If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.

I do my best thinking when I'm taking a walk

2011-10-11T08:08:00.001-07:00

As I was taking the dogs for a walk this morning, I was thinking about how amazing it is that Lucie has turned into such a good little walker. For so many years she would pull so hard against the leash that she was walking upright on her two hind legs for most of the walk. We had to buy her a harness as she would just choke herself and retch repeatedly. We could not curb that behavior. She was such a terrible walker that not only did we stop walking her but Bobo as well, and that was wrong, because that boy sure did love his walks.

We used to walk Rufus by himself when we lived in Kent, and I told myself that Lucie didn't care as we left her standing by the door every day. When we made the big move out here, Julie and Andrew took the dogs in for several days to facilitate that move. Julie took Rufus and Lucie out multiple times a day and walked them around the apartment building. Lucie likes to walk now, she reported to me, and she is good at it. Better than Rufus, really. So I have taken to walking them both, and it's true, in her dotage, Lucie trots right along, stopping to sniff and mark many places, which Rufus eschews for the all-out pulling me along as I tell him repeatedly to stop. I am sure we entertain the neighbors as we make our rounds.

Lucie snores loudly behind my chair as I type this, and I know I will have to pick her up and carry her to another room when I am on to my next task. She doesn't see or hear well, but she still "swims" at Ben every day when he gets home from work, and she will endlessly flip Hezbollah (her little stuffed duck) off the chair in Ben's room as he tries to change his clothes. When we are out and about, Lucie is routinely mistaken for a puppy, and I guess that is what she will always be to us, as well. A little, brown, curly-haired puppy. I hope she stays that way for a long, long time. And I'll keep walking her just as long as she wants to do it.

strikes and gutters

2011-10-01T04:51:00.000-07:00

The success of our plantings this first year in Maryland has been pretty hit or miss. For some reason - maybe it's human nature - I tend to focus on the failures. Our big (read expensive) cherry tree died - twice. The nursery replaced it once free of charge, but now it's just a loss to us. We have subsequently decided that exact spot probably isn't a good place for a tree. The butterfly bush barely survived the torrents of rain that fell, and we don't know if it will make it through the fall and winter in its weakened condition.The tomatoes and peppers were fabulous while they lasted, but the excessive rains of late August and all of September, really, killed the plants dead. So our vegetable season was early, but short. Alas that I won't pick another cherry tomato and eat it fresh from the vine until next July!

Our potted plants did not fare well, either. The geraniums I planted and placed on the front steps were in poor soil, and I knew it. They didn't even struggle, really, and the leaves turned yellow right away and they stopped flowering. Ben saved them by re-potting them and putting them somewhere else, but we had no flowers in the front of the house all summer. The flowers I planted in the big concrete container looked great the day I planted them, and never after. One of them is blooming now - in October. When the violas were played out, I bought mums to replace them. It seemed like they were dying from the day Ben planted them. I don't know why.

That being said, our passion flower bloomed this year like never before, and the mandevilla looks positively tropical, with its glossy, dark green leaves and huge, bright pink flowers. My mail order roses are climbing the fence in record time, and haven't stopped growing since we planted them, I think. The willow we planted has loved the wet weather, needless to say, and yesterday I noticed that I have flowers blooming outside both of my bedroom windows. How nice is that?

So I will try to swallow my disappointment over this year's growing season, but it's a process, you know? First I have to be disappointed and pissed off, then, after a while, I will be able to say, okay, what worked and what didn't? What should we do differently next year? Because, after all, it is our first year here.

pointless weather rant

2011-09-28T06:10:00.000-07:00

It's a good thing we didn't move to Maryland solely for the weather. As we are now officially a week into fall and I have experienced all four seasons here, I have to say, they have all sucked! "This weather isn't normal," the natives keep telling us, and I can only hope it returns to normal tout de suite.

This winter we experienced the worst snow storm I have ever seen, and that's saying something since I came from Northeast Ohio. I have never seen wetter, heavier snow, and I honestly feared my heart would give out as I shovelled it. The spring came early, it's true, but it rained all the time, and, unfortunately, the hot summer days came early, too. Summer was unusually hot and very humid, but, at the same time, it didn't rain for weeks on end. Ben and I had to carry water every evening to our struggling plants all through July and into August.

At the end of August, hurricane season arrived, and it has pretty much been raining ever since. The plants that struggled through the dry early summer succumbed to the ceaseless rains of late summer and early fall. We can bring water to dry plants, but we can't dry out wet plants - as far as I know, anyway. Our beautiful cherry tree was the first to go, and it was incredibly depressing to see it standing there with all its leaves dead and brown in the pouring rain. The huge hole it left behind is pretty depressing, too.

I will admit, it is still early fall and I am holding out hope that somehow it will stop raining, the leaves on the trees will start to change color, and everything will be lovely. But I have to tell you, I am not optimistic.

almost a perfect day

2011-09-22T06:56:00.000-07:00

As you may remember, last fall I was still living in Ohio trying to sell our house while Ben lived and worked out here in Maryland, trying to find a new house for us in his "spare" time. I wanted Ben to come home every weekend, but, needless to say, that was not feasible or even possible. Some weekends he managed to enjoy a day trip with Julie and Andrew, and one of their favorite trips turned out to be a day spent in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. They have been telling me about it ever since, and we have been waiting for the "perfect" day to make that trip together. We decided on last Saturday, which, as my previous post details, was not the perfect day. But it was the day we spent there, and I enjoyed it very much. Moreover, I can't wait to go back again.

Harper's Ferry is really the perfect melange, if you will, of things I enjoy doing on an outing (as we prefer to call it.) It is close, first of all. It took us about an hour to drive from our house to the parking lot where one boards the shuttle bus for town. It is best to go early in the day before it gets too crowded. We love to get an early start. It is really beautiful and scenic. Harper's Ferry is situated at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers, which cut through steep, tree-covered hills as they converge and flow south. There is a train tunnel through solid rock that is still in active use by the railroads. We saw easily a half dozen trains while we were there. We love to see trains.

The town itself climbs up the side of a hill, with the oldest part of town along the river bank. Interpretive signs explain that this quiet little town was once a bustling center of industry, with many businesses harnessing the power of the rivers to run their great machinery. Arms were manufactured and stored there, to be shipped up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Now, maybe you knew all this already, but I didn't, and suddenly I understood what brought John Brown to Harper's Ferry instead of somewhere else. So. Something else I love to have on a good outing - an interesting educational experience. And that was just the first of many as we gradually climbed the flights of stairs up the steep hillside.

We found a nice mix of shops and historical buildings, many of which were outfitted as they had been during the prosperous times before the Civil War. We did some shopping, as I mentioned in my earlier post, and had a nice lunch. But we also climbed further and further up the hill in the drizzling rain, coming to a beautiful native stone church overlooking the town, and above that, Jefferson Rock, where Thomas Jefferson once stood and commented on the spectacular view of the rivers. Thomas Jefferson. I know it is no longer politically correct to admire Thomas Jefferson, but I do, and I was awed to be walking in his footsteps, as it were.

I know there are things I am leaving out, but the point is we had a great time, learned a lot, and will definitely make return trips to Harper's Ferry. It is one of those places that I look forward to seeing all different times of year, and I know I will learn more each time I am there. How nice that it is only an hour away.

the thing about hats

2011-09-19T13:57:00.001-07:00

I don't like to wear hats. Even before I gained as much weight as I have in the past year, I never thought I looked good in them. And now I really don't. You see, the thing is, I have a big head and a big face. I need some hair to "frame" my face, in that old phrase that mothers (at least mine) used to use. I believe some hair around my face softens it and also hides part of it. I was definitely one of those girls who used to hide behind curtains of long, straight hair back in the day.

That being said, there are times when I think it is necessary to wear a hat. Other than in the winter, I feel those occasions are fairly infrequent, but they do pop up from time to time. To that end, I knitted myself a couple of wide-brimmed sun hats which I really like and which allow some of my hair to still frame my face. I also bought an adorable straw hat at Hats in the Belfry, a cute little shop in Fells Point.

The type of hat I think looks particularly bad on me is the ubiquitous baseball cap. Most of them are not big enough for me, and they all smash my hair and make my face look extra big. Hate that. Unfortunately, that was the only type of hat available to me on Saturday when we went to Harper's Ferry and it began to rain. Rain had not occurred to me so I was without an umbrella or a raincoat. An unfortunate oversight on my part, as I particularly hate to get my hair wet. The only thing worse than hat hair is wet hair, in my opinion. So I wore the baseball cap to keep my hair and glasses dry, but I was not happy about it.

One of the many things I learned about Harper's Ferry was that Lewis and Clark stopped there to outfit their great expedition. I found there were still lots of little shops where I could outfit my own somewhat smaller expedition, as well, and we began to wander in and out of them, searching for a hat that would keep me dry but wouldn't be a baseball cap. And, you know, I found it. I won't try to describe the hat, but it is big enough to fit me, it is made of waterproof fabric, it has a nice, rolled brim, and it is definitely feminine. And, most importantly, it is not a baseball cap. As I explained to Jules, when I have to wear a hat, I want to wear a hat. I wore it the rest of the day, and it kept me dry and happy. I only hope I will find occasion to wear it again some time. That is the other thing about hats.

how cool is this? my knitting pattern in Polish

2011-09-15T16:15:00.000-07:00

As some of you know, in addition to being an avid knitter, I have designed a few knitting patterns of my own. I offer them at no cost through Ravelry.com and also on my other blog, amancine hand-knits . Yesterday I was contacted by a woman in Poland who was seeking my permission to translate one of my patterns into Polish and post it on her knitting blog. Of course I said yes, and here it is. The world wide web. It's an amazing thing.

ready or not

2011-08-27T06:10:00.000-07:00

This past winter I scoffed at the weather reports when a winter storm warning was forecast. I'm from Northeast Ohio. Seriously. They don't know from winter storms out here, I thought. I have to admit, however, we did have a couple of doozies. Over a foot of wet, heavy snow fell one night, crippling much of the East Coast, and keeping us busy digging out the driveway all day long. By and large, however, the "storms" that dismissed schools early and sent people to the store for emergency supplies were nothing more than a few inches of dry snow. I scoff at that.

I am not scoffing today, however, as I watch Hurricane Irene head up the coast straight for me. I had not anticipated facing the most dire hurricane warnings for this area in the past five years by myself. Well, the dogs are here, of course. But Ben flew out yesterday to attend his father's birthday party, and Julie and Andrew have very kindly taken in friends who had to evacuate a truly dangerous area along the coast. So it's just me. And I haven't even the slightest idea how to prepare for something like this.

Before Ben left, he rounded up all the flashlights and candles in the house and made sure that I had a transistor radio with working batteries in it. I went to the grocery store yesterday and bought some big bottles of water. Got home and realized I should have gotten some toilet paper too. (Isn't that one of the things people always scoop up in situations like this?) To further prepare, I have done probably pointless things like do the laundry and run the dishwasher. I can, of course, just turn on my television or check the newspaper for lists of supplies I should be laying in. It is probably too late to buy a generator, however, and what the heck would I do with it when I got it home anyway? It would be nice to have some large, battery-operated lanterns, but I am sure those are all gone, as well.

Living where I do, west of Baltimore, I am not so much worried about the hurricane as the aftermath. I know it will rain here for a long time and the wind will blow, but unlike our house in Kent, we have no big trees at all near us so there is no danger of a tree falling on the house or on my unprotected car. The drain outside the basement door is clear, so water will probably not seep in there as it did during the last big storm we had. The backyard will fill up with water, I know, and I fear that our second cherry tree will not survive having its roots soaked again, but I realize these are minor things.

The thing I really fear - and fear is not too strong a word - is a prolonged power outage. I'm not good at power outages. I can hear my family laughing now as they read this. I am terrible at power outages. I just don't know what to do with myself when the power goes off. I can't get on the computer. I can't watch tv. If it is dark out, of course I can't see. My cell phone will only hold its charge for so long without electricity. The A.C. will not work, and the air will become hot and stuffy. The sump pump won't work, and then the basement really will take on water. (Ben's instructions on what to save first were not encouraging.) And, really, the most horrible thing about it is not knowing when power will be restored. I can't tell you how much I am dreading this.

And yet there is this underlying hope that I don't even want to acknowledge that maybe it won't be so bad. Maybe the weather forecasters are over reacting just like they did about impending snow storms. See, I just don't know. And that is what I hate the most.

nothing is nice

2011-08-25T17:14:00.000-07:00

The stated purpose of this blog is to actively seek out and celebrate the nice little things in life that one might otherwise overlook. Gloomy thoughts are not well received. In case you wondered why I haven't been posting.

fool me once

2011-08-14T07:01:00.001-07:00

I've known for many years that the weather forecasters always lie about the weekend forecast. They don't want to tell their readers/viewers that their plans for the weekend are doomed to crappy weather. So they lie. Always. I know this. Which makes me wonder why I chose to believe that yesterday would be another beautiful, sunny, summer day, just like the three days before it. Here's the thing, the forecasters warned, Sunday will not be as nice so if you have outdoor plans, better do them on Saturday. And I wanted to believe that. So I told Ben over dinner Friday night, let's get up early and go to the beach tomorrow.

You see, although we live in Maryland, that doesn't mean getting to the beach is easy for us. It is a three-hour drive to the closest beach. So that is six hours in the car for probably three hours max spent on the beach. Not a good ratio, but when you love the beach as much as we do, it seems worth it to spend a beautiful summer day at the beach. We hadn't been swimming in the ocean yet this year - something we both love to do - and summer is on the wane, let's face it.

Accordingly, Friday night I rummaged around in the basement to find our beach blanket, beach towels, and big beach bag, that had all been tucked away who-know-where when we moved. I found everything we needed (except for my wide-toothed comb. Jules, did I give that to you?) Ben set his alarm for 5:30 a.m., we got up, fed the dogs, and were out of the house a little after 6:00. We were excited and happy as we headed the car east towards the Bay Bridge, but we both noticed that, really, the sun was not shining, and in fact, there was cloud cover as far as we could see. We'll drive out of it, I thought, but instead we drove into - along with the hundreds of other folks who saw the same weather forecasts - a total downpour.

We did drive out of that, but the weather on the other side wasn't very promising, plus we knew we had the rain following behind us. Still, we were on the Eastern Shore by that time, and decided to press on. To add to our discomfort, there was an awful stench of something burning that seemed to travel along with us. Was it our car? Was it the car in front of us? We even smelled it at McDo's in Cambridge, where we made a quick pit stop and bought some breakfast sandwiches. It didn't used to smell like this out here, we thought. Even once we got to the beach, there was a strong burning smell, which we chalked up to damp campfires.

But, hey, we were at the beach! The Atlantic Ocean stretched out in front of us all the way to Africa! I love that! We travel light compared to, really, everyone else we saw on the beach, and the two of us easily carried our blanket and two bags to what looked like a propitious spot on the sparsely-populated beach. It was 9:00 by this time, but the sun was still not shining, although we could see crepuscular rays peeking through the clouds above the water. We knew what the weather looked like at our backs, so it was a quick trip into the water for us - no suntan lotion needed. Wow. Either you love the ocean or you don't, and either way I don't have to describe it for you. We easily got out past where the waves were breaking, and the ocean was like a big bathtub out there. I ducked under some of the big waves and floated over others. I floated on my back, straightened my legs, and wiggled my toes. When it was time to come in, I misjudged a wave and was bowled over by it. Even that was fun.

Pretty soon, we were just watching the sky to see how soon we would have to make a run for the car, so we just packed up and went to the car, as raindrops began to fall. Luckily, we had thrown the newspaper (with its lying forecast!) in the car when we left the house, so we read that. We watched other people straggle in from the beach. We watched the rain on the windshield. We watched other cars pull into the parking lot, and their occupants sat and watched, too. At last we could see blue sky between the clouds and fewer and fewer raindrops fell. So we all headed back out to the beach. The sun came out. I put some suntan lotion on and went in the water. The sun went in, of course, making me feel like I had wasted my time and lotion. (It was not a waste, though. I did find myself slightly burned last night, which would have been really burned without that.)

We stayed in the water as long as we wanted, and decided it was time to go. The beach was filling up at an alarming rate, and I was absolutely amazed by all the stuff that people bring with them to the beach. It was even worse than when we used to bring the kids to the beach twenty years ago. Way worse. Seriously, these people are bringing their entire households with them. No wonder they have to drive those giant gas guzzlers. But, you know, mothers still held their toddlers' hands tightly as they took their first tentative steps into the deep, wide ocean, and little kids still squealed with delight as they ran from (or to!) each approaching wave. I love that.

The trip home was a nightmare, as many others abandoned their plans for a sunny day at the beach and headed home when we did. At 25 miles from the Bay Bridge, the sign said it was a 44-minute drive, but I am sure it took us longer than that. The prevailing stench was still everywhere we drove, and I was fascinated to find out later that the Great Dismal Swamp was burning, and we were smelling it across the entire state of Maryland. That's some smolder.

So this weekend I learned why everyone who lives here says to stay away from the Eastern Shore on the weekend, and I learned that the weather forecasters here - even the avuncular, folksy ones - lie, just like they do in Ohio. I'm looking at you, Marty Bass.

just as soon as I finish this post...

2011-08-10T18:22:00.000-07:00

It has been ten days since I sent my dad a letter. I guess it is time for me to sit down and write him another one. I know it has been that long because I save copies of all the letters I have sent him since we moved here. So I know that I have sent him twenty letters over the eight months we have lived here, and I know how frequently I sent them and what I wrote to him in each of them. I have not received anything in return from him, nor do I expect to. And yet, I still say, it is time for me to write my dad a letter.

When I first started writing to him, I tried to only write about things I thought he would care about or be interested in. Gradually I realized that he doesn't really care about the things I do out here and the only thing he is interested in is when I might be coming back. So. I stopped caring whether he was interested or not, and now I pretend that he is a normal person who is interested in normal things. I write him cheery, descriptive letters about our lives here. I tell him about the house and the dogs and the garden - pretty much what I write about here, actually.

To be honest, I am not entirely sure why I continue this practice. I think my letters might actually irritate my dad in some ways. I mean, we like it out here, we're doing fine, we're not planning on ever going back to Ohio (at least I'm not!) so, obviously, he doesn't want to hear about it. On the other hand, if I stopped writing to him, I think he would be pissed off about that, as well. So, yeah, damned if I do and damned if I don't. I guess the main reason I continue to write to my dad is because I think it is the right thing to do. Is there a better reason than that?

our nest is finally empty

2011-08-08T05:31:00.000-07:00

Julie doesn't maintain two residences anymore, and that is just a sad fact. I noticed it first last summer when Ben started living out here while I stayed in Ohio to sell the house. I had thought (hoped) that Julie would be living in Kent with me more so that I wouldn't be all alone, but that was not the case. Admittedly, she started having more serious car trouble about that time, and on the one trip she made, the drive back to Maryland was tense and scary for her. So the bedroom that Ben built corner shelves for and that Julie and I painted bright yellow her freshman year of college was mostly unoccupied until the day we moved.

We do have an "extra bedroom" here, and it basically holds most of the furniture that was in Julie's room at the old house, which is kind of surprising because it is a very small room. We do have a smaller bed in there and I think that makes the difference. Unfortunately, although Julie prefers the compact size of this bedroom, she hates the bed and finds herself unable to sleep in it, to the point that she has recommended that we replace it. I am surprised by this, as I have slept in that bed myself on many occasions. It is the bed that used to be tucked up under the roof in our attic bedroom at the old house. I actually loved sleeping in it when we had a houseful of people downstairs.

I think about all this now in particular as Julie and Andrew are in Ohio right now - but we are not. I remember how excited I used to be when I received the phone call from Julie telling me they had just crossed into Ohio on the turnpike. When I received a text to that effect yesterday, it just meant they were further away. I remember how excited Ben and the dogs and I were when Julie's car pulled up the driveway and she unloaded all her suitcases and bags (and sometimes plants) for a good long stay. I loved the late nights watching tv and knitting, and I loved the lazy breakfasts where we planned our days' outings. I loved having Julie's help in the kitchen as we prepared dinner, and I loved how she and Ben cleaned up afterwards so I didn't have to. I just loved having her in the house, I guess.

To be fair, I think we had a good long run of chicks in the nest, if you will, and I am glad my adult children have "flown away" to productive lives of their own. But that doesn't change the fact that I miss Julie and Tom every day and wonder what they are doing and hope they are safe and happy. It's very like the "words of wisdom" my father-in-law shared with me when Tom was a newborn still in the hospital. "Now you'll worry about him for the rest of your life," he told me in his ponderous, I-am-imparting-great-wisdom-to-you way. That seemed more like a curse than a blessing to me, but I wouldn't have had it any other way. Fly away, my little chickadees. Spread your wings and soar to heights we never dreamed of. Baby birds were never meant to stay in the nest.

settling in

2011-08-05T08:17:00.000-07:00

Living in a new neighborhood is always different. There are different little unspoken "rules" that everyone follows - unless one lives in a neighborhood with an HOA where the rules are not only spoken but are part of a written contract - and it takes some time (and close observation) to learn the rules. I feel vaguely uneasy about being forced by peer pressure to follow those rules once they are learned, but that is a topic for another day.

Since Ben and I moved here in early December, everyone was pretty much indoors most of the time - as were we, of course. But as winter faded into spring and we spent every minute we could outside, we noticed that we were, well, the only ones outside. No one else was trimming their shrubs or raking the dead grass from their front yards. That could have been because they had been taking care of their yards right along while ours had received minimal care for we didn't even know how many months.

As the weather warmed up and the grass greened and grew, we finally saw some activity. A lot of activity. Especially from our neighbor across the street with the beautifully-manicured lawn. We saw him outside on a weekly basis, wearing scrubs and a surgical mask as he mowed and edged and watered his lawn. I tell you, he has scrubs in every color of the rainbow. We saw other neighbors outside, as well, although many of them employ lawn care services to keep their yards beautiful. Ben and I just don't want to go that route, and not just because of the cost. I am increasingly uncomfortable with the heedless way our society uses harmful chemicals, and I just don't want to be a part of that. So, once again, we have one of the crappier front lawns instead of one of the nicer ones. Such is our fate, it seems.

The fact is, though, we spend very little time in the front yard. It is much smaller than the back yard, for one thing, and we have a very small front porch. When we are outside, we are, for the most part, "out back". Our large (to us) fenced-in backyard is where we have planted our garden, as well as the trees and shrubs we bought and had planted at great expense by a local nursery. It's where we take the dogs out to chase around and eat things. It's where we enjoy puttering around, planting and picking and pruning. We are out there alot. So here's another strange thing we have noticed: generally we are the only ones out there. We can see, like, six backyards from our back porch, and no on is ever outside doing anything. Seriously.

We worked hard to arrange our patio furniture just the way we wanted it on our little back porch, and when weather permits, we love to eat outside at the glass-topped table we brought from our house in Kent. What we really like to do on the back porch, however, is watch it rain. As I am sure I have mentioned, it really doesn't rain much here, but when the clouds have thickened and thunder has rumbled and rain finally seems imminent, Ben and the dogs and I hurry out the back door (well, we carry the dogs) and we all sit on the glider and wait for the first raindrops to hit the porch roof.

I don't think I can describe the pleasure it brings me to just watch it rain. Oh wait, I already have. One of the first posts I wrote on this blog four years ago detailed my love of a good, soaking summer rain. Lucky for me, Ben shares that enthusiasm. So the four of us sit out there and just watch it rain. If any of our neighbors see us, I'm sure by this time they just shake theirs heads and think, those new people are sitting out in the rain again. But, you know, that's just what we do, and they'll get used to us as we get used to them -- in their houses, somewhere, never coming outside.

it's just another day

2011-08-02T07:01:00.001-07:00

Ever since I haven't had to get up early and go to a job I hate, mornings have become my favorite part of the day. I have settled into a summer routine I really like, and I will enjoy it while I can, as I know it is only temporary.

I feed the dogs first thing, of course, and that is not as easy as it sounds, believe me. Oh, Rufus is easy enough. I pour a half cup of dry dog food into his bowl, and he's munching away before I even start to prepare Lucie's breakfast. Lucie requires a different type of dry dog food, but only a quarter cup. To that I add a quarter cup of canned Hill's Prescription Diet k/d©. I break this up into small pieces, add water to it, microwave it for 15 seconds, then stir. It is now ready to be given to Lucie, and she is ready to eat it. At least she seems to really like this concoction, and generally eats it all. Rufus has long since finished his breakfast and been given a treat by this time, and he watches and waits for Lucie to finish eating.

You might think at that point I would be finished with the dogs' petit dejeuner, but you would be wrong. Next Lucie receives a half squirt of salmon oil on a teaspoon. She has been refusing this lately, but when she does eat it, she pushes about half of the stinky, sticky oil off the spoon and onto my outstretched palm. Yum. On odd-numbered days (the 1st, the 3rd, etc.) Lucie gets a Glycoflex tablet and 1/4 of a baby aspirin. (Rufus gets a little treat, as well, so he doesn't feel left out.) The last week of every month, Lucie takes antibiotics twice a day, which I administer with a bit of peanut butter - Rufus gets to lick the spoon. And, finally, yesterday being the first of the month, was really a triple-word-score day as the dogs also had to have their flea and tick medication. I know you're probably thinking I am exhausted by that time and ready to go back to bed, but, actually, my coffee, which I somehow managed to start is ready, and it is finally my turn to eat breakfast.

Although my morning cup of coffee is crucial (I get blinding headaches without it) I am generally not much of a breakfast eater. This is not because I don't like breakfast, really, but because I am too lazy (and befuddled) to make anything elaborate first thing in the morning. I will usually have some type of granola bar, but lately I have re-discovered an old favorite - cheese and peanut butter crackers. I used to always have a pack of these for my "deskfast" in the mornings when I worked at the university, but I had left them behind with everything else. I had some at Julie's a month or so ago, and I am hooked on them, for the time being, anyway.

I read the Baltimore Sun as I eat my breakfast. Although it is not the Plain Dealer, which I have read all my life, I think it is important to read a local newspaper, and I like it fine for what it is. And the important thing is that after I finish reading the paper, I can work the daily Sudoku. It was a happy day when I first started getting the Sun and realized they carry a Sudoku every day but Sunday on the comics page. I try not to let the tone of my day be set by how well I do on this early morning mental exercise. You see, the thing is that early in the week - Monday, Tuesday, even Wednesday - the puzzles are easy and I can almost always solve them unless I am not paying attention and put an "8" in the same box with an "8", for example. By Friday, however, it is not so easy, and I have learned to walk away from the breakfast table without crumpling and throwing the offensive puzzle across the room. Not a good way to start the day - you see what I mean?

After a quick check of the interwebs, I don my gardening togs and head outside. Most mornings I have to water everything we have planted this year as we get almost no rain here. The worst part is watering the south (or Iris's side, as we like to call it) of the house, so I do that first. It has gotten sun all day long the day before, of course, and it is dry, dry, dry. I have to haul five, full, heavy watering cans of water from the spigot at the front of the house before I am satisfied that everything will survive for another day. Then it is on to the north side of the house, where I fill the bowl in our Japanese garden with water, and water the miniature shrubs when they need it. I water the two struggling containers (even though I am mad at them) and on to my favorites, the climbing roses. The plants were so tiny when we got them in the mail, and I am so surprised and pleased by their progress. Maybe next year they will even bloom... I hope they are like the roses we had climbing next to the back door of our house on Denison. Those roses were so beautiful and so fragrant that the little back porch just filled with that smell when they were blooming. Then, yes, I water all the things in the back yard, pausing frequently to ascertain where Rufus is, and sending him in the house when he inevitably starts munching on the mulch.

Today, though, I didn't have to water all the things because we had a wonderful, soaking thunderstorm last night that did it for me. So I was able to wander around the back yard with my yellow bucket and my gardening tools, picking and pruning, at will. I also have to stop and yell at the dogs to get out of the tomatoes, a recent development. They are looking for grape tomatoes that have fallen off the vines, and I know that they eat them. You don't want to know how I know that. Lucie doesn't hear me when I yell, of course, so I have to walk over to her and scoot her away, which always startles her and makes me feel bad. Pretty soon I get tired of yelling at them and send them in the house, which I think they appreciate.

The time always comes when I am drenched in sweat (sorry, but gardening is not pretty) and ready to go in, as well. I bring in whatever I have picked for the day and set it in the kitchen sink for a good wash. Then I go off for a good wash myself. I don't think I have gotten as dirty in many years as I get here on a regular basis. But, you know, I like it. It feels good and honest to me. And I know that although this hot, humid, growing season will last longer here than it does in Ohio, it will not last forever, and I intend to enjoy every morning of it.

it's that time of year

2011-08-01T12:18:00.000-07:00

I filled two big bowls with fresh tomatoes this morning, and decided it was time to try another batch of marinara sauce. Two of our eight tomato plants are San Marzanos, and I bought those specifically because they are supposed to be the best for making sauces. About half the tomatoes I picked this morning were the San Marzanos, along with several other varieties that were ripe today, as well. What the hell. I put them all in the sauce, just like I did when Ben and I first tried making our own marinara sauce last week.

I had never made my own sauce before, so it was off to the interwebs to learn how other people do it. I read six or eight or a dozen recipes, and decided I knew what I wanted to do. So Ben and I set to chopping and chopping and chopping vegetables. We chopped onions and garlic and carrots and a banana pepper and basil, fresh from the garden, and lots and lots of tomatoes. Wow. Did we make a big mess. A seedy, juicy, pulpy mess. But what we ultimately made was some marinara sauce, and I have to say, for a first attempt, I was absolutely satisfied with it. I cooked some penne pasta in the water I had dropped the tomatoes in to remove their skins, and within an hour of when we began, we were eating penne with fresh marinara sauce. And I don't think I would have changed a thing.

So today I set about to replicate that marinara sauce. Things were less hectic this time - perhaps because it wasn't the first time I was doing it all - but it sure did go a lot slower as I worked by myself. I felt like I was more in control of the operation than it being in control of me like it was the last time, though. I cooked the sauce longer this time and plan to reheat it another day, using it to simmer some Italian sausage for a few hours. Upon tasting the sauce, I realized I had forgotten once again to liberally salt and pepper the sauce when I started cooking it. I am so used to using prepared tomato products that I forget how much seasoning fresh ingredients need.

My marinara sauce is cooling now, and I have to say, I am not sure it is worth all the effort. I used three big bowls, two big strainers, and two big pots for one recipe of sauce. I think I discarded as much of the tomatoes as I actually used, I made a huge mess, and as I was eating my lunch, I noticed a hunk of tomato skin stuck to my foot. I may just stick to my cold recipes in the future. But it made me think about my mother-in-law and the huge operation she went through every year when the tomatoes were ripe. From what Ben has told me, it was all hands on deck as they made tomato sauce and tomato juice, and canned jar after jar of bright red tomatoes for the coming year. The house wasn't air-conditioned, of course, and the humidity inside was at 100% as the tomatoes steamed and cooked and cooled. But that was just how it was. It isn't all singing That's Amore and playing bocce in the back yard when you're Italian, you know.

UPDATE: It was worth the effort!

everybody talks about the weather...

2011-07-30T06:58:00.001-07:00

Before we moved to Maryland, Ben and I had lived in Northeast Ohio our entire lives. (Well, there was that brief time when Ben lived in Libya, but that is a story for another day.) Anyway. Because we had always lived in Ohio, we pretty much knew what to expect from the weather, season by season. Sure, there were aberrations over the years. There were some summers that were so hot for so long that we forgot what it felt like to be cool in those pre air-conditioned (for us) days. There was The Great Blizzard of 1978 when our new little Toyota was buried under three feet of snow and nobody went anywhere. There was the freezing rain that fell in April of 2007 as we were leaving for Chicago to attend Tom and Kristy's wedding that wiped out all the wisteria blossoms, along with pretty much all the other blossoms, as well.

By and large, though, we could pretty much predict how the weather would behave in any given season. We knew it would snow too much in the winter and rain too much in the spring. We knew that on summer days when dark clouds rolled across the sky and thunder rumbled in the distance, a soaking summer rain would soon follow. We knew that Indian Summer would come each fall with colors so beautiful and air so crisp that we could forget for a few days that winter was almost upon us.

Those days are gone. Living in a different part of the country is, well, different - as we knew it would be. Since we live right outside of Baltimore, we expected the weather to be hotter and more humid in the summer, and it is. But day after day with temperatures in the upper 90s and even over 100° on several days is really worse than we thought it would be. Nor did we expect day after day (and week after week) to go by without even a hope of rain.

Everyone tells us, however, that this is not normal. "It's not usually this hot for this long." "We're breaking records every day." "We're in the middle of a drought." "The whole country is like this." And, you know, I believe that. I believe it all. But that doesn't help me understand what to expect tomorrow or next week or next year. Each day is a surprise to me. I just hope there are some pleasant surprises in the mix as well.

about seizing the moment

2011-07-24T08:51:00.001-07:00

Have I mentioned my garden recently? Because really I should. We have eight tomato plants, five pepper plants, some basil, rosemary, chives, and parsley. The tomatoes are San Marzanos, Early Girls, grape tomatoes, beefsteaks, Black Princes, and Pink Brandywines. The peppers are hot banana peppers, jalapenos, and red bell peppers. And all of it is rockin' and rollin' right now. Yesterday I made some marinara sauce. I filled a big basket with ripe tomatoes, banana peppers, and fresh basil, all from the garden. Ben helped me with the chopping - there was lots of chopping - and in a little over an hour, we were sitting down to eat incredibly fresh marinara sauce over penne pasta.

We have always had small gardens over the years, with varying degrees of success, but never anything even close to this one. I think it is because we have never lived in Maryland before, but Ben says it is because we have never had such an ideal location for a garden before. We have a long narrow bed along the side fence which faces south, and it gets sun all day long. I wish you could see it. Our garden is really a thing of beauty this time of year. But as I was chopping tomatoes for gazpacho this morning, I was thinking how really brief this season of plenty is and how really soon it will be over. So as hot as it is outside right now, I particularly want to get up from my computer and go out and have a few warm-from-the-sun grape tomatoes right away. Think I will. Hasta la vista.

#211

2011-07-20T06:58:00.000-07:00

I started this blog four years ago in July of 2007. I was suffering through the last painful weeks of working at the university and felt the need to have some place to chronicle my shifting emotions about my job. I tried to understand how the job I had once loved had morphed into the job I dreaded and couldn't wait to escape. My blog saw me through that difficult patch and I have kept up with it intermittently ever since. To date, I have written 210 posts, which you might think would average out to roughly 50 posts a year, but I didn't post at all in 2009. That was the year I was working at Miss Chickpea's, before Shelly lost interest and it all turned to crap. I was busy and happy with my job and my friends and my knitting.

In honor of this anniversary of sorts, I have been reading back over my old posts, and, all in all, I am pretty pleased with them. Some of them I remember very well, of course, but others I had totally forgotten about. The forgotten ones are the ones that interest me, and they make me glad that I took the time to sit down and write them. Thoughts and feelings I didn't remember have been preserved for me. I have tried in the past to keep a diary or journal but have never been successful at keeping up with it. This time I sort of have. And although I often feel discouraged about a lack of readers here, I made an important discovery. That my most important reader is -- me.

standin' at the end of a real long road

2011-07-19T05:40:00.001-07:00

When we moved to Kent eleven years ago, I didn't know anyone there. I didn't have a single friend. I tried the ways I knew to make some. I went to a book discussion group. I didn't like it. I went to the fitness center. I didn't like it. What I needed was a job. That's how I have always made friends. And, the fact is, I have always made friends. Wherever I have gone, doggone it, people like me.

My brief stint working at a local public library brought me some friends, but they didn't last beyond my job there. When I started working at the university, however, I finally found some true friends. Friends I laughed and cried with. Friends I got drunk with. Friends I took vacations with. Friends who moved away and left me bereft. Friends who remained my friends even after I left the university five years later, feeling depleted and defeated. Friends who were some of the last people I saw before Ben and I made the big move. Joany, Kristen, Vince, you know who you are, but I want to give you a shout-out here. I love you guys.

Those aren't the only friends I left behind, however. Not by a long shot. When I started working at Miss Chickpea's, my co-workers there became my teachers and my mentors, and to my surprise and delight, my friends. Janet and Kathy and Dianne made it a pleasure to go to work every day, and I was delighted when the orbit of my schedule allowed me to work with each of them over the course of a week. We had fantastic customers at that little shop, and it was a pleasure to see many of them walk through the door, but I would be remiss if I did not single out Amy, who became a true friend to me. Even after the shop suddenly closed, we all remained close, and the knitting groups we attended were full of laughter. I miss you all more than you can know.

When we moved here, I was delighted to realize that there is a yarn shop right here in the town where I live. It was one of the first places Julie and I stopped on one of our outings. I love knitting. I love knitters. Surely here I would find kindred spirits who might some day - with careful nurturing - become my friends. But, you know, I didn't like it there. I didn't like the yarns they carried (too pedestrian) and the staff was not friendly and welcoming in the ways to which I was accustomed. I go back there periodically, but, really, I have plenty of yarn. What I need is friends! And it seems to me that I don't have any friends here because I can't find a job, and I can't find a job here because I don't have any friends. It's a bit of a conundrum.

I try to keep in mind that after we moved to Kent it took me a year and a half to find a job at the university, but I hope it doesn't take me that long here. Because I really need the money, and you know, ya got to have friends.*

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Yep, they're song lyrics, kiddies. From Bette Midler's debut album, The Divine Miss M. I must have listened to that album a thousand times, and probably could still sing every song on it, but these are the lyrics that keep running through my mind:

But you got to have friends
The feeling's oh so strong
You got to have friends
To make that day last long

I had some friends but they're gone
Someone came and took them away
And from the dusk 'til the dawn
Here is where I'll stay

I'm standin' at the end of a real long road
And I'm waiting for my new friends to come
I don't care if I'm hungry or freezing (freezing) cold
I've got to get me some

a bathroom of one's own (with apologies to V. Woolf)

2011-07-15T17:52:00.000-07:00

I have a bathroom of my own. No one ever uses it but me. I have offered to Ben, to Julie, to Liz, to go ahead and use it, really, but they have all declined. Not that it is dirty or unattractive. Quite the contrary. It is a very pretty little bathroom. And, in point of fact, although it is very small, it is not the smallest bathroom we have ever had. In our house on Longford Avenue, I could stand in the middle of the room and touch all four walls. In my bathroom, I can only touch two of them. Still, it is very small. But since it is only for me, I don't really need it to be any bigger. And I assure you, it is very clean, most of the time. In fact, sometimes when I come in from working in the garden, I feel like I'm too dirty to use my bathroom, and have to use one of the other ones instead.

Ben painted the walls and the ceiling a pale blue that is one of the colors in the shower curtain we brought from the old house. I am very attached to that shower curtain with its soft shades of blue and green and violet. There is a snowy white valance at the window, and a white throw rug on the floor, which is hard to keep clean (in spite of my never wearing shoes in there) and gets thrown in the wash with the towels frequently. I have new light fixtures and the most elegant little medicine cabinet you have ever seen. Ben installed hooks on the door and a lovely glass shelf which holds beach memorabilia from summers gone by. A photo I took of Ben and the kids at the beach more than twenty years ago hangs above it. I prefer my bathrooms to have a cool, clean look, and this one does, with its pale blue and white color scheme.

What I like about my bathroom best of all, though, is that it's just for me. Only my stuff is in there. All the stuff in the medicine cabinet is mine. All the stuff under the sink is mine. All the stuff on the shiny glass shelf is mine. When I want to hang my hand washables up to dry, I don't even hesitate to hang them in my bathroom because they won't bother me - and who else is there to see them?

There are many things I like about this little house that Ben found for us here in Maryland, but one of my favorite things is definitely the smallest room in the house - my bathroom. And for that I say, thank you, Ben.

it's gazpacho time!

2011-07-14T06:51:00.000-07:00

Thirty-one years ago when I was pregnant with Tom, I found a recipe in a brochure in my doctor's office. The recipe was for gazpacho that one could carry to work, refrigerate, and eat. So I did. And thus began my absolute love affair with this cold, fresh, vegetable soup. There are as many ways to make gazpacho as there are people who make it. Ben and I had dinner at a friend's house where the cook was a former priest. He served gazpacho which he said he had learned to make in Spain, and that it was the only "proper" way to prepare it. He had thrown everything (even the bread) into a blender, and the result was flavorful, but thick and textureless. I prefer my own recipe.

This year I am trying to chop the vegetables a bit smaller at Ben's request. And, you know, I like it that way. The perfect spoonful of gazpacho has a bit of each vegetable on it, along with a crouton. That is more difficult to do when the green pepper chunks are 1-inch squares, as the recipe suggests. Need I say that the best gazpacho is made with the freshest vegetables? To that end, I waited this year until I had enough fresh tomatoes hanging on the vines to make up a batch. It is exquisite. I would like to just eat a big bowl of it for dinner. And lunch. Seriously.

The croutons are more important to the recipe than you might think as they provide a much-needed crunchiness. Imagine my dismay yesterday when I made up a batch of gazpacho, then realized we didn't have any croutons. I decided to make my own. I put a few slices of sourdough bread out to firm up, then cut them into cubes. I knew I could toss them in olive oil and herbs and toast them in the oven, but I pretty much don't turn my oven on from June to August, so that was out. Instead I put them in a skillet with the olive oil, a little butter, Parmesan cheese and parsley from my garden. I browned them until they became golden, crunchy little cubes. Perfection. Fresh croutons for my fresh gazpacho.

Ben and I had some gazpacho with our dinner last night, and I just checked the rest this morning to see if it needed more V-8 added to it. Of course it did. I like lots of broth so I added a couple of big glugs from the bottle, then more olive oil and vinegar, salt and pepper. A quick taste - oh man, I was doing the happy dance just like that wild-haired chick on the Food Network. I hope you will try my recipe and do a little happy dancing, yourself. Be sure and adjust the ingredients until it tastes just the way you want it to. That's what I do.

Gazpacho

1 clove garlic, minced
2 tomatoes, cut into chunks and seeded
1 cucumber, pared and coarsely chopped
1 medium green pepper, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cups tomato juice (I use V-8)
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 tsp. salt
2 to 3 drops hot pepper sauce (try Sriracha, if you have it)
dash of pepper
cheese and garlic croutons

Combine vegetables in a large bowl. Stir in tomato juice, oil vinegar, salt, pepper sauce and pepper. Cover; chill. To carry, spoon into a wide-mouthed vacuum bottle. When ready to eat, garnish with croutons.

no good deed goes unpunished

2011-03-16T08:25:00.000-07:00

So I got a call from Wesleyan Village this morning. "Dad is doing fine," the soothing voice on the other end of the line assured me right away, "but we've got a bit of a problem." You know, as soon as I saw that 440 area code in my caller I.D., I knew it wouldn't be good news. And it wasn't.

One of the requirements of living in an assisted care facility, it seems, is that once a year the resident's primary care physician must examine the resident and fill out a form pertaining to the resident's general health. You know, the results of an annual check-up. Doesn't seem like a big deal, does it? Well, that's because you're not my dad. Apparently, he insisted he doesn't go to doctors and so doesn't have a PCP. When told that he had visited the doctor a little over a year ago, he replied that he doesn't have transportation to get there now and so can't go. When assured that transportation could be provided for him, he declined, as he would have to pay for it.

"The last thing he said to me before he hung up on me, " the nice lady told me, "was to call his daughter. She got me into this mess." Yes, I got him into that mess. One only need look at my blog posts of early last year to see how I agonized over what to do with my dad as he had clearly deteriorated to the point where he could no longer live alone and care for himself. I shudder to think how things would be for him if he were still living in that decrepit house all by himself. The "mess" that I got him into was the best and most expensive facility in the area. Aren't I a bad daughter for doing that?

I explained to my caller that I live in Maryland now and that my dad is mad at me for moving so far away. (That is what I assume, anyway, as he has never said.) She did not have my updated info, and apologized for not knowing. "We will try something else then, " she assured me. That's what they will have to do because I can no longer drive to Elyria and take care of him. I most especially can't go out there now to deal with this. That would teach my dad that raising a fuss gets my attention. So I will treat him like an unruly child and be careful not to reward his bad behavior. Meanwhile, yeah, I feel like crap about it. And as ornery as my dad is, that's probably just what he wants.

it still tastes salty

2011-03-14T13:21:00.001-07:00

Ben always takes me to the ocean. I think I mentioned before that I never saw the ocean until Ben and I drove to Virginia Beach and Chincoteague Island in, I believe, July of 1979. I fell in love, and the affair is still going strong all these years later. I am told there are people who don't love - or even like - the beach and the ocean, but I don't really get that.

I don't know if I can describe what I love so much about the ocean, but I will try. In no particular order, I love the smell of it. I love the sound of it. I love how windy it is. I love the feel of it, curling around my ankles or trying to knock me over in the surf. I love walking along the beach and stopping to dig my toes into a whole colony of thousands of tiny coquina clams. I love the idea of swimming in the ocean with all the creatures of the Seven Seas. I love standing at the edge of the continent with nothing but the ocean in front of me all the way to friggin' Africa.

On Saturday, Ben and I went to the beach. We drove to Ocean City, which I was delighted to find was less than three hours from our house. My absolute exhileration began, however, as we crossed the Bay Bridge from Annapolis to the Eastern Shore. I craned my neck to look for huge ocean-going ships in the bay below me, and was delighted to see what looked like a whole flotilla of them to the south of us. I was thrilled to drive by so many familiar landmarks of all our trips to Chincoteague. We drove right over the Kent Narrows, where we used to have to stop if a tall sailboat needed to get past the drawbridge. We stopped and ate in Easton, where it seemed like every restaurant we passed was some place we had eaten before. We crossed the mighty Choptank River. We passed Rockawalkin Road. But just past Salisbury, where we usually swing south on 13 to head for Chincoteague, we stayed on US 50 and headed for Ocean City.

I had never been to the ocean when it wasn't summer. I had never been to the ocean without my bathing suit and sun tan lotion. Needless to say, then, I had never been to the ocean in my leather jacket, hoodie, and jeans. But that's how I went because although it was sunny and bright, it was also windy, and I needed every layer I wore.

This was my first visit to Ocean City, and I loved walking along the boardwalk with all its cheesy old souvenir shops. I love that shit. I feel like an eight year-old again with two quarters in my pocket. Ben and I were not the only ones strolling the boardwalk on a brisk Saturday in March, but it was by no means crowded, either. There were other people there just like us, enjoying an early spring afternoon with the promise of summer ahead of us. And this summer, we'll be here to keep that promise. And we'll be here in the fall and the winter, too. You see if we're not.

mea culpa

2011-02-28T05:20:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was my dad's 84th birthday. I did not call him. I did not send him a present. Yeah, I feel bad about it. I sent him a birthday card, a post card, and his regular letter. I briefly considered sending him a potted plant, but when I asked Ben what he thought about that idea, he quickly vetoed it. And he was right. Last spring I took my dad some branches of blooming forsythia in a vase of water. They sat for weeks on his radiator until I removed them. Needless to say, they were quite dried out and dead by that time. I don't know why he left them like that, but he did. Maybe he figured I put them there, I could move them.

Dad doesn't make it easy. There is nothing he needs, but more importantly, there is nothing he wants. Last year, every time I went to visit him, I took him something. A new sweater. A beautiful quilt for his bed, which even Dad thought looked quite pretty. Soft, colored t-shirts so that he would quit wearing his white undershirts to dinner. I never saw him wear the sweater or the t-shirts. He returned the quilt to me and told me it was too heavy to sleep under. So he wears old sweaters over his undershirts, just like he always has. His bed is covered by a cheap, unzipped sleeping bag from Walmart. I never took him flowers again, needless to say.

Ben tells me all the time I should call my dad, and he is probably right. But I don't want to call my dad. He has never been good at talking on the phone, and he is even worse now. He has no small talk, nor is he interested in mine. That is why, really, the letters I send him on a regular basis are the perfect way to communicate with him. He can react to them - or not - any way he wants, and I won't ever know it.

These are my rationalizations for not calling my dad or sending him a gift for his birthday. Pick whichever one(s) work for you. They don't quite do it for me. On the positive side, today is the last day of February. Hooray for that, anyway.

changes in latitude... you know how the rest goes

2011-02-17T05:28:00.000-08:00

A quick check back into the old archives of "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is" shows me that last year at this time I was bemoaning cold weather and ice dams and how much I hate February. I gotta say, I still don't like February, but out here in Maryland, it's not so bad. The temperature was in the 50s yesterday and it was bright and sunny. Today and tomorrow the forecast promises sunshine and temperatures in the mid 60s. Can't complain about that!

We did have a warm, sunny day on Monday, and it was wonderful! I opened all the windows, and even left the big sliding door to the back porch open. I mean, there are no bugs this time of year, so why not? Rufus was a bit confused by the open concept, however, and at one point he just walked inside and stood at the door looking out at me. I wiped down all the furniture on the porch, but I believe it is still too early to put the cushions out. I bought some flowered wellies a couple of weeks ago, so I put those on and strode about the wet, muddy backyard with impunity. I was, you know, on poo patrol, but I didn't hardly mind with all the sunshine and fresh air.

The down side of the unseasonably warm weather was that the regular weather had to come rushing back later in the day. The wind picked up as the day progressed, and by evening, the gusts had turned to steady, heavy blowing. The power went out briefly as we sat down to dinner, but we were fortunate, indeed, that it came right back on again. I heard the wind blowing throughout the night, and I was glad that we weren't back in our house on Grove Avenue, surrounded by big, old oak trees.

The wind had done its damage all the same, though. When Ben went out to leave for work in the morning, he noticed the gate to the backyard was wide open. When he went to investigate, he saw that the latch had been blown right off the gate by the buffeting winds. How lucky we were that Rufus had not noticed that when he went out for his early morning constitutional! He would have been gone, and we would have never even known it. The workmen came and repaired the gate yesterday, and I really doubt that we will have a problem with it again. The screws they installed were literally three times longer than the ones that did not hold. Yeah, the fence was expensive, but included in that cost was the maintenance we expected - and received.

So, yeah, it looks like it's going to be a beautiful day today. I believe I'll go out and enjoy it. Hope you have a good one, too.

time on my hands, a new post on my blog

2011-02-02T08:33:00.000-08:00

I don't know for sure, but I have to assume that everyone hates having workmen in their house as much as I do. I need to say straight away that I have not had a single unpleasant experience with any of the workers personally. They have all (so far) done an outstanding job for us, have been efficient and polite, and have cleaned up after themselves. Still, I hate it. I can't go anywhere for one thing. Now, I hadn't planned on going anywhere in particular today, but, still, I can't go if I suddenly want to. I could go to the bank, it now occurs to me, and deposit the check that I finally received from the Interstate 77 Auction House. (More than we had anticipated, thanks for asking.) I could go to the library and pick up the two books they have on hold for me - which I could then read, of course. I could return the curtains that I bought at Target yesterday that are totally wrong for the basement windows, but that helped me to determine what would be right. But, alas, I can't do any of those things.

Today the workmen are here laying ceramic tile in our foyer. I guess it is a good thing that the fence installers have failed to show up for a second day. Otherwise, I think there would be a serious lack of space in our short driveway and in front of our house. These things happen for a reason, eh? Although, I truly have to say that our back yard is a sea of mud where the workers shoveled the snow away on Monday, and I don't blame them for wanting to wait for that to dry out a bit. My shoes are seriously coated with mud from the time I had to go out and get Lucie yesterday. Little shit!

The first thing the floor guys had to do was remove the vinyl floor covering that was there when we bought the house. It wasn't bad as vinyl floor coverings go (other than the mysterious holes right in front of the kitchen door) but it was vinyl floor covering. So that is out of here. They spent a great deal of time trying to get rid of all the squeaks in the floor boards. I know they were doing this because I would hear squeak, squeak, squeaky-squeak, then a bunch of pounding. Squeak, pound, and repeat. Next, they must install the Wonderboard©. Do you wonder what that is? So did I, but that is not how it got its name. It was explained to me that the Wonderboard© will save the tiles from the dreaded "trampoline effect" during which the tiles could crack and break. After that, I assume, the tiles will go down.

I probably should mention that our adventure with the floor tiles actually began last night when Ben and I drove over to Home Depot to pick up all the materials necessary for this project. You know we don't have a truck of any kind, but the delivery of materials would cost an extra hundred dollars, and we thought to save that money for another day. It was a great idea, really, but that darn Wonderboard© was just too big to fit in either of our cars. So we had to pay for delivery, anyway, although it only cost fifty dollars instead of a hundred. So I will consider that we saved fifty bucks by loading our little cars down last night with 300 pounds worth of flooring materials, driving it home, and unloading it.

Needless to say, I am eager to see what our foyer will look like with new ceramic tiles instead of the old vinyl flooring. It will probably totally be worth a day spent in my bedroom with the dogs. We have already replaced the light fixture in the foyer, but have not yet re-painted the dark slate blue walls. This house is already much darker inside than our old house was, and we need to lighten and brighten in here. I know our living room will never be as bright as the old one - window walls on both ends of the room will do that for you - but it can be brighter than it is now. And this time of year, we need that. 'Cause it's winter here in Maryland, too, and I'm telling you, it feels and looks like it. In here, though, it looks fresh and lovely. You should see it. No, really, you should come and see it. Did I mention how lonely I am? A topic for another day, perhaps.

you can't always get what you want --- but sometimes, you can

2011-01-28T11:36:00.001-08:00

I was clicking around last week when I found an old black and white movie on TCM. Nothing unusual about that, right? But I lingered on this one for a few minutes, sucked in more by the atmosphere than by the dialogue. A young woman was having tea with a much older woman in a large, old Victorian room. The older woman was chastising the younger one about, it seemed, transgressions in the past towards the young woman's sister, complete with flashbacks to a happier time. The tone was moody and nostalgic and somewhat foreboding. You know, I thought to myself, I am in the mood to read a book that strikes just that tone.

I went to the library and, almost unbelievably, found the perfect book. It is The Distant Hours by Kate Morton. I will tell you straight away this is not great literature. But it is a good, solid, entertaining read that kept me interested throughout its 600 pages. The book has the requisite pair of elderly twin sisters, but (amazingly) they got along, had always gotten along, and had never changed places with each other. There is a big, old moldering house in the British countryside, there is a fey, heartbroken sister, and there is a decades-old mystery to be solved. Our fresh-faced young narrator solves the mystery (of course) and in the process, learns a great deal about her own past - which, surprise! turns out to be entwined with the sad history of the great house.

I know. I know. It sounds like you've read it before. So have I. But the author took some interesting new turns in this familiar tale, and her writing, while a bit florid in places, is deeply satisfying in others. For me, it was the right book at the right time, and the value of that cannot be under-estimated.

the waiting game

2011-01-24T05:13:00.000-08:00

One thing you have to do a lot of when you are working with contractors and workmen is waiting. One thing I am really bad at is waiting. This morning, for example, I am supposed to receive a call between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. that will inform me what two-hour time slot later today a workman will arrive to measure our foyer for the ceramic tiles we purchased over the weekend. Got that? I am waiting right now for a call that will tell me when I have to wait some more later. I hate this!

I desperately want to take a shower. I want to sort the laundry and throw the first load in the washer - something I can only do after I shower. I want to return my books to the library. I want to go to Target to look for a clock for my bedroom. I want to do all manner of things that I can't do while I am chained to the house, waiting for a phone call.

It seems to me that ever since we moved here I have been waiting for someone. The electrician, the plumber, the guys who delivered the new tv, the guy who came to fix our cable reception, the carpet installers, the guy who came to measure for the carpet installers (!), the guys who came to give me estimates for a new fence - each of them due to arrive at a not clearly defined time that I must, that's right, wait for.

My phone rings - hurray! Is it the measuring guy? No. It is Ben, telling me that for some inexplicable reason, the measuring guy has called him at work to tell him when he will arrive at our house. No matter, now I know that my next period of waiting will begin at 1:00 p.m. It's off to the shower for me!

musings on a winter morning

2011-01-18T04:33:00.000-08:00

I'm finding out that in many ways, winter in Maryland is a lot like winter in Ohio. It is cold and gray outside and I am disinclined to leave the warm, bright comfort of my home. The sun is slow to come up, and it gets dark early - earlier here, actually, as we are now on the eastern edge of the time zone.

When I went out to retrieve my Baltimore Sun this morning, everything - and I mean everything - was coated in a not-so-thin layer of ice. I am very glad to be able to stay inside today. It will give me a chance to do some further work on my resume, which I pulled out yesterday and began updating. I didn't actually need a resume for my last two jobs at yarn shops, but it doesn't look like my next job - whatever it may be - will be quite as easy to find.

When Ben got home from work last night, I asked him to take a look at my updated resume. Since he is at the other end of the spectrum (that is to say, he hires people) I find his input very valuable. One interesting thing, I find, is that while I try to be what I think of as scrupulously honest on my resume, Ben says that is not necessarily how it is done anymore. Well, he tells me, you could say this instead of that. But that is not actually, technically what I did, I tell him. Close enough, he assures me, it's all in how you phrase it. I begin to realize that perhaps a resume is not the place for narrow definitions or excessive modesty.

In reading over this last paragraph, I am concerned lest you think that Ben is not totally honest, because he is. To a fault, really. And he is quite good at getting jobs, as well. When I asked him last May how soon we could move to Maryland, it took him less than six months to find a job here. So when he gives me job-hunting advice, I listen. Mostly. When I think he is right.

It puts me in mind of the vows Julie wrote for her wedding, actually. I will obey you, she told Andrew - to everyone's surprise - but then adding, when I think you are right. Some traits Julie gets from me, but it is not a one-way street, and some things I get from her. I like it that way.

And now, after a quick peek out the window ~shudder~ it's back to the resume.

but is it communication?

2011-01-10T04:28:00.001-08:00

I try to write a letter to my dad every ten days or so. In fact, checking my folder of letters, I see that I wrote every eleven days in December, actually, so it's time for another update. I have been holding off, waiting for the photos that Ben was going to send to Walgreen's, but they are ready to pick up now.

I sit down at my computer, adjust my font size to 14, and try to write a cheery, informative letter. I try to make it sound like I am sitting in Dad's room at Wesleyan Village, chatting with him. Frankly, when I am there I frequently wonder if I am boring him or if he is thinking what an idiot I am, so basically I wonder the same thing as I type these letters. But I persevere. I usually end up with about a page and a half of news about what Ben and I are doing, changes we are making to the house, how the kids are, and what the dogs are up to. Then I hand sign the letter and send it off.

I don't ever expect a reply, you understand. My dad used to be quite the letter writer, firing off hand-printed, single-spaced, many-paged missives to anyone who rubbed him the wrong way - and that was a lot of people. I found copies of many of these letters when I was cleaning out Dad's file cabinet before the house sold. They made me sad, though, and I threw them all away. He has been so angry for such a long time.

Dad sent me a couple of "letters" last year when I was working on getting him situated at Wesleyan Village. They were printed in pencil on torn sheets of paper, and generally were one-sentence requests or questions. He has never liked to use the telephone, you see, and only calls me under situations of duress. He hasn't called me since we moved to Maryland, and I don't believe he will. I think he thinks the phone call will be too expensive, although I tried to explain he would be calling my cell phone with the Ohio area code.

In spite of all this, I will sit here later today and write another letter. I will try to make it light-hearted and informative. I will try once again to connect with my dad. I don't know if I'm doing it for him or doing it for myself. I only know I need to do it.

project #17 in a continuing series...

2011-01-08T04:23:00.000-08:00

Rufus and Lucie and I spent most of yesterday in the basement "rec room". We were waiting down there while two workmen installed carpeting in the hall and bedrooms. I was okay watching TCM until a Red Skelton movie came on. Who ever thought that man was talented or funny? But I digress.

The carpet looks fantastic. I am very pleased with it. Ben and I picked out a berber with as little pattern cut into it as we could find. The color is called "ecru" and I know that doesn't tell you much. It is a darker color than I wanted, but lighter than Ben was hoping for. Since yesterday was cloudy, we haven't really seen the carpet in sunlight yet, so that is something to look forward to.

We did cover up finished hardwood floors with the carpeting, and, like all loyal HGTV viewers, I know that is a no-no. But, hey, that hardwood is still down there, waiting to be uncovered and ooh-ed and ah-ed over by someone else. The fact is, Ben and I did not like the bedrooms with bare wood floors. The rooms felt cold and empty even with all our furniture in them. They did not feel "homey". They also strongly reminded me of the second floor of the big, old, drafty house where I grew up, and that is never a good thing.

Needless to say, the dogs love the carpeting. Rufus immediately began racing up and down the hall and into the bedrooms. He can turn on a dime and speed away again. When he tired himself out, he lay down in the middle of the newly-carpeted hallway. We are happy because both of the dogs can jump on and off the beds now without slipping and falling.

Perhaps early January is not the optimum time to have carpet installed as we really can't open the windows and air the rooms out. If you like that new carpet smell, we've got it. If you don't, we've still got it. On the other hand, right after the holidays is a slow time for most businesses like that, and I believe we got a better price than we would have at other times of the year. I'm really hoping that savings will carry over into our next project: a new fence for the backyard. Now that's a biggie.

how I spent my birthday

2011-01-04T04:57:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Ben and I bought seven new light fixtures. How many light fixtures do we have in this house? Well, about seven. They are all hideous. We bought a fixture for the foyer, the hall, the little dining room that we are using as a library, two for the kitchen and two to go outside the front and side doors. The fixture for the "library" will also have a ceiling fan - the only one in the house. We got quite used to having ceiling fans in our last house, and it didn't seem right not to have any.

When are we going to install all these fixtures? Well, we're not. We are hiring someone to do it. We need some electrical work done anyway, and when the electrician was here a couple of weeks ago, he said it would be any easy thing for him to do. Imagine that. Someone who thinks killing the power and switching the fixtures is easy. I can't begin to tell you what a hassle it is for the two of us to do something like that. If you have ever done it yourself, perhaps you know.

In addition to the light fixtures we bought new house numbers, window well covers, and a large recycle bin. We also took a little print - perhaps it is a lithograph - to the local framing shop to have it framed. So I spent my birthday shopping and buying things - a great many things - and that made it a great day. I just really don't want to know how much we spent. I mean it.

a post written by one of the newest residents of the state of Maryland

2010-12-29T04:24:00.000-08:00

New residents of Maryland are given sixty days to switch over their car registration, title, license plates, and driver's license. This seems like ample time to me, allowing for the myriad other things folks are doing when they move to a new house in a new state. I wish I would have had that much time to get all those things accomplished, but I didn't. As you may know, I celebrate my birthday pretty much right after the first of the year. So, instead of having sixty days, I had thirty. Frankly, that was barely enough time.

I didn't work on car stuff too much the first couple of weeks we were here, but I kicked it into gear around mid-month. The Maryland MVA (Motor Vehicle Administration) has one of the most confusing, difficult-to-navigate websites I have ever tried to use. I'm sorry, but that's just the truth. It reduced me to frustrated tears more than once. But with Ben and Julie helping me along, I began to understand the steps I had to take and in what order I had to take them.

I called two different service stations to schedule an appointment to get the MSI (Maryland State Inspection) done. Neither of them provided that service and they directed me to locations in other cities that I hadn't even heard of at that point. I ended up calling the Toyota dealership about a mile from our house and was able to schedule an appointment there. Everything went like clockwork until the service manager came and sat down by me in the waiting area to tell me that my car had not passed the inspection. I basically needed new brakes, front and back. Well, you can probably imagine the cost, but the dealership, and the service manager in particular, were stellar, and at the end of the next day my car was delivered to me along with the state inspection certificate I needed.

I had to gather documentation to proof that I was indeed who I claimed to be and that I lived where I said I did. Proving my identity was fairly easy - I needed my social security card and my birth certificate. Check. Proving that I do indeed live here in Maryland was a little more difficult. Most of the bills come to this address in Ben's name. I filled out an application for a voter registration card at the library, but learned that takes six weeks to arrive. I didn't have six weeks. Hm-m-m. I had a bill from the Baltimore Sun. Would that work? I had bank statements from two different banks. I could use a cancelled check, I learned, but who gets back cancelled checks anymore? One of my banks provides a printable copy of my cancelled checks, however, and when one finally came back, I printed that up. I felt pretty confident that my papers were in order.

The next step was to find the nearest MVA office. We live in Baltimore County, but the Baltimore County office is in Essex, so that seemed farther than we needed to go. We considered going to the Baltimore City office, but got horribly lost trying to find it. Ben knows his way around Glen Burnie a bit from the three months he lived there this fall, so we were off to Glen Burnie. The office there was easy to find and huge, actually, so I resolved to go there the following week. Unfortunately, the day we chose to go, the office was closed. I don't know why it didn't occur to us that that might be the case. Ben had the day off, so it wasn't unexpected that the employees there would, as well. But, even so, we didn't expect it.

The MVA website had warned that Mondays and Fridays are bad days to go, and that one shouldn't wait until the end of the month either. Well, I was pretty much out of options, so Julie and I drove to Glen Burnie yesterday. And, I have to tell you, it went off without a hitch. We were done in under two hours, and my little Toyota now sports Maryland Chesapeake Bay license plates with a heron on one side and a blue crab on the other. How cool is that? That's right, pretty damn cool.

a good murtle, a good book - life is good

2010-12-10T04:28:00.000-08:00

Julie came down to spend some time with me the other day and we went on a murtle. (sp?) The Mancine family lexicon is rich with words that are either re-purposed, mis-used, or just plain made up. "Murtle" is one of the latter, and it means, roughly, to wander about, when used as a verb, or an outing, when used as a noun, as it is here. Anyway. We wanted to drive down to Catonsville proper to find the local yarn shop, Cloverhill. We found it easily enough, and were pleased to find it bustling with customers who were both buying yarn and sitting and knitting.

We were delighted to find that there is a downtown Catonsville with shops and restaurants and off-street parking. Definitely something to explore another day. We were most excited to find the local public library, and, in fact, Julie pulled in the parking lot so we could check it out. We found it to be architecturally reminiscent of the Elyria Public Library on Washington Avenue. A large one-story box of a building with a local history room in the basement, the Catonsville library is actually a branch of the Baltimore Public Library System. This is exciting to me because it means I have that whole system to draw from.

I went to the reference desk to apply for a library card and was delighted to find that with the proper identification (which I had) I could get my card right away instead of having to wait for mail to arrive at my new address. So I got a library card! And I checked out a book! Yes, it's all that exciting to me. And it was not just any book that I checked out - it was a book by my favorite mystery writer, Carol O'Connell, that I had not yet read.

Carol O'Connell is the author of the Mallory books, a hard-boiled detective series set in contemporary New York City. I love everything about that 9-volume series (all of which Ben gave to me one Christmas) except for the fact that the ninth book, Find Me, seems to be pretty clearly the end of the series. O'Connell also wrote Judas Child, a stand-alone book that was so compelling and so incredibly well-written that as soon as I finished reading the last page, I flipped the book over and read it all again. I almost never do that.

This is all prelude to saying that the book I checked out of the library the other day is another stand-alone entitled Bone by Bone. O'Connell's books are not for the faint of heart - not so much because they are violent or gory, which they sometimes are - but because they are so heartbreaking. The author deals with "the damage that humans can do to each other" as the Library Journal says in its review of this book. O'Connell's characters are badly damaged, but, for the most part, manage to function in spite of that, frequently in ways that will break your heart.

In Bone by Bone, a man is summoned back to the small resort town where he grew up - a town he has not seen in the twenty years since his teenage brother disappeared there. His brother is returning home, "bone by bone" and the protagonist must determine why. There are perhaps too many suspects and too many red herrings, but having read all of O'Connell's other books, I just sat back and enjoyed the ride. This was a book to be read slowly and carefully, and now that I have finished it, perhaps for a second time. Yes, it's that good.

here we are now

2010-12-05T11:05:00.000-08:00

So, first of all, yes, we're here. We're all here. Lucie and Rufus are asleep on my bed as I type this. I am equally glad to have Lucie, Rufus, and the bed here. I don't think I could have "slept" on that air mattress for one more night. There's just something so depressing about an empty room with a blanket-covered mattress on the floor in one corner.

Everything has been going pretty well so far, although when I came in from the backyard with the dogs this morning, Ben announced that smoke was coming out of all the registers, and indeed, it was. He immediately turned the furnace off and started making phone calls. Even though it's not snowing here like it is in Ohio, no heat in December is still an emergency situation. There is a BGE van in front of the house right now, and Ben and I are just hoping the home warranty will cover this service call on a Sunday afternoon. This whole scenario feels remarkably familiar to me, although I can't remember which of our previous houses it happened at. Maybe Tom or Julie could remind me.

I went to the grocery store by myself this morning and found every single thing on my shopping list. Finding some place to put it all in our severely storage-challenged kitchen was not so easy. We did it, although finding it when we need it again will be the next challenge.

We have a two-page (and growing!) list of items we need from Bed, Bath & Beyond some time soon. That big wad of coupons that I kept in the kitchen drawer will come in handy for that. It's a little hard for me to believe that with all the stuff we brought with us, we still need a great deal more. And, of course, there's the stuff already here that we are getting rid of. I already went through the house and took about half the curtains off the windows. I am not a fan of curtains, but my blue and white toile valances look just as lovely here as they did in my room in Kent.

It looks like we won't have time to make a shopping run this afternoon - to B, B & B or to Lowe's or Home Depot or Best Buy - all places we need to visit soon. We have to get everything we want done around the house before 8:00 so we can kick back and watch the game. The Ravens are playing the Steelers tonight, you know.

it's just another day

2010-11-30T06:27:00.000-08:00

So I'm sitting here at my computer like it's any other day, working on this post. It is not, however, any other day. The movers have just arrived, and they walk in and out of the house, laying down mats to protect the hardwood floors and bringing in big stacks of collapsed cardboard boxes that they will fill with all our earthly belongings. They have already complained to us about how narrow our street is and how much stuff we have to move, so I am on the defensive and feeling a little irritated with them. Probably better that I just stay in my room and type.

Lucie and Rufus left yesterday. Julie and Andrew took them to their apartment in Maryland, where they will stay until we are more or less settled in our new house. I cannot begin to tell you how much I miss them. As irritated as I was with Lucie a couple of weeks ago, I desperately want her with me now. But I know it is absolutely for the best that she and Rufus are not here right now, as the movers go in and out and all over the house.

As if moving halfway across the country is not stressful enough, we really don't know when this house will be emptied out or when everything will arrive at the new house. Our understanding had been that they would come today and box everything up, then load it on the truck tomorrow. However, the huge truck is here now. We had been told we couldn't stay here tonight, but now the movers tell us we can. I am doing my best to go with the flow, something you all probably know I am not very good at. But I know that the big machine has started up and it will just keep grinding away until Ben and I and Lucie and Rufus and all our belongings are safely at our new home. By this time next week, I tell myself, we'll be all settled in. And, you know, we will.

over the river and through the woods

2010-11-24T04:08:00.000-08:00

As I have mentioned before, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. When I was a kid, we used to go to my Aunt Louise's house. It was a big deal. I knew that because we all got new outfits. My mother would bake pies - pumpkin and pecan - contributions that would travel well, as we had the farthest to go.

As we drove along country roads, we passed an old stand-alone silo with "Fresh Cows" painted down the side of it. (Always a mystery to us kids, and I am still not exactly sure what it means.) We passed the prison farm, where on summer days we would sometimes see the inmates playing baseball or sitting on the bleachers cheering each other on. We saw cars pulled off the side of the road, and sometimes, we would see the hunters who had left them there heading out into the fields and woods. We drove through tiny crossroad towns with names that we loved: Erhart and Mallet Creek and River Styx.

My dad avoided the highways, so it took us a little longer than it might have, but when we finally arrived, we headed straight for the warm, fragrant kitchen. Aunt Louise would open the oven door so that we could see the huge turkey that seemed to fill the whole oven, already golden and glistening. I was instantly hungry, even though it was hours until dinner time. I still don't think anything compares with the aroma of a turkey or a chicken roasting in the oven.

As much as I loved the holiday meal, it was being with my extended family that made it a truly special day for me. We weren't a very big family, really. My widowed grandmother (my grandfather had died when my dad was only a child) my two aunts and their families, and the five of us. My dad was quite a bit younger than his sisters, so our cousins were all older than us. I just adored my older cousins, and they loved me right back. I hung on every word they said, and when I was very young I literally hung on them.

There wasn't enough room at the big oval table in the family room for all of us, so of course we sat at the kids' table. The problem with that was my brothers and I were the youngest kids, so it was just the three of us. It wasn't much fun to sit only with each other, as we did every day. One of our kind-hearted cousins, Butch or Greg, would come and sit with us, however, and I immediately felt included again.

It was dark and cold outside when we finally left, and sometimes my brother Bill would fall asleep on the way home, his head resting heavily on my shoulder. Truth to tell, sometimes I fell asleep, too. It's kind of funny. We spent our Thanksgivings there for maybe five years in a row - I don't know why we stopped going, I do know my aunts never liked my mother - but those five or so days are some of the best memories I have of my childhood.

I don't think my own kids have ever liked Thanksgiving all that well, and I am sorry for that, but it doesn't change how I feel about it. Everyone is on their way home to me today, and I couldn't be happier. I am glad we will celebrate the holiday here one last time before we move. It feels right to me.

this could be the last time

2010-11-18T02:37:00.000-08:00

I have been trying very hard not to think in terms of "this is the last time I will do x" but the situation presents itself with increasing frequency these days. I don't know why I'm trying not to think that way because, really, that's how it is. Yesterday I took the dogs to the groomer's for the last time, as you know, but I also got my own hair cut here for the last time. I guess that's what started me thinking along these lines.

Going in to work for the last time was difficult, and I really hated taking the shop keys off my key ring and leaving them on Judi's desk. It made me feel a little better that she hated it, too. I haven't been back to the shop yet for my "last time" - perhaps I will do that while Julie is home for Thanksgiving.

I have read my last Record-Courier, the truly awful local newspaper. For the last few weeks, it has been arriving too late for me to read as I eat my breakfast, so Ben cancelled it. No great loss, I assure you. Cancelling the Plain Dealer, however, will be more difficult for me. I have been reading that newspaper my whole life, and it is hard to imagine starting my day without it. Hope I like the Baltimore Sun.

I also realized yesterday that there are some "last times" that I will be happy to observe. This thought came to me as I was trying to carry the dog crate out the front door, and the storm door slammed shut on my heel, as it frequently does. It was not quite as painful as it is in the summer when I am wearing sandals, but since I always wear clogs in cooler weather, it still clipped my heel a good one. Won't miss that!

There are some last times that don't even bear thinking about, so I won't. Having dinner at our favorite sushi restaurant. Walking around the campus together. Saying good-bye to the friends I've made here. Driving away from our little house for the last time.

Okay, I don't know about you, but this is bringing me down, and that's not the purpose of this blog. Next post: things I am looking forward to. ;)

checking one more task off my list

2010-11-17T04:22:00.000-08:00

The doggies are going to the groomer's today, and, boy, do they need it. They have needed to go for a while, actually, but Lucie got a bad ear infection, and I have been treating her ears with yucky medicine for more than a week. The medicine looks like Elmer's glue, but it is slimy instead of sticky. Twice a day, I have to squirt the medicine in each of her ears, then massage the ear, making sure it makes the correct squishy sound as I do so. I find that if I put Lucie up on the kitchen counter, she doesn't have any traction and can't get away from me.

Her ears look so slimy and awful that I tried giving her a little spot bath last week, but the dog shampoo that I have didn't even touch the greasy mess. I am pretty sure that whatever the groomer uses will take care of it, though.

I don't know who hates the trip to the groomer's more - me or the doggies. When we get there, Rufus hides behind my legs, and Lucie, whom I am carrying, tries to crawl up my front and sit on my shoulder. I have to be careful to wear a top that covers my neck and throat so that she can't claw me (she has drawn blood in the past) and it has to be a fabric that she can't snag. Hoodies work well.

I hate leaving the dogs there. They are so pathetic and resigned - well, Lucie tends more towards frantic, I guess. But I am always so happy to receive the phone call that they are finished and I can pick them up. When I get there, they come prancing out of the back room, looking just great. The are usually wearing seasonal bandanas, which they don't like, and I don't either, actually. What I love is when Lucie has a little bow on either side of her head. She just couldn't be cuter. I bundle them into the car, and get them back home as quickly as I can. They want big drinks of water and an immediate trip out back when they get here.

Going to the groomer's is an exhausting experience for Lucie and Rufus, and, safely home, they really just want to snuggle up next to me on the couch and sleep for a few hours. Which, I must say, dovetails nicely with my plans.

saying good-bye to all sorts of things

2010-11-10T12:32:00.000-08:00

Y'all know I am not a great outdoorswoman, like Sarah Palin or something, but, I tell you, I could not stay in the house today. I kept finding reasons just to be outside. I blew the last of the maple leaves out of the back yard that fell from our sad, old maple tree. Ben and I did all we could for that tree, but it was dying long before we moved here. A previous owner had built a ring of stones around the tree and filled it in with about a foot of dirt. I find it quite attractive now, with the myrtle we planted there, but all that dirt packed down on its roots started killing that tree right away. Now it looks like all the other trees in the neighborhood - leafless. We won't be here to see it leaf out in the spring. Nor anything else, for that matter.

I knew I would miss many of the good people I have met here over the past ten years, but I didn't realize it would be so difficult to leave all our plantings behind, as well. I thought about that as I swept oak leaves off the front deck today - something I do every day this time of year. Just in the front yard, there are the holly bushes we planted several years ago on either side of the garage door, for example. For some years, we had filled the big tubs the previous owners left us with geraniums and trailing vines, but it seemed we could never water them enough, and we had to buy new plants every year. When we planted the tiny holly bushes, I didn't realize that one would grow so much faster than the other, and I have spent the intervening years trying to even them up. They look just about even now, and their bright red berries are a harbinger of the coming winter.

All the leaves have fallen off the redbud, but the seed pods are still holding tight to the branches. I remember when we bought that little tree at Walmart (when we still shopped there) and Tom pushed the sapling around in a shopping cart as we made our other purchases. It was no bigger round than my thumb, and less than four feet tall. Ben and I argued about where to plant it, of course (I always want to plant things too close) and I think it is in the perfect spot now, so I probably won that argument. We planted a redbud at our old house, as well, and when we drive by there, it takes up the entire front yard. This tree will never do that here (the yard is bigger) but it is probably ten feet tall now. As I stroked its rough bark the other day, I thought that I will never see the delicate pale flowers appear on its branches again.

I won't see the wysteria bloom again, either. Ben bought that plant for me maybe the first spring we were here as a Mother's Day present. He planted it at the foot of an old pink dogwood at the corner of the front yard. We thought the dogwood was dying, but that it would be a good thing for the wysteria to climb. The wysteria has, indeed, been very happy to wind itself around the old tree, and I think it has actually been good for the dogwood, as well. All the water and fertilizer we lavished on the wysteria helped the dogwood, too, and we had beautiful pink flowers on it each spring. The dogwood trunk is totally hollow, now, though, and I suspect the sturdy wysteria entwined around it is now helping to hold it erect. There was no killing frost this spring as in past years, so we had more beautiful hanging wysteria flowers than ever before. The vines were so heavy with blossoms, they bowed down to the ground. That is how I will remember it.

I can't forget the little yellow rose bush that never quite caught on beside the front steps. This was a particularly difficult year for it, as the contractor building the deck stepped on it repeatedly until I asked him quite politely not to do it anymore. The primroses will be a colorful surprise for the new homeowners next spring. I wouldn't have thought I would like their garish colors of magenta and yellow against the vivid green leaves, but, you know, I quite do. I remember the year Julie revived them from the dead with gentle care (and lots of water). The clematis Ben and I planted several years ago hasn't really had enough time to make much of an impression, but I think it will be beautiful with its large, plate-size white flowers.

All this is just the front yard, folks. Perhaps another day we'll take a walk around the back yard. It was a big, empty box when we first moved here - just like our new yard will be. I can't wait to see what we'll plant there. It will be different from here, of course, but that's okay. That's good, in fact. It's time for a change, and I'm ready to embrace it. But first I have to say good-bye.

turn, turn, turn

2010-11-08T04:37:00.000-08:00

I don't know why, but we have never liked the people to whom we sold our houses. We were happy in our first little house - the one we brought our babies home from the hospital to - but we quickly outgrew it. We found some buyers for it fairly quickly, and that was a good thing, but they really raised my hackles. The man pretty much told us that he was hiding from the company in Chicago where he had formerly worked, as he was perpetrating insurance fraud. His wife seemed to me to be functionally illiterate, and certainly had never graduated from high school. She was coarse and furtive in her ignorance. But they loved that little house, and, in fact, he told us it was his "dream house." How nice to be able to achieve that.

We raised our kids in the house in Eastern Heights, but when they grew up and went away to college, I just didn't want to live in that empty house anymore. Again, we sold the house fairly quickly, to a young family with four small children. I couldn't imagine that many kids in the house, but I was just happy to sell it. Even though Ben never met them, he had reservations about the buyers from the beginning, especially the man. We're going to have trouble with him, Ben kept saying, and, you know, we did. He started sending us strange, rambling letters not long after we moved, demanding that we pay for extensive repairs he felt the house needed. When we ignored his letters, we received a summons to appear in small claims court. The jerk was taking us to court! He lost, of course, didn't get a penny from us, and had to pay court costs. I remember the magistrate asking him, did you look at the house before you bought it? Did you buy it online? It would have been funny if Ben hadn't had to take time off work or we hadn't had to drive back to Elyria for the day.

All this is prelude to saying that we met the buyers of our current house yesterday. We are so pleased with them. They are a young, engaged couple (got engaged two weeks ago, we learned when I asked them) and they just kept telling us how much they loved this house. We knew right away, they said. That did my heart good, as Ben and I, too, knew right away about this little house. We put in an offer the day we saw it. It's nothing fancy, mind you. Those of you who have seen it know that. But the house has been just right for us, and I think it has blossomed under our care. And now that we have met Ben and Kara, I am reassured and happy to turn our home over to them. It is just right for them, too, and they will take good care of it. Again, I don't know why, but that matters to me.

a ghost story for an autumn evening

2010-11-07T04:52:00.000-08:00

Spoiler Alert: I read The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters last night. Eventually, I will be reviewing it here. If you haven't read it yet and are thinking about reading it, you may want to skip this post. I am giving it all away.

I have always been a mystery reader. Like most kids of my generation, I raced through the Nancy Drew books and my brother's Hardy Boys mysteries. Probably unlike most other children, I went on to read my father's Fu Manchu books, which for some inexplicable reason were stored on a low shelf in my bedroom closet. Next was his big book of Sherlock Holmes, which was more to my liking, and I have been reading mysteries pretty much ever since. Murder mysteries, police procedurals, cozy mysteries, ghost stories - I like 'em all. I like mystery series a lot, too, if I manage to get in on the ground floor and read the series straight through.

The pleasure for me, and I suspect all mystery readers, is to figure out "who-dun-it" before the author reveals all at the end of the book. It's a delicate balance. If I figure it out too soon, I feel the author has not done a clever enough job. If I don't figure it out at all, I'm a bit frustrated. I like my mysteries to be pretty formulaic. A crime is committed. Leads are pursued by one sort of detective or another. The guilty party is discovered. I don't like ambiguous endings. And when the author resorts to a clever trick like the unreliable narrator, I find that particularly infuriating.

The first time I ran into that particular literary device was in Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, one of the first books I read by the renowned mystery writer - and also the last. As I read the book, I picked up the clues the author placed for me, like Hansel and Gretel following the bright pebbles back out of the forest after their first successful foray into the darkness. I was so engaged, so trusting. Imagine my surprise when I realized that the author, whom I trusted absolutely, had deliberately led me down the wrong path. It seemed so unfair. It seemed like cheating. I was done with Agatha Christie, and have tried to avoid stories told by unreliable narrators ever since.

So, to review: no ambiguous endings, no unreliable narrators, oh, and very important, no harm to animals, especially dogs. I don't care what kind of murder and mayhem may rain down on the humans in the story (I watch SVU and Bones, remember) but I cannot bear to read about or think about harm to innocent creatures. The book I read last night turned out to have all three. Who knew?

It started out well enough. Set in post-WWII Britain, the author's story of a great house and a great family in decline are familiar enough territory, but she does it well. She takes her time setting the stage, which I like. I became concerned, however, when the first ghostly "incident" involved the beloved family dog. This better not be headed where I think it is, I thought, but it was. I soldiered on, skipping several of the worst pages, and managed to put that behind me. I realized fairly quickly that my narrator was not to be trusted, so I was on the lookout there, but I honestly did think the author would tell all in the end. She did not.

Oh, she left enough clues so I could figure it out to my satisfaction, but I was disappointed that here, too, she took me over such well-travelled ground. Bad things happened to people when the narrator was asleep (think Morbius and his raging id in Forbidden Planet or the Johnny Depp/John Turturro character in Secret Window). Eventually, the narrator has his heart's desire - not the girl, but the mouldering great house he had violated as a child and never forgotten. I have to say, I was very satisfied with the way the author bracketed the rest of the book with scenes of the narrator wandering alone in the huge, old house.

To tell the truth, I realize that I enjoy thinking back on the book more than I enjoyed reading it. Perhaps that's not so bad, as it will surely stay with me longer that way. It would have been nice to have both, though.

wheeling and dealing in the real estate market

2010-11-05T04:19:00.000-07:00

If the housing market is still tanking, it's not my fault. I feel that we have more than done our part to aid the economy. In the past couple of months we have: sold our house, sold my dad's house, and bought a new house. It's weird how things time out like that. I mean, of course, after selling our own house we damn well better buy a new house pretty quickly, but to have sold my dad's house as well in the same time period is a little, well, it's overwhelming.

The sale of my dad's house turned out to be the easiest in the end. It sat on the market for six months with lots of viewings, but only one offer, which was so low as to not be taken seriously. That was partly our fault, as we priced the house too high initially, but I feel our realtor has to take most of the blame. We had no idea what a little Cape Cod that had been neglected for 35 years might fetch in today's market. Neither, as it turned out, did he.

I started to panic as our own house sold and it became clear that I would be moving before the end of the year. How could I sell my dad's house from out of state? Then, one day at work, I heard a woman discussing how her mother's house had been auctioned off and they had donated all the furniture. That's it, I thought. We could either just donate the house - something my dad had already suggested - or auction it off. Accordingly, I contacted the realtor with those suggestions. He was appalled at the idea of donating the house. You'll only get a tax write-off then, he told me. But we can auction it off for you. Would you like to do that?

Would I like to do that? Yes! As soon as possible. And that was all it took. One of his co-workers who is also an auctioneer contacted me about a month ago and assured me the house would be sold by the end of October. He also told me he could probably get us the asking price. I was thrilled and gave him the go-ahead.

I walked through the house the day before the auction. It was cold and empty and dirty, and I hated the house that day as much as I ever had. What an unhappy home it had been for my parents and my brother. I silently wished the new owners well, and walked out the door for the last time. The house sold the next day for $2,000 less than our asking price, which, really, we probably would have negotiated away in a regular sale. Less than a week later, the money was deposited in my dad's account. What a load off my mind. I can only hope the rest of our transactions go as well. Stay tuned.

star gazing

2010-11-04T07:25:00.000-07:00

I saw the Big Dipper this morning. In these last days before the time change, it is still quite dark outside when I shuffle out in my pajamas and sweatshirt to collect the daily newspapers. I saw dozens of stars, and the moon, as well, but right above our house I recognized the stars that make up the Big Dipper.

I stood there in the driveway for a while, gazing upward and remembering the first time my dad pointed out the constellations to me. Our family was visiting one of his fraternity brothers, and while the wives and the other kiddies stayed in the house on that warm summer night, I only wanted to be outside with my dad and his friend as they smoked their cigars and reminisced. We sat in lawn chairs in the back yard as the sky darkened and the stars appeared. It must have been darker there than I was used to because the sky was just full of stars. My dad pointed out the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper with the North Star at its tip.

I was fascinated. So much so that I went home and memorized a poem from a reading book my aunt had given me. She was an elementary school teacher at the time, and the book must have been from a series they were no longer using. I loved that book and read it from cover to cover many times. I knew right where to search for it in the attic today, and when I found it, the book mark I made probably fifty years ago was still marking this poem.

The Man in the Moon

The man in the moon as he sails the sky
is a very remarkable skipper,
but he made a mistake when he tried to take
a drink of milk from the Dipper.
He dipped right out of the Milky Way,
and slowly and carefully filled it.
The Big Bear growled, and the Little Bear howled,
and frightened him so that he spilled it!

And yes, I wrote most of that from memory. I am amazed at the things I can't remember from day to day, and equally amazed by what remains. I'm going to read my book now. Reading Today Series: Stories Old and New...

the elephant in the room

2010-09-30T05:23:00.001-07:00

It's here with me right now. It's always with me, really. I haven't been able to escape it for more than a month now, much as I long to do so. And I can't write about it here, which I am surprised to find makes it much harder to cope with. It is both the blessing and the curse of the internet that everyone has access to, well, everything, and this is not something I am ready to share with the whole world.

So, it's not that I don't want to blog anymore, it's that I can't. And if I can't talk about this huge change in our lives, nothing else really seems worth talking about. Sorry.

the miracle of modern telecommunication

2010-09-29T07:45:00.000-07:00

I just got off the phone with my friend, Joany. So what, you say? You can chat with your chums on your iPhone® any time you want, you say? That's true, but Joany is on a train on her way to Rome right now. And that's a first for me, for sure. It amazes me, you know? My voice in an Italian train car, speeding towards Rome. (Insert joke here about the trains always running on time, or about where all roads lead.)

My grandparents owned the first telephone in their neighborhood, probably because my grandfather was a landscape gardener and needed to have a phone so that his customers could contact him. My mother told me that she remembered neighbors coming over to use the phone for emergency calls. My mother and several of her sisters had jobs as operators at the local telephone company, which makes me wonder, when was the last time I talked to an operator? When was the last time I dialed (pressed) 0 for operator? I don't even remember.

The first phone I remember using is the heavy black desktop phone that the the local telephone company loaned us. It always sat on the bay window behind the couch. For a long time, we only had that one phone, so there were no private conversations in our house. When my dad started traveling more, we got an extension upstairs in my parents' bedroom for security. That was a great place to take private phone calls. I can remember snuggling into my parents' bed on cold winter evenings while I gossiped with Judy, or took the rare call from a boy I was dating. And I could always tell if someone picked up the extension.

I still don't have my Star Trek communicator, but if I flip my cell phone vigorously, I can make it spring open like James T. Kirk used to do. And I can talk to Joany as she speeds towards the Eternal City. Some days, it feels alot like the 21st century.

fool me once...

2010-09-03T05:18:00.000-07:00

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

I hesitated for a long moment when I realized who the author of this book was, but I brought it home anyway. My bad. I hated the author's huge best-seller, The Time Traveler's Wife, and only finished it because much of the story took place in the Chicago neighborhood where Tom and Kristy were living at the time. Well - no surprise - I hated this one, too.

Once again, the author clumsily tackles the supernatural, but instead of a time traveler, this time she deals with two sets of twins and a g-g-g-ghost. (Pretty scary, huh?) I figured out almost immediately that one set of twins had pulled the old switcheroo. (Don't they always?) It took the entire book, however, for the author to reveal that fact.

It's hard to imagine a premise more ridiculous than someone becoming "unstuck in time" but the author manages it here with her ghost who comes back to life and has a baby with her bereaved lover. Hope you weren't planning on reading this book because I guess that would be a pretty big spoiler if you were. On the other hand, now you won't have to waste your time on it like I did.

on why I insist on reading books in the order in which they are written

2010-09-01T04:24:00.000-07:00

After making what I hope was my final "deposit" at the library yesterday (I take the books there that Jason doesn't want) I decided to go in and look for books for a change. I was excited to find what I thought was the next book in a series I have been reading for some years.

In 1994, author Laurie R. King wrote The Beekeeper's Apprentice, the story of a young woman who meets, and most improbably, falls in love with a retired Sherlock Holmes. They marry, and she becomes his Watson, traveling the globe with him and helping the master of deductive reasoning solve matters of international intrigue. There have been more hits than misses in the series, and the last book I read was by far my favorite, so I was thrilled to find The God of the Hive on the New Books shelf.

After reading a few pages, I realized that I had clearly missed a book, and that basically the entire plot was based on what happened in that earlier book. I stopped reading. I was torn. Should I start the other book I brought home with me? Should I go back to the library and search the shelves for the missing book? Perhaps I made the wrong decision, but I decided to press on. And that may be why I found this book so confusing for so long, and why, ultimately, I didn't enjoy it as much as I might have.

Part of the problem was the fact that the author starts the story from the points of view of four different characters. Now, that is just too many. Had I not known her style of writing from the previous books, I would have been utterly lost. As it was, I struggled to to keep things straight, and I don't enjoy that. I did settle into the book about halfway through, but I don't know if that was through my efforts or the author's.

Through the many references to the previous book, I believe I already know the "surprise" ending, so I probably won't be adding it to my reading list. Like all mystery readers, I prefer to solve the mystery on my own. What's the fun of it if I already know?

my blog - in the news (sort of)

2010-08-26T04:21:00.000-07:00

Check it out. Here I am quoted along with writers from the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Akron Beacon Journal. I'm pretty sure they got paid for their efforts, however. A link to my blog would have been nice, at least...

http://www.akronartmuseum.org/display/content/newsletter/index.php?type=nl&unid=246

maybe it's my math...

2010-08-24T04:29:00.000-07:00

We are working on many fronts to rid ourselves of the "stuff" we have accumulated over the past 35 years or so. We just can't take it all with us, and, in fact, we don't want to. It is time to divest. Julie and Tom have both been home to take carloads of belongings (theirs and ours) home with them. Julie and I took a carload of clothes and shoes to Goodwill. Ben sold his record collection and a great deal of stereo equipment to the local used record store. We have arranged with an auction house to sell the radios, televisions, clocks, toasters, and assorted collectibles we have been amassing all these years. They will also take regular household items we no longer need/want.

I have taken on the task of getting rid of some of the hundreds and hundreds of books we have in practically every room in the house. In a previous post I mentioned Last Exit Books, a used book store here in Kent. I don't know when the store first opened, but when we moved here ten years ago, it was a tiny storefront shop with a few book shelves and a comfortable reading chair. It has grown like crazy, and earlier this year, moved into a much larger space in the same building.

When I took my first box of books in to be sold several weeks ago I explained to Jason, the shop owner, that we would be re-locating to Maryland. "Oh, that's too bad, " was his reply. "I mean, it's probably good for you guys..." I assured him it was good for us, and he assured me that he would be happy to look through all the books we would care to bring in. I haven't kept track, but since then I have probably taken in ten or twelve boxes full of books. Sometimes Julie helps me and sometimes Ben does, and sometimes I just haul them in by myself.

Typically, Jason looks over what I bring in and offers me a price for the majority of the books, setting aside the ones he doesn't want. This system works great for both of us, but lately, I am increasingly concerned that the number of books we want to get rid of is growing instead of getting smaller. Let me give you an example. I had four boxes of books in the trunk of my car. Ben and I took two boxes to Jason over the weekend. I now have three boxes in the trunk, with two more waiting to go. Yesterday I found two stacks of books in a cupboard I thought contained only pottery and other decorative items. I am feeling a little panicky about this. I need to get the books out of the house. When I told Ben about my concern, his reply was, "the nearest thing I can figure out is that they are born pregnant" - a classic Star Trek reference, and very entertaining, but not very helpful.

I figure I will take a box or two of books to the bookstore today, but I'm kind of scared to open the trunk and look inside. I'm pretty sure there were three boxes in there the last time I looked. Or was it four?

random thoughts on house hunting

2010-08-22T04:29:00.001-07:00

I'll admit, I have been known to watch HGTV. If I can't find Bones or any of the Law & Orders on any of the cable stations, I'll watch House Hunters or that new Curb Appeal with the real cute host. But I take the shows for what they're worth, and I am afraid most people don't. I am afraid watching HGTV has created unrealistic expectations in real life house hunters. And, sadly, our little house does not live up to those expectations.

You know what I'm talking about. Crown molding is de rigueur, along with double sinks in master bathrooms, walk-in closets as big as my bedroom, and stainless steel appliances and granite countertops in every kitchen. It makes for entertaining television, perhaps, but real-life, middle-class, average people don't live like that, although now they think maybe they should. No, it's more than that - they think they have to. And I just don't understand that. Why would anyone want to have a bigger, more elaborate, more expensive house than they really need? What's the point?

I think this trend has spawned the hideous warrens of McMansions that are springing up across the country. Pointlessly meandering streets are lined by vinyl-sided houses available in every shade of beige and faux brick fronts. You better hope you never get lost in one of those "neighborhoods". No amount of rational thinking will get you out of there. Even your trusty GPS will run up the white flag.

I don't know. Maybe this is progress and it's time for me to jump on the bandwagon. I guess I might just be getting too old to run that fast and jump that high. Or maybe I'm just jealous, but I don't think that's it. I don't want to own a house larger than I need. I don't want to leave a bigger carbon footprint than I absolutely have to. I don't want to get lost in my own neighborhood. And, seriously, I don't even like crown molding.

crate training - for all of us

2010-08-19T04:29:00.000-07:00

Lucie and Rufus hate to ride in the car. I hate it, too. Lucie sits on my lap and shakes as I drive, and Rufus paces back and forth in the back seat and cries. The entire time. Needless to say, we don't travel in the car together very often. Basically, I take them to the groomer's or to the vet - which may be the reason they hate it so much.

However, I see a very long car trip in their future, so things will have to change. To that end, I bought them a soft-sided crate, large enough for both of them. We have been trying to acclimate them to the crate gradually. I set it up in the kitchen, with a couple of their soft blankets inside it. And just left it there, for a couple of days. They were curious, but not especially interested in getting inside. Next, I would entice them one at a time inside the crate with a small treat. They each had to sit and lay down inside the crate, then I would pat the floor in front of the crate, and invite them to come out.

Last week, we removed their big pillow from the corner of the kitchen, and placed the crate there instead. We have been delighted to see each of them climb into the crate and curl up there on several occasions. Earlier this week, Julie and I loaded the crate into the back seat of my car, then brought Lucie and Rufus out to the car and zipped them into the crate. Off we went for a very brief ride around the block. I don't think we were even in the car for five minutes. They did really pretty okay. No major freak outs - by any of us. We repeated the ride later in the day. Still okay. Yesterday, I took them out by myself and we drove to a nearby farm stand to buy some fresh corn. I left them in the car as I bought corn, and they seemed fine with that. We were home within twenty minutes of leaving, but still, a good run.

Our next big test is coming sooner than I would have liked. Today, I will have to hurry home from work and pack the doggies into the car so that some prospective buyers can look at the house. I have mixed feelings about that, but this is the path we have chosen, and off we must go. We are supposed to be out of the house for an hour, so I really don't know what we will do during that time. Drive past the house until the driveway is empty, no doubt. I understand that the longer the buyers are here, the better, but Lucie and Rufus and I hope it won't be too long. We're all creatures of habit.

into the belly of the beast

2010-08-17T11:49:00.000-07:00

The For Sale sign went up last night. Papers were signed. The rooms were measured. Photographs were taken. I guess this is really going to happen. I had forgotten the curious sense of shame and embarrassment that I feel when a For Sale sign appears in our front yard. I don't really understand why I feel that way, but I know that I do. I feel a bit like a quitter, I guess. Like a rat leaving a sinking ship - although this ship is far from sinking in any real sense. I still love this house and this neighborhood, but the time has come to go. I just don't like the idea that anyone who drives by or sees the listing online will know that. And now you do, too.

how summer tastes

2010-08-03T04:27:00.001-07:00

I don't know yet what we will have for dinner tonight, but I do know that I will probably be serving fresh corn and tomatoes with our meal - just as I have done for the past two days. High summer has come to Northeast Ohio, and that means farmer's markets and farm stands piled high with freshly-picked local produce. Even Ben - a notorious meat-eater - says that he could be a vegetarian this time of year.

I love corn on the cob - who doesn't? - but it's the fresh-from-the-vine tomatoes that I crave all the rest of the year. I like them best at room temperature, just sliced and salted, but we also love cherry tomatoes in a salad with blanched green beans and Vidalia onions. I love coarsely-ground pepper over tomato wedges and cottage cheese, but I have to say, no one else in the family shares my passion for that dish. We all love gazpacho, however, and when Julie comes home this weekend, it will be time for a big batch of that.

We have never had much luck growing our own tomatoes at this house, possibly because we are surrounded by so many big, old oak trees. We keep trying however, and this year we have three different varieties in various stages of ripening. Ben and I poke at the fruit almost every day, and I have to admit, I have been known to pick a ripe cherry tomato, wipe it clean on my shirt, and pop it in my mouth. That's what summer tastes like!

Here is the basic recipe for the green bean salad I make. I adapted it from a salad we were served somewhere else, so feel free to do the same.

fresh green beans
fresh cherry tomatoes
1/4 Vidalia onion, coarsely chopped
fresh basil leaves
extra virgin olive oil
apple cider vinegar
salt
freshly ground pepper

Snap both ends off the green beans, then snap them in half. Cook beans until they are just tender, then plunge them into cold water to cool. While beans are cooking, cut tomatoes in half, coarsely chop onion, and chiffonade the basil leaves. Prepare a simple salad dressing of the oil and vinegar, season with salt and pepper to taste. Drain beans. Combine all ingredients, chill well. This salad tastes best if eaten the day it is prepared.

what happens to a dream deferred?

2010-08-01T14:59:00.000-07:00

More than thirty years ago, Ben and I packed our suitcases and headed our little two-door, stick shift, non-air conditioned Toyota Corolla due east. I had never seen the ocean, so Ben was taking me to Virginia Beach, and to Chincoteague, a tiny island off the coast of Virginia. Soon after we made the big right turn in Breezewood, PA, we were in Maryland. The whole time we drove through the state, we remarked on how beautiful it was there, from the rolling hills to the Chesapeake Bay to the long, deserted beaches of Assateague Island. We agreed right away that we would love to live in Maryland. Over the years, subsequent trips through the state only reinforced that idea.

But we had a baby, and another baby, and we bought a house, then another house, and we just never seemed to make it out of Ohio. Tom grew up and moved to Chicago. Julie grew up and moved to Maryland. Here Ben and I remain, and up until recently it looked like we would always remain here. That is not the case, however, and it seems that sooner rather than later, we will be moving to Maryland. Ben has accepted a position with the company where he works in Laurel, Maryland.

As we were trying to make this difficult decision, a phrase kept running through my head: "what happens to a dream deferred?" and I knew I had to track it down. It is the first line of a poem* by Langston Hughes. Lorraine Hansberry took the title of her play, A Raisin in the Sun, from that same poem. The family in her play, the Youngers, have deferred their dream to move to a better neighborhood for many years, and when they finally have the chance to do so, cannot seem to agree on a course of action.

Ben and I are in agreement, however - we will be moving. It is an exciting and terrifying prospect, and when I wake up with the dogs at 4:30 a.m. there is no falling back to sleep for me anymore. It seems overwhelming in every way, but I just keep reminding myself that people do it every day and so can I. I will be posting about our move over the next couple of months, so buckle your seatbelts. It may be a bumpy ride.

*What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

helpful hints from Anne Louise

2010-07-27T17:26:00.001-07:00

I made a rookie error while cooking the other day, and paid the price for it. I was heating some olive oil in a skillet while I chopped some onions and peppers that I was planning to sauté. The chopping took me a little longer than I thought it would, so the oil got a little too hot. When I dumped my veggies into the skillet, they were too wet, so hot oil popped onto my shirt, my shorts, and both my arms, the right one in particular.

It really hurt! I knew right away I had been burned pretty badly. Here's what I did about it. I got a bottle of soy sauce from the refrigerator, and poured it over the burns on my arms. I let it dry there. I'm telling you, it stopped hurting right away, and the burn on my left arm virtually disappeared. My right arm blistered, and did start to hurt a bit today when the blister deflated.

I know I read this tip some where at some point, but I sure don't remember where or when. All I know is that I have used it before and that it works, so I pass it on to you. I hope you don't ever have occasion to use this helpful hint, but I hope you remember it if you do. Alternately, you could remember to dry your vegetables before putting them in hot oil. Whichever.

something's happenin' here

2010-07-26T04:49:00.000-07:00

It's not that I haven't thought about posting over the past few days, it's just that all I can think about is a big decision we're trying to make. I'll let you know when we know. It's big.

looks at books

2010-07-22T05:31:00.000-07:00

As promised, here are reviews of the books I brought home from the library last week.

Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies

This is a memoir detailing the break-up of the marriage of a television actress and a pompous, womanizing, poetry professor. Here's why it was a must read for me: The actress has a recurring role on Law & Order: SVU as the wife of detective Elliott Stabler. A life-long New Yorker, she left New York and followed her husband to his teaching position at --- Oberlin College. Yes, that Oberlin College. I probably need to devote an entire post to how deeply entwined the little college town of Oberlin, Ohio is with memories of my childhood and my dad and our time spent there. Suffice it to say, I know that town.

Gillies is not a professional writer, and the book is written in a conversational tone - pretty much like the tone I try to use here. You know me, you're interested in me, and in what I have to say. And I was interested in what she had to say. I was fascinated by the town as she described it, and was amazed to find that she lived right down the street from a friend of mine who has lived in Oberlin for years. (She didn't know the author - I asked her.) I tried to picture Gillies in the bead shop or the Ben Franklin, but I couldn't quite manage that.

The author doesn't pull any punches, and the gut-wrenching passage where she kneels in the snow to beg the other woman not to destroy her children's happiness is overly-dramatic, sure, but as the song lyrics say, love has no pride, and that rang true to me. I love how she frames that scene from the perspective of an elderly professor watching from his window, and the knowledge of him there is what gets her up off her knees.

This memoir offers what no one can resist - a peek inside the lighted windows of the lovely old house we walk past on a crisp evening, and the reassurance that the people who live there are, after all, just like us.

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The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt

I have been fascinated by Nikola Tesla since the first time we saw the huge statue of a seated Tesla on Goat Island near Niagara Falls. As I read the attached plaque, I wondered why I had never heard of this brilliant inventor who illuminated the entire world. I vowed to learn more about him, and in the years since have read everything I could find about this eccentric genius. There hasn't been much, so I was excited to read a review of this novel several months ago, and even more excited to find it on the library shelf.

I am very disappointed by this book. The author wrote in such a detached style that I could never get into the book. I felt like I kept waiting for the introduction to be over and the story to actually begin, but by the time I was fifty pages into the book, I realized the narrative wasn't going to change into a smooth readable style. The dual plots chugged along, but Hunt never lingered long enough to engage us. The passages where the author repeated what had been written elsewhere about Tesla were not well integrated and stood out like they had been written in neon ink.

Hunt had a good idea when she attempted to describe the New Yorker, the hotel where Tesla lived until his death in 1943, but her attempt fell short of the mark, and I will have to learn about it elsewhere. The author also failed to capture the magic of New York City at the turn of the century, something which I would think would be difficult to do. The secondary plot of the fictional chambermaid was depressing more than anything else, and really, Tesla's declining years were depressing enough on their own.

To learn about the greatest inventor of the 19th and 20th centuries - and, possibly, of all time - read Margaret Cheney's biography, Tesla: Man Out Of Time, or, really, just google Tesla. You'll be amazed by what you find. I guarantee it.

maybe it builds character, but I doubt it

2010-07-19T04:09:00.000-07:00

Today I have to drive to my dad's vacant house and wait for a service man from the local gas company to replace the indoor gas meter with an outdoor one. This is something that I most devoutly do not want to do, and I almost never do things I don't want to do. I am dreading this, but perhaps not for the reasons you think. Yes, it is inconvenient, and yes, I hate waiting for workmen to arrive - although I was given a two-hour window, which I think is not bad if he actually shows up then. No, the real problem is the heat.

My dad's house has never had central air, but he does a have a large window air conditioner that my brother used to install in the living room window every summer. Unfortunately, it has been many years since the last time he did that. I had to pretty much quit visiting them in the summer, as I would get very overheated and uncomfortable there, and then wouldn't be able to cool off. My dad doesn't mind the heat. In fact, he seems to like it in some way that I can't understand at all.

The forecast for today has the temperature in the mid-80s with humidity to match. I mean, it's July. It's hot. With that in mind, I have been thinking about how I will cope with the heat ever since I made the appointment. Here's what I have come up with. Worst case scenario, I can just sit in my car with the AC running. I said worst case. I put a lawn chair in the trunk of my car. I could sit out on the back patio for a while and knit. I will bring my knitting, and, also, a book I have been wanting to read. If it rains (which is a possibility) I can take my lawn chair down to the basement, where I'm sure it will be cool, although not very dry. The last time I was at the house, there was an old TV and a leather couch in the living room, but I am pretty sure it will be way too hot to sit in there - although that would be ideal.

I am not above cutting and running, if it comes to that. If it gets to be 1:45 or so (my time slot is 12 to 2) I will call and let them know I am leaving. I mean, two hours is all I can realistically stand, and who knows how long it will take once the service man arrives. One has to know one's limitations.

Thanks for listening. I'll try not to be so whiny next time.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update: Well, it was just no big deal, as it turned out. I drove to Elyria, stopped at McDonald's for a filet-o-fish sandwich, and headed for my dad's house. It wasn't too hot inside yet, and I wandered around the mostly empty house while I ate. As I have in the past, I tried to summon some happy memories about the place, but to no avail. I never liked that house. It never felt like a home to me, and now it feels alot like an albatross hanging around my neck. A really dusty albatross in need of a good cleaning.

After I ate, I got my lawn chair out of the trunk of my car, and set it in a shady spot on the back patio. I took out my knitting and set to work. I was only on my second row when I heard a truck pull into the driveway. Yes, it was the young man from the gas company arriving at about 12:20. I was delighted. Even more so when he told me he would be done in about five minutes (!) As I turned on the basement light, I told him I didn't have the slightest idea where the meter was. I was charmed by his reply. "That's okay," he said. "I'll do a little spelunking down there, and I'm sure I'll find it." Spelunking - that just about describes it perfectly.

I was loading my lawn chair into the car by 12:45, and I was home by 2:00 - and that includes a stop at a roadside stand for fresh corn and tomatoes. While it's true that I drove two hours for an errand that took fifteen minutes, I am not complaining. It could have been so much worse. Once again, by expecting the worst, I was pleasantly surprised when things turned out to be not totally awful. And, boy, do I feel fantastic to have that taken care of!

I may live to regret this...

2010-07-16T07:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning a little lady came into the shop. When I asked if I could help her, she replied, "I sure hope so because I'm in a pickle." She went on to explain that she would be attending a baby shower for her first great-grandchild next month - a little girl to be named after her. "Isn't that wonderful?" she asked me. I agreed that it was wonderful indeed, but wondered what the "pickle' could be. Vivian, for that is her name, went on to tell me that she saw a pattern online for a wonderful knitted baby blanket with owls on it. Did I think I could find the pattern? Well, probably, as I know of several owl-patterned items on Ravelry. I found the pattern easily enough, but we still weren't at the root of the problem, as it turned out. I should have anticipated her next question, really.

"Do you know of anyone who could knit it for me? I can't knit at all," she said. "And, in fact, I have a degenerative eye disease." Oh man, I thought, oh man. Vivian had picked out some yarn. The pattern wasn't difficult. But I didn't want to commit to knitting it for her. We talked around the issue for a bit, and finally I said, "Look, here's why I'm hesitating on this. It's going to be expensive. I design patterns. I sell my own work. I value my work. It doesn't come cheap." "Oh, I wouldn't expect it to," Vivian assured me. "If that's the only thing that's stopping you, don't let it."

I thought of the joy of living to see a great-grandchild. I thought of a granddaughter who loves her grandma enough to name her first child after her. And, honestly, I thought of a bit of extra money in my pocket. Yeah, you know I said yes. I'm not regretting it too much yet. It's good karma, right? That's what I'm telling myself, anyway.

there'll be a change in me

2010-07-14T05:36:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that I am pretty into knitting. Okay, yes, that I have been obsessed with knitting for more than two years, and pretty much spend every spare moment (and some that I can't spare) with a pair of knitting needles in my hands. Knitting has tapped a wellspring of creativity in me that I didn't even know I had, and I find it deeply satisfying. But lately, I am, well, not as satisfied. I still love to knit, you understand, but I am restless. I cast about for something more. When I received a couple of comments last week on some of my blog posts from a blogger whom I greatly admire, I felt embarrassed that more than a month had passed since the last time I posted. I realized I missed posting on my blog. Well, that is easily remedied, and here I am.

Still, something is missing, and I think I know what it is - my lifelong passion for reading. Up until I started knitting, I believe I would have defined myself first and foremost as a reader. From the time I learned to read - more than fifty years ago - I could generally be found with a book in my hand. We didn't own a lot of books when I was a kid, but I loved the public library, and it is one of the first places, other than school, that I remember walking to without my parents. My friend, Judy, and I used to read books together on our front porch swing. I am a quick reader, and used to wait impatiently for her to finish each page, especially when we were reading The Pink Dress or the racy Forever Amber.

After we were married, it took Ben some time to adjust to the fact that his new wife spent most of her spare time with her nose buried in a book. When we moved, our new apartment was next door to the public library. Talk about a great location! I read throughout both of my pregnancies, and, looking back, I believe reading helped me to maintain my equanimity during those early childraising years. Something even more important was happening then, as well. My kids were learning by my example about the pleasures of reading a book. When they needed Mom, I was almost certainly sitting in the flowered chair by the bookcase, with a book in my hands. Need I say they are both avid readers?

I worked at the library for eleven years, and belonged to two book discussion groups. When we moved again, I joined an online community of readers and book collectors, and began seriously collecting books. I read all the time. Then I started knitting, and all I wanted to do was knit. I bemoaned the fact that I couldn't knit and read at the same time, so Ben bought me an iPod player so that I could listen to books that way. He even put some short stories and books on my iPod. But, you know, it wasn't the same as reading, and I never really took to it. I like to hold a book in my hands. I like to turn the pages. I like to linger over passages and re-read them - or skip them altogether.

So the past couple of years have gone by without me even picking up a book - something I could never have anticipated. I still read the book reviews in the Plain Dealer every week, and frequently thought, now that sounds like a book I would have read. A couple of times, I even got the small wire-bound notebook out of my purse and wrote down a promising title and author. But that was where it ended.

Yesterday, however, I went to the library. I headed for the new book section, right in the center of the first floor, and - it wasn't there. The shelves weren't even there. It was a big empty space. I couldn't believe it. It was like one of those dreams where you think you know where you are, but things keep shifting and changing, and suddenly you're not sure. I looked to the familiar stacks on my left, then looked back to see if everything had returned to normal, but it hadn't. I couldn't find the new books. I was reduced to asking the reference librarian where they had gone. When she told me, I asked her when they had been moved there. "Like a year ago" was her reply. After that much time, I guessed it was pointless for me to tell her that I don't like change in general, and didn't like that change in particular.

After a great deal more browsing than I thought I would need, I did manage to find two books that I had read reviews of - one of which I even located through my little notebook. They are small books, and I should be able to read them pretty quickly. I feel the need to start small, and work my way back to the contemporary literature that had become my favorite reading material. I have decided to bring you along on this journey, and will be posting my book reviews here on my blog, at first. If this reading thing catches on, I may create a new blog just for reviews. Who knows? I'll keep you "posted".

Detroit Disassembled

2010-07-12T07:01:00.000-07:00

Julie and I were casting about for an outing one day last month when she was in town. We are always talking about re-visiting the Akron Art Museum, so I checked their current exhibitions. You probably can't imagine my excitement when I found that the Detroit photographs of Andrew Moore are there right now in a fantastic exhibition entitled "Detroit Disassembled".

I was already aware of these photos, actually, because Ben had shown them to me some months earlier when he found them online. We marveled over the images of massive structures abandoned to the elements. I knew Julie would love the photographs, and I couldn't wait to see them displayed on such a grand scale, so off we went to the museum.

I was blown away by what I saw. The photographs in the exhibition are so beautiful and evocative that, well, really, words fail me. I offer you instead the catalog's description:

"Moore’s images, printed on the scale of epic history paintings, belong to an artistic tradition that began in the 17th century. Numerous artists have used ruins to remind their viewers of the fall of past great civilizations and to warn that contemporary empires risk the same fate. Moore’s soaring scenes of rusting factory halls and crumbling theaters share the monumentality of Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s 18th century engravings of the fallen civic monuments of ancient Rome and Greece. His photographs of skeletal houses and collapsed churches carry forward the Romantic tone and rich hues of Caspar David Friedrich’s 19th century paintings of fallen medieval cathedrals and castles."

If you live anywhere in Northeast Ohio, I encourage you to see this exhibition while it is here. See it to contemplate what has become of a once-great city in our contemporary throw-away society. See it as social commentary. See it as a warning. Or just see it for the haunting beauty and grandeur of an abandoned train station, or the hollow emptiness of a once-bustling automotive complex. Just go and see it. You'll thank me.

Here is a link to the museum website: http://www.akronartmuseum.org/

And you can read here about Detroit Disassembled specifically: http://akronartmuseum.org/exhibitions/details.php?unid=1499

Or view additional photos from Andrew Moore's Detroit series:
http://www.andrewlmoore.com/view_project.php?project_id=13

the light at the end of the tunnel

2010-07-11T09:08:00.001-07:00

Summer is not the best time to work at a yarn shop. This is not a surprise, you say? I didn't mean it to be - just a simple statement of fact. When I first started working in a yarn shop, it was in the summer - two years ago, actually. Then, I was thrilled it was the off-season, as I knew I had, well, everything, really, to learn.

Last year was a particularly bad summer at the yarn shop for me. My former co-workers and I were gradually realizing that the shop we loved was slowly being allowed to die. Killed off is too strong a term, perhaps, but that is more what it felt like. When the yarn reps called to make appointments to show the new fall yarns, they were put off and postponed and lied to, really, until they got the message, and began spreading the word that Miss Chickpea's was not long for this world. How embarrassing and sad that was.

So this summer is pretty awesome in comparison to that. It's a slow time of year, sure, but things are happening here at My Sister's Yarn Shop, let me assure you. Last month, Judi, our shop owner, took all of us to Columbus to attend TNNA (The National NeedleArts Association) Yarn Market, which is a big deal in the knitting world, in case you didn't know. We saw the booths of dozens and dozens of vendors, all displaying their newest yarns and needles and patterns and buttons for fall, which, as you can imagine, is a big season for yarn and knitting. We had a fantastic time, and were overwhelmed and excited by all that we saw there.

What's happening at the shop now, though, is the truly exciting part. The yarn reps have come and gone, we have ordered our yarn, and any day now, the new fall yarn will start arriving. It is time to make room for all that yarn, and I, for one, can't wait. Can't wait for the UPS man to start bringing us boxes and boxes full of yarn. Can't wait to start putting the skeins of beautiful wool and merino and alpaca yarn on the shelves.

And here's one thing I know for sure: when the new fall yarns start arriving, the customers won't be far behind. Can't wait to see them!

Lefton's legacy? Lefton's folly

2010-06-07T15:00:00.000-07:00

When I worked at KSU, I learned that the big open square between the library and the student center has a name: Risman Plaza. Well, okay. I imagine someone donated a lot of money to the university for that honor. Not enough money for a whole building, maybe, but probably more money than I will ever have, anyway.

My freshman year of college, the student center – and the plaza outside it – were under construction. I believe it was the spring of 1973 before everything was completed. I know that was when the awkward, angular fountain was filled with water for the first time. The multi-tiered fountain seemed the antithesis of smooth, flowing water to me, with its straight lines and rough, pebbly concrete texture. Maybe that was the point. It was an instant hit with the students, at any rate, and they swarmed all over it, some climbing clear to the top, others content to splash in the pool or sit underneath one of the waterfalls.

My roommate, Sarah, and I wandered down there one beautiful spring afternoon, wearing short cut-offs and halter tops, I imagine. (Because that was what we wore on beautiful spring afternoons.) Sarah was more athletic than I, and liked to think of herself as athletic, which is slightly different. She kicked off her sandals and began to climb the fountain. Not to be outdone, I followed her. The first level was easy, and I loved the idea of being part of the fountain, with water cascading down from above me, and flowing underneath my feet to fall below me. Sarah climbed to the next level, and with some difficulty, so did I. At that point, I became concerned about how I would get down again without totally making a fool of myself, so the moment had passed for me.

When Tom and Julie were little, we would take a car trip to Kent every year or so, and a highlight of the trip for them was to walk on the broad edge of the fountain, or if they were feeling brave, to step to one of the large, square blocks surrounded by water. As so many before them had, they shrieked with delight when the shifting wind sent a fine mist of water their way.

I always thought the fountain was unattractive, to be perfectly honest, and it sprayed water all across the plaza whenever the wind blew through the wind tunnel the buildings had created there – which was basically all the time. Over the years, I know the university architects tried various means to tame the winds that swirled through the plaza, and it was re-constructed at least once. I believe that was after a winter so harsh that ropes were strung across the large open square for students to hold onto as they crossed the icy expanse. For all that, though, the fountain and the square still looked pretty much as they always had. On warm, sunny days, the steps ringing the plaza were full of students sitting and eating and chatting and just watching the world go by.

All that is gone now. Ben and I decided to take a walk on campus yesterday evening, and our meandering path led us to Risman Plaza. Or as close as we could get to it, anyway, with a 10-foot tall chain link fence surrounding it. Everything inside that perimeter is gone. The graceful curve of steps, the years of plantings, the angular fountain that I had grown to love – all gone. University president Lester Lefton didn’t like the way the plaza looked, you see. So now it must all be changed. I understand that change is good, indeed, vital, to the life of the university. It is change for the sake of change that concerns me. And the fact that one man’s opinion is deemed more important than that of so many thousands of students, faculty, and staff troubles me, as well. But, thus it has always been, eh?

working hard to make it work

2010-05-30T07:02:00.001-07:00

Ben and I do our best to celebrate holidays, even when just the two of us are here. Our trip to the grocery store yesterday included lots of meat to grill out, pasta shells for a pasta salad, and some hard lemonade - just for fun. Our iced tea glasses last night had sprigs of fresh mint in them, and the salmon was grilled just right. I hope I remember that there is a whole watermelon chilling in the basement fridge. It's hard, though, to feel festive - or, as festive as we used to feel, anyway.

When Tom and Julie were little, Memorial Day always included the library book sale, and, of course, the Memorial Day Parade. The first time we took them to the parade, I don't think Julie was walking yet - so it was probably right before her first birthday - and I remember the cute sunbonnet she wore with little pink strawberries on it. We hated the loud noise of the fire trucks with their sirens blaring, but loved the Elyria High School Pioneer Marching Band, every year playing their fight song as they marched down Washington Avenue. The best years were those when Julie marched in the band. She always looked for us, and we were always there.

Everyone in town was at the library book sale, and it was a good place to catch up, as well as a great place to buy cheap used books - something we all loved. I remember the year Julie found books stuffed with old postcards from all over the world. She probably still has them...

After the parade, we usually headed to my dad's house for a cook-out. Bill worked quickly and efficiently, and always provided an incredible spread, with much more food than we could ever eat. I loved that he used the same spatula to flip the burgers that my dad used when we were kids. The years that Laura was there were always fun - she manged to fit right in with our little family, and we all loved her.

When we lived in Eastern Heights, someone in the neighborhood would get up early and put little American flags in every front yard on one street or another. Whoever was walking Bobo that morning had to restrain him from lifting his leg at each flag as we passed it. Not that we cared at all, but no point in needlessly offending the neighbors...

Now, of course, Tom and Kristy live in Chicago, and Julie and Andrew live in Maryland, and we haven't lived in Elyria for almost ten years. My dad lives at Wesleyan Village, and Bill lives in Cleveland Heights with Catherine. Ben and I will spend this Memorial Day at their house. I don't know that this is the start of a new tradition, but I do know we'll have a good time. And we won't even have to work hard at that.

big city musings from a small-town girl

2010-05-24T20:31:00.000-07:00

Through a sad twist of fate, I have lived all my life in small Ohio towns, but I dream of big cities. Regular readers will know how much I love New York, but I also really love Chicago. Like many Midwesterners, it was the first big city I ever visited - in photos of my stay there at Aunt Helen and Uncle Fred's duplex on South Loomis Street I look to be about eighteen months old - and it is certainly the big city I have visited most often and where I have spent the most time.

I have driven to Chicago, taken the train, and flown, so unless some sort of Great Lakes steamer line re-opens - which, hey, is not a bad idea - I have gotten there every way I could. I flew this time, and since I am such an infrequent flyer, was amazed anew at how quickly I could travel from one reality to another. Landing at O'Hare is always an overwhelming experience, and my heart filled almost to bursting when I finally saw my tall, handsome son scanning the crowds for me. Okay, I know I am biased, but, damn, he is a good-looking guy.

We rode the blue line back to the city, talking so busily that I didn't notice the famous skyline at all. I only stayed with Tom and Kristy for a long weekend, so I include a few impressions that really struck me on this visit. The first morning I was there, I heard Kristy quietly get up and take the dogs out. I sat on the couch and gazed out the window at the view so infinitely different from the one I see from my own front window. I cracked open the window so that I could hear and smell the city. I love that smell, you know?

Tom and I spent a good part of Friday at the Art Institute, checking out the new Modern Art Wing. Tom is good enough to accompany me there whenever I am in town. I know he enjoys it, but I suspect that he does not experience the same pleasure I do when visiting a museum with him or his sister. I treasure those times more than I can say. I feel that we fostered a love of the arts in both of our children, and I am reaping the benefits of that now.

I went to Knit Night with Kristy at her favorite yarn shop, Loopy Yarns. I was grateful to Kristy once again for re-awakening my love of knitting, and grateful to knitting for helping to strengthen the bond between the two of us. I enjoyed watching the interaction between Kristy and her knitting friends, and was as proud as any mom to observe how much they all liked her.

We spent most of Saturday north of Chicago. We went shopping at IKEA and at Mitsuwa, an amazing Japanese bookstore/supermarket/travel agency, with a food court I wish was in every shopping mall in the U.S. Tom showed Kristy and me his office in Evanston, we walked along the nearby beach, and I waded in Lake Michigan. It's the rare body of water I can walk along without kicking off my shoes and stepping in. We drove further north to Wilmette to see the fantastical Baha'i temple there. Seriously, look it up. Words cannot describe how serene and lovely it is.

As we drove through the city streets after a long day on the road, Kristy opened the moon roof. "Look up, Anne," she said, and there was the Sears Tower (or the Willis Tower for those who care to be correct) stretching high into the sky directly above us. It was incredible, and a fitting end to my stay there. I flew out the next morning. It was difficult to leave after such a short time, but it was a perfect visit, and another day might have spoiled that.

I am already dreaming of my next trip to Chicago. Perhaps a stroll down the Magnificent Mile or a Cubs game at Wrigley Field or maybe something entirely new. One never knows in the big city.

making lemonade, metaphorically speaking

2010-05-19T07:14:00.000-07:00

May has let me down this year. Perennially my favorite month, May usually abounds with bright, sunny days when the temperature hovers around 70 to 75° , which even my outdoor thermometer recognizes as "ideal". Not so this year. Cold, rainy day is followed by cold, windy, rainy day, and it's a good thing I kicked the sunbathing habit or I would be really pissed.

As we know, however, this blog features things that are nice, not naughty, so in that spirit, I offer a soup recipe for a rainy day. This is not just any soup recipe. It is for the best damn potato soup I have ever tasted, and I think you might agree with me if you try it. It all started a couple of months ago after one of my blog posts mentioned how I longed for a good potato soup recipe. Bryan (who turns 30 today - happy birthday, Bryan!) sent me his mom's recipe, which I promptly tried. And, I tell you, it was darn good. But I knew I could make it better - if less healthy - and this is the recipe I came up with.

8 slices of bacon, cut into small pieces
medium onion, diced
2-3 celery stalks, diced
3-4 cups cabbage, coarsely chopped (Ben thought 4 cups of cabbage was too much, but that begs the question, can there be too much cabbage?)
2-lb. bag Ore-Ida frozen cubed hash browns
6 cups homemade chicken stock
2 Tbsps butter or margarine
2 Tbsps Wondra flour
2 cups milk
salt
freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup shredded cheese (Whatever you like, really. I use a 4-cheese, reduced fat, Mexican blend.)

Fry the bacon until done in a large frying pan. Remove bacon pieces and drain. Sauté onions, celery and cabbage in bacon grease until cabbage is well-cooked.

In a large saucepan, cook potato cubes in chicken stock until potatoes are tender. Add about a teaspoon of salt. You may want to mash some of the potatoes at this point for a thicker soup.

Melt the butter or margarine in with the sautéed vegetables, whisk in flour to make roux. Remove from heat and whisk in 1 cup of the milk. Return to medium heat and bring to a gentle boil.

Slowly stir the vegetable and white sauce mixture into the potatoes. Add the second cup of milk. Let soup simmer, stirring frequently until thickened. When ready to serve, add bacon pieces and shredded cheese. Heat through until cheese melts. Season with freshly-ground pepper, and check to see if soup needs more salt. Serve in big bowls, because it's really good.

Bon appetit!

sendin' out an S.O.S.

2010-05-17T12:51:00.000-07:00

When I leave work on Thursday, instead of taking the back route home through sleepy little Uniontown and bustling Hartville, I will get on the highway and head north to Cleveland Hopkins Airport. I am flying to Chicago on Thursday afternoon, and as excited as I am at the prospect of seeing Tom and Kristy (and Chicago!) again, I am almost that nervous about getting there.

I guess I have travel anxiety. I don't really know what else to call it. Any time I am planning a trip anywhere, really, by any means of transportation, I get very nervous and anxious about it. Over the years, I have tried to break down my feelings and understand them so that I can just get over them already. I used to think I was afraid of flying, but that's not it. Once I'm finally settled in my teeny little seat, I feel fine. Until we land, that is, and I have to worry about how to make my connection or meet up with whoever is waiting for me at the other end.

I don't suffer as much anxiety when I am driving somewhere, and, in fact, was fine almost all the way to Julie's house. I was a little nervous about getting lost once I left the highway, but since I just drove there last year, I didn't have any problems with that. Travelling with someone else helps, as well, but when Ben and I travel together, I worry about the dogs all the time. I have decided that my anxiety, then, stems mainly from two causes: getting out of my little rut and doing things I don't usually do and therefore don't know how to do, and relinquishing control of - everything.

If you have any helpful hints on how to finally defeat all this and enjoy travelling, for god's sake, please send them to me post haste. I thank you.

local yarn report (like the local farm report, except...different)

2010-05-14T05:42:00.000-07:00

It may sound like a busman's holiday since I work in a yarn shop, but Julie and I visited a different yarn store every day that I was with her. It was great. If you don't go to a big box store, independent yarn shops are as different from one another as they can possibly be. Think of the independent book stores, for example, that you have been in and you will start to understand what I mean.

On Thursday, we went to A Tangled Skein in Hyattsville, just south of College Park. It was the biggest shop we visited, and the one where we spent the most time. I loved the selection of yarns there, but the lighting was not good, especially towards the back of the store. I bought a skein of beautiful, hand-dyed sock yarn there. It is a 50/50 blend of merino and tencel, and the tencel shimmers in the light.

Our Friday trip took us to Fells Point in Baltimore to visit A Good Yarn. I'm afraid that shop got two thumbs down from us. It wasn't just that the space was incredibly small, it was more the fact that there was almost no yarn on the shelves. Nothing was priced - which I know is not uncommon - and the gentleman behind the counter made both of us uncomfortable as he commented on every skein of yarn we touched. The much larger room in the back of the shop seemed to be used exclusively for classes, and I would have liked to have seen more inventory available there. This shop was a disappointment and will not merit a return trip.

Saturday found us in Baltimore again to attend Squidfire's Spring Art Mart in Fells Point. Then we headed to Hampden for lunch at Golden West Cafe, and to check out Lovelyarns, housed in the first floor of one of Baltimore's ubiquitous row houses. It was a delightful little shop, and I bought some sock yarn for Julie and some brightly-colored, hand-dyed yarn for myself. I had been advised to check out the restroom there, which I did. I found it very charming, but have to admit I didn't like it as well as our restroom at Miss Chickpea's. Shelly did have an eye for design - I will always give her that.

We decided to spend Sunday (Mother's Day) the same place we did last year - in St. Michael's, a small resort town on the Chesapeake Bay. One of our stops was at Frivolous Fibers, a yarn shop that also sells pottery and ceramics. That's a concept I can get behind. I was a little surprised to find a knitting group there on Mother's Day, and was glad when the knitter who wouldn't shut up (there's always one!) finally left. Julie and I browsed at our leisure after that. I resisted the temptation to buy several skeins of a beautiful worsted weight yarn, and have decided I can, indeed, live without it.

Although there was certainly some overlap in the brands and types of yarns we saw on our yarn crawl, the variety was amazing. Savvy shop owners know what keeps their steady customers coming back, as well as what tempts newbies to come in and look around. That's a win-win situation as far as I'm concerned.

feed your head

2010-05-13T06:15:00.000-07:00

So, I was on vacation last week in Maryland, and I am heading to Chicago next week for a long weekend. Although I kind of hate that my kids live so far away, I am glad that they don't live in, I don't know, Houston and Tallahassee, for example.

Julie lives just north of Baltimore, and she and Andrew explore the city every weekend. Every time I am there, they have new areas and neighborhoods for me to visit. We also drove to College Park and took the Metro down to D.C. We spent an entire day in the museums along the National Mall. It really is a national treasure to have so much free and available to us. I can't describe how invigorating it is to wander from gallery to gallery, drinking in the works of so much genius and creativity.

That is, of course, what one expects to find in museums of this caliber. The real surprise came the following day when Julie and I visited the American Visionary Art Museum. (http://www.avam.org/index.html) I saw the building on my last trip to Baltimore, and thought it looked intriguing. Julie and Andrew had never been there, so we made it part of our itinerary for this year. We had no idea what to expect when we got there, and honestly, words fail me when I try to describe what we saw. The works on exhibit are those of untrained and unknown artists. Many of them spent time in and out of mental hospitals. They could not hold down steady jobs. Most of these people did not think of themselves as artists. They were simply compelled to create what they did. It is an absolutely fascinating glimpse into the workings of the human mind.

The one idea I took away from AVAM, as it is called, is the absolute knowledge that humans must express themselves. And, by and large, we will use whatever materials we find at hand to help make sense of the world as we see it. I don't know where to begin to describe it all. There were things like the huge model of the Lusitania made from toothpicks, of course, but much more interesting were the more non-traditional works. The hundreds of hand-lettered signs made over a period of years that express one man's frustration and isolation. The notebooks full of collages made of pictures cut from magazines and catalogs, interspersed with hand-drawn images and captions that form a shut-in woman's entire world. The entire elaborate country created by a lonely boy where the man he grew into preferred to spend his life. I could go on and on. Check out their website to learn more.

I love to eat Maryland crab cakes by the Chesapeake Bay, as we did the night I arrived, but I am equally thrilled to fill my brain with new concepts and ideas. Now that's a trip.

musings on a May morning ~ or ~ what if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?

2010-05-04T08:44:00.000-07:00

As Rufus and I took our walk on this lovely morning in early May, I began to wonder how different our quiet, tree-lined neighborhood in this small Midwestern college town looked 40 years ago. I decided probably not all that different. Oh, I'm sure the houses were painted different colors, and the cars parked on the streets were gas guzzlers instead of sleek SUVs. The trees had not grown as tall as they are today, I suppose, and different shrubs probably bloomed just as brilliantly in the lawns. All in all, though, this little neighborhood in Kent, Ohio hasn't really changed much.

Neither, it seems, has the attitude of some people towards the Kent State students who were killed or wounded 40 years ago today on their own college campus. I only had to look as far as this morning's Cleveland Plain Dealer to be reminded of that. Let me share some comments with you.

"The students didn't ever take enough of the blame. Instead of being in class learning like they were suposed to be doing they were outside throwing rocks at people with guns. Should have learned way before college to not antagonize people with guns. Doesn't seem like they were college material."

"Geeze, these hippies won't give it up already. Let's just appease them and turn the entire campus into a memorial. Then let's make every day May 4th. They make it hard to feel bad for them."

"Townspeople huddled in their basements with their young children in the nights preceding May 4th."

And my personal favorite:

"The students who were protesting are a bunch of current left-wing nuts who probably voted for the racist president we now are stuck with."

I guess I thought that all these ignorant, hate-filled people would have died off by now, but I see that is not the case. Eh, to quote some more song lyrics, only the good die young.

I can be flexible

2010-04-17T16:14:00.000-07:00

I got a new yellow hoodie today to replace my old one. So what, you say? Well, I'll tell you, it's monumental. I guess I have to start out by explaining what my old sweatshirt means to me. I bought it shortly after we moved here ten years ago. I went to the university bookstore and picked out an XXL yellow hoodie that said KENT STATE UNIVERSITY across the front in really pretty small letters for a sweatshirt. The letters aren't puffy or rigid or plaid, they're just navy blue printed letters.

I don't think it started out this way, but I wear my hoodie every day. Well, maybe there are a couple of mornings in August when I don't put it on as soon as I wake up, but that's about it. I use my sweatshirt for a bathrobe, for one thing, and even I have to admit that the mornings can be a little chilly in the house, pretty much year round. I'm not complaining, you understand, that's how I like it.

I wear my hoodie for walking Rufus or when I go hiking with Ben. It's great for rainy weather because of, well, obviously, the hood. I wear it underneath my leather coat in the winter when I go out to shovel snow. I took it with me to Arizona and wore it in Mexico, which gave all the street vendors in Nogales the opportunity to yell "Hey, Kent State!" at me as we walked by. It was cool and rainy that day. Again, the hood was great. I wear my hoodie when we go down to the flea market in Hartville or up to the lake at Mentor Headlands.

Actually, it was after our last trip to the lake that I finally had to admit that Ben was right, and it might be time to start looking for a new sweatshirt. We had stopped in Chardon on our way home, and decided to have lunch in a cute little restaurant there. When we were seated at our table, I glanced down at my hands and saw my ragged, torn, dirty shirt cuffs. Granted, I had dressed for hiking along the lake shore, not lunching out, but still I was embarrassed. Maybe my sweatshirt, like my flannel pajama bottoms, needed to stay in the house from now on. Or at least on our property.

Clearly, I needed a new sweatshirt. The problem would be finding the right one. I had some very definite specifications as to color, size, and most importantly, the lettering on the front. In a perfect world, I would find a sweatshirt identical to the one I had, but I already know it's not a perfect world. Ben offered once again this morning to take me over to the bookstore to look for a new hoodie, and this time I took him up on it. "Sure, let's go," I surprised us both by saying.

As we entered the bookstore, Ben used his most relaxed, calming voice. "Now, you're going to be open-minded about this and consider what they have here, right?" "Sure, sure," I told him, but I was already searching for the twin to my beloved hoodie. And, I have to tell you, I damn near found it. It was on the discount rack, actually, and it was the only yellow hoodie - in fact the only yellow piece of clothing - on the entire rack. It was a size XXL and it didn't have any puff paint or stupid mascots on it. Only "KENT" was printed on the front of it, unfortunately in huge, three-inch tall letters, but I can live with that. I can be open-minded.

Ben bought me the sweatshirt, and I brought it home and threw it in the washer with the old sweatshirt, which needed to be washed anyway, as it had some toothpaste down the front of it. Long story short - well, too late for that, I guess - I am wearing the new hoodie right now. It feels pretty okay. I wore it through dinner and ate pasta with sauce, but didn't get any sauce on the sweatshirt. I think that's a good sign. I think it's going to work out all right.

You might think I am going to get rid of my old hoodie or perhaps cut it up for cleaning rags. That is not what I am planning to do. I am going to cut the long sleeves off and wear it like Bill Belichick wears his sweatshirts. That's right. Bill Belichick. I am just not ready to let go of it yet. Maybe I never will be.

isn't it ironic?

2010-04-12T05:23:00.000-07:00

I grew up on the wrong side of town. I don't say this for dramatic effect - it is a simple statement of fact. In our small town, the four junior highs fed into the one huge high school across the street from our house. The neighborhoods that populated the junior high schools on the east and north sides of town were considered "good". The other two --- were not.

I didn't know all this, of course, when I was in elementary school, and I loved my elementary school like I have never loved any other school. We walked home for lunch every day and back again, so I actually walked past Wesleyan Village (called the Methodist Home in those less PC days) four times a day. I considered myself incredibly fortunate when my elementary school became a junior high school at just the right time for me to keep attending classes there. I went to school at Franklin School, later Franklin Junior High, for nine years. My friend Beverly and I walked the empty halls one last time on our last day of classes there. I never went back.

The following fall I started classes at the high school in whose shadow I had lived for as long as I could remember. The multiple buildings took up a whole city block, and like all new freshmen (although I believe we were actually sophomores when we started there) I was sure I would never find my way or make it to class on time. In fact, I still dream of forgetting the combination to my lock or not finding my locker or the classroom where I need to be. Common nightmares, I know.

By the time I entered high school, I already knew that I did not live on the right side of town and I had not attended what was considered a good school. And some of the girls who attended the schools on the north side or the east side never let me forget that. Others were kinder and more accepting, but by my senior year when they finally allowed me into their group, I no longer wanted to belong. The boys from the "good" schools were always nice to me, and I never knew for sure if it was because I was a pretty girl or because my dad served them 3.2 beer whenever they came over. It didn't really matter, I guess.

All this is prelude to saying that my dad told me yesterday that one of the reasons he is unhappy at Wesleyan Village is because it is in such a bad neighborhood (!) and he is uncomfortable walking around there. I will admit, the neighborhood has deteriorated in the 30+ years since we lived there, but that just irritated the crap out of me! It wasn't a nice neighbhorhood even then, but he considered it to be a good enough place to raise his family. Now it is not good enough for him.

Life is funny, I guess, and I know it's better to laugh than to get pissed off about it. But, honestly!

random memories of a small-town childhood, part 237

2010-04-10T18:42:00.000-07:00

Before there was Walmart, mothers actually bought quality clothing for their children. When my brothers and I were little, our mother generally took us clothes shopping at the Jack & Jill Shop on Broad Street. We went to Weiss Shoes next door where they carried Red Goose Shoes when we needed shoes, although I know they sold shoes at Jack & Jill's as well. I know this because I remember very clearly the little painted wooden chairs where children sat as they tried on shoes. The chairs were painted to look like brightly-colored seated clowns, so when you sat in a chair it was as though you were sitting in the clown's lap. Those chairs creeped us out. Because as children know, clowns are innately creepy. At the same time, we were fascinated by them, and we crawled along the row of four or five of them from lap to lap as our mother shopped and chatted interminably with the shop owner. She was a talker.

The winter I was five or six years old, I needed a new coat to wear to church. My mother had promised me that I could pick it out myself, and I was thrilled at the prospect. We walked downtown to Jack & Jill's, and I picked out a purple wool dress coat. I don't remember anything else about it, but it was very purple. I loved it. It turned out to be not at all what my mother had in mind. "How about this one?" she asked me, holding up a somber tweed coat with a black velvet collar. "It has some purple in it," she said, pointing to some little nubs of color in the fabric. So much more appropriate to wear to the hoity-toity Congregational church where we attended, but never belonged.

More than fifty years later, I still remember a small girl's disappointment in the choice she wasn't allowed to make. But you should see the beautiful purple suede jacket I wear now.

a little help here

2010-04-03T14:54:00.001-07:00

Over the years, Ben and I have brought various and amazing things home in (and on) our little cars. Ben bought a dining room table and four chairs at Hartville over thirty years ago, and strapped the table on the roof of his Toyota and drove it home. The chairs were in the back seat and the trunk, I assume. We have brought home overstuffed second-hand chairs and old floor model radios. We bought an odd sofa-like piece of furniture one time that was really two long, narrow pieces of upholstered foam rubber with two similarly covered wedges for back rests. We roped that baby to the top of the car and got it safely home without it going airborne even once.

When Julie and I bought a tv several years ago, the box was way too huge to fit anywhere in my car. With the help of some skeptical stockboys, who laughed at my Swiss Army knife but in the end had to admire its efficacy, we got the television out of the box and into the back seat of the car. We have brought many Christmas trees home, sometimes on the roof of the car and other times protruding from the trunk.

It doesn't work 100% of the time, however. We made so many purchases at a nearby antique mall when we first moved here that we had to have the big pieces delivered. As it was, we chipped the large mirror we had wedged in the back seat. Our purchase today stymied us, as well. Ben and I decided that it was time to replace the glass-topped table and four chairs we had out on the deck. We bought the set along with the house when we moved in almost ten years ago now, and it was definitely showing its age. We had already replaced the cushions, but the chairs have been losing their bolts over the years and sometimes slip in an alarming way when one is seated in them. (I won't even go into the time the big umbrella blew over the roof of the house during a storm.)

Ben and I headed out to Home Depot with the gift certificate my brother gave us for Christmas, and almost immediately found the set we wanted. We were thrilled. We put everything on a dolly and wheeled it out to our car. The table top is 44" x 44", and there was no way that was going anywhere on or in our car. We wheeled our purchases back into the store, and asked to have them delivered. A man waiting for help at the service desk turned to us. "Where do you live? I'll put them in the back of my truck and drive them to your house." We didn't know what to say. He insisted. He was driving to Kent, anyway, he said, to his son's house.

Soon we were loading our table and chairs into the back of his pickup truck along with a big roll of pink insulation and four big window shutters. We told him where we lived, and drove home. Ben voiced the concern we both felt as we drove along. "I hope he's honest. I hope he doesn't rip us off." "I have to believe everything will be fine," I told him. "That's how I have to live my life."

The set looks great on the deck. I can't wait to eat out there.

how it is

2010-04-01T04:52:00.000-07:00

My dad and I went to his favorite restaurant for lunch on Tuesday. I have mentioned the place before. It is a formerly skeezy bar that now houses a small family restaurant. It is a clean, bright space, and the mismatched Fiesta ware is homey and cheerful.

The food is simple, tasty and inexpensive. We usually order the same thing every time. We each have a bowl of stuffed pepper soup - which I am in awe of and wish I could make myself - and we split a grilled cheese sandwich. Sometimes we have a patty melt instead, especially when Dad tells me he hasn't been eating any meat at Wesleyan Village.

We usually see the same waitresses working the lunch hour. For a while, it was a little dumpling of a woman named Patsy, whom my dad recognized from several other restaurants in the area. Patsy always brought us our sandwich halves on separate plates, each with our own chips and pickles. We haven't seen her for a while, but the woman who waited on us this week was someone who has waited on us before. I have to say, her service was indifferent, at best. She brought us one plate with our sandwich and chips on it, and I did not receive any refills on my glass of water, although she did refill my dad's coffee cup.

I took a peek at the bill as my dad pulled a handful of cash from his pocket to pay our tab. It was fourteen dollars and some change - not bad for lunch for two. When Dad left two singles on the table as a tip, I began to understand the service we had received. We got up to leave, and my dad shuffled up the aisle to pay the bill. "Let me just get my coat on," I called to him, but I was rummaging in my purse for my wallet. I found only two singles there, but quickly laid one of them on top of his tip.

I felt bad for the waitress. I felt bad for my dad. I felt bad. That's just the way it is these days.

an examined life

2010-03-25T16:58:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why, but inspiration seems to fly out the window when Julie walks in the door. I just don't have time to sit and write, but, moreover, I don't have time to sit and think (or, more correctly, shower and think or walk and think, as discussed earlier) when Julie is home. That makes sense, I guess. One must be alone to be introspective.

Now, I prefer for Julie to be home. Don't misunderstand and think that I am longing for my long stretches of all-by-myself, navel-gazing time. But, the fact is, Julie doesn't live here anymore. She is an adult with a domicile, and a life, of her own. It's hard for me and for Ben when she leaves us, but we know she doesn't belong here, and wouldn't keep her if we could. Each of us has developed ways to deal with the fact that our little birds have flown the nest, as we always intended for them to do. I examine life as I find it around me, and try to make sense of it as best I can.

Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. That seems extreme, but Ben and I have for many years known a woman whom we feel lives an unexamined life, and it seems to us a very shallow existence. As in most things, I believe there is a balance that must be struck between actually living life and ruminating about it. That's what I'm trying to do here, folks. I hope you find it at least intermittently interesting.

with the new season, a new job

2010-03-23T08:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I shifted yarn for five hours. That might sound arduous or maybe boring to some of you, but you would be wrong. I loved it. I loved the color, the feel, even the smell of all that yarn. It was the semi-annual yarn shift at My Sister's Yarn Shop in Uniontown, just off I-77, north of Canton. Yesterday was my first day of work there. I look forward to many more.

I was in the shop a few weeks ago telling Judi, the shop owner, how much I missed everything about working in a yarn shop, but most especially when all the new yarn and pattern books for the season arrive. "Well, would you like to come work for me?" Judi asked, to my surprise. "Yeah!" was the best reply I could come up with, so here I am. Judi is a hands-on shop owner, which means she actually knows how to knit and help her customers when they get stuck. Further, she works every day, and knows her customers' names and preferences. This is going to be different.

I will try to keep you posted, but, hey, I'm going to be working, so cut me some slack.

a different kind of celebration

2010-03-18T08:01:00.001-07:00

Although I don't have a bit of Irish in me, I have occasionally celebrated St. Patrick's Day in typical ways over the years. A couple of times, I spent the evening (and the wee hours of the morning) in a bar singing and laughing and drinking way too much. For several years, I accompanied my friend, Mary, to the annual parade in downtown Cleveland. I do love a parade, but it was just too cold to stand outside for several hours, even wearing so many layers I looked like the Michelin Man.

This year was different. The weather was beautiful, for one thing. The sky was a clear and cloudless blue all day long. The temperature hovered in the 50s, and for all I know, shot up to 60 in the afternoon. And I was at a celebration of a different kind yesterday. I was in a synagogue, celebrating a young life cut short. I went to Ali's funeral.

Janet and I drove down to Canton, and slipped into seats in the back of the sanctuary. We didn't talk to anyone there. We didn't know anyone there. We had only known Ali. We were there for Ali. I just wanted to occupy a seat there. I just wanted to be counted as someone whose life had been touched by her. We saw Ali's family seated in the front row, but only the backs of their heads as they listened to the rabbis and speakers talk about their beloved Ali. They hugged and wiped their eyes as they listened.

At the end of the service, they followed Ali's casket up the aisle. That was when I saw Ali's mother's face for the first time, and quickly looked away. To look into her face was to think the unthinkable. No, it was to know the unthinkable. My child could die before me. I had learned this lesson before - twelve years ago, almost to the day, when I attended Ava's funeral. Ava had been my kids' regular babysitter when I worked at the library. Her mother was my co-worker and good friend.

Ava was the light of her mother's life, as I'm sure Ali was. You wouldn't have known it to look at Ava, but she was sick most of her life. She was attending law school when she got sick again from too many nights spent studying instead of sleeping. She came home and was admitted to the hospital a few blocks up the street from the house where she grew up. She died there. So, yes, I thought of Ava yesterday. How could I not? Ava's life was too important to forget. So was Ali's. I believe I honor them both by remembering them and mentioning them here. I believe I celebrate their lives.

when inspiration strikes

2010-03-17T07:11:00.000-07:00

I never sing in the shower. Y'all know I have issues about singing. I do remember reciting the toast I wrote for Tom and Kristy's wedding over and over again in the shower, in hopes that I wouldn't have to read it from a sheet of paper. I sometimes cry in the shower, I have to admit. The water falls with my tears, but never washes away the pain, which is perhaps what I hope for. What I do really, really well in the shower is think. (What did you think I was going to say? My kids read this blog. Come on.) I'm serious, though, I do some of my best thinking in there. Sometimes I think so hard that I lose track of what I am doing. (Did I just put shampoo on my hair or was that conditioner? Crap!)

I find that I also do some good thinking when Rufus and I take walks together. The sun shines down on us, the wind blows, Rufus trots along like a champ (most of the time) and I ruminate. I start out thinking about how nice it is to see the sun shine again or when was the last time we saw that one dog who always runs down the hill, and pretty soon I've got half a blog post written in my head.

Do you see a common thread here? Yes, yes, it's when I'm alone, of course, but, also, it's when I can't get to my computer or even a pencil and paper. I'm writing and and re-writing and editing in my head without any possibility of saving my precious thoughts. I have to towel off quickly after stepping out of the shower, and hurry to my desk, with both dogs swirling around my feet, and Lucie pawing to be picked up as soon as I sit down. Or I come in from our walk, and have to make the dogs sit and lay down for their expected treats before I hurry down the hall to my room. If I'm lucky, I remember what I thought was profound or clever or urgent a few minutes earlier.

What I'm trying to say here is that I suffer for my art. This isn't as easy as it looks, folks. I hope you appreciate it.

signs of spring, version 2010

2010-03-16T12:50:00.001-07:00

Rufus and I went for our first walk of the new year today. It was not Rufus's first walk - he has been out with Ben several times already this year. Come to think of it, so have I. So Rufus and I had our first walk together, then. Anyway. It was such a beautiful morning, I just couldn't stay indoors. Rufus is always ready to go for a walk, and he seemed to know as I was tying my shoes that we were headed out. He really didn't pull too badly, and I could tell Ben had begun the process of re-training him.

We took the longer walk today - the one that takes about twenty minutes. I don't usually do that on our first outing, but I just wanted to keep going. Although the snow has finally melted, the lawns haven't started to green up yet, and small branches, sticks, and leaves from last fall are still everywhere on the ground. I was hoping to see crocuses, my favorite harbingers of spring, but was disappointed to see so few. I guess the squirrels must have eaten everyone else's bulbs, as they did ours.

This afternoon, I started in on another, more onerous, odiferous spring tradition - the annual poo pick-up. Since the snow was so deep for so long, weeks and probably months went by when we didn't clean up the back yard at all. The dogs were still pooping there, however. Two dogs, twice or three times a day. You do the math. I picked up poop until my knees locked, and knew I had only scratched the surface. Such is the life of a dog owner.

Ben and I went out for ice cream a couple of nights ago. We went to the Dairy Queen on Water Street that we used to walk to with big groups of our friends when we lived in the dorms. It was such a treat to go out for ice cream. It still is. And you know, I still ordered a Peanut Buster Parfait, and Ben still had a banana split.

Although the thermometer has not made it to 50 today, I still have the windows cranked open a bit. I hear distant cars drive by and a dog several streets over begins to bark, which makes Rufus cock his head and Lucie growl softly. I expect an explosion of barking any minute. The real reason I have the windows open, though, is for the smell. The ineffable smell of spring. It's out there. And now it's in here, too. I love that.

who could turn the world on with her smile?

2010-03-15T20:12:00.000-07:00

Ali was already sick when I met her. In a way, I met her because she was sick. She came into the little yarn shop where I worked and asked to speak to the owner, who, of course, wasn't there. So Ali told us her story. She had brain cancer. She was on disability, so she wasn't allowed to work for pay. But the chemo seemed to be working and she was feeling a little better, and she just got so bored sitting at home all the time. Could she volunteer at the yarn shop? Could she just hang out there? We encouraged the owner to go along with the idea. We thought we were doing something nice for a sick girl. It never entered our minds that Ali would do so much for us.

Ali was so positive, so upbeat, so glad to be alive, I think. She had a beautiful smile and the most wonderful, unexpected laugh. And she laughed all the time. And she talked all the time. That girl could talk! We learned a lot about Ali in the short time that we knew her. We learned that she had been in college at McGill when she became ill. That she had come home to Cleveland to receive the best medical care available to her. We learned about the guy she was dating and the friends she had and the trips she and her mom took together. A trip to the west coast to see her brother and sister-in-law. A trip to Paris - the trip of a lifetime. We celebrated with Ali when she went back to Montreal to receive her degree. We worried over her when a dizzy spell at the shop one day turned into a trip to the hospital, and the discovery of another brain tumor. And when the shop closed unexpectedly last fall, we lost touch with her.

Today Ali died. As I read the announcement on Facebook, and my eyes filled with tears, I realized a song was playing in my head:

Who can turn the world on with her smile?
Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?
Well it's you girl, and you should know it
With each glance and every little movement you show it.

I think Ali would have loved that. I think she would have laughed.

a day in the life

2010-03-12T10:29:00.000-08:00

I drove out to see my dad yesterday, and, once again, when I called to let him know I was coming, he seemed very glad to hear it. Our visit went, really, okay. He did tell me, once again, that he doesn't think he will ever like it there. "Well, I'm sorry to hear that, " was my reply, "because you know you can't live in the house by yourself anymore." Yes, yes, he allowed that was true, and we went on to the next topic. So maybe he just needed me to respond in some way - any way - when he told me that, rather than just looking at him sadly. That's not to say I think he won't ever say that to me again, because I know he will. But now I feel like I know what to say in reply.

I think the weather has brightened Dad's spirits a bit - I know it has mine. He told me has been walking downtown and back every day - a walk of about seven blocks each way. The neighborhood has gone downhill a great deal since we lived there, not that it was ever that great. I'm sure the sidewalks are cracked and hooved up by tree roots, so I worry about that. But I know he needs to get out and walk more than anything else, and I try to remember that. I wonder if he misses the walk he took for so many years around Eastern Heights. I wonder if the people on his route miss him.

All in all, we had a nice visit, which will certainly make it easier to go back the next time. Because there's always a next time.

the dude abides

2010-03-08T13:24:00.000-08:00

The Academy Awards were on last night, but I didn't watch them. It seemed kind of silly when I only saw one movie last year. Granted, I picked a pretty good one, as it was one of the best picture nominees. Along with most of the female population, Julie and I went to see Julie and Julia, and enjoyed it very much.

I was marginally interested in the awards this year because I was very interested to see if Jeff Bridges would win the best actor award. Jeff Bridges, you see, is the protagonist in my all-time favorite movie, The Big Lebowski. I think of that as our family movie, actually. The one that all four of us can sit and watch time after time, each time laughing out loud at the same parts. I don't know what kinds of movies other families share, but our family movie drops more f-bombs than any other movie I know. And we like it that way.

If you've never seen The Big Lebowski, well, you should. I won't try to explain the plot to you, but I will say that the Dude (Jeff Lebowski) is the victim of mistaken identity, and becomes a reluctant detective. John Goodman, as Walter, is the Dude's large, angry, profane sidekick. This is very much a detective movie, but a delightfully skewed one.

Jeff Bridges is the Dude, of course, and from the moment he shuffles down the grocery store aisle in his bathrobe and jellies, I am completely won over. I believe Jeff Bridges is the Dude, and indeed, have read articles to that effect. So I guess I was interested to know if the man could really act, or if he was just being himself. The man can really act. He won the Oscar.

outings

2010-03-07T09:38:00.001-08:00

March is better already than the entire month of February was. Yesterday, Ben and I drove up to Mentor Headlands to see if the ice on Lake Erie was breaking up yet. It's not. It was a really cool trip, anyway, though. Even though we have both lived our lives so close to the lake, neither one of us had ever seen Lake Erie frozen over. The ice on the shoreline looked like frozen waves, and we clambered over them and walked out onto the lake. It was sunny and clear, but still bitter cold when the wind blew. And that was the only sound we heard, really. It is unbelievably quiet along the lake when no waves are crashing into the beach. We will wait a couple of weeks and try it again. I would love to see big ice chunks scattered along the beach.

We drove through Chardon on our way home, and stopped at a yarn shop, (naturally) a gallery with a bookstore in the basement, and a three-story antique shop before we had lunch in a newly-opened restaurant. I liked the yarn shop, and noticed some Neil Young music playing there as I browsed. The woman on her cell phone in the gallery never even looked up as we entered or left, and the guy in the basement bookstore was playing (I kid you not) a Celtic Woman CD. It was a long, narrow, damp basement, anyway, and that music pushed me right out the door, believe me.

I liked the antique shop a lot. Two storefronts next to each other had been joined together, and the basement was full of nooks and crannies with nifty things to look at. Ben and I found a room that was full of postcards (!) and y'all know how we feel about that. One small problem, though, the speaker above our heads was blasting "Doe, a deer" or whatever the hell that song is called from The Sound of Music soundtrack. Again, I felt poked right out of there. Play music I like or don't play music at all, for god's sake. The service was pretty bad in the restaurant where we had lunch, but Ben overheard one of the wait staff saying they had just opened. So, okay. The food was good, anyway.

Today we drove over to Fred Fuller Park, and hiked the Hike and Bike along the Cuyahoga River. Once we got past the water treatment plant, it was a pretty scenic walk. We saw so many birds! Ducks and Canada geese, cardinals and chickadees, red-bellied woodpeckers, with their bright-red heads, and for the first time ever, I saw a kingfisher. As much fun as seeing the birds was hearing them. I don't realize how much I have missed the birdcalls all winter long until I start hearing them again in the spring. That's right, I said it - spring. I just feel optimistic about that. And I never feel that way in February.

are you what you eat?

2010-03-03T11:29:00.000-08:00

I started dinner last night by sautéing diced onions and banana peppers in EVOO. (Extra Virgin Olive Oil) As I stirred and sniffed, it occurred to me that was the third night running I had started dinner the same way, with some pretty different outcomes. Last night I was making linguine with white clam sauce, the night before it was chicken fajitas, and the night before that, my own recipe for Stuffed Cabbage Soup - a sort of de-constructed cabbage roll dish.

Right off the top of my head, I can think of several other recipes that start that way; certainly spaghetti sauce and chili, for example. That got me to thinking. What are the absolutely essential ingredients for me to make a tasty meal? What are the things I can't cook without? I used to know a woman who hated onions and refused to cook with them, wouldn't even have them in her house. I was amazed. Really, I just wouldn't cook without onions.

So here is my list of ten essential ingredients. I'm not even going to get into herbs and spices, except to say that everything must be salted and peppered with freshly-cracked pepper.

1. onions - far and away my #1
2. garlic
3. celery
4. banana peppers
5. EVOO (I prefer Colavita's)
6. homemade chicken stock
7. tomatoes (fresh and canned)
8. mushrooms (fresh and canned)
9. Marsala (which I use in pretty much any recipe that calls for wine)
10. Eggland's Best eggs

I have to admit, I have never used all ten of those ingredients in one recipe, but the first eight sound like the start of something pretty tasty. I'm sure I have probably forgotten something - even though I got up and did a quick tour (a cook's tour) of the kitchen cupboards - and I have probably left out your favorites, as well. So, what are they?

if this isn't nice...

2010-03-02T17:49:00.000-08:00

Ben has challenged me to get back to the original purpose of my blog, and to write more positive, upbeat posts. So that means no writing about my dad for a while, I guess, because there sure isn't anything upbeat to report there. Anyway.

Well, it's not February anymore. And if that isn't nice, I don't know what is. 'Nuff said.

I seem to have worked past my knitter's block. In fact, I am designing a pattern of my own for the first time, and I am really excited about it. I have made so many different pairs of fingerless mitts now that I absolutely understand how they are constructed, so it is just a matter of super-imposing a stitch pattern over that construction. (If you're a knitter, that makes sense to you. If not, you'll have to trust me.)

I am continuing to sell my work. I can pretty much sell it as fast as I can knit it up, in fact. And if I was willing to make seven pairs of identical mitts (which I am not) I could probably sell all of those, as well.

Ben and I have been doing some painting, and the living room and kitchen are both sporting fresh coats of paint. The living room looks fantastic, and only needs us to finally hang some artwork above the couch. (I'm looking at you, Ben.)

The Olympics are over, and so I don't have to worry about watching ice dancing anymore for four years. I will miss Apolo Ohno, though.

Um, did I mention it's not February anymore?

yeah, it's still February, so this is how it goes

2010-02-28T07:35:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was my dad's 83rd birthday. I called him in the morning to wish him a happy birthday, and to let him know that Ben and I would be driving out to see him and take him out to lunch. He expressed concern that the roads would be too bad, but I assured him we would be fine. "Well, that's great, " he said. "I'll be glad to see you." A promising start to the day, I thought, and after picking up cupcakes and sparkling water and birthday plates, napkins, and cups, we headed to Elyria.

Dad did seem genuinely glad to see us, but I was discouraged to see that, as for my last couple of visits, he wasn't wearing one of the nice, new sweaters I bought, but an ugly, heavy, untucked flannel shirt. He had a bad cold, he told us right away, everyone did in that pest house. I stifled a laugh as I thought, for god's sake, that's straight out of Charles Dickens. The Wesleyan Village could not be further from a pest house. I remarked that anywhere alot of people were living together - in a dorm, for example - winter illnesses were rampant. He seemed unpersuaded.

We took Dad to his favorite little restaurant for lunch, which he seemed to enjoy, remarking on how much better the food was there than where he lived. He allowed Ben to treat, which is unusual, but we insisted as it was for his birthday. When we got back to the Village, Dad seemed reluctant to return to his room, and took us on a slow, circuitous tour. Now, I have toured the facility probably four or five times, I was wearing a heavy coat (and it is warm in there) and I had to pee. Finally, there was nothing else for it: "I have to pee! Could we please go back to the room?"

Dad had arranged his desk chair and the bench we brought from the house in a little seating arrangement, so we sat and had cupcakes and chatted. I had brought his college scrapbook along, but he was disinclined to look through it, and told me to keep it. "You guys don't have to stick around," he finally told us, so we took that as our cue to leave. I don't think he realized how personally I took his parting words to us. "Well, I still don't like it here," he said. "I probably never will."

Everyone keeps telling me, he needs time to adjust, he'll get used to it. But I'm not so sure. I tend to agree with my dad. He probably never will.

knitter's block?

2010-02-23T06:03:00.000-08:00

If writers can have writer's block, then I guess knitters can have knitter's block. That would explain my recent dry spell, anyway. I have finished all the projects I was working on, and I just can't think of anything new that I want to knit. It's not that I don't have enough yarn - I don't think you can imagine how much yarn I have. Oh, I haven't reached SABLE (Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy) yet, but I can knit with what I've got for a long time. And it's not that I don't have patterns I am interested in. I have almost seven hundred (!) patterns saved on Ravelry, the amazing online knitting community, and most of them are free, so it's not a lack of funds, either.

I am just not inspired, I guess. Working at the yarn shop was so inspiring. We were always getting new knitting magazines or books, and our customers were always coming in with new ideas they had picked up somewhere else. Most exciting of all, twice a year the sales reps came in with new yarn from all the leading yarn companies. We would come in even if we weren't scheduled to work on those days. Creativity was always in the air in our shop. At my house, not so much.

I have been working on fingerless mitts lately, almost to the exclusion of everything else. That is because I have found a market for them, and can turn a little profit on each pair that I make. Since I am still unemployed, this constitutes a little pocket money for me. And, no, I don't spend it all on more yarn. It might be that I am just sick of working on mitts, I guess, but there are dozens of patterns for them, so it is not like I am knitting the same thing over and over. (Although I find, to my dismay, that is what people seem to want : "Oh, I want a pair just like hers!")

I belong to two knitting groups that meet on a monthly basis, and those are very important to me. So much so, in fact, that I went to one earlier this month in the midst of a "major snow event," as winter weather is now called. Not everyone was there, but I was not the only one who drove in, either. I'm going to the other group on Thursday. Maybe they will inspire me. I don't know. I know for sure they will admire my work and be glad to see me. And that's a good thing.

ever had parsnips?

2010-02-22T05:25:00.001-08:00

We had dinner with Bill and Catherine a week ago Sunday, and she made us a traditional British Sunday dinner consisting of roast leg of lamb with mint sauce, brussel sprouts with a cream sauce, and three kinds of roasted root vegetables, including parsnips. I am not proud to say that I did not even try the brussel sprouts, having a strong aversion to them since I was a child. (I barfed them back out onto my plate the first time I was forced to eat them. Boy, did that make my parents mad!) Anyway.

I had never eaten parsnips before, and they were a revelation. They had carmelized as they roasted, and they were creamy and sweet and delicious. They were my favorite part of the dinner, in fact. Catherine sent the rest of the uncooked parsnips home with us, and I roasted them for the two of us the next day. Still delicious. Right on the edge of tasting like a yucky cooked carrot, but somehow managing to avoid it. I can't wait to explore all the possibilites of the humble parsnip.

Eating cooked vegetables is still a risky business for me. Growing up, the only cooked vegetables we ever ate came from a Birdseye box in the freezer. They had no texture and no flavor, and they generally smelled terrible. At least, that's how I remember it. I used to only like cooked corn, and for many years after I left home, that was the only cooked vegetable I would eat. Gradually, I have learned that buying fresh vegetables and cooking them yields unexpected flavor and texture. Thanks, Catherine, for adding another tasty vegetable to my growing list.

reason #4,357 why I hate February

2010-02-18T07:54:00.000-08:00

This is how Wikipedia defines an ice dam:

An ice dam can occur when snow accumulates on the slanted roof of a house with inadequate insulation and warm air leaks into the attic at penetrations for plumbing stacks, wiring, chimneys, attic hatches, recessed lights, etc. These warm air leaks are known as attic bypasses. Heat conducted through the insufficient insulation and warm air from the attic bypasses warms the roof roof and melts the snow. Meltwater flows down the roof, under the blanket of snow, onto the eave and into the gutter, where colder conditions on the overhang cause it to freeze. Eventually, ice accumulates along the eave and in the gutter. Snow that melts later cannot drain properly through the ice on the eave and in the gutter. This can result in:

· Leaking roof (height of leak depends on extent of ice dam).
· Wet, ineffective insulation.
· Stained or cracked plaster or drywall.
· Rotting timber.
· Stained, blistered or peeling paint.

Under extreme conditions, with heavy snow and severe cold, almost any house can have an ice dam.

We currently seem to have two ice dams - one above the east window in Julie's room and one above the north window in the living room. I know this because water is drip, drip, dripping into our house in both those places. We had this problem in Julie's room last year, so that is not a surprise. The water in the living room, however, is a most unpleasant surprise.

Our living room is really a lovely room. I can honestly say this. It is a long, narrow room, with a wall of windows at either end. Ben and I have spent a lot of time and effort over the years to make this a pleasant, welcoming room. We had a hideous wood-burning stove removed from the fireplace last year. We have re-painted the walls - most recently only a couple of weeks ago. When the sun comes out, as it briefly did this morning, the living room glows, and I love to just look at it. Not today, however. The furniture is all pulled away from the windows at one end, and old towels catch the dripping water. I hate it. I hate being in there. I hate February.

sometimes, where you least expect it, joy

2010-02-17T06:12:00.000-08:00

"Remember my old college suitcase?" my dad asked me recently. "I want you to give it to your cousin, Davey. He always loved it. Used to drag it around the house when it was bigger than he was."

Well, of course, I remembered the suitcase, but I wasn't at all sure that Dave would. The suitcase was older than me, needless to say, and the stickers on its side - "Ohio University" and "Phi Kappa Tau" were among my earliest memories. My dad took it on every business trip, and I remember it coming home festooned with tags from airports across the country.

When my brother, Bill, and I were at the house on Monday, I asked him if he could find the suitcase for me. Of course, he could, and soon he walked down the attic steps carrying the ancient, dusty suitcase. "Are you sure Dave will remember this?" Bill asked me, as he cleaned decades of dust from the leather surface. "Not at all," I replied, "but Dad wants him to have it."

As I drove home that day, I decided to give Dave a call. "Hey, I have a gift for you from your uncle," I told him. "Yeah, what is it?" "Do you remember his old college suitcase? He wants you to have it." I was totally unprepared for Dave's reaction. "Are you kidding me?! Really?! Do you know that the family story goes that I took my first steps towards that suit case? My first steps ever! I am so touched that he wants me to have that!"

"I didn't know, " I told him. I didn't know. And I don't think my dad did, either. But he certainly remembered the strong attachment he and his young nephew - and namesake - had shared. He gave Dave a gift that he may not have known the magnitude of, but that doesn't lessen its value. My heart sang as I drove the rest of the way home. By asking me to deliver his old suitcase, my dad gave me a gift, as well. The gift of joy. Thanks, Dad.

progress report - if you can call it that

2010-02-16T06:29:00.000-08:00

We moved my dad to Wesleyan Village on February 1st. It was a cold, clear winter day. In less than two hours, the movers had moved everything Dad wanted to take. And then there we were - Dad and Ben and Bill and me all standing in the room that was now his home. We had lunch there with him, but then it was time for us to be on our way. It felt stranger than I can say to leave my dad there. The three of us went back to the house, and that was strange, too. My dad had embarked on his new life.

That was on a Monday. The phone call and email came on Tuesday evening. "Your dad is having some problems adjusting. He had a run-in with the RN about taking his meds. He walked out of the dining hall without dinner when he got confused. What is the best way to handle this?" I was not at all surprised to hear this. I was surprised and dismayed to be contacted so quickly, however. My reply was quick and, I hope, courteous. Dad was going to have to learn to adjust and get along. Without me. I believe my message was received, as I have not gotten daily status reports since then.

I waited a week and a half before I drove out to visit my dad. I thought that would give him time to settle in a bit and start to develop a routine. Hopefully, to adjust. He is not adjusting. He doesn't like it there. He says the meat is tough, and so he only eats salads. He is constipated, and talked about it endlessly. Dad has lost his inner filter - not that it ever worked that well. As we sat in a bank office waiting for a customer service representative, Dad turned to me and asked, "Ever had an enema?" I was surprised, offended, and pissed off. "Not that I remember, Dad," was the best reply I could manage.

I tried to shake the effects of that visit all weekend long, but couldn't quite do it. I had worked so hard to get him in the best place he could possibly be, and he didn't like it. I should be so lucky to end up someplace like that. When I talked to my brother on Sunday, however, he put things in perspective for me. "Dad was never going to be happy there. He's not happy anywhere. He's not happy." He's not happy. It's true. And I was wrong to think that changing his address would change him.

something about walking down the same street on the very same day...

2010-01-23T04:27:00.000-08:00

President Obama and I were both in Elyria yesterday. That is what I am told, anyway. I didn't see him and he didn't see me, and I'm fine with that.

As I crossed the bypass, I noticed police cars parked at either side of the intersection. I assume they were there to stop traffic on all the side streets so that the presidential motorcade could speed along the highway. When I went to the post office to drop off Dad's change of address form, I could see further down the street that Cleveland Street was totally blocked off, with traffic being re-routed to Gulf Road. The president had lunch at Smitty's, apparently; a working-class greasy spoon where I never ate in all the years I lived in Elyria.

I think it's fine that the president visited Elyria, and I think it's even better that we didn't impact each other's time there in any way.

expect the worst, I always say

2010-01-19T04:45:00.001-08:00

I dragged my ass out to Elyria yesterday, having this inner dialogue as I drove that was really just me listening to me complain. I didn't want to go to Elyria, my dad was going to give me a hard time about some things we had discussed on the phone the day before, the banks and post office would be closed, we wouldn't get enough done in the time I had there. As it turned out, everything I thought was wrong. Well, the banks and post office were closed, but other than that...

When I got to my dad's house, the concerns he had expressed to me the day before were gone. (They may come back, I know.) We picked up his new eyeglasses and had them fitted. That took almost no time at all, and he liked them so well that he left them on for the rest of the day, even though he had worn his old glasses for reading, only. After lunch, we went back to the house, and I loaded my car with some books he wanted to give me, and some paintings I wanted to have.

The most important thing we did yesterday, however, was sign all the papers - so many papers - and put down a security deposit for his studio apartment at Wesleyan Village. Dad will be moving there February 1st. His third-floor "apartment" consists of one large, sun-filled room and an ample bathroom. The room's two large windows face west and overlook a couple of shuffleboard courts, the small patio homes that are part of the Village, and past those, the tops of trees in a small woods that leads down to the bank of the Black River. This is where I have wanted him to live since we first visited Wesleyan Village. I am deeply satisfied. I hope Dad is, too.

did I mention one step forward and two steps back?

2010-01-14T06:07:00.001-08:00

My dad had his assessment yesterday for his admittance to Wesleyan Village. What this means is that an RN from the Village came to his house and asked him some questions and gave him a couple of simple cognition tests. I thought he did pretty well. He certainly knew what day of the week it was, what year it was, and what state he lived in, anyway. There may be cobwebs in the corners, but he still does his own laundry, showers every day, and heats up the food Bill and I bring him. All good things.

When the conversation turned to his daily medication, however, the tone took a turn for the weird, as it so often does with my dad. Yes, he told her in answer to her question, he takes his medication every day, because he paid for it, but once he is finished with what he has, he doesn't want to take it anymore. The young lady looked up from her notes and focused her bright blue eyes on him. "Are you saying you would refuse to take your prescribed medication?" I looked up from my knitting at that point, pretty sure that Dad was on the verge of messing up all we had accomplished to that point. "I want to try to get along without it, once I am moved in," he replied. "That seems reasonable," I said, looking right at her. Yes, she agreed, that seemed reasonable. Whew.

I got a call from Roni, our incredible liason, later that day, and to my relief, she said the assessment had gone well, and we could think about setting up a move-in date. At that point, she and I laughed about my dad's comment, but for a minute there, it wasn't all that funny. What a relief it will be (on so many levels) to have him safely settled.

is anybody there? does anybody care?

2010-01-10T13:41:00.000-08:00

Hello? hello?

You know, I know I'm supposed to be writing this blog for myself, but a little feedback would really be nice. (I am not talking to you, Ben, although your comments are always appreciated.) One of the reasons my blog was a fail the last time was because I finally felt that I was sending it off into the void day after day. So, come on, guys, a little help.

Thank you.

I'm working through it

2010-01-09T08:05:00.000-08:00

Okay, so, my yarn shop closed at the end of September. I don't want to mention the name here because I am still pretty bitter about it, but clever readers will find it easily enough in previous posts. I worked there for fifteen months, and absolutely loved it for the first twelve. Once it became clear to us that the owner would not be ordering new yarn or notions ever, it just wasn't fun anymore - for us or our customers.

The shop did not have to close. It was a small, narrow space, stocked to the gills with colorful yarn and beautiful hand-knit sweaters and scarves and baby things. People who came in for the first time sometimes stopped in the doorway, just taking it all in. The shop was in the upscale shopping area of a wealthy little community, and the local ladies just loved it. We held classes and helped customers who came in with a dropped stitch or a new pattern they couldn't quite puzzle through. We helped them chose yarn for new projects. Hell, we helped them chose the new projects.

We loved working there. We loved working with each other. All except for the owner. She came in less and less frequently, and finally, not at all, as she moved to another part of the country. We ran the shop without her, but could not make the purchases that needed to be made. We were hard-pressed to explain to our customers why we still hadn't re-ordered the yarn they needed, and, no, we couldn't special order it for them. In the end, the only thing we could think to do was quit. So we did. En masse. That's when she decided to close the shop.

She came back to clear out the store, and I heard her telling our surprised and saddened customers that it was the fault of the tough economy and the mean management company, but that wasn't the truth. She didn't care and she lost interest, and something that was unique and valuable to a lot of people is gone. Yeah, I'm one of them. But, hey, I'm working through it. I'll get over it.

it doesn't come in cans

2010-01-08T17:40:00.000-08:00

Is there anything better than a steaming hot bowl of homemade soup on a winter day? I mean, if you have to live in Northeast Ohio in January, you should, at the very least, have something hot and tasty to eat.

I make a lot of soup in the fall and winter, big pots of it that only taste better with each re-heating. I make bean soup with ham and ditalini. I make lentil soup with chunks of kielbasa and lots of garlic. I make Ben's favorite, beef barley soup with turnip greens and a medley of mushrooms. New for this fall, I made up a recipe for stuffed cabbage soup. I downloaded four different recipes I found online, and took what I wanted from each. Not to brag, but that is damn good soup.

The best soup I make, however, is also the simplest and the one I have been making for the longest time - chicken noodle soup. When Julie had a cold she couldn't shake last week, I knew it was time to make some. I took a couple of roast chicken carcasses from the freezer, put them in the stock pot with onions and garlic and celery and carrots and filled the pot with water. Then I let it simmer all day. I swear, the smell alone is good for what ails you.

Once the stock has been strained, I add noodles and some fresh parsley, and that's all. Oh, I sauté some vegetables and chop up some chicken for others to add, but nothing else goes in my soup bowl. I am a chicken noodle soup purist.

For years, I have preferred extra fine egg noodles above all others, in spite of the fact that they generally slip off my spoon faster than I can slurp them up. I have, however, found a new noodle that is worthy of my chicken stock, and, I would go so far as to say, completes the soup in a way I didn't even know it was lacking.

Julie and I found these noodles in a little import store in a strip mall in Uniontown. The store sells mostly Eastern European food, and we found a whole shelf of Hungarian egg noodles. Now, I happen to know a little (well, very little) about Hungarian egg noodles, as I have a very clear memory of my Hungarian grandma rolling out noodles and cutting them into long strips on the big kitchen table in the basement of her house. I had never seen anyone do that before - nor since, for that matter.

Julie and I bought a couple of different shapes, but the ones I like best are called Csiga, and they look like little ridged horns. And I am telling you, they are perfect for my chicken noodle soup. They are eggy and delicious, needless to say, but what I really love about them is they stay on my spoon. I don't think I can overstate the importance of that.

So, if you're cold and hungry, give me a bit of advance notice and I'll cook up a big pot of soup for you. I don't think it will be chicken noodle, however, unless I have some Csiga in my cupboard.

full disclosure

2010-01-07T04:50:00.000-08:00

My dad, who will turn 83 next month, was recently diagnosed with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. As it turns out, this diagnosis came as a relief to him, as it confirmed what he had suspected for some time. Needless to say, Dad can't continue to live by himself. This is something he realizes, and this realization has driven our current search for an assisted living facility. From the beginning, I wanted him to go to Wesleyan Village, and it now looks like that is where he will end up.

I will be writing about our journey here in the hope that it will somehow help me deal with my sorrow, anger, and frustration. As I said to a friend, this is a maze I had hoped to never enter, but we are in the thick of it now, and sometimes taking one step forward and two steps back, we proceed.

going for a ride

2010-01-06T14:33:00.000-08:00

I remembered a car trip on a summer day. Just my dad and me – my favorite way to travel. No little brothers to share his attention, no mother to doze and snore in the front seat, admonishing us all to shut up - just the two of us speeding along quiet country roads. In those pre-air conditioned days, all the windows were rolled down, letting a wall of hot summer air rush in.

Sometimes I sat up front, on the long bench seat next to my dad. If I got tired, I lay down and rested my head on his leg as he drove along, his freckled left arm turning pink, then red in the bright sunlight. Sometimes we sang together – but not the songs you might think. “’Twas a cold winter’s evening, the guests were all leaving…” we would begin, and we would sing one of his old college drinking songs with great gusto. My mother despaired that neither of us could carry a tune, but we liked each other’s singing just fine.

Although I liked to sit up front next to my dad, that day I had clambered over the seat, and lay stretched out on the back seat, my bare feet (a no-no when my mother was along!) propped on the open window. It was hot in the car and the air blew in the windows with a monotonous roar. I stared absently at my wiggling toes as the telephone poles rushed past, the wires between them looping quickly by. It was a moment of pure contentment that I have never forgotten.

I wondered at first why that memory came to me yesterday as I drove home through the fine, driving snow of a January afternoon. I had spent the day with my dad, trying to get some of the myriad tasks accomplished for his move to an assisted living facility a block away from the house where I grew up. We made several stops: the doctor’s office, the pharmacy, the bank. At each stop, the seatbelt in my car confounded my dad, as he pulled the wrong end of it or couldn’t click it safely closed. Each time I did it for him.

My dad drove me, and now I drive him. It’s really pretty simple.