."
More wild grapevine holds a broken branch waving in the breeze fifteen feet above my head: a perfect Halloween prop. On the computer, it looks like . . . "hanging brush."
I guess you had to be there.
Maybe if I worked at it, or had a more sophisticated camera, or knew how to manipulate photos with Photoshop, I could capture what I saw and felt, but I don't want to work that hard. My memory serves me well enough.
I have a friend who politely and rationally takes issue with anything that she suspects is computer-enhanced photography. To me those images are all beautiful shapes and colors: she wants Real, with all Reality's flaws and idiosyncrasies. The world is certainly interesting enough in its reality, but I can't photograph it worth beans.

This weather provides the best of both worlds: I can have the drowsy indoor coziness of a winter day with Spring's exuberant Life charging, lilting, rustling, burgeoning, all around me.

Husband told me yesterday about an article he read in a woodworking magazine about a master carpenter who, in the 1970s, began making roach clips and sending them out to head shops. Eventually the operation grew to require seventy employees. As I placed my glass of ice water back onto its coaster, I said, "I think you should make a gazillion of these things and sell them."
"What things?"
"These." I picked up the 3/8"-thick slice of unfinished wood that Husband created while testing a saw. I flipped it back and forth in the air between us. It is The Perfect Drink Coaster. It absorbs water and the wet darkness reveals pretty patterns that hide in the dry wood. I see that several somebodies are selling similar things on eBay, but they're all finished so as to be non-absorbent and remain pristinely beautiful, tiny little objets d'art. What good is a coaster that doesn't absorb water and lets my icy beverage glass drip condensation all over my warm body? Package them greenly, with raffia ribbon, or drill holes and tie them with a piece of twine, and he'd sell millions of them as gifts for ungiftable people. I think Husband was not truly taken with the idea. So now I have given it away, and somebody else will make a bazillion dollars on my idea.
I'm going to feel sad about giving that up, but I'll be drifting back to sleep shortly, so I won't suffer for too long.
If you do it, and make your fortune, all I ask is that you send me a five-dollar check to acknowledge my inspiration.

Sunday Stills: Yellow

2011-06-12T00:01:00.009-04:00

Sunday Stills' challenge this week is "yellow."

My peonies bloomed two days ago, and I thought they were all I'd be able to see, and they are most definitely not yellow.

But I did manage to happen upon some yellow...

It occurs to me that I'm glad this challenge didn't come when all there was to be seen outdoors was snow . . . or I might have had to take pictures of yellow snow...

More a suspicion of yellow than actual yellow...

Cucumbers-to-be...

A goldfinch blessing the garden...

See more Sunday Stills: yellow by checking out the responses here.

2011-06-11T10:28:00.001-04:00

A year ago, my thoughts were so different from today's!
There's a lesson for you: Keep putting one foot in front of the other!
Life goes on. Life gets better!

Today . . . well, actually, yesterday . . . my consciousness was all about how beautiful our little world is up here on the hill.

The peonies bloomed...

The animals frolicked and played and generally acted far younger than their fourteen- (MiMau) and fifteen-year-old (Max and Angus) selves. MiMau had a FRAP (Frenetic Random Act of Play) , chasing her own tail...

...and then collected herself and her dignity for a bit of grooming.

She lolled prettily on the stone wall...

...and then went off to do some hunting.

Two days ago she brought home a half-grown bunny and left it on the front walk, one efficient puncture wound at the base of its skull. I disposed of the corpse, flinging it off into the hay adjoining the mown yard, leaving her wondering why nobody eats all this good food that she brings home.

The boyz, apricot Maxwell Seamus and black Angus Finbar, poodled around the peony plant...

...and sauntered back over to partake of their supper al fresco. After that, Angus stood in the doorway to the house and barked one bark every thirty seconds: it was time for me to come inside so we could all cuddle on the couch as is our evening habit. I withstood his harassment until almost dusk, finally succumbing only because, I told myself, I was getting too cool outdoors.

I hate to come indoors, I hate to go to sleep these spring days. It's all so beautiful and it all feels so good all over, that I don't want to give up a single conscious moment.