I Hope You Have a Good Day, Charlie

Disgusted with Congress?

2011-12-02T10:58:00.001-05:00

So much is going on these days...

But very little is happening in Congress!

If you are upset, annoyed, angry and disgusted about the State of the Union - and especially our boys (and girls) in Congress - please consider signing my petition to set term limits on members of Congress.

Maybe if politicians were denied the possibility of a lifetime of serving - or disserving - the American people, they would attempt to work together to solve our country's problems.

Please click on the following link to join me, and forward the link to all who are of a similar mind.

http://www.change.org/petitions/the-us-house-of-representatives-limit-terms-served-by-members-of-congress

Thanks.

First Graders - Gotta Love 'em

2011-10-19T08:07:00.000-04:00

"Have you had this class before?" The administrator who hires substitute teachers gives me a really earnest look, as if trying to judge how to best break the news.

"No," I admit while shaking my head and beginning to feel the faintest tinge of dread.

"Well," she sucks in her breath and her brow wrinkles as she searches for the politic adjective to describe this first grade from hell, "they're really... active."

She adds, "Very different. I mean a lot of different personalities."

Different means? Crazy? Belligerent? Weepy? Foul-mouthed? What I ask is, "Does she (the teacher) have a para?" I'm asking if there is going to be another adult in the room, a paraprofessional who can bail me out if things get wild. What little experience I have has taught me that a first grade classroom climate can swing from serenity to pandemonium in nanoseconds. It's like herding cats - you have to keep a firm grip on them.

"No."

"Oh. Okay," I reply.

"And there are two you should be aware of: Fric and Frac. And the teacher is there now writing down the lesson plan." This last bit is a godsend, because it means the person I am replacing is as driven as I am.

I've been warned. Game on.

One thing you need to know about all first-graders. They are the most helpful busybodies in the world. They're really compassionate - and easily offended, like they'll cry if you look at them wrong way. Horrific tattletales and great huggers, too. And active.

When I arrived at the classroom, the teacher had almost everything laid out. She seemed stricken because it was her first day of not-teaching, and the math lesson promised to be difficult. She even had a back up, if-the-class-goes-wild, activity sheet - and a behavior monitoring system that involved a lot of magnetic, student-named bees hovering around a hive with yellow, red, and blue zones (blue signifying a dreaded trip to the Office.) She handed me three pages of notes with a tight timeline of execution.

I don't want to bore you, so here are the high points of the day:

I barely averted a snack-time mutiny.

"It's snack time now," announces a chirpy little thing named for a fragrant flower.

"No, it's not." I reply, just as two other wee voices chime in, "Yes, it is!"

"No, it's not," I insist, waving the lesson plan I have clutched in my hand all morning because experience has taught me if you don't stay on track, you can kiss science at the end of the day goodbye. "It's right here in your teacher's handwriting. You have snack at 10:10 - after handwriting."

A chorus of little crestfallen "Ohhhs" erupted behind me. It was an astonishing, almost telepathic connection. A child across the room asked, "We have handwriting?" Total disbelief.

Later, I made the mistake of asking if we had "calendar" in the morning. I couldn't find it on my cheat sheet. Calendar is a sound and sight show involving the naming of days, recognition of shapes and patterns, monetary transactions, counting by common multiples, prediction of number sequences and translation of First-Grade-ese, a written language wit plntee ov invenshun.

"No, calendar is after lunch," said One.

"No, calendar is before lunch," said Two.

"I think it's after snack," said Three.

"It's before recess," said Four.

The Designated Helper (every good teacher has one or two to set substitutes straight) stated firmly, "It's before lunch." And I said "Amen." (I didn't really, but I thought it.)

When the handwriting teacher came in to do warm up exercises (toe-touching "base-line" and waist tapping "mid-line" stuff that would have sent my first grade teacher into cardiac arrest) I reread my plan. Deep on page 2, I found "calendar" before lunch. Whew! Another crisis passed.

Traumatic Recess Syndrome: It's when four six-year-olds rush into the classroom to announce that the sweetie pie with the downcast face hidden by dark, shiny locks who is at the center of a moving pod of consternation (I counted at least eight legs, ten arms, and a cluster of multicolor curls) is crying because:

1. She's afraid of bees.
2. Her classmates made fun of her.
3. She can't see and she's tripping over her classmates who are trying to console her.

The incident sparked an impromptu session on Bee-ology with a steady refrain of "I have a connection." Having a connection does not mean a guy down the street who's standing ready with hard cash, weed, or an entree to the Junior League. "I have a connection" means:

"My dad told me to wave my hands and hit them" Please no.

"I don't have a pen for bees but for peanut allergy." Have you ever had Epi-Pen training? I have. It amounted to giving myself a quick jab in the thigh with a dummy syringe. Seriously, people are trained to do this.

"My sister said to run away."

"My friend says don't run." Smart girl.

"I know. Bees chase you."

"I hit a bee between this finger - she spreads her palm - and this finger."

"Did it hurt?"

"No."

"I had a stinger in my hand, and my mother got ice cream." I perked up at this, always open to new home remedies. "When I ate the ice cream, I forgot about the stinger." Ohhh.

Uh-oh. I was beginning to sound like them. Enough. It was time for Difficult Math.

A moan went up in the classroom: "Nooooo - not MAAAATHHHHHH!" Add to that a document reader - not an adult who can read above an eighth grade level, but the all-seeing arm of a projection device - and at least three students who need one-on-one help, and you have a winning recipe for learning. The teacher wrote, "Do it together." And together we did. Everyone except Frac.

"I'm feeling dead." Okay, Frac. Don't do the math. Dead guys don't add.

"Oh, Frac! You've had such a good day! You even got a token.... " Tokens are a bribe for good behavior. "And you're still in the GREEN ZONE." Green is the best. Sadly, Frac has a behavior chart that looks like Christmas.

Sorry. At the end of each school day, every student records his behavior based on that magnetic hive on the side of the teacher's desk. Remember the Yellow, Red and dreaded Blue? Each has a calendar with little squares that are colored to correspond with his or her behavior of the day, i.e. if a bee named Frac ends up in the Red Zone, Frac has to color his little square red. If the whole class is GREEN, the class gets FIVE FUZZY BALLS!! YEAH!!! (If the class gets enough fuzzly balls it earns a pizza party, or a Disney cruise, or excused from school for the rest of the year.)

I guess it was a winning argument because Frac was resurrected and finished problems 12 through 17.

Science fizzled next. My volcano was a dud. Luckily, none of the comments in the Predictions or Observations columns on the students' answer sheets read This teacher blows.

"I wanted an explosion."

"How do you spell bubbles?"

"How do you spell mushy... fizzly... hissing?"

"Why don't you do it again?" Beats me. Uhhh, because we're out of time.

"Okay, boys and girls. Time to clean up, and Dark Tinkerbell - who has become joined with me at the hip - is going to pass out your behavior folders."

That's when things started to fall apart. Little Pink No-teeth colored Frac's behavior square red. A posse of Do-Rights swarmed my desk and squealed, "Pink No-teeth colored Frac's square red!!"

I walked up to Pink as she buried her blond head in her arms, mouth puckered, eyes cast down and shooting daggers.

"Pink, I'm going to move you into the Yellow."

When I came back she was hiding under her desk. No doubt the anguished chorus of "We could have had five fuzzy balls" had driven her there, where she remained scowling for the next ten minutes.

"Okay, boys and girls......... You have end of the day jobs, don't you? Why don't you do them now."

That was it - the tipping point. All of a sudden, a clutch of pencil sharpeners were grinding pencils to nubs. Over the din, a lot of unhappy campers were duking it out.

"Fric is doing my job!"

"But she said I could!"

"No I didn't!"

The magnetic Fric bee moved into the Yellow, too.

First graders run amok - all of them suddenly crazed. Flipping chairs onto desk tops. Shrieking when they fell off. Rubbing their heads. Moving furniture. Crawling on the floor in search of the detritus of education. Mauling each other in their eagerness to be of help.

I turned off the lights and they all froze momentarily.

I immediately turned the lights back on and threatened, "If you don't settle down I am going to take away some fuzzy balls!!"

Did I really say that?

Didn't matter. In unison those defiant little darlings cried, "You can't take away our balls. Our teacher said so!"

I had to nail them to the rug until they were dismissed to their buses.

So much for my authority. If you can't take away fuzzy balls, you might as well give up the ship. The day ended in a truce, but I'm aching to go back.

2011-10-14T15:28:00.000-04:00

Really. I am pathetic... and dithering even more than usual.

A lovely little trip to Charleston and Savannah kept Senor and me busy over the long weekend. (More about that later.) Before and after our Southern Living excursion, I've been running around looking for picture frames and making deposits for our library's Friends group's membership drive. (Can you guess how many $5 and $10 checks add up to $10,000?)

In September I submitted electronically two of my Madonna images to the New Hampshire Institute of Art's Biennial and was waiting to hear if I'd be lucky enough to make the final cut. Before I received any news, I took the image files to a local copy shop that specializes in large format prints. In the process I realized that I had switched the dimensions of the two unintentionally. Bummer. Would I be disqualified before I even left the gate?

Late last week, NHIA sent notice that one of the two images had been selected for the show. (Yeah! Only 55 out of 350 entries were accepted. Not the Shopping Madonna, but the Paraclete instead.) So I started buying frame parts, because my entry was an irregular size, and not the size noted on the entry form anyway. Works on paper must be submitted under glass.

I bought two 28" sides with a 40% off coupon. I intended to return a week later for the 22" sides with a second 40% coupon. This particular frame required gluing and a separate glass purchase. (I was thinking I might have a piece at home that I could try to cut. (Danger, Will Robinson! Danger! were the words that blinked in my brain.)

A day later I bought a separate 22"x28" frame with glass and ran back to the printer to see if he'd started the job. I wanted to be sure he included enough extra paper around the 16"x21" image to make it self-matting. He rolled his eyes when I tried to describe what I wanted and then he begged me to take the files back and insert crop marks. So I did and burned another CD.

Wednesday, not only did I resize the picture closer to the dimensions submitted, I added a neat brown mat to fill out the extra space to the edge of the frame. Then I reconnoitered with the printer who assured me there was a 50/50 chance that the brown mat would have weird bars at the edges of the image. I could pay for a test strip or I could take my chances. "What the heck. Go for it," I said. My middle name is Reckless.

While I was contemplating how to get creative with weird brown bars, I purchased a third 16"x20" standard frame with glass that a moron could assemble. It is ornately tacky - sort of like the picture it will receive. It was on sale - 40% off to be precise - and by the time I returned my other frame aberrations, I only had to cough up $2 more. O Happy Day.

Is it a wonder that I don't get anything accomplished? Add to that 8½ hours of recording checks for deposit and updating donor lists and you have yesterday and today.

Going to Hell in a Handbag

2011-10-04T21:38:00.000-04:00

Anyone familiar with this blog knows that I am a Photoshop junkie.

Of late I have become more than slightly obsessed with images of the Virgin Mary and, in this case, the High Renaissance work (cropped) known as the Madonna with the Long Neck by Parmigianino.

It's one of the Top 100 in the history of Western art. I love the way her elongated fingers are lightly touching her overfull heart. Still, I wonder if her downward gaze of adoration doesn't have a tiny bit of smugness about it.

And I'm sure Parmagianino's mom's mouth fell open with dismay when she took in this beauty's head posed on an impossibly long neck - which was interpreted by critics as sexually suggestive and blasphemous. Did the madre cuff her boy on his Mannerist ear?

"Caro mio, che cosa stavi pensando?" What were you thinking?

Don't know, but I was compelled to update her look, stylish thing that she is.

So - mea culpa - I give you the Shopping Madonna with the Long Neck.

Yikes! The Holy Mother of Commerce appears in front of the first self-serve brand in the universe, whose headquarters just happen to be located in Keene, New Hampshire. (Piggly Wiggly grocery stores were the first to allow customers to choose items from open shelves instead of from the hands of a vigilant clerk.)

I love the way Piggly Wiggly sounds like one of the characters from the Chicken Licken-Henny Penny-Turkey Lurkey-Goosey Loosey-Sky Is Falling gang of my bedtime story days. Fashionable as ever, my Lady's got a designer bag slung over her arm, and she seems smitten with it. And the sky isn't threatening at all. Or is it?

Personally, I think this Madonna is even more blasphemous than its namesake. She just sort of evolved, but in the process the Baby Jesus totally went missing. Oops...

The devil made me do it.

Cat Man Due

2011-10-01T13:01:00.000-04:00

We are no closer to being feline free than we were a month ago. We've been asking all our friends if they want to be foster parents. So far... no luck.

We have a schedule. The Skinny Italian aka Cat Man shows up every morning at 6am after a night of kitty carousing that includes lots of cat fights and mauling mice. After a little warm milk, a bowl of cat crunchies and a bit of heavy petting, he curls up and sleeps on the ottoman on the porch until 5pm. Then after nuzzling and more cat crunchies, he's off for the night. It's gotten to the point that Senor leaves the door slightly ajar for him... Not quite Motel 6, but close.

The Cat Man is a really beautiful specimen: long-limbed like a cheetah with little feral tips on the ends of his extremely sensitive ears. And as for being the spook of late summer... he is now the friendliest of beasts. Really sweet and insistently affectionate. Still, he startles at sudden noises and has lethal claws that can do a lot of damage even when he's playing. He wouldn't be good around small children or anyone foolish enough to try physical play with him without wearing evening length oven mitts.

I can't take him to a shelter because he would be utterly miserable in a cage. He would probably have a mental breakdown and totally become an attack cat. Then he'd have to be euthanized.

I wonder when he had his last rabies shot and wish I knew a vet who made house calls.

If the porch door is closed, he hangs around until I come home. I've caught him waiting at every door, patient and determined. Once this week he was lying in the middle of the driveway, colored fiery orange in the long light of late afternoon. He was watching for my car.

Did I mention that Cat Man is smart? Even Senor, who is not overly fond of anything on four legs, seems taken by the Cat Man. This morning, while I was making an omelet, I found an enormous bug tap dancing on the inside sill of the window above the sink. I asked Senor, who was standing near the door to the porch, to move the critter outside.

"I don't want to wake the cat."

From his lips to your ears. I'm still laughing. I think I'll nominate Senor for the St. Francis Medal of Honor.

Tai One On for Me

2011-09-23T10:19:00.001-04:00

For years I've toyed with the idea of doing tai chi. It's appealed to me ever since a visit to San Francisco in my pre-digital photo days when I noticed that scores of people in the city's parks were doing its synchronized, spiritual ballet. I thought that it was pretty cool that both old and young, Oriental and not, hefty and thin were caught up in this lovely exercise that seemed to honor both Nature and Self in a community based simply on like minds.

Perhaps the thing that has impeded me most is Senor's spastic imitation of Bruce Lee's fighting stance complete with mad rooster squawks. To wit this week:

"Hey, dear, I'm thinking of going to the beginning Tai Chi class."

"Wwaaaaaaaoaoaoaoaoaoaawwwwwwhhhhhhhh!!!!!"

His chin juts forward and his left hand jerks up to shield his face, claw-like and menacing, just as a needling, low-pitched scream emits from his throat.

He sounds like he's getting ready to hack up a particularly painful hair ball. Meanwhile the right paw is tracing an arc towards his right hip. Suddenly, he's in freeze-frame mode.

Then he relaxes and smirks, "How did I do?"

It would be funnier if I hadn't seen this show a thousand times. Although, truthfully, it's still pretty amusing.

Anyway, yesterday I showed up for the 7am early bird class at our local Taoist Tai Chi Society headquarters. I felt a little foolish and more than a little out of shape.

There were two of them to the one of me. And I was dressed all wrong except for the bowling shoes that haven't seen a lane since 2007. When I pulled them out of my bag, Chang and Eng nodded their approval. (Seriously, my instructors were two lovely Caucasians who had volunteered their time to teach neophytes like myself.) They were dressed in shades of black. I was blue and khaki.

My Master-ma'am gave a quick explanation of the style of tai chi, and the Master pointed out some of the artwork, including an inspirational portrait of Master Moy. Then both explained the manner in which I would learn the 108 movements that make up a cycle.

108 movements! I felt the mental equivalent of a deer-in-the-headlights look. Heck, I can't remember where my glasses are even when they're on my face.

"Okay. We're going to show you the first 17 movements..."

It seemed like less than a minute and it was over. Visually stunning, they performed in total silence, not looking at one another, yet perfectly synchronized. I felt panic set in.

"When you master the first 17 movements, we'll give you a free tee-shirt." The Master was wearing this year's Rabbit. The Master-ma'am, she had a shirt from a tai chi convention.

I mentally winced, afraid I might be a particularly slow learner. Maybe I'll get a dragon - cool, 'cause I was born in a dragon year - or even a snake. That would be sad. My ex is a snake, in more ways than one.

The first thing I learned was the empty step. That was easy: Stepping while not putting weight on the forward foot.

Then we settled down to conquer the first movement. If I'd been a Looney Tunes cartoon there would have been steam coming out my ears. So much to think about!! Hands, feet, center of gravity, extension, fluidity... constant movement, constant changing direction, and constant awareness of where each body part was. Each movement had many parts and I was to learn three movements.

And so it went on - for 75 minutes. Two instructors and one totally inadequate me. It was humbling to be watched so closely. But fun, too. I comforted myself by thinking that Mini Moy must have had his moments, too, when he was a beginner.

At the end of class I felt perky and clumsy at the same time. And determined to practice... Compulsively.

I even downloaded Master Moy's video.

Did I mention I am a perfectionist?

"Wwaaaaaaaoaoaoaoaoaoaawwwwwwhhhhhhhh!!!!!"

It Wasn't Me

2011-09-19T10:51:00.000-04:00

Fall has suddenly come to our little corner of New Hampshire. Overnight temperatures are practically frosty and the days have that brisk, crisp, nip in the air that makes wimps like me reach for fleece. Even Señor broke out one of his ~~disgustingly shabby~~ much loved rugby shirts - a clear indicator that winter is on its way.

For a week or so, I've been making noises about picking apples... specifically sweet-tart and crunchy Empire apples. So yesterday, my wonderful husband drove to my favorite orchard - Mack's Apples in Londonderry - and parked at orchard #3, the tried and true mother lode of delectable Empire apples. And because I am a sport, I was going to let Señor also pick some Red Delicious (even though they taste like cardboard.)

The PYO signs stated that only McIntosh and Jonagold apples were available for picking.

"What do you mean, you can't pick Empires!" I practically shrieked at the cashier. I had already fluffed my handled paper picking bag in anticipation.

Señor was more politic, calmly asking, "When will the Empire apples be ready to pick?

The girl rifled through a clipboard weighted with schedules and cantankerous customer strategies and responded, "The third week of September."

"This is the third week of September." Señor replied and received a pained look for his insistence.

I think, "It's in God's hands" was on the tip of her tongue.

Meanwhile, I calmly refolded my bag, snuggled it back in the bag rack, and sniffed, "Well, we don't want any ~~of your bogus apples~~ today. Thanks."

Señor and I decided to check out Mack's farm stand down the road on the chance that they might have a stash of premature Empire apples somewhere amid the pies, jams, donuts, candies, vegetables and fruits. But before we left, I hauled out my camera, so the picking experience won't be a total loss.

Señor begged to take a photo of me, which I usually refuse because I hate having my picture taken. But I was feeling generous because he had just driven thirty miles to accommodate my cravings, and somewhere in the posing - which just happened to be next to a Red Delicious tree - he urged my hand to a specimen which - SURPRISE - just happened to fall off in my palm. Almost.

I thought it would be a shame to leave it on the ground, and I sure wasn't going to return it to the snarky cashiers - so, I whisked it into the car.

"You take the first bite," Señor prompted.

"Oh, no! I'm not taking the blame this time. You take the first bite, Adam."

What came to us was the knowledge that the Red Delicious apples weren't quite ripe, but we ate the slightly green delicacy nonetheless. Sinners all the way.

Ironcially, another young woman was leading her man to his doom at the same time:

In the end, I didn't feel guilty about our purloined treat. When Señor later paid $7.80 for six average-sized Honeycrisps, it begged the question just who was getting robbed. And in a week or so, we'll go back and spend twice as much for those precious Empires.

Feeling Flush

2011-09-09T10:05:00.000-04:00

Sometimes it takes me years to commit to doing something. You could chalk it up to thrift or laziness, or a misguided priorities. Whatever. Take toilet seats... Not a biggy, but why would it take me three years to replace the toilet seats that came with the house? They are slightly stained - faintly gray with condensation streaks and rust-colored in small patches. And scrubbed down to the wood in a few places. I've tried to clean them. Really. I've tried.

This week was it, though... the deadline.

I said to myself, "This is it. Even though every man in this house" (four of them pass through on a pretty regular basis) "could care less about the condition of our toilet seats, I will no longer blush at the thought of appalled house guests and stray health inspectors who may crash through our door without a moment's notice."

So I did it. (Also, I was tired of seeing Martha Stewart in my dreams, hawking her Living Omnimedia products for personal hygiene.)

I did some comparison shopping first - seriously, how anal is that? - and finally made a return trip to Lowe's, where I stood so long in rapt contemplation of the toilet seat inventory that a sales representative came over and held my hand.

I didn't want to spend a fortune. They're toilets seats for crying out loud. But I wasn't sure that anything but Kohler would properly fit on a Kohler john. Plus, some of the seats had some pretty highfallutin' technology: Self-closing lids, audible prompts, micro-biotic properties, and training wheels, to name a few.

In the end I put into the cart three identical seats that were one step above basic and sighed with relief.

Then I wandered over to the distressed plant display where I compared the virtues of a rackful of $7 spreading cypresses that were marked down to $2.50. You would have thought I was a plant proctologist, peering so deeply into the pots and poking into the root systems. Sheesh.

That exercise took a full twenty minutes before I finally selected five plants and headed home for a fun afternoon.

Tools, rubber gloves, antiseptic wipes, a roll of paper towels... I was good to go. Plus, I had cleaned all the bathrooms yesterday, so I wouldn't be grossed out if I did decide to hug my toilets, (which is the only way to describe getting your hands into position to unscrew the bolts.)

In an hour or so, I had figured out how to work the locking mechanisms that allowed for "easy removal for replacement and cleaning," had installed all three seats, and had even wrapped up the old seats - all nice and tidy - in the new boxes. Plus I hadn't broken anything, including toes.

Sad, isn't it, to be so thrilled over something so mundane.

Speed Trap

2011-09-05T13:37:00.000-04:00

You know what they say... Make haste slowly. This is my personal credo since I am twice as likely as the next guy to burn my wrist while snatching the entree from the oven in the middle of a dinner party, or drop a ladder on my head while rushing to finish painting that little patch of wall that's just out of reach, before I scoot to a meeting that I would have been on time for if I hadn't picked up the paintbrush in the first place.

Yesterday, Señor and I decided that, as long as we left early, it would be a fine idea to travel a highway battered by Hurricane Irene to go see his Mom. If we left early enough, we might avoid slow traffic where multiple lanes had been narrowed to one. Our intentions included stopping for 8:30 Mass in North Conway at Our Lady of the Mountains, where one of Señor's friends is the pastor. The trip should take about two hours. We left our house at 6:20am, stopping for coffee (6:25am), a bathroom break (7:10am), a bagel (7:35am), and were breezing through Chocorua when a NH State Trooper pulled us over at 7:55am, thirty miles from the church.

Now Señor has never gotten a ticket... not in my memory. Señor doesn't get tickets. No school superintendent wants that kind of blemish on his record. God forbid that any school board member might ever have the opportunity to equate reckless driving with the management of their school district. Noooooooo!! Not on Señor's watch.

So as soon as the officer flicks his index finger in the universal language of traffic violations, I feel Señor's blood pressure start to sky rocket - from 110/70 to 150/90 - in less than five seconds. As he pulls the car to the side of the road, I sense that Señor is operating from a zone somewhere west of "Please, God."

"Your license and registration, sir."

Señor removes them piece by piece from his wallet - a time-worn accessory that resembles a leather billiard ball. It's stuffed with old business cards, buy-ten-get-one-free fast food membership cards, the credit cards that are too numerous for the minimal space allotted to them, notes to himself, correspondence from employees and graduate students, photos, prayer cards, coupons for $5-off at Friendly's and $2-off at Papa Gino's, and a modest amount of cash, including the all-important Emergency Twenty.

Señor hands the officer his license, and then the car registration. Then he looks at me and states in a low voice, "I hope I gave him the current registration." He roots around in the billfold and, triumphant, holds up last year's registration. Or was it the year before that?

"Where are you headed?"

Señor in total earnestness says, " We're headed to Berlin to see my elderly, 86-six-year-old mother." Sigh. As if she were knocking at Death's Door.

Then the officer poses the question that State Troopers can rattle off in their sleep, "Do you know how fast you were going?"

Señor: "Around fifty?"

"Do you know what the speed limit is?"

"Forty or forty-five?"

"No, it's thirty."

------ crickets -------

Then Señor said that we were hoping to see Father Don for 8:30 Mass. Honest.

Then I added a line about picking up a couple of homeless people on our way to helping out at the soup kitchen for lunch... before our stint at the Salvation Army. Seriously...

Just kidding. Luckily, the officer scribbled a warning and Senor's driving record retained a clean bill of health. Whew.

We had a good laugh at our unspoken embellishments, thankful that Senor's mother did the trick.

The Skinny Italian

2011-09-01T08:31:00.002-04:00

All too recently I was standing in the rain, shovel in hand, trying to judge if the grave I'd dug for poor Smoke was deep enough. Heck, I'd wrapped him in two giant bath sheets to keep him warm for the kitty hereafter, and thrown in a couple bags of Friskies Party Mix Beachside Crunch for good measure. The hole I was digging was big enough for two mummified wolf hounds, but was pondering if it would bury the smell. I didn't want the coy dog I'd seen loping across Middle Road rooting for his supper under my living room window.

During the following days I missed him, but I didn't miss the litter box, the mauling of furniture, or the stray cans of Fancy Feast that malingered in the refrigerator long after they had been rejected as unpalatable incarnations of salmon and chicken. I didn't miss worrying about him when we were gone or paying a small ransom for his care in our absence.

Then, in late June, my mother asked if I had seen the yellow cat sitting on our front porch or stretched out on the cover of the hot tub soaking up the sun. She said he was almost white. Ghostly? Perhaps.

Actually, I didn't see the yellow cat until the end of July. He was a spook - hovering near the house, but running away when I approached. And he was small and skinny. Rail thin.

Finally, I set out some milk for him, which he lapped up faster than you can say, "Sophia, you tenderhearted idiot." I watched from a distance and wondered if he were homeless or merely a voracious juvenile.

We repeated the milk thing a couple of days later. Then I bought him some cat treats. He devoured the handful I left on the step and disappeared.

Next time, I was able to lure him onto the deck. And he let me pet him before wandering off to roll in the mulch, its roughness being the equivalent of a feline back scratcher.

The next evening, Senor saw him sitting in near darkness against the tire of the old Corolla parked on the edge of the driveway. The cat was waiting for me and promptly ran over when I shook the bag of treats in my hand. I was able to pick him up and tucked him under my arm as I carried him to the deck. He was bony and incredibly light. I gave him a a handful of food and small bowl of milk.

Then Senor and I went on vacation for ten days. And a wonderful vacation it was: Alaska!! However, very soon after our return, the yellow cat was back, hungrier than ever. We decided to call him Sam-Too, because he was a smaller version of our beloved Sam who died of heart failure six years ago.

So I fed him. So small and skinny... and beautiful to boot! Long-legged and graceful and fastidious about his toilette. Friendly and grateful, he was now lingering on the screen porch, licking his paws and wiping his face, and hunkering down on Senor's favorite chair for a leisurely nap after his meal. How civilized! Perhaps he's French? Definitely European...

More to the point, I decided to make him a topic at the neighborhood gathering scheduled last week... to see if he was truly homeless... or feral... or something else.

"The yellow cat? Oh, he's Kate's." She lives over the meadow and through the stream. She and her husband have a farm with a barn and a mastiff.

"They call him The Skinny Italian. You've seen her other cat, Whitey Bulger?" Yes, he was the rotund white devil with black ears that would stare at Smoke through the screen porch door.

"And before that that yellow cat belonged to Sue. He left her for Kate." Sue is the Englishwoman who moved back to Cambridge or Cheapside or whatever. She visits occasionally. I met her once at the library. Like me, she was the treasurer of the Friends group. I have her old files in my basement. And now I have her cat.

But I don't want The Skinny Italian aka Sam-Too... at least not full-time.

Yesterday, I arrived home late because I was picking up dinner - Indian take-out - after an eye exam. Senor proudly showed me how he'd let the famished Skinny Sam-Too Italian into the porch for a big bowl of cat crunchies with a side of milk. He had been yowling and pawing at the door with enough agitation to tear the screen.

I found him curled up in Senor's chair. Despite his full belly, he stretched and returned to his bowl when he saw me. There were a few crunchies left, which he munched before curling up again. Senor sat in a different chair as I brought our dinner to the porch - Lamb Mushroom, Chicken Korma, and rice. The Skinny Italian's nose immediately twitched and he jumped at the opportunity to share our meal. Literally, I had to push him down from the table. Twice. Then I showed him the door. Who knew cats could get so excited about rice?

So my problem - of my own making, I admit - is how to return the Skinny Italian to Kate's care. He never heads toward her house. Instead he bounces to one of our neighbors to check out their menu du jour, his little white boody bobbing beneath that extra-long, extra-luxe stripy tail.

I don't want him in our house, with his surgically sharpened claws kneading our upholstery and shredding our rugs.

I don't want to be a full-time foster mom. (Because somehow I know I'll relent in the winter when his elegant little paws are crusted with snow. I'll let him into our house where he will piss in the corners to mask Smoke's scent.)

He, on the other hand, has jumped onto a chair and is waiting me out.

Some Things are Priceless !!

2011-08-19T12:22:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to be a little more diligent about posting on a regular basis. It's been a loss not to be able to dredge up our daily doings - no matter how mundane - for the past six months or longer. There have been many, many moments - big and small, happy and somber - that have deserved their own record. Some have been downright ridiculous. (I like those a lot.) Take this shopping transaction keyed by a hapless Walmart clerk:

Wedged between the turkey and the hammmm, I think it's hysterical. The poor lady behind the register was profoundly apologetic and tried in vain to cancel the sale. (A store manager had to set it right.) I felt bad because it delayed customers in line behind me, but I wasn't angry or impatient or annoyed. What weird keystroke had set the incident in motion? It's a mystery, but one I am compelled to preserve as just one event in the pattern of daily life. What's to be learned from all things great and small? Or our reactions to them?

Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." How true is that? We, as a society, are so bogged down with work and consumption that we spend little enough time considering our lives and that which governs our motivations and our actions.

I suppose many would think that such self-absorbtion is narcissistic and pointless. I guess - for the last year more or less - I have agreed. Instead of writing, I've attempted to convince myself that it's so much more useful to clean the house, do laundry, paint walls, or work at a low-paying job that allows the freedom to travel when I want. (By that I mean my job as a substitute teacher.) But I've felt as if I've lost a lot of time, and the work I have chosen to do hasn't been lucrative or rewarding.

Let's face it, I suck at being a wage-earner. And it's my wonderful, unsurpassingly supportive husband who has urged me to continue with writing... without guilt.

Memory is but a fogged mirror of the past, because details are easily forgotten and emotion paints with a broad brush. Perhaps that is why I am compelled to take so many photographs and write about such trivial happenings. They may seem useless to some, but they are like tent pegs to me. They anchor the fabric of my reality. Others may help me with the supports, but I'm the one with the hammer in my hand, making things fast.

South Boston Harborwalk

2011-08-15T17:42:00.000-04:00

On any day from almost any vantage point, Boston is a beautiful mix of old and new. Yesterday, to celebrate our anniversary, Señor and I walked part of the Boston Harborwalk - that 46.9 mile work-in-progress that meanders along the waterfront from Chelsea Creek to Dorchester. We covered a seven-to-eight mile section from Fort Point Channel to the end of Carson Beach, which afforded us splendid views of the city we hadn't previously seen.

I had traveled the beginning of this particular route over 35 years ago - before the Hood Milk bottle graced the grounds of the then newly relocated Boston Children's Museum, and before the elusive No-Name Restaurant appeared on any public locator boards. I remember the original, humble storefront of the Daily Catch and the fancy marquis of the Jimmy's Harborside when it was the fashionable hot spot for Brahmans needing a seafood fix. The thoroughfare was scarcely more than an alley, all but impassible when the wholesalers were loading their trucks with the catch of the day.

At Fort Point Channel we observed remnants of the Tea Party Ship Museum, burned in August of 2007. (A new museum will open next year...) We admired Rowe's Wharf from a short distance across the harbor - a view favored by tourist publications. We could hear soaring planes on thunderous take-offs from Logan Airport as they shook the air at least twice a minute.

Chic shops, museums, upscale hotels, spas, courthouses, cruise terminals, the Boston Design Center, and even a manicured, picture-perfect patch of grass proclaiming itself a "city green" highlighted the wide, pristine Seaport Boulevard. I guarantee that wasn't its name when my feet touched down on its rough, cobble stoned predecessor. We admired the massive cranes that move containers from ship to shore.

We continued our walk into Southie to Pleasure Bay and Castle Island, stopping for a fruit freeze and hot dog at Sullivan's before declining a tour of Fort Independence. We decided to save that adventure for another day and another season, knowing that this part of South Boston deserved more exploration.

We walked past beaches and bath houses dating from Mayor Curley's 1930s reign. We laughed at seeing mounted police purchase ice cream cones from a street vendor and we sat on a park bench overlooking the water to give my sore hips a rest..We ended our promenade a stone's throw from the JFK Library, before taking the MBTA to the North End where a scrumptious lunch awaited us at Trattoria Il Panino. It wasn't the first time we've lingered there on our special day. Thank you, Señor, for fourteen fabulous years!!

So Long

2011-07-01T08:14:00.003-04:00

It's been so long between posts that most of my blogging buddies would view a post title of So Long as a final farewell. Actually, my mother has sold her house, and I have spent much of the last eight weeks helping her relocate.

First, I found my mother a beautiful apartment that is a hop, skip, and a jump from the senior center where she participated in exercise classes during last winter's stay with us. Several of the ladies there convinced her to join their Red Hat group. And my elderly neighbor has been introducing her to other local activities and attractions. My mother has even achieved a level of comfort navigating the country roads between my home and hers. Not bad for an eighty-two-year-old!!

Harder by far was the process of completing repairs requested by the buyer, sorting of fifty years of belongings and memories, and donating or discarding things, so that my mother could distill much of her old existence into a packable start of a new life.

So much stuff... What tales I could tell about the once-lovely piano fallen into neglect... the 1950s freezer that turned once-edible walleye into permafrost... the questionable photo chemicals left to fester in the homemade darkroom that lost its light... of Roy, Arleen, Lorenzo1100, Pat, Joan, Linda, Paul, the two Toms, Vivien, Ms Martine, the photo teacher at Laurel School, the three guys at the Goodwill Attended Donation Center (Tractor Trailer), and my favorite new haunt, the Pepperpike Recycling and Drop-off Center.

I can say without a qualm (and after witnessing my mother's mental anguish and physical stress) that architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe had it right when he stated, "Less is more."

One final note...

On the eve of my last return to my childhood home, I took Smoke to be euthanized. He had started to defecate throughout the house. Otherwise the task would have fallen to my son in my absence, and I couldn't do that to him. So, Señor drove me to the vet's and stood by my side as I stroked Smoke's head, soothing him as he took his last breath. A very gentle end to a long, happy life.

So long, Smoke. You are sadly missed.

CLAWS (Think da-duh... da-duh...da-duh-da-duh-da-duh JAWS music)

2011-04-22T09:15:00.000-04:00

What makes you write?

I've found it so easy to neglect this little corner of my universe. Where I used to spend hours cropping photos and playing with sprightly words, I now juggle work with work around the house. More than anything I miss recording the mundane bits of my life, afraid that I will forget the the smells and sights and rhythms of the little things I share with those I love.

Take poor Smoke, the Ancient Gray Ghost. Once a charcoal panther capable of slaying three chipmunks in a single day, he is but a silver shadow of his former self. Now the old guy just wants a warm human leg to snuggle against. He paces in circles, howls like a creature bereft, forgets to finish the kitty snacks that form a small constellation on the kitchen floor, and gets totally lost in the dark. Suffering from feline dementia, bad eyesight and arthritis, Smoke is a caterwauling Feliway addict.

Talk about thinking outside the box!! Smoke was missing his litter box on a daily basis until I drilled out one side of a ten-gallon tub. Actually, I modified two tubs and jammed them between the litter closet's bi-fold doors, just in case the cat decided to pace around the tubs and leave a deposit en route.

There's also the business to do with the claws. Smoke's front paws are like grappling hooks; both of them wrapped around one of my ankles as I stand at the kitchen counter and attempt to cook. He is reducing my wardrobe to bouclé... that loopy fabric that looked great on Coco Chanel. On me... not so much. And his touchy-felineness extends to everyone who tries to share the couch with him.

I try to be nice to this cantankerous old man-cat and to treat him as compassionately as I can. Even when he poops on the oriental rug in the dining room, as he did last night.

Señor whispers, "Euthanasia."

But I can't figure out to when or how to let him go.

The cat... not Señor.

My Monthly Friend

2010-12-09T10:09:00.000-05:00

I've always thought that "my monthly friend" was a hysterical euphemism for a woman's bodily functions. It's the kind of thing my 81-year-old mother would refer to, as in

"Have you gotten your monthly friend yet?"

I think this was the question posed to me when I was sitting glassy-eyed and headachy at the 1964 World's Fair. I was 11 at the time, flushed, hot and moody. I crashed at the Mexico pavilion with full-blown PMS. That's all I remember: an enormous Aztec calendar and GE's robotic display of electricity through the ages which was viewed from theater seats that rotated around the stage. Imagine a very slow amusement park ride where the audience moved sideways through the show, the highlights of which included cavemen with an electrified fabric fire (think fanned, filmy flames), a family crouched around a WWII cabinet radio, and a mom perpetually opening Donna Reed's modern-day refrigerator which vaguely resembled a 1963 Pontiac Bonneville.

Also there was the steel globe sculpture that was the iconic image of the whole event - the Unisphere. I thought it was huge then. During a recent drive by the Flushing Meadows site that globe was puny by today's standards - a mere 12 stories high.

Anyway, consider this blog to be your monthly friend. That just about describes the regularity of my postings of late. The time consuming task of recording the minutiae of my existence just doesn't seem to be time well spent. And yet, it helps us to remember our busy lives. Señor and I traveled to see one son in LA in mid November and another son in Washington DC just this past weekend. Where else can I easily jot down the details of our trips?

Or that I weathered a nasty cold that robbed me of my voice for a few days, and worked at Exeter's Festival of Trees, which raised over $23,000, 00 for warm clothing vouchers for area kids.

I painted the bedroom my mother will be moving into next week, and spent untold hours doing bookkeeping and taxes for our local Friends of the Library Group. I edged two large flower beds with a round point shovel and moved several hundred pounds of mulch. I worked as a substitute teacher on several days, the low point of which was cleaning up rabbit pee deposited by a free-range classroom pet.

Our chimney got a much-needed cap, as I was tired of smelling the acrid sootiness that streamed down the flue in inclement weather. Two previous owners could have cared less.

I started working on a fundraiser for our local breast cancer survivors' group. (More news of this will come in January.)

We attended an awe-inspiring performance of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis at the university where our youngest son is a music major. The fabulous chorus was 140-strong, and the instrumentalists were absolute troopers who rehearsed over eight hours in two days. I remember that the world thought Vladimir Horowitz was a weirdo for soaking his hands in an ice bath before performances. He was merely reducing the effects of arthritis. My violinist son will attest that ice packs and ibuprofen are the musician's best friends.

All this blather aside, what really moved me to pick up the digital pen was the sight of a harrier caught in my hydrangea bush. Nooooooo, we're not talking about a military jet which would have been a truly astonishing sight I would not have stuck around for, but a Northern Harrier hawk. Yesterday I heard an awful bang against the side of the house. When I looked out the front window, I saw a good-sized raptor struggling to free himself from the denuded shrub. The hydrangea was hazardous, sporting many spikes from previous years' prunings. The bird was up to his butt and wing feathers, lurching around while keeping a hold on whatever poor mouse or mole was his prey.

The pale, blue-gray hawk was beautiful and sleek with broad white streaks above his piercing eyes. It took him only a few furious seconds to disengage himself, and he flew off with his meal to go, leaving a cloud of downy white contour feathers. They were tipped with beige and gray. I bagged a bunch and stuffed them in my freezer to kill any lingering mites. (Shhhhhh... don't tell Señor. I'm going to use them to feather our nest egg.) Then I realized were traces of blood on my hands. From the bird or the prey I do not know.

I hated to think that the harrier was harmed by its efforts to merely survive. By contrast, I watched from my cozy room near the kitchen where our refrigerator is well stocked, and I considered how being at the top of the food chain was a cosmic accident of birth - as in it is my good luck to be human.

Seeing the harrier was a reminder to be thankful for small gifts during a season when large gifts are unrelentingly bill-boarded across our consciousness. A reminder to be alert to the needs of others. A reminder to steal a few moments to reflect on what really matters.

Go slowly amid the haste...

Heigh ho, heigh ho!!

2010-11-09T11:45:00.000-05:00

I've been looking for work for a few months now. And since I renewed my teaching certification in June, applying for a position as a substitute teacher seemed the logical way to go. Finally, an ad for a nearby district appeared in last week's Sunday paper, and I hurried over to claim a pile of paper work. As part of the criminal records check, I got fingerprinted by a very nice police officer and was amazed to see that heat-sensitive red ink is currently used instead of the black, greasy stuff of a decade ago. My prints were baked to a lovely shade of gray.

I checked all the boxes to teach every grade level, and assumed I'd be called to the middle or high school for my first assignment. Instead I got to sit on the floor all afternoon and assemble puzzles with a bunch of preschoolers, and I got paid for it. I also found out that I am a little rusty when it comes to popping straws into those foil juice packs. I managed to dowse the other aide with apple-ish Capri Sun as I sent a geyser across the snack table. Way to go!!

And they want me back again tomorrow! Life is good.

The only thing that gave me pause was the lighting in the room. I find that fluorescent bulbs on a low barometric pressure day can easily trigger a migraine. It's weird. Also driving during low, twilight conditions or amongst flickering trees. So it was a good thing my eyes were mostly on the floor or at knee-level today.

Yesterday I was trying to repurpose a striped polo shirt into a pillow cover because it was frayed at the edge of the sleeves. The body of the shirt was perfect, and I knew it would look great in the boudoir where indigo batik rules the day. However, the morning was cloudy and as soon as I began cutting, my eyeballs started vibrating in a St. Vitus jig. I had to put the fabric away for a sunny day. Does this kind of stripe drive anyone else nuts?

Sadly, Senor has two shirts with similar 50-50 stripes. They aren't permanent press and I never iron them. They've been in the closet for years, because on a really nice, high barometric pressure day, I'd rather be outside in the garden - or at beach.

Ironing striped shirts - who knew they'd be the true test of love.

And speaking of love... I made a man cave for our senile cat. I can feed him until he's about to explode, but he'll still bother me if he's cold. Swiping at my ankles with his claws, sitting on my feet when I'm at the kitchen sink, stretching out over the newspaper if I happen to place it beside me on the couch. Sometimes he'll even single out Señor for the ultimate hot body fix. Since the thermostat has been hovering around 65º, he's worse than ever. He really doesn't like being bundled in a blanket, so we settled on this which traps his body heat:

Now, that we've mulled over the meaning of love, I'd like to mention hate. Did I tell you how much I hate my purple and green bathroom? It reminds me of an Easter basket gone bad.

Throw in the phony marbleized, black Formica counter top and the blond wood vanity and you really have something to barf about. I gag every time I brush my teeth. Well, today I had enough.

The shower curtain fabric curtains with the sloppy ribbon tie backs that fall into the tub when you breathe on them - well, they're history.

Señor didn't even notice they were missing when he came home last night. Another keenly observant male... what can I say. Luckily, the window opens upon woods at the back of the house so that none of our neighbors have to witness him shaving in his underwear.

My next trick will be replacing the lighting without electrocuting myself, and removing the wall-sized mirror that is losing its mercurial backing. It will be a daunting task. From watching HGTV, I know you have to tape it with duct tape so it doesn't shatter, and having extra hands to grab it as I pry it off the wall seems like a necessity. Maybe I'll enlist my neighbor's help. Then we'll see if Señor misses it when it's gone. Bets, anyone?

Boo...Hiss... I Didn't Get to Scare a Soul

2010-11-01T20:08:00.000-04:00

Sadly, Soul Man was retired before the Trick or Treating even began. Hurricane-force winds threatened to air-lift his stiff, bamboo butt to Canada, so there was no shrieking or fainting on the part of the fourteen witches, ghouls, warlocks and vampires who darkened our door in search of Halloween loot. Soul Man was sidelined. DNS. DNF.

We weren't surprised that we only had fourteen visitors, since we live in a rural area where parents pretty much chauffeur their kids among housing developments. The smart ones go to nearby Exeter, where lovely antique houses nestle cheek by jowl along thoroughfares where George Washington rode his horse. There the streets are thronged with costumed revelers of all ages and sizes. (Count me in for next year.)

The first year we lived here, I bought ten pounds of candy, not knowing what to expect. The next day we provided treats for our son's entire dorm and then some. Last year I was circumspect and bought much less, but still there was scads leftover for the dorm. This year, I had it down to a science, but what I lacked in quantity, I more than made up for in quality. Twelve monster candy bars and a pound of truffles:

I have one candy bar left over for our collegian, and a half-pound of dark chocolate and hazelnut truffles that I will put to very good use. Trust me.

I didn't even photograph the cuties who came to the door. They were good... but not that good.

I did photograph our eldest son who was visiting with his splendid new wife. He's a little over six feet and trim. She is much smaller and more lithe, wearing sizes I haven't fit into since pre-pregnancy days. Size 4, maybe size 6 at most. When we suggested going for a walk at the ocean, he decided that wearing his wife's under armour would be a smart way to stay warm. Silly boy. He never made it out the door. I think the shirt's turtleneck stopped the flow of blood to his brain. Clear thinking at its finest. Watching him getting out of it was the most amusing part of the weekend.

Uh-oh. Is my evil side showing again?

I Am Not Nice

2010-10-29T10:09:00.002-04:00

Despite my Pollyanna tendencies, deep down there is a Dark Side. Like I can be Luke Skywalker on his worst day. Where these urges come from... all I can say is the Devil makes me do it.

Halloween for example. (Or is it okay for parents to traumatize their own kid?) I terrorized our youngest son by staging a haunted house for his older brother's October birthday. Our youngest was a baby - under two - when he saw a whole herd of party goers led into the basement never to return. All he heard was the screaming. (We had them exit through a basement door to the back porch where apple-bobbing, cake, and hot spiced cider awaited them.) Even though he saw them on the porch, to this day he believes that his dad and I fed the youngsters to the furnace.

So what was I up to yesterday? I decided to make a scarecrow using an old costume and a hideous door decoration. Tripped by a motion sensor, the skull on the door plaque belts out a James Brown version of I'm a Soul Man. Cute. Anyway the scarecrow looks like this:

And when he breaks into song - loudly, I might add - the face looks like this:

That ought to scare the bejeesus out of our trick-or-treaters. Especially when it gets dark and you can barely see the Soul Man. Awfully perverse, isn't it?

Grass Man Comes Calling

2010-10-27T09:29:00.001-04:00

What an extraordinary month!! Just when I think the leaves can't be any brighter, a blaze of gold or red will blind me with its remarkable intensity. The trees are so seductive, I can barely keep my eyes on the road when driving. We will have a day full of beauties like this...

...quickly followed by a morning that brings this:

The early morning frost is my cue to move annuals to warmer quarters - if I hope to see them again in the spring. I have a few container gardens which I move into the garage to overwinter. I also dig up and pot the parsley, rosemary, and some basil to bring into the house. I look at the lawn and sigh.

Our lawn is a source of deep frustration. Patchy, weed-infested, and a perennial favorite entree for voracious grubs, our grass needed some professional help. So this spring, for the first time, we hired a service to administer first aid. That was back in April when a representative from Mainely Grass made his beguiling pitch to me. I was conflicted, because I wanted primo grass without toxins. He assured me that his company could deliver.

Well, it didn't. Our lawn looks its worst ever!! And it's really too bad we don't include bugs in our diet, because we have enough crawly protein to feed a third world country for a month. Slimy, but satisfying... Maybe I could start a business selling organic lizard food to pet stores...

Anyway, I was working in the gardens near our front door the other day, when Grass Man showed up for an impromptu review.

{pregnant pause}

"Well, how did the season go?"

I can't believe he's asking me this. He's got eyes, doesn't he? I respond, "Not very well. The heat took its toll." I was being polite.

"Yeah, it was a tough summer." {pregnant pause}

At this point I just wanted him to go away. He's focused on the grass as if it were a candidate for reconstructive surgery. He says, "Everybody's lawn suffered because of the heat."

"But we have an irrigation system. And, if you want to know the truth, our lawn looks worse than it ever has."

"You should have called us."

"I did." I looked at him cross eyed. "Someone came out and put a fungicide on the grass and two days later the mushrooms were back. And now we have grubs." I point to the hundred square feet of dirt we've seeded, hoping that it's not too late to start some grass for next year. That area is just a small fraction of what needs to be replanted.

"Well, if you had called us, we could have..."

At this point, I cut him off, saying, ".. and it would have cost another couple hundred dollars."

"I feel really bad." Me, too. Me, too. "I'm going to see if there is something we can do for you."

He poked his finger in the soil and dug up a live grub. I guess he was looking for lunch. Shaking his head, Grass Man slunk away. He was feeling bad because I hired another company to thatch and overseed the lawn instead of his.

The next morning while I was cleaning the cat litter, the door bell rang. Not really wanting to answer in my mismatched ensemble of oversize red tee-shirt and turquoise sweat pants, I walked into the hall to see if I could peek at my unwelcome guest.

Grass Man was standing on the porch and had his back to me. I didn't want to talk to him or hear his suggestions, so I dashed into the room next to the front door. And since he might catch a glimpse of me through the windows. I dove under the desk and stayed there until Grass Man went away.

Very mature, I know. But kind of amusing, nonetheless.

Suan La Chow Show

2010-10-21T08:59:00.000-04:00

Sunday morning Señor and I visited a friend in Dorchester, south of Boston. After Father Brian's Mass in the chapel at Carney Hospital - which lasted a record 21 minutes in deference to the many doctors and nurses in attendance - the three of us headed to an Irish breakfast. Then the good priest returned to work, and Señor and I headed into the city via Dorchester Ave. and many Asian neighborhoods. Fascinating.

After finding a parking space in record time, we wandered up Boylston Street. We started at the Paper Source store (three rooms of every kind/color of paper imaginable, from hand marbleized to adhesive-backed book cloth) and ended at Trader Joe's before heading down Newbury Street. Along the way, Copley Square where you can see the New England Building reflected in I.M. Pei's tower beside H.H. Richardson's Trinity Church:

Anthropologie, home of window-dressing and store displays of remarkable creativity:

The lobby at the Hynes Convention Center, site of a comic convention and strategic bathroom break:

Then we started searching for the elusive Narragansett Fest Lager for our youngest, beer connoisseur. It's not distributed in our home state. We tried Trader Joe's and ten other liquor stores on our way back to New Hampshire. One store told us they couldn't sell to anyone with an out-of-state license. (Luckily, it didn't carry Fest. I would have had to kill the clerk.)

To fortify ourselves, we stopped at Mary Chung's in Cambridge, MA. for its infamous Suan La Chow Show. In Chinese I think it means "Lips Melt Sublimely Off Your Face." One of our sons discovered this delicacy years ago and got us hooked on it, too.

Enormous, ragged wontons - their corners crimped into misaligned triangles - come bathed in a sauce made primarily of ginger, soy sauce, sugar, red pepper flakes (I'm thinking a handful per bowl ) and rice vinegar. My six were lightly resting on a bed of bean sprouts, caressed with a sprinkling of scallion. They were brutally good. I think I was shaking with heat prostration by the end of the meal. (One guy in the restaurant actually downed two bowls of this fiery delicacy.) Here are the before and after photos:

And where but in Cambridge would you find a school bus with profanity on it?

In case you can't make out the web site, it's www.doityourdamnself.org. Are Señor and I the only ones who think this is strange? Apparently, the mission of the organization is to promote student-created flash animation. The school board must have had fun with that one.

Canterbury Shaker Village

2010-10-15T09:12:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I visited the Canterbury Shaker Village, something I've wanted to do for a long time. It's located far enough from our home to be a destination rather than a stop in the stream of a normal day's activities, and I traveled back roads to get there, so I could savor the fall foliage. The day turned mostly cloudy by the time I arrived, but the photo ops still dazzled and intrigued. No photography was permitted in the interiors of the buildings, which was too bad. The simple, well designed elements that filled the rooms suggested Andrew Wyeth paintings with muted colors and objects revealing the character of the people who used them. I felt suspended in time as if I had stepped through a gracious, sincere, and authentic portal to an earlier age and spirituality.

"Canterbury Shaker Village was established in 1792 when followers of founder Mother Ann Lee formed their seventh community in Canterbury, NH. The religious group that we know today as the Shakers was formed in 18th-century England when dissidents from various religions, including English Quakers and Methodists, formed a religious society based on prophetic doctrine. The group, formally called the United Society of Believers, were known as Shaking Quakers, or Shakers, because of their use of ecstatic dance in worship.

According to founder Mother Ann Lee, the Shakers devoted their "hands to work and hearts to God." They believed in community ownership, but were aggressive entrepreneurs, launching industry after industry, developing and adopting new technologies, and reinvesting the earnings into community enterprises to encourage greater growth and productivity."

The Shakers were celibate, swelling their ranks by accepting new members (families with children) and by taking in orphans long before the state provided homes for them. "The Village has operated exclusively as a museum since 1992 when the last Shaker sister in residence, Ethel Hudson, died." That pretty much says it...

A remarkable break in time!!

2010-10-13T14:57:00.000-04:00

When Señor and I arrived at the beach a few evenings ago, the water was calm and absolutely luminous. The air was surprisingly warm - a real delight in mid-October. A few couples had unleashed their frisky dogs, who bounded across the sand and nuzzled noses with casual canine acquaintances. The sun had already slipped below the horizon and the sea was painted pink in the afterglow. It was the kind of scene that evoked a deep sigh of appreciation. And I'm not all that crazy about dogs...

I'm really feeling the need to change some things. For the time being, I think I'll focus on little photos that describe my day. Soon I hope to be doing something else. Not sure just what yet. I've changed my profile.

See... The shoe is gone.

What shoe?

The converse sneaker I made out of paper.

There was a shoe?

Today I was traveling down the roller coaster road that is the shortest route from our house to the highway and mega-shopping. It changes so much from season to season. Around noon the sun was poking at the autumn leaves, urging them to sparkle. Optimal foliage is currently on display. It won't be too long before the color dries up and blows away. Sadly, the photo doesn't do it justice.

It reminds me of roads I traveled when I was a kid in Ohio... of dirt roads leading to the back fields on my grandfather's farm... of the allée planted on the estate of an erstwhile friend. The quality of the light is much the same. Dappled. Like my memories.

2010-10-12T14:06:00.000-04:00

The weekend was beautiful! Gorgeous weather for walking the beach, patching the lawn, and staining the deck, which I had abandoned last fall when my back misbehaved. And so many, pesky outdoor jobs remain!! No wonder there is so little time for blogging. I still have mulch from a June delivery that is fermenting in my driveway under a big blue tarp. Last time I reduced the pile, a yellow, sponge-like fungus bloomed. It smelled like ripe feet and oozed liquid the color and consistency of buttermilk. Talk about an incentive to work outside in the garden. A whole tarp creature might metastasize under wraps if I don't clear the pile away soon.

This afternoon is warm enough to apply water seal to the wood inside the porch. Sounds like fun, no? Water seal... shouldn't I be teaching it to play a horn instead of applying it with a brush? (The can even has a marine mammal on the label.)

And I've been covering picture mats with marbleized paper in preparation for framing some fern prints. They are headed for a shop in Exeter, where I am trying to sell some of my work. The shopkeeper asked for postcards of local scenes, too, because there are none to be had. My wonderful, patient husband chauffeured me around on Saturday morning while I hopped in and out of the car to grab some shots. In the process I realized that power lines and traffic signs mar most of the views and that my camera is too rinky-dink to take a good telephoto picture. (My Canon ELPH fits in my pocket. A 400mm lens would not...) If any of my photos sell, perhaps I'll be motivated to acquire a better camera as a "business expense." This view looks like it needs to be "shopped" a bit to lighten and brighten.

Sounds tedious, doesn't it? I think so, too. Yawn.

We See Gettysburg, Too...

2010-10-06T11:27:00.000-04:00

Sunday morning on our way to Gettysburg, we stopped for Mass at St. John's in Westminster, MD. Going to the battlefield was something we had discussed a couple of times before, always assuming that the shortest route would be from my sister's home outside of Philadelphia. Silly us. Gettysburg is only 60 miles from Baltimore proper.

First of all, the park is huge - five times larger than we thought it would be. It took us almost four and a half hours to complete a cursory circuit of the self-guided auto tour. Next, Señor and I realized that our knowledge of this particular, historical event was sketchy at best. (We noticed that almost every cluster of people had some sort of local guide - park sponsored or not. Every history buff can hang out his shingle in Gettysburg, and I think most of them do.) Thirdly, it is profoundly sobering to consider how 50,000 of our countrymen died or were wounded fighting their fellow countrymen in a three-day span. Few things are as tragic as civil war.

The avenues were filled with markers and statues commemorating the efforts of over 150,000 troops and officers from every state in nation. Clearly the most strategic points were Little Round Top and the Devil's Den - two vantage points 500 feet apart separated by the Valley of Death. That says it all. A sniper's view of Little Round Top:

The view looking into the Devil's Den:

The vision of Brig. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren, Meade's chief strategist:

The view of the infantryman, clouded with smoke:

The cemetery where Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address just four months after the battle:

Sobering, indeed.

And because I am plum crazy, I tried the crab cakes here for dinner:

Good, but no Obrycki's for sure.

We See DC...

2010-10-06T11:23:00.001-04:00

Last fall, Señor and I booked one of Southwest Airline's $39 Ding Specials to visit our son in Washington DC. Three times we've scheduled this trip, only to be preempted by his business travel or - as in the case of this past weekend - a wedding. We had to use it or lose it, our travel credit, so we ended up in one of our favorite cities on a perfectly gorgeous weekend and managed to tick off two of a Thousand Places To See Before You Die.

After our predawn departure, we were more than ready to have breakfast at one of Guy Fieri's faves (of the Food Network's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives) just east of the Capitol. I can't say I've ever eaten roast beast for breakfast before, but Guy told me that Joe's West Virginia sandwich was not to be missed. It was sooooo delicious, I forgot to take a photo of it first.

In fact, the chefs are so accommodating, they will make anything for you any time of the day. Here is the lovely, cozy, funky interior complete with gun racks made of deer hooves. Scores of past, four-footed patrons fill the walls. A ginormous black bear with a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a Canadian flag made our meal a festive threesome.

We needed to walk off our breakfast, so Señor and I circled the Capitol.

As you can see, the sky was brilliant and brightly highlighted the yellow-clad workers cleaning the stone on the dome.

Señor, who is afraid of heights, said it made him shake to look at it, so we ambled around to the front where an immigration rally was in full swing. A Chinese tour bus had just arrived, and the travelers took turns being photographed while waving the the Chinese flag.

We tried to go to Mt. Vernon. Sadly, it was our second attempt. Last fall, we actually stood at the entrance to the park in a chilling drizzle. We shook our heads and decided that a visit during primo weather was a better idea. So did about a gazillion others this past Saturday. It took fifteen minutes to find a parking space, and then we were told we'd have to wait ninety minutes for a timed entry into the park. So we left it for future, third attempt, and bought a pumpkin to decorate with a black magic marker face. We drove to Reston to deposit it upon our son and daughter-in-law's back patio grill - a smiling surprise when they got home and opened the drapes. We napped in the car while dirty birds pummeled our windshield with blueberry poop.

Much later we drove to Obrycki's, through Baltimore's red light district and some projects in neighborhoods where the street lights were dark. It was pretty scary, but we eventually landed at an oasis of gustatory delight where herds of people were clamoring for the backfin crab that makes Maryland famous. While most people brandished mallets and knives, we opted for the easy way out and ordered the largest, most succulent crab cake I have ever eaten. Pure crab meat, sweet and tender, harvested by a kitchen slave who can pick crabs in his sleep. Dusted with only enough egg and crumbs to hold it together.

Here we have original and Devil's Balls split between us. Spicy!!

Dan Shows Us His Whimmy Diddle

2010-09-28T13:11:00.009-04:00

A photo montage of our afternoon -

a lovely Saturday over much too soon.

Many quaint pictures risking overload.

A happy turn down a long, dirt road.

Finding glass and vintage tins:

Seeing how Dan's homemade toy spins.

A sunny moment for a final take:

In crystal waters, just us by the lake.

Still Here After All

2010-09-20T13:58:00.003-04:00

I have become such a sorry blogger. I think I'll rename my blog Once in A Blue Moon, because that's the frequency with which I manage to post something.

I do have an excuse. I've been in Ohio, helping my mother with the House From Hell. This time we had carpet installed in the basement rec room. (Boy, that dates it right there.) People have media rooms or game rooms or home offices. My mother has a sizable wasteland with cheesy, grooved, wood paneling and a built-in bar that - if it had a set of wheels - would resemble a pint-size caboose. Boxy. Groovy. The room has been painted the color of an albino elephant. She ordered the carpet for the floor in rose (brownish) quartz, but didn't order enough carpet to do the stairs. (????)

So I painted the stairs in Albino Elephant and Smokebush Rose. Fun.

And stripped 35 years of (lead???) paint from a window box and painted that, too.

And met with a realtor!! Yeah!! Still, the house won't go on the market for another five months.

Then I brought my mom back to our home in New Hampshire, so she could have a vacation from the constant worry of being elderly, alone, and burdened with a crumbling house.

We've been spending time at the beach, eating yummy lamb and baklava at a Greek festival, shopping at outlet stores in Kittery, Maine, and taking pictures of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard for her friend Henry, who was stationed there during WWII.

Somehow we stumbled on The Fairy House Tour at Portsmouth's Prescott Park. The gardens were packed with sweet, little girls decked out in tutus, wings and tiaras with their attendant moms and dads. There were even some ancient, cross-dressing fairies directing traffic.

Truly delightful!

Here I am... in my dreams!

The Big Blur

2010-09-07T18:22:00.004-04:00

I think I am in a time warp. I woke up this morning to find headlines for Tuesday, September 7, but I could swear that yesterday was Tuesday, August 31. How could a whole week have vanished so completely?

Actually, I'm lying. I can account for some of the time. My weeks are separated into Tuesdays and Fridays, the days on which I'm supposed to change my hormone therapy patch without which my lady parts south of the border would shrivel up and blow away, sort of like the sirocco winds of the Sahara. Can't you just imagine the astonishment of the 'tween crowd at the bus stop if my withered vagina curled and scraped along the breezy sidewalk with the rest of the early autumn leaves?

All I know is that last Friday I was still wearing the previous Friday's patch. This is a bad sign. And today I'm still wearing last Friday's patch and it's almost time for bed. It's sort of like Groundhog Day the movie. Every day is the same old patch. I think I'd better start making a memo on my phone - with an audio reminder. Or make myself a post-it. Thank goodness for post-its... But even my post-its have post-its.

Seriously, I have to set my alarm clock to record the news. Señor and I like to have our evening meal uninterrupted by media of any wave-length, and we have to eat relatively early so that my delicate digestive system has time to settle down before my head hits the pillow. Otherwise I

1. Don't fall asleep.
2. Wake up at 3am with a gnawing in my stomach, which may or may not be appeased by the cereal with milk and tylenol routine.
3. Spend the rest of the night listening to Señor snore and thinking of numbers for my bucket list, which I won't remember in the morning anyway.

We like to watch World News with David Muir or Dan Harris. Diane Sawyer regularly evokes a gag reflex with all her syrupy side-commentary. She should be a soap opera diva - not an anchorwoman. Anyway, by recording the news, we can skip the sex-in-the-bathtub drama and barrage of pharmaceutical ads where the side-effects are worse than the medication. If I forget to record the news while Señor is at a meeting, it's so sad. I get the eyes-closed head shake with a resigned sigh of stifled disappointment.

So where did the week go?

I spent a lot of time working on a PowerPoint presentation/portfolio of my photography which I hope to sell to a local shop.

I shopped for picture frames to showcase a few foot-in-the-door pictures.

I printed and framed four of seven said pictures. They are sitting in my car, awaiting the perfect moment of delivery, which should have been last Monday, but wasn't.

I went to a scrumptious open house with Señor at our local gourmet cooking school, the Chez Boucher Culinary Arts Training Center. We sampled a country pate with a tomato-fig chutney, fresh pesto-dipped mozzarella in cherry tomatoes, gravelox with toasted baguette points. The main course consisted of braised beef with sweet potato puree, lamb cassoulet, pork loin stuffed with cranberry cornbread, and three different salads featuring rice, cabbage, and marinated mushrooms with field greens. Dessert included past-decadent chocolate cake, creme brulee, a fruit tart, and a pate-brisee crown of angels with profiteroles and vanilla cream. And nary a calorie in any of it!

Señor and I awaited the non-hurricane aka Earl, overlooking the waves in Rye with take-out seafood chowder and fried scallops. No calories there, either.

I made kale "chips" for the first (and last) time. Señor gingerly chewed a small sample and firmly pronounced, "It tastes like burned leaves." Thank you so much.

We drove eighty miles to Russell Orchards for cider donuts and PYO apples. We opted for PFU apples instead. (Picked For Us) And we got perfect peaches at Meadowbrook Farm in Hamilton.

We scouted out a South Hamilton seminary that used to have a high school. (Señor once stayed there for a week as a prospective student.)

We did our weekly grass act and pulled some weeds, then walked three miles.

And we had lunch with friends at an elegant seaside restaurant. And cleaned the refrigerator, not necessarily in that order.

Five pounds of farm tomatoes have been roasted, bruschetta-ed, and/or given away. I have PMO tomatoes coming out my ears. (Pick-My-Own) And the Delcorn squash vine is so vigorously verdant it has ambled over to my neighbor's yard. Is there a Guinness record for the longest vine?

Anyway, it's Tuesday again and I have to cope with another five pounds of you-know-what. I have more kale and carrots and leeks to burn. And a woodpecker destroying the birdhouse. And a new haircut that makes me look younger. And that patch that anchors the beginning of the week.

You're in the North Country If...

2010-08-31T10:27:00.010-04:00

Señor and I drove north on Sunday to visit his mother in Berlin. The city changed the pronounciation to BURR'lin when the U.S. entered WWII, just so there would be no confusing it with the Nazi war capital. Same with MY'lin, which is right up the road. Milan was just a little too Fascist for the local folks. Mooselini was in power, after all.

A view of Mt. Washington from North Conway:

I knew we were in the North Country when we passed a sporting goods store with the following sign:

They have flannel shirts in extra-extra-big and extra-extra-tall sizes for all the reclusive relatives hanging out in your wetlands.

On our way home, we decided to take a shortcut over

Hurricane Mountain, aka the Le Mans of the North. It was a wild ride (either turn off the sound or excuse the language)- almost a religious experience - and is the subject of many YouTube videos.

I guess people drive each other off the road regularly, since it's only a little wider than one lane. Here is some North Country road rage:

We dodged a lot more North Country road hazards on the next stretch of Rt. 113.

Then we decided that we needed to revive ourselves after so many thrilling near-misses, and stopped at Red Caboose Ice Cream in Ossipee which boasts the smallest handicapped parking signs in the whole world. One space was under a picnic table. My file of this photo is rotated correctly... it's jinxed:

You could guess which car in the lot belonged to the owner:

But his trucks were just plain weird. I give you pugilistic ice cream:

The last time I had ice cream that packed this kind of punch, it was laced with rum. And the Spirit of Christmas delivery truck:

We took our order to go and proceeded to freeze our brains while we headed south. I felt thankful to be alive, but somewhat suspicious of Señor. I know that he secretly plotted out this route, so that I wouldn't be able to nap while he drove.

You Saw It Here First...

2010-08-26T11:39:00.005-04:00

Farmer Maggie was right. Never mix...never worry. (I think that was my mother's advice on drinking wine and beer.)

You can call me Dr. Veganstein from here on out... I have spawned mutant squash in my own back yard!! Step into my la-BORE-atory, Igor.

TA-DAAAAAAAH!!!

I bring you the Delcorn... or is it the Zuccata?

This is what happens when you plant zucchini, acorn, and delicata squash seedlings close enough to be kissing cousins: monster zombie food.

Haven't tried it yet... I'm waiting for the pumpkin-watermelon mix to ripen. {wink, wink}

Cute and Old Like Me

2010-08-25T08:02:00.008-04:00

My boys know that deep in my heart of hearts, I want a truck. Not a bruiser with a Hemi, but a girlie truck with a bed just big enough to cart around antiques and the occasional power tool - like an industrial lawn edger or snow thrower.

A couple of days ago I saw the truck of my dreams in a shade of turquoise that screamed soda fountains and lassies in poodle skirts. It was a honey of a truck with voluptuous curves and enough chrome to out-bling even the glitziest creation on Pimp My Ride. Plus, you didn't need a step ladder to climb into the cab!

As we came up to it from behind, I was on the verge of becoming a truckjacker.

Sigh...

Lucky for Señor, the guy behind the wheel wasn't my type. He had a beard that looked long and scratchy, and he probably smoked Virginia Slims. (A guy with a Super Duty F-350 would be a Marlboro Man, naturally...) Anyway, I couldn't stalk him at the time, and now the truck of my dreams is gone forever.

This post was brought to you by my Siamese twin, Techno-Cat:

Everybody But Me

2010-08-21T10:04:00.007-04:00

I love walking along the beach - especially in the summertime when you can kick off your shoes and anesthetize your toes in the ~~chilly~~ refreshing waters of Northern New England. Lots of others agree, and you can see them setting up their chairs, coolers, cabanas, tents, and whatever as early as 7am on the weekends. There are lots of kids and couples. Signs posted strictly forbid dogs on the beach from June to September, because dogs peeing and pooping near the same waters enjoyed by children digging in the sand and crawling over the rocks just isn't healthy.

So why do I see this:

and this, which further proves my point that some people are selfish, thoughtless pigs:

It drives me nuts, this mindset that says "The law applies to everybody but me." I asked Señor this morning if I could make a 911 call, but he said no. I feel the same way about parents who litter in front of their children. Or people who litter at all. What's wrong with us?

Sunday in the Park with Señor

2010-08-16T15:38:00.013-04:00

Yesterday, Señor and I drove to the North End of Boston to walk part of the Freedom Trail and eat classic Italian cuisine. Behind North Church, Paul Revere headed his mighty steed towards Charlestown.

A support group was meeting in Paul's park, and a memorial to U.S. servicemen and women who lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan glittered in the tree-filtered sunlight. It was a chilling, sobering sight, consisting of over 5,500 blank dog tags hung on a matrix of posts and wire.

We went to services at St. Stephen's and wandered over to Quincy Market and back, checking out the weekend's fiesta dedicated to Madonna del Soccorco di Sciacca, the Fishermen's Feast.

We ended up at L'Osteria for Veal Valdostana and Paglia e Fieno, aka Straw and Hay. Delizioso.

We also stumbled upon All Saints' Alley,

and a fire boat docked along the Harborwalk.

We discovered the Maritime Museum and several high-end condos where once the fish markets prospered. Sailboats dotted the harbor, and motor boats zipped by like water bugs. The Harborwalk is a work in progress. When completed, it will stretch some 46.9 linear miles along wharves, piers, bridges, beaches and shoreline from Chelsea Creek to the Neponset River. We covered only a small segment, and I am anxious to walk the rest.

The funniest part of the day involved a bathroom break.

There are no public toilets in the North End, which forces tourists to either eat at a restaurant or hike across the greenway to the bathrooms at Quincy Market. After traveling over 50 miles, going to church, and walking for over an hour, Señor and I were ready for a comfort stop. (The restaurant we planned to visit for lunch was not yet open.)

We dashed down the steps to the subterranean bathrooms, which were accessed via a long hallway that runs between either side of the market's main building. When I finished my business, I returned to the side we on which we entered, and I waited near the pushcarts and shops.

I waited so long that I was able to mentally complete my Christmas shopping for half the family. There was a pair of neat, carpetbagger-style Apropos shoes for my sister - a way to avoid that white-sneaker, fashion faux pas that screams "AMERICAN TOURIST!!" There was a nifty tie printed and shaped like a clarinet and a teeny, playable violin for our son the music teacher. There were moose-printed pj bottoms for the daughter-in-law. And dragonfly magnets to embellish the wrapping on my mother's gift (whatever that may be...) There was a gift certificate for baked beans; and a purse made of zippers that unzipped itself just in case you wanted to strangle somebody - a gift for the future daughter-in-law.

I moved several times to avoid groups of families and friends waiting for significate others to emerge from the john.

After about ten minutes I was being to think that Señor had had a stroke in the stall or something, and I started to text him, "R u ok?" Just then, I received his text asking the same, and I traced my steps down to the bathroom and walked through the building to the other side where Señor stood guard like the Potty Police. He didn't look happy, but annoyed and faintly agitated.

"I thought something was wrong," he said tersely.

"I was waiting on the side where we we came in," I explained.

"No, this is the side. One to ten... what do you want to bet?"

"10 bucks!!" was my immediate response.

"So, how will we know who's right?"

"Well, when I entered the bathroom I turned to the right. When I exited, I turned to the left." Take that, Sherlock! "Do you know which way you turned to enter the men's room?"

"Uh, no." Señor's confidence was beginning to crumble.

"Well, how about the Cheers bar with the doors that don't allow entrance from outside the building?" I suggested.

We ducked down the stairs and emerged on the side where we had entered. Señor was shaking his head as he humbly admitted he was wrong again. We laughed about it, and I didn't say another word, considering the couple of times that I've been wrong... {wink, wink}

Humor and forgiveness... a great marriage abundantly has both.

Thank you, Señor, for 13 wonderful years.

The Week in Pictures

2010-08-13T07:44:00.006-04:00

Where does the time go? A whole week has gone by without a post. I guess I've just been having too much fun. Random pictures:

I love the look of this sign at Petey's. It's home-grown artistry sums up the roadside clam shack ambiance of this eat-in/take out beach restaurant in Rye, NH. Petey's is big business though. On Saturday we waited over thirty minutes for our chowders and fried scallops to appear at the window. The parking lot was so hazardous and visibility onto the street so poor, that a traffic cop was needed. We left the four picnic tables for the other six families who were vying for a spot to sit and drove to our favorite look out. The beach was luminous under the setting sun:

and the sea looked like an Impressionist painting:

Things like mowing the lawn and doing tons of laundry ate up most of Sunday. Early Monday I edged one of the flower beds which is still overgrown with some sort of creeping bell flower. It is the most invasive plant I've ever seen, it's massive root system looking like the neurons of your brain. Digging out the soil barely controls the problem. Add in tons of crab grass and you've got my garden. I edged this particular garden with a shovel, which is no easy task after ten years of unfettered growth. Then I mulched it. Bah!

I trimmed three enormous lavender bushes, and disturbed this alien who climbed on top of the mound and gave me The Look. I could feel his annoyance, bug whisperer that I am:

At first I thought I had clipped his wing. Turns out, he was already deformed. His right wing had been crimped from birth:

Tuesday morning I had a library meeting, and the rest of the day I continued my work outside. I picked up more vegetables at the farm, like these from last week:

Multiply these time two, and you have the amount of veggies now rotting in my refrigerator.

This was amazing, too... a normal guest at the bird bath:

And other interlopers... I counted eight crows that afternoon:

About a month ago, I hi-jacked my neighbor's brand new wheelbarrow, and I was feeling guilty that a little rust had formed at the bottom of the tires' spokes. And I'm not ready to return it, so I decided to buy a new one for the neighbor. 70-80 bucks, right, for a primo wheelbarrow? I nearly had a heart attack when I found one online at Sears for $199.

When I asked the neighbor where she got it, she told me it was a Mother's Day present. (Sheesh! Now, I was feeling really bad.) But she said she thought it came from Lowe's...

I was thrilled to find it on sale (a mere $109... just joking, I still think that's a fortune to pay) and I bought it in a box so I could assemble it at home. (In my next life, I want a truck, Señor.) And Wednesday morning, I put the thing together in less than thirty minutes with time out for coffee and a bathroom break:

The rest of the day, I scrubbed down the side of the house related to the 16'x16' screen porch, and its floor, and its rails with a concoction of Tide, Spic and Span, bleach and hot water. Then I pressure washed the whole thing, and all the furniture, and vacuumed all the cushions. so I wouldn't be mortified when Señor's administrators arrived for a retreat the next morning. I've been wanting to sanitize this area since we moved into the house two years ago. Did I mention I'm slow? But I sure know how to have fun.

Time out for arranging flowers:

And making Paula Dean's baked French toast, which was phenomenal. No picture of that, sorry. Suffice it to say, that one casserole could have supplied the caloric needs of a whole Pakistani village. I'll be eating BLTs with the leftover bacon for several days, too. And have zucchini bread up the wazoo. (I am really loathing zucchini bread about now.) And I get to play Martha Stewart again this evening for another round of dinner guests.

Still working on writing short stories... and other stories. It leaves my head empty of blogging ambitions. Hence this rambling, tedious post. You'll be happy to now that Catzilla is still underfoot. Literally, he was sitting under my chair this morning, ready to attack my ankles if I made a false move - like placing my foot on his head. I tricked him into the screen porch by dancing around its furniture faster than he could keep up. Locked out, Sucker!!

And if you're still with me, after all of this tedious drivel... have a lovely weekend!!

Rant - Part Deux

2010-08-06T07:40:00.003-04:00

Since I'm feeling fairly feisty - and a fool for alliteration - I may as well bore you with my personal outrage over the cost of health care. Remember how my own precious pet mauled me a month ago? Well, an accounting from the Urgent Care unit arrived yesterday.

Over $1,100 to treat a cat scratch? Unbelievable. I am so happy Smoke didn't chew off my nose.

Over $140 for gauze and a half-ounce tube of Bacitracin? You could wrap a mummy for less.

And those three questionable x-rays for kitty teeth in my arm? $630? Sick.

If we didn't have insurance to cover these charges, I think I'd stick my head under a moving truck. I pity families who can't afford to pay for health care for their children. That has to be one of the worst feelings in the world.

Enjoy your weekend... and stay out of the ER.

The Story of Pete

2010-08-04T15:37:00.006-04:00

Señor is very practical when it comes to washing his car and feels that a good rain or snowstorm does the trick just as well as fancier methods that cost money.

Accordingly, as a special Christmas treat and to preserve the under body of his car, I bought him a 5-wash package at our local Mobil on the Run. The deal was to pay $35 for five mid-quality ($7) washes, and the code provided would automatically upgrade to five superior $10 washes.

I was really cute about it and scanned the single store receipt, so that I could make five separate coupons. I figured this would help Señor to keep track of how many times he used the code - knowing it might take years for him to use them all...

Well, on Sunday Señor and I went to the car wash to use Wash Coupon #3 to get rid of the NB/PEI mud that caked the car. Sadly, the code didn't work. Code Error!! Repeat. Code Error!!

We were dumb-founded, which explains why we tried punching in the code three separate times. We felt gypped and went into the store to speak with the manager. He wasn't there. I promised to follow up the next day, which would be the new manager's first day of work.

I figured he didn't need to see me on his first day. So it wasn't until Tuesday that I finally met Pete. His workers hauled him from the back room.

"Hi, Pete!! How's it going?"

"Uhhhh. Okay, I guess." Pete was serious and approachable. "Can I help you with something?"

So I told Pete all about the code not working, and fanned my three wash coupons under his nose. How the code had worked twice, and so on.

He looked at me as if I smelled bad.

Then he bought some time with, "But I've never heard of this promotion."

"Well, there was a huge banner about it in the front window. It didn't say anything about an expiration date. It's not right."

Pete agreed, "No, that's not right. I'd be upset, too."

So I told Pete that I wasn't upset with him, and he agreed to phone the main office. He made the mistake of standing next to me while he was making the call. Next he seemed to repeat for my benefit, "So the code expired after six months."

I jumped right into the conversation. "The code shouldn't expire. No where on the receipt or the banner did it say anything about expiration! That's just wrong!!"

Pete put some distance between us. His body language softly cursed. Finally he put the phone down.

"I can't do anything without the original receipt."

I looked at him with dagger eyes. I started punching Coupon #3 with my index finger. "But this is the receipt!! Look!! A photocopy. It has all the original information on it."

"I need the original receipt."

Now this stinks because I bought the thing on December 23, 2009. That's over seven months ago.

I countered with, "Well, I want a phone number. I want to give the company a piece of my mind. What's your name?" His name tag said "Pete".

"Pete," he responded.

"Pete what?"

"Pete in Epping."

Lame. I hate it when people refuse to tell me their last names.

"Okay, Pete in Epping, what's your boss's name?"

"Christine."

I shot him the look.

"Christine in Manchester" ...sort of like Joan of Arc.

Meanwhile, I'm writing this down and giving him my best I-just-sucked-on-a-lemon look. A little nostril action, too. Meanwhile, Pete is getting all apologetic. Shaking his head in agreement with that "I'd be upset, too" phony sympathy.

I know two things, but I don't want to show my cards too soon.

1. Gift certificates in New Hampshire never expire. It's the law. I can report Pete in Epping to the Better Business Bureau. And...

2. Somewhere at home I may have the original receipt in an envelope marked "Receipts to Keep" which I always prepare around Christmas time. (You know, in the unlikely event that my sister hates the spectacularly priced, gorgeous merino, kimono-style jacket I got her in that navy blue color she never wears.)

Then I went home to ferret about in the mail organizer that holds statements from when the kids had braces, souvenir postcards from a 2002 trip to Yosemite, my 2005 lens prescription, and the like. And...

Bingo!! God is good!! I found my car wash receipt dated 12-23-09. And I knew Pete was gonna be thrilled for me.

On Wednesday, I walked into the Mobil Hit and Run ready to brighten Pete's day. He was working the register and did a double take when he saw me, getting all squinty-eyed with apprehension.

Not even a hello. "So you called them."

I smiled sweetly and responded, "No, I found the receipt."

He slumped. Pete in Epping was a defeated man, but his hand shot out with incredulity.

He scanned the receipt as if I had forged it. Finally he sighed and asked me if I wanted a partial refund or three car washes.

I said I'd like the washes, please - and added, "Wouldn't that be easier for you?" since I thought three frigging car washes would cost him next to nothing.

But Pete was busy in his drawer, and thrusting $21 at me, he dismissed me with, "No, this is easier."

Obviously, the customer is always right. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship...

The Journey, Not the Destination...

2010-08-03T11:15:00.018-04:00

Señor has been so busy this summer, it really was a pleasure to get away for a few days last week. We had a destination - Prince Edward Island via the Hopewell Rocks in New Brunswick - but the real goal was to enjoy our journey together.

I was a bit of a Nazi about the Hopewell Rocks adventure, which is one of those bucket list, 1,000 Places to See before You Die activities. The highest tides in the world funnel through the Bay of Fundy, and over many thousands of years, have eroded the landscape into flowerpot and teapot rocks, a mother-in-law and a lover's arch. Due to astute timing on our part, were able to walk the sea floor at low tide and kayak during high tide.

Here's Señor looking every bit like the Great Outdoorsman. He managed to skipper us safely without a rudder, and didn't even yell at me when I quit paddling to take a photo or two or a dozen. (Well, maybe once there was just a little pique in his voice: "Do you think you could paddle, so we don't crash into those rocks?")

After our kayaking adventure, we became very casual about our itinerary. It went something like:

1. Arrive PEI on Tuesday.
2. Drive west.
3. Drive east.
4. Drive home on Friday.

In doing so, we opened ourselves to an amazing number of serendipitous events. Like arriving at the Tidal Bore Park in Moncton thirty minutes before the bore was due. It came early. We waited barely five minutes before a small wall of water rushed up the Petitcodiac River. The bore ranges in height from two feet on a good day, to eight inches on a modest day. We saw it on a modest day:

We paid $5.00 to experience Magnetic Hill, where if a vehicle is set to neutral, it will appear to coast up hill. Señor muttered "money-making scheme," but I thought it was great to watch a tour bus defy gravity.

We also found Nanna's Bakery aka Chez Mémére with breads and muffins so delicious we stopped both coming and going on our way to Prince Edward Island. The world's best pan bread:

New Brunswick is largely a latte-free zone, so I was teasing Señor with a "Oh look, there's a Starbucks!" when there was none in sight. Low and behold, we turned a corner and Starbucks appeared like magic at a Chapters store. Chapters is Canada's Barnes and Noble equivalent. It was totally random and weird how it happened, but our craving for caffeine was perfectly satisfied.

On PEI, we stopped at the church in Brae where Señor's grandmother was baptised.

The church was locked up tight, so we scanned the cemetery's headstones, hoping to find some Beatons or Steeles. No luck. Instead we were devoured by mosquitoes that hadn't had a meal in this decade. So we hopped in the car and headed to Brae Harbour, down a dirt road that became a footpath. Señor harvested some new potatoes,

while I collected wild lupine seeds and photos like this:

On our return past the Brae church, a car was parked at the church door and a lady had her key in the lock. Not only did she let us in, Señor discovered that he had taught her son in graduate courses and that she had been a colleague's secretary. This occurred almost 600 miles from home. Pretty amazing.

We drove all over the island and saw red sand beaches,

amazing churches,

and cemeteries,

harbours,

and lighthouses,

boardwalks,

and Edouard Arsenault's queer glass houses, a pastime that consumed over over 25,000 recycled bottles.

We ate numerous forms of lobster, famous Malpeque oysters (I did... Señor wouldn't touch them), and delicious Lebanese food in Charlottetown. We tried Cow's Ice Cream, but actually preferred the soft serve at Richmond's Dairy Bar. We saw the world's biggest dog in Victoria. (Stretched out on the porch, he is bigger than I am.)

Occasionally, we napped in church parking lots, and even found a school museum for sale. Maybe Señor could retire there.

There were so many beautiful views, from the multi-colored tapestry of fields and river valleys to the udderly pastoral:

The best part of the trip, though, was just being with Señor and happily savoring whatever fate sent our way.

Juvenile Vegetables

2010-07-27T20:33:00.003-04:00

When Vegetables Intermarry

2010-07-24T11:08:00.002-04:00

Mom, Don't Play with Your Food... Part Deux

2010-07-22T08:32:00.006-04:00

Some people have to keep up with the Joneses. We, on the other hand, have to keep up with the Vegetables. No easy task, I might add...

This week's haul from the farm looks a little scant:

That's because I left behind fennel, eggplant, two zucchinis, one slicing cucumber, and a head of lettuce for some other happy family.

Señor doesn't do fennel because it tastes too much like licorice. He'd rather eat shoe leather than licorice. Eggplant is also out because it so often tastes like soft sludge, although he might eat it if it were deep fried first, then layered with tomato sauce and lots of cheese.

Instead, I tried to focus on what we could reasonably eat, pickle, or turn into bread. To that end, for the past two nights, I've prepared a stir fry with golden raisins and basil, filling a ten-inch skillet for just the two of us.

Señor reacted by saying he knew that we were supposed to consume 4 to 5 servings of vegetables each day, but not 4 to 5 servings of vegetables at each meal!!

Also, for an appetizer, I offered Señor a slice of buttered turnip, because he'll eat anything slathered with butter or Smart Balance. He popped in his mouth and murmured "Body of Christ."

Now I don't know why we have to bring religion into it.

On the other hand, I can't see why we can't seize this opportunity for a lesson in multiculturalism...

Hear Ye, Hear Ye... Read All About It !!!!!

2010-07-20T08:36:00.008-04:00

Where does the time go? Seems like last Tuesday's veggie pick up from the farm was yesterday. Last week's haul included some troublesome vegetables. They are still sitting in the bin because Señor is "selective" when it comes to unfamiliar foods. (Prejudiced might be more apt... he crinkles his right nostril as if the foodstuff in question smells like dirty socks, which it doesn't.) In fact, he even went so far as to suggest that we skip the farm membership next year and shop instead at the local farmers market where we only have to purchase the things WE like...

Here are the culprits: 1. patty pan squash, 2. turnips, and 3. so much zucchini I've got several loaves of zucchini bread stashed in the freezer... and more to make. Can't get rid of it fast enough. The neighbors are locking their doors when they see me coming.

Feliway is working wonders for our grumpy old mancat. Well, technically he's an itcat. Here he is hooking up with the pheromone diffuser on Friday at 5:00, 7:00, and first thing the following morning. He spent the night with it, too.

What a turnaround! He's much calmer, not under foot as much, and not as prone to random attacks. So far, so good. He's got a stay of execution at least for now.

And it must have been a slow day at our local newspaper yesterday. One-third of today's front page (and half of the second) was devoted to an article about an "inn-bedded reporter" at the Balsams resort in Dixville Notch. He gets paid to tweet pictures of his meals, hiking, and golf experiences to some 4,000 followers on Facebook. I am kicking myself that I haven't been savvy enough to get similar exposure with my outstanding photos of our eats across the nation.

Friday, for example, we did take out at our favorite seafood restaurant and headed to the best "table" on NH's coast... where you can see the Isle of Shoals in all kinds of weather. Here's my photo masterpiece Seaside Dashboard with Chowder at Sunset:

The fried scallops were so succulent, I almost forgot to take a picture:

And, as if that isn't exciting enough, here's some breaking news... LOBSTER RUSTLERS SIGHTED NORTH OF RYE HARBOR:

Or do you think this guy just normally hauls in his catch on his kayak?

And of course, we can't forget to add Munk #6 to our Southern NH Rodent Relocation Project Hall of Fame:

Mellow Cat?

2010-07-16T16:18:00.008-04:00

Hallelujah!! WE'VE {wink, wink} finally produced a zucchini of distinction.

Reasonable size, perfect complexion, and undoubtedly superior taste from OUR vegetable garden. Señor announced yesterday, after he had plucked it out of the squash patch, that he was satisfied that WE {wink, wink} had cultivated an ideal specimen and I was released from further zucchini-growing duties now and for all time hence. Amen.

Other big news, my vet suggested another tactic for dealing with Smoke's personality disorders:

The secret to happy cats is pheromone therapy... French pheromone therapy... that set me back $37.26. If it works and it deters Smoke from alternately lunging claws akimbo for my ankles or purring up a storm as he squeezes his hot, furry body against my leg, I will be kissing my fingers in that distinctly French fashion and announcing, "C'est magnifique!!" to every soul who crosses our threshold. I may even get one for myself and install it in the cat-free zone next to my bed. Maybe I'll sleep better, too, and won't feel like biting Señor when he snores.

Bad Cat

2010-07-12T15:34:00.004-04:00

Smoke's eyesight isn't what it used to be... And he's developed this extremely annoying habit of snagging my ankle with his claws as a way to signal:

1) I'm hungry

2) I don't like the food you just put down for me.

3) I'm feeling feisty... or hot... or bored... or senile...

4) My bad... I thought your ankle was an albino rabbit, and I was zooming in for the kill...

Yesterday, I was using a paper towel to blot Smoke's leg. (He had bit it and it was looking kinda nasty.)

Well, the cat must have thought that he was being attacked, because he suddenly dug his teeth and his claws into my arm. I yelped and he really clamped down. Then he was growling and I was yelling, and I smacked his head until he let go. Not a pretty sight. Senor would have shot the damn cat if we had a gun. He settled for making a trip to the urgent care center for a thumb-to-elbow swabbing with Betadine solution that hurt like hell, a tetanus shot, x-rays to rule out teeth fragments, a very chic surgical dressing, and ten day's worth of Doxycycline. Ick.

Bad cat. Bad, eighteen-year-old, quirky, semi-blind cat with the first warning signs of dementia... who sometimes pees outside the box... the double-wide litter box.

The question is... when do you say "Goodnight, Irene" ???

Finally, Something to Blog About...

2010-07-10T08:26:00.011-04:00

I can't believe the Ides of July is coming up. Where does the time go?

Delightful visits from family and friends have kept us so busy I haven't had time to blog or garden much. Besides, the heat has been so oppressive that drinking a cup of coffee makes me sweat. My muse wants to go to the beach, not sit at a simmering desktop PC, the monitor of which emits enough BTUs to bake bread.

Here are recent photos of our grandchildren... Tucker is a skinny, Canaan dog who detests traveling in the car ...evidenced by his huge, pointy ears folded against his head in a prolonged flinch and his drooling anxiety.

His 'big' sister, Kahlua, is a perpetually smiling mix of cocker spaniel and cattle dog ??? She likes to drive.

Both of them are terrified of

Señor, who ~~hates~~ ~~barely tolerates~~ greets visits from his canine kin with mixed emotions, really outdid himself this past weekend by walking poor Kahlua when her parents were sleeping late. The poor pup had her legs crossed all the way to the lawn. Señor was a real sport, poop bag and all. (Sorry, no pix. Señor said he didn't want to be remembered for his critter-loving heroics.)

Other big news... On July 5th, we were victimized by the Killer Hook at Guiseppe's Grille in Northboro, MA. Our dear friends, Steven and the lovely Deirdre from Honolulu, had just enough time to meet us for lunch before attending her mother's dance competition and leaving for home. As soon as we walked into the restaurant, the Hook grabbed Señor by his belt loop, delivering a giant wedgie that obliterated any hope of future children. Then the nasty thing grabbed the waitress by her sleeve, causing Steven's iced tea to hit the floor and shatter like one, huge, ice-and-glass-shard bomb.

Our lunch was delish, and we sang, danced, and sumo-ed for the bill. Steven charmed the other patrons and gave me this Kodak moment.

The next day, Señor went to Waterville Valley to teach for PSU. I was able to join him on Saturday, when we took a detour along Tripoli (pronounced Triple-Eye) Road in the White Mountain National Forest. The road is gated and closed in the winter. The rest of the year it is campers' heaven... off the grid and a great gathering spot for survivalists. Little tent cities interconnected by tarps seemed to be filled with Real Men of the shootin', drinkin', smokin' variety. Here's one of their Welcome Centers:

We were amazed by the lush undergrowth and canopy

... so different from our more southern, seacoast-area home.

Here's a parting shot for those of you who remember New Hampshire's best-known poet. Two roads diverged...

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

2010-06-27T20:49:00.004-04:00

Yesterday, Señor and I took an early morning ride to the beach to see the entries in the sand sculpture competition. Ten master sand carvers were doing their thing... defying gravity and exciting the mind's eye. 300 tons of some special sort of sand (with a flat crystalline structure that allows the sand to compress more tightly than normal beach sand) was trucked in for the event. After the event, they haul it away. (So I won't get a chance to practice with the leftovers. Tsk. Tsk. My career as a master sand carver... nipped in the bud, so to speak.)

2010-06-23T09:10:00.004-04:00

Yesterday was the second time I picked up harvest at the community farm. My haul included more garlic scapes, which I think I'll epoxy and turn into pens.

Also, there were scallions, broccoli, snow peas, sugar snap peas, rhubarb, thyme, and salad mix. (My family's eaten so much salad in the last ten days their noses are twitching and their ears seem a bit longer.) For Señor's sake, I declined more radishes. (And I chucked last week's radish tops into the composter, because Señor winced every time I threatened to cook them. He's not very adventuresome when it comes to eggplants, chard, cabbage, cauliflower, or anything with a foreign-sounding name. My son is worse. You can count the veggies he readily eats on one hand.)

I decided to make pasta salad for dinner, which included most of the above, as well as mini bow-ties, grilled chicken, turkey kielbasa, grape tomatoes, and baby mozzarella balls. See how pretty the green stuff looks when it's sauteed in olive oil?

Today I'm making kale soup with hot Italian sausage, potatoes (I can hear Señor cheering), onion, chicken stock, and Sriracha (chili pepper sauce). I will freeze 80% of it, and probably eat 100% of it. Sad. What the heck, I'm sure Julia Child had some of those days as well.

And yesterday's winner in the Southern NH Rodent Relocation Program was Munk #5.

Gonna buy me some stock in the Hershey Company. KitKat catches 'em every time! Sounds like a marketing ploy, no?

Hello, Summer!!!

2010-06-22T07:38:00.003-04:00

The longest day of the year has come and gone. It makes me sad, because it means we are turning toward winter again. The beginning of summer doesn't cheer me as much as it should. In fact, hot and humid weather makes me downright testy. If I were going to bite someone, it would happen during the dog days of summer.

When I was little, summer seemed a lot better. Whenever my mother wanted some kid-free time, she would cart my sister and me to my grandparents' farm in eastern Ohio. Our stay there could be numbered in days or weeks, depending on my mother's mood and my father's ability to escape from the office. In fact, our visits seemed pretty much nonstop during summer vacation. It was fine with us because we pretty much had free run of the barns and gardens, fields and sheds. The pasture where the bull sulked and anything surrounded by electrified fence was off limits, but we found plenty to amuse us - from kittens in the hay loft to searching for Indian corn in the crib. We'd hunt for toads in the rock garden, and grab fistfuls of willow branches to swing like Tarzan. We'd feed grain to the cattle whose disgusting tongues were as long as my arm, or play hide and seek among the many buildings housing idle farm equipment, gardening tools, and the family car.

We were sent outside most of the time. Television was reserved for Saturday night fights when my grandfather would break out the Jiffy Pop. My grandmother liked Art Linkletter, and we would occasionally sit down to watch kids say the darndest things.

Jigsaw puzzles were reserved for the wait before dinner, after we'd washed our hands from playing all day. Reading was encouraged, which is why I finished Lorna Doone and Ivanhoe before fifth grade. But for the most part we were expected to play outside and help with chores.

We could walk to other farms owned by other relatives if we were really hard up for amusement, especially if it involved admiring a new batch of piglets or playing Scrabble with elderly aunts.

For me, the best of summer is distilled in dry, heated air tinged with the smell of grass and old, sun-warmed wood and in the endless patience and kindness of my grandmother's love...

Not Herculean weeds and Munk #4:

2010-06-21T09:16:00.009-04:00

A belated Happy Dad's Day to all fathers... We celebrated by going on a Portsmouth Harbor cruise which started very sunny and turned into a thunder shower before becoming sunny again.

Earlier in the day, I saw that the chipmunk trap had been sprung. Expecting to see Munk #4, I was stunned when the thing started barking at me. Not a chipmunk at all:

So Señor and I drove him to the Leddy Center in Epping (almost five miles away) where he can enjoy life at Verdant Pastures. They have all kinds of activities, and the squirrel can even sign up for counseling if he needs to... which he may opt for once he realizes that a highway and a river separate him from his birth location. Maybe the Center offers swimming lessons, too...

And remember the zucchini angst of last summer? (and every summer for the prior ten years...) Well, Señor wants squash... but he relies on his Little Red Hen (moi) to plant and tend and harvest them. (He's still dodging the kale and radish tops, btw.) Well, I saved seeds from every squash we ate last fall... acorn squash, delicata, and zucchini. When they sprouted, I planted them all together. The community farm manager, Maggie, shook her head in disgust and said this wasn't a good thing to do, as we would end up with a mongrel lot. I bet Luther Burbank's mom told him that as well.

Life is good!!

Mom, stop playing with your food...

2010-06-16T08:35:00.009-04:00

Yeah!! Yesterday was the first pick up date at the community farm. (You know, the one where membership allows wannabe farmers to get down and dirty with the leeks...) My share included head lettuce, arugula, kale, radishes, and garlic scapes. (A bunch of PYO stuff was also available. I ogled the Asian salad greens, snap peas, and rhubarb, and grabbed some cilantro for my pork kabob marinade.)

I'd seen "garlic scapes" bandied about on the farm's blog, but yesterday was the first time I actually saw one. (To me they sounded like some kind of art genre... you know still-lifes and garlic-scapes by Pissarro or Cézanne.) Think of them as giant, twisted, garlic chives:

Everything looked beautiful and it was certified organic to boot:

For dinner I served grilled sesame ginger kabobs with pork tenderloin and vidalia onions, some skewers of grilled pineapple, and a lovely salad that included the aforementioned head lettuce with strawberries, blueberries, cucumber, and celery tossed with a honey balsamic vinaigrette. No potatoes, no rice, no pasta. A slice of homemade boule, purchased at the farm, with rosemary-garlic dipping oil rounded out the repast. Just in time for the new USDA nutrition guidelines which recommend a diet of 65% vegetables and fruits. Pretty clever on my part...

Señor is going to be pretty sad to know that mashed potatoes are going on the DO NOT SERVE list... along with grilled cheese sandwiches and hot dogs. (He lives for mashed potatoes loaded with Smart Balance and sour cream.) When I told him that I was saving the radish tops to serve in kale soup, his reply was, "Please, no."

Other big news...

Munk #2 went for THE RIDE...

Back in Business

2010-06-13T16:30:00.006-04:00

Just in case you thought the NH Rodent Relocation Project was dead, let me assure you that there is no end of critters seeking to make my life difficult.

Friday, as I was cleaning the hot tub - an all-day affair that involves emptying, scrubbing, rinsing, emptying again, and spending several hours adding calcium and other chemicals - I saw some chewed bits along the bottom of the tub's exterior. Creamy, chewed bits of sawdust?

I ended up dismantling the side walls, and lo and behold, this is what I saw:

While I was busy chasing down the Squirrel Queen, critters had moved into the hot tub. And they'd been there a while from the vast maze of rodent rooms carved into the insulating foam.

Sigh.

This is my life. No wonder our electric bill is so high. We save $20 per month for every five degrees I lower the water temperature. If somebody is charging rent here, it should be us!!

So what did I do? I packed the maze full of moth balls and rat poison. (I am still crazy about the damage done by our last rodent invaders; i.e. the screen porch.)

Within the hour, sometime between alkalinity increaser and stain and scale control, a chipmunk and I had a face off. I won, I think. He stared at me and went back into the tub.

Later, when I explained to my mother what I had done, she exhaled a mighty, "Awwww. You've ruined my day." She was so upset over the hardship endured or about to be endured by the stupid chipmunk, i.e. death by camphor and worse, that I had to promise to dig out the Havahart trap.

Two hours later, BINGO! The KitKat gets them every time.

We went for The Ride... traveling over five miles to an adjacent town where I found a really nice property with a newly planted vegetable garden and a bunch of sheds and barn-like structures. Think of it as Alvin Goes to Camp. Or not.

Making Haste Slowly

2010-06-10T12:22:00.008-04:00

So often I have to remind myself to slow down. Bet you never thought of accessorizing this way:

Especially fetching from the side:

You see, rather than wait a few days for a stiff back to resolve itself, (shoveling will be the death of me...) I rushed to plant a bunch of hostas and totally tweaked my spine in the process of clearing and tossing a mega clump of dead ornamental grass onto the mulch pile. My hips are those of an eighty-year-old elephant who's danced the Twist too many times. I spent the remainder of the day first chillin', then prone on a heating pad.

This minor contretemps occurred the day before a job interview. Since the position was meant for a younger person, it would have been bad form to limp into the prospective employer's office. So I put on my game face, bashed my elbow while hurrying to get dressed in the morning, and transformed into that chirpy, insurance saleswoman on those Progressive ads. Or tried.

The place of business in question produces high-end ceramics that are personalized according to the wishes of the clients who order them. Other non-ceramic products were also on display, including a handsome pillow propped on the chair on which I was supposed to sit. The design had a graphic and tons of descriptive phrases. The business owner shook her head with disgust, and asked if I could see the typo.

Now, I started to scan the small print, assuming this was where the error would lie, and immediately found a phrase that was ungrammatical. It involved the interjection "Oh" followed by "the bells sweetly ring" or some other holiday-themed line. There was no comma after the interjection*, i.e. "Oh, the bells sweetly ring..." and as I was searching for a tactful way to point it out to her, she blurted, "Look at the header!"

It read, "'Tis the Seaon!"

Ooops. I missed the elephant in the room. (And I'm not talking about my hips here.) In fact the whole showroom was filled with gorgeous samples that involved mistakes in the spelling of a name or misquoting of a date. What a depressing thought... all that inventory. Were they a result of someone rushing to get the work done?

Anyway, I think she assumed I was a slow-witted.

So I probably won't get the job... even though I did a pretty good job when she handed me a squeeze bottle with a metal tip and a green ware platter filled with lines, and told me to fill the lines with calligraphy. It was like scratching on a stone. Hmmm. Nails-on-blackboard sufferers need not apply.

* Interjections are words or phrases used to exclaim or protest or command. They sometimes stand by themselves, but they are often contained within larger structures.

Wow! I won the lottery!
Oh, I don't know about that.
I don't know what the heck you're talking about.
No, you shouldn't have done that.

Most mild interjections are treated as parenthetical elements and set off from the rest of the sentence with a comma or set of commas. If the interjection is more forceful, however, it is followed with an exclamation mark. Interjections are rarely used in formal or academic writing.

From http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/interjections.htm

Breaking News

2010-06-07T12:36:00.003-04:00

There's no two ways about it: I am a wiener Nazi. Those wonderfully garlicky, fatty tubes of miracle meat are barred from my kitchen. Heartburn, indigestion, hardening of the arteries, flatulence - these are all things I am trying to spare my loving, slightly overweight spouse, Señor. In fact, I publicly denounce sausages in all their forms - kielbasa, linguica, bratwurst, knackwurst, Andouille, bologna, and salami, to name just a few - and give Señor the evil eye whenever he hints that he wants something tubular for dinner. It's gotten to the point he no longer mentions them.

Sometimes I cave in, and chicken masquerading as Italian sausage might appear with the ziti. Turkey contorted into links might show up at breakfast. But it's really not the same...

So what does Señor do? He goes behind my back! He has the school lunch ladies send him love notes!! His Email contains subjects like HOT DOGS AND BEANS ON MONDAY!! or MAC AND CHEESE ON WEDNESDAY!! Any time they think they are serving something Senor might be denied at home, they send out the alert. Thank goodness, Señor draws the line at mozzarella sticks.

For shame, I say. These woman are taking brown-nosing to a new level. I'm going to read them the riot act.

Get Me to the Church on Time

2010-06-01T17:09:00.008-04:00

This weekend was a first for us!

I bet you can guess which side of the aisle we sat on...

The best man and his dad:

And other brothers besides... actual and figurative:

Proving you can never have too many hugs...

Saying goodbye to a singular point of view:

To become as one with his beautiful bride:

We are so lucky to be joining her wonderful family.

Picture This

2010-05-26T07:31:00.006-04:00

My Elmer Fudd days are finis...

fin·is (fns, fns, f-n) n. [Middle English, from the Latin]
The end; the conclusion: setbacks that wrote finis to our venture.

Last Thursday, I took a trip to the hardware store for wood screws and some lengths of pine. (Knotty pine for a naughty squirrel.) And I sealed SoSQ (Son of Squirrel Queen) into the eaves by adding strips along every crevice where light could shine in, effectively causing his gnawing there to cease and desist.

Then I shared my woes with my friend, Niki, who offered her son's BB gun "just in case."

After a little target practice, I camped out on top of the ladder, positioned so that I could shoot through the damaged screens, but not those still intact. This lasted for about 40 minutes. I could hear SoSQ chewing frantically at various points of the roof along with a second set of scurrying.

I'd trapped two squirrels with my bush league carpentry, and I felt seriously bad. Not bad enough to let them go, but really bothered. It was just like Romeo and Juliet.

After I while I left my post, but kept checking throughout the day for evidence of squirrels making a break for it. No such luck for the ill-fated pair. Sigh.

After 48 hours, it became really clear that that we had a squirrel tragedy on our hands. The gun wouldn't be needed. There was silence overhead. I could just picture her little head resting on his small, still chest.

Three days of 90º weather has further removed any doubt concerning our squirrels' demise; decaying squirrel stench drawing big, hairy flies and causing us to post signs on the doors:

The whole situation is gross and disturbing... I am a killer, not just of sex-crazed bugs, but small, cute, furry animals. I am going straight to Hell where rodents will be pissing in my face and chewing on my elbows for all eternity.

Okay. Now that we're done with the sordid stuff, here's where I'd really like to be when I die:

With Señor, of course. (Not us... but we're just as funny.)

Squirrel Update

2010-05-19T20:26:00.010-04:00

I am ready to kill. First degree murder. I'm going to sacrifice my rain slicker and use a hammer. It won't be pretty. You may think that Son of Squirrel Queen is the victim:

No way!! I am the victim.

Actually, our porch has been brutalized. Three beautiful new screens - mega-large, expensive screens - are now shredded with many squirrel-sized openings.

At first I wanted to cry. The beast persisted in trying to gnaw his way back into the eaves. The screen repairmen had sealed the space with hardware cloth after setting some rat bait inside.

I blocked the gaps and set the rat trap. The critter gnawed an opening near the gutters on the right.

I blocked this entry and he attacked the left side. The he chewed through the screen near the side door. And he pushed all of the rat poison out of his space, so that it fell on the beam below.

I redoubled my efforts to block his entry. I felt like a cartoon character who ruthlessly destroys his home in the process of de-crittering his house. Sad. I kept adding more traps, and sacrificed my spiderman place mat to block some of the squirrel holes.

Here's the bigger picture:

1 = squirrel left entry
2 = squirrel right entry
3 = squirrel entry near side door
4 = location of pushed out poison

Some detail shots:

This is the closest I've come to catching our furry fiend.

The squirrel just chewed through screen #4. You had better believe this is not going to last much longer. And in case you were wondering...

I am not smarter than a fifth grade squirrel.

As the world turns...

2010-05-13T16:02:00.012-04:00

I am apologizing to any of you readers who are faithfully following the vagaries of this blog. Far from sitting on a couch eating bon-bons, I have followed a rigorous schedule of arising at dawn and kissing Señor farewell before launching myself into the task du jour... or the beaucoups tasks du jour.

The dining room is done and looks fabulous (especially my photos on the birch branch rescued from the ice storm):

All that nonsense about Fabric A and Fabric B really paid off. Of course I was ready to kill myself when the London shades made the room feel like a tomb... as in dark. Formerly the room was bright enough to cause snow blindness, so I've rationalized that blocking the summer sun strong enough to sear one's retinas is really a good thing. My son loves the room, but then again, he is half mole.

I've been trying to jump start my metabolism by walking with my somewhat older neighbor twice each week. As long as she remembers to use her Advair, we can cover two miles in about 40 minutes. She'll be sorry if she has to rely on my untried CPR skills. That's all I can say. I can cover the distance quicker by myself, but I spend so much time on my own I'd rather be slow and sociable.

It's not enough that the community farm summons its peons with the promise of organic bounty, the lawn and gardens are also screaming for attention. Being outdoors is both rewarding and hazardous. So far, two deer ticks have gotten up close and personal. I discovered one on my arm while we were watching Diane Sawyer smarm her way through the evening news. (We being Señor and I; I'm not sure ticks give a fig about Pakistan or oil in the Gulf.) The other tick snuck up my pants and was locked onto my thigh. I had to tease him away with the promise of a swim in the septic system. Sucker.

Planting onions was a real hoot. After working on my knees for two hours, I walked around like an octogenarian with a stick up his butt for four days. I couldn't climb stairs without crying, dragging myself up by my arms. Not a pretty sight.

Next, I volunteered to pot tomatoes at the greenhouse, knowing that I could perform this task standing up. Good call. But yesterday, I was back on my knees, communing with the leeks. I sure hope Señor will appreciate his organic vichyssoise come July.

All the while, I've been fretting about the Squirrel Queen and delaying the repair of our storm-ravaged porch. Trying to trap her has been an exercise in futility. A chipmunk bought it in the rat trap, and mice keep stealing the peanut-butter-slathered Kit-Kat from the Havahart cages. In desperation, I pleaded with the screen repair guys to come up with a solution. They sealed off her boudoir with hardware cloth fastened with screws. In the process one of the guys grabbed her tail and it came off in his hand. Ick. Ick. Enough said. After tomorrow, I'll get to use the porch again. Or not. I'm pretty sure she's still inside. A stinky situation for all.

Doing the paperwork to renew my teaching certification was a lovely diversion. Sifting through three years of plausible, professional development hours has made me joyfully reflect on the merits of mentoring and docenting and becoming the tech-savvy, tweeting, in your facebook, blog writer that I am. And editing some of the fiction I am submitting to various publications... well, that's a treat, too. Almost as good as beating my head against the wall. I will submit...I will submit...

And cleaning 60 gigabytes of photos from my hard drive. Even though they are copied on an external drive, I find it tough to eliminate an almost daily journal of where we've been. Time to get serious about Flickr, I guess.

And trying to resuscitate my 5-month-old laptop. Opening with a blue screen in March. Black screen in May - as in dead dead dead. A word of advice: stay away from HP G60s.

By the way, in the time it's taken me to finish this post, the squirrel has already chewed through my brand new screen. :o(

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

2010-05-05T19:59:00.006-04:00

Or not. I’ve joined a community farm because I don’t have enough weeds and bugs in my life. Also, after reading about the perils of imported produce and nanotechnology – the nasty, under-tested, food-altering chemistry that is going to kill us because we can’t get our ketchup out of the bottle fast enough – I’ve decided to get closer to my food source. Real close. In fact, if I were any closer I’d have turnips in my bed.

As we were moving to our bucolic corner of New Hampshire, I noticed the expansive tract of land just about a mile from our house. Workers were swarming over the rows of crops like ants on a piece of pecan pie. From the road, the ant-sized creatures - soon to be my neighbors - seemed to embody higher purpose industry and ecological stewardship: quiet, busy, mosquito-sucked denizens of a green, green world. I felt my heartstrings pull me back to small-girl Ohio where my grandma grew a household worth of foodstuffs and raised edible critters long before Clarence Birdseye had his frozen epiphany. Oh, to be able to pick beans again… by the bushel.

Sunnybrook Farm this isn’t. Willowhip Farm would be closer to the truth. In addition to shelling out a hefty sum for the privilege of eating local food, I have to report for twenty compulsory hours of servitude. Today was my first day of duty, and I spent it planting an acre of onions and scallions. Well, it seemed like an acre. In fact I spent a mere two hours on my knees, teasing the little sprouts apart and nestling them in their new, cosy digs. Praying. Humming a few bars from Candide.

“Oh, they’ll be in shock for a couple of weeks,” says Farmer Meg, our lead lady with the hoe.

So will I, so will I… I agree as I stagger to my feet and limp down the aisle to get yet another flat of the fragrant babes .

She looks at me askance and suggests, “Maybe you’d better go for a longer walk. You know, to the shed and back.”

So I was sent to the shed. In my absence, Farmer Meg managed to get the hose tangled in her tiller when she backed up the tractor a bit too far.

But she didn’t curse once, this young professional who was not much more than a girl herself. Instead she headed for the greenhouse and emerged looking like Edward Scissorhands, an assortment of cutlery protruding from her arms.

She explained, “I did this once before. You have to cut the hose to get it loose.”

She proceeded to crawl under the tiller and take a dirt bath. I offered to help, but she brushed me off. “Naw… it’s okay. I know what to do.”

Obviously, I don’t, but I’m trying to learn. Feeling fatigued and slightly shaky, I quit planting when my rows were no longer straight.

Farmer Meg continued to work throughout the day. When I stopped much later on my way to the grocery store, she was watering the lettuces and stretching cheesecloth over a mystery crop. All by herself. No workers in sight. From dawn ‘til dusk. Not an easy job.

I guess those ants can’t smell the food yet.

Memories

2010-04-26T09:00:00.005-04:00

Señor and I drove a thousand miles this weekend to visit our oldest son, shocked to realize it had been over a year since we'd last made the trip. In the intervening months, we've seen him and his fiance a few times at our house in New Hampshire, but he reminded us that we hadn't viewed his last apartment at all. The observation brought home how quickly time flies.

We had a great time together, the son and I assembling a BBQ grill on Saturday afternoon - and well into the evening - the many, small, emptied boxes of parts becoming a mountain of recyclable cardboard. We struggled, laughed, and applied brute force when needed, to bring this mechanical marvel into being. It was the stuff of memories.

This is the same son who studied in France in the fall, taking his dog, Tucker, for companionship and to spare the fiance the chore of caring for two pups. Tucker, however, missed his doggy companion, and was in the throes of doggy depression when we visited them abroad.

Now I'm not a dog person, but Tucker was so sad I had to try to cheer him up. We became fast friends, playfully tussling with each other, learning new tricks, devouring bags of treats - he, not me. I taught him to shake hands and to come to me when called. He even perked up at my voice when we Skyped the son after our return to the States.

So imagine my surprise this weekend, when Tucker offered me a paw to shake... seven months after our last encounter!! Though shy when we arrived, Tucker dug deep in his doggy memory to come up with the connection we briefly had in November. You are amazing, Tucker. Thanks. Good dog!!

Wordless Wednesday

2010-04-21T11:49:00.003-04:00

Disgust and Dismay

2010-04-15T17:43:00.006-04:00

Dismay come as no surprise, but I am totally disgusted with my vermin catching prowess. I'm really discouraged... and this close (picture me opposing thumb and forefinger with a 3mm, miniscule gap) to buying a bb gun. Mice have sprung all the traps - rat, squirrel, and chipmunk - and the only thing I've caught is a giant slug.

My clever son suggested using some jumper cables and a 12-volt battery to electocute the Squirrel Queen, but with my luck, I'd manage to burn the house down.

So imagine my shock and dismay when our porch, which used to look like this:

Now looks like this:

We are not amused.

That's right, her majesty has added a balcony complete with a sun umbrella and reclining chaise.

Squirrel Queen Continued

2010-04-08T06:53:00.005-04:00

Admittedly, Owlzilla is a bust. His hooter has been disengaged, but his head still ratchets around like Linda Blair on a bad day. I decided to go back to Plan A – a Havahart trap – which had been derailed when mother said, “You should get an owl.” Such a dutiful, trusting, dumb darling I am. Get an owl my ass.

This time I opted for the deluxe double-door, Large Squirrel Model #1030:

And, knowing how squirrels LOVE bird seed, I purchased a suet treat for bait from our local feed store.

I thought this was inspired. How else was I going to corral a bunch of loose seeds on that tiny treadle tray that trips the tricky trap? (Say that fast five times…)

It practically screams a three-star Michelin rating, don’t you think?

Well, I set the thing up outside under the porch, like a roadblock on the Squirrel Queen’s route to Dunkin Donuts or wherever she goes for her hazelnut breakfast coffee. And Señor and I must have checked it about thirty times in the next 15 hours. Sadly, the cake was nibbled, but the trap wasn’t sprung.

Now I’m feeling murderous.

Days have lengthened into a week without success. On Friday, my neighbor added her two cents: peanut butter. “You can catch anything with peanut butter,” she enthused as we trotted around the loop that runs along the Exeter River.

Not so. So not so. I gooped peanut butter on top of the suet cake to no avail.

Over the weekend, my son suggested a trick he’d learned from Billy the Exterminator: cover the trap with leaves.

“You gotta make it look natural.”

So I gathered some tick-infested leaves while wearing my best tick-detection garb and fluffed them around the double-door Model #1030. More nibbles. No nabbing.

Señor said, “Maybe you need a larger trap. The next size up. You know... to catch something big like a… cow.” If I go that route, I may as well start my own pest control business. I already have the mouse trap and the chipmunk trap.

On Monday, my AWOL roofer guy finally showed up to lie one more time to my face about his impending visit to re-shingle my roof blasted by the February hurricane. Seeing the trap, he exclaimed, “That squirrel hain’t never going in there.” His advice: “Rat trap.” Then he reconsidered and offered “Bear trap” instead. “A little bear trap,” he further qualified. “You got to kill it and leave the body to rot on the edge of the woods. There hain’t any squirrel who will come around if they smell that stink in the air.” It will probably keep the humans away, too.

This is the stuff of nightmares. Nanook of the North I am not. I’m not going to have the Squirrel Queen sobbing while gnawing off her paw in the middle of the night. I don’t do squirrel trauma.

And I’m not getting a gun. At least not yet.

But I need to get the screens repaired before the wasps start nesting in the wicker furniture that we so enjoyed sitting in last fall. And I’m not going to shell out $1200 for new screens, only to have the Squirrel Queen chew out a double door and a porte-cochère. What to do?

THE QUEEN MUST DIE!!

There. I’ve said it. The PETA people are going to be beating down my door and cursing me with scary sobriquets like Squirrel-killing Skank or Pelt Pervert.

So, to tell you the truth, today I bought a Havnohart Rat Trap.

More about that later…

The Squirrel Queen Returns

2010-04-07T13:06:00.005-04:00

I gave up blogging for Lent.... ahem... ? ...in case you were wondering. But now I have shocking news:

THE SQUIRREL QUEEN HAS RETURNED !!!

She’s back, my own little furry nemesis. To add insult to injury, she’s been eating the parsley plant I nurtured through the winter. And she has hips….womanly hips. And attitude.

As I was inspecting the damage caused by the first typhoon of the season, I noticed a hole in the screened porch at the peak of the gable leading to a small crawlspace perfect for birthing squirrel babies. Our gal had returned, the one I had confronted over squatter’s rights in the fall. At that time, our standoff had ended when she peed all over the place as she left the building. I thought she had a bad case of nerves or weak kidneys, but now I realize she was marking her turf while I too busy doing my victory dance to see the “I shall return” writing on the wall.

When I told my mother about it, her suggestion was, “Get an owl.” This from a woman who used to leave peanuts on the outer window sill behind my father’s seat at the breakfast nook. As my dad ate his salami and hot peppers on rye, the squirrel would press his nose and hands against the glass and stare intently at my mother as if demanding, “Where’s mine?” When my mother started chuckling, my dad would look up and say, “Is that that damn squirrel again?”

But the squirrel got really bold.

“Oh, he peed all over the window sill to mark his territory. In the end, I had to spray coyote urine outside the window to get rid of him.”

“You should get an owl,” she repeated, leaving the unless you want coyote urine all over your porch unspoken.

So, I went looking for owls and ended up in Kittery, Maine where I had vague memories of owls as I waited for my Mythic living room paint to be shaken last spring. Indeed, an owl was perched high on a shelf near the feeders and seed.

A clerk appeared at my elbow with a “May I help?”

“Sure. I’m trying to scare off a squirrel. Do you think an owl would work?”

“Hmmm. I dunno….” He did some mental head scratching. “You could try flax seed. They say squirrels hate the smell of flax seed.”

“Yeah, but with my luck, a sloth would move right in.”

He paused and added, “You know, I’ve seen sea gulls sitting on the heads of fake owls.”

Just then the store’s owner came over. She must have smelled a sale going down the tubes. Her smile was brilliant.

“You know, I have a hooting owl in the back.”

No kidding. Now how could I pass up an offer like that?

She vanished for a few minutes, then came back toting her prize in a half-busted box that declared “Scares Away Pests 3 Ways!”

Then the clerk managed to turn it on by damaging the packaging a wee bit more.

Sure enough the owl’s head started making a grinding noise as it slowly swiveled and the hooting commenced. The lady owner shuddered as I started laughing. It was too funny. In fact, it was blog fodder extraordinaire.

We stood there discussing the owl’s merits, and every time it hooted, the owner acted as if she’d just had ice water poured down her back. I had to have it, even if only to present it as the guest of honor at a summertime bash.

So I forked over forty-five clams… a pretty shocking amount, but I was figuring it would be worth the investment. Turns out, it was annoying as hell.

First, I hauled it up to the top of our ladder, intending to screw the owl to the beam nearest the squirrel hole. Even though I had pre-drilled holes, I could barely sink the screws into the wood, because the owl’s perch was above my shoulders and I have zero upper body strength. I managed to steady Owlzilla with a bottle cap under one talon. Then I turned on his hooter.

Man-oh-man, he continued to grind and whoo-oo-whoot hoooooo nonstop for the next eight hours. The wind-whipped, tattered screen set off his motion detector. My walking past the French doors to the porch set off his motion detector. And the Squirrel Queen’s flicking tail set off his motion detector as she paused mid-stride to stare at him with a look that said BITE ME.

I felt like an idiot and I’m sure our neighbors were pleased.

The next morning, Senor and I watched the Squirrel Queen leave her abode to do some errands. I immediately duct-taped her egress to discourage re-entry. The early spring weather was resplendent, providing a perfect squirrel-house-hunting-moving day if ever there was one.

But while we walked around Portsmouth soaking up vitamin D, the Squirrel Queen returned and peeled back the tape as if it were but tissue – its tackiness just a bonus when it came to hanging up her nuts.

What a fiasco! A few more useless days of endless hooting, and I was ready to buy a trap. Either that, or I was going to mark my territory by peeing all over the porch myself.

To be continued.

What I Did for Love

2010-03-09T16:54:00.004-05:00

My mother’s is the house from hell. Where she lives, the city requires all homes to pass an inspection before being listed for sale. Hers is a disaster zone that has required extensive electrical work, a waterproofing system in the cellar, a new driveway, and a new basement floor. The only major job that remains is the problematic floor.

Currently, about a dozen of the ugly brown, cracked and lifting, water-damaged linoleum tiles have gone AWOL. The Man says match the tiles, or the whole floor needs to go. The nasty, nine-inch tiles appear to be irreplaceable. So, dutiful daughter that I am, I spent about thirty minutes measuring and re-measuring the area, so that I could draw a neat, little, scale drawing before my mother and I set off for Home Depot to check out our flooring options. Picture me on my knees, sniffing the dust of sixty years, diligently measuring…

Skip, the Home Depot floor-meister, happily scanned my plan as I rambled about 27 feet by 14 feet and carpet-versus-vinyl and old, vintage 1945, nine-inch tiles. He was jotting “45 sq yds” in the margin, and his head snapped up. Skip said, “You know, most of those nine-inch tiles have asbestos in them. Our installers aren’t allowed to lay a floor unless they are removed. If you call one of these guys for an estimate, they’ll just stand there and say, ‘Give me $35.00.’”

Hmmm. “Even carpet? Could someone install carpet over the tiles?”

“Even carpet. When they lay down the tack strips, they pierce the floor.”

Hmmmmmmm… “What if we put those peel and stick tiles over the old floor?”

“You can do it. We can’t.”

Hmmm. Asbestos. I’m gonna die.

He handed back my design of death…

And seeing the defeated look on my face, added, “Look under asbestos removal in the Yellow Pages…”

In the car, mom and I did a quick run-down of all four of handymen who have worked at the house over the last thirty years, including Fred, my mother’s newest recruit. Who could possibly be a peel-and-stick wizard?

Fred had come to the house the day before my arrival, to clear the snow bank in front of the garage door. Housebound for most of a week, my mother had called Carter the manager of the hardware store, desperate for a name. They sent Fred, who visited three times during the next two days, showing up with stringy, greasy hair on day one. After receiving generous payment from my mother, Fred showed up on day two with ice melt and a snow-shoveling diligence not seen since the Blizzard of ‘78. His shoulder length gray hair fell in fluffy curls to his shoulders. All smiles, Fred was still working when we arrived from the train station. I gave him a friendly wave as we pulled into the drive. My mother cautioned, “He’s a little weird. I’m not sure I’d want him in the house.”

Of all four floor-laying prospects, Fred was the unknown quantity. So, on our way back from Home Depot, we stopped at the hardware store that had sent us ‘Over-eager Fred’ as my mother had dubbed him.

We looked at the clerk, and I asked, “Can you tell us anything about Fred?”

“Fred Horning?” My mother added.

The clerk squinted, puzzled, and exhaled, “Ohhh… You mean “Crazy Fred?”

My mother and I shot each other a glance. Yup. Crazy Fred.

“You mean Fred Hoenigman!” He exclaimed.

“Yes… Carter sent him to my house to do some shoveling,” my mother responded.

“Well, he does mostly tree work.”

Did a branch fall on his head? I mused.

“And before that, he was working construction.”

Mom continued, “Do you know of anybody else who could help us put down a floor?”

The clerk though a moment. “Well, there’s Perry, but he mostly paints.”

Yep. He botched the paint job in my mom’s upstairs bathroom. Looks like the handy-work of a five-year-old.

“And Sacchi…”

The one who charged a small fortune to hang the front flower box crooked…

“But he’s just a carpenter.”

If you say so…

We chimed, “Well, thanks anyway,” and headed out the door.

Crazy Fred? We rolled our eyes at each other and laughed. My mother reiterated, “I don’t really want him in my house… He‘s far too eager.” Meaning scary in his weird, hippy-dippy way.

Then we discussed the merits of Tony, the house-cleaner who doesn’t clean very well, and recalled her kitchen renovator who laid new vinyl over nine-inch linoleum eight years ago, no questions asked. But my mom couldn’t dredge up his name.

We did have the names of a couple of young people who were looking for work, handed to us by a church secretary the previous day; but I couldn’t see consigning them to an early, asbestos-induced death. Plus you need a certain level of skill to deal with peel and stick tiles.

So I spent the afternoon getting estimates for tile removal, with and without mastic removal. The best was $600-$1,000... And Señor informs me, he thinks that’s a good price.

All the while I’m thinking,..

I could do it… even if it kills me. I’ve peeled and stuck a floor down in the distant past. And I can almost picture myself on my knees for twelve hours with my ventilator mask and chemical gloves.

Almost... but maybe not.

A Bad Case of the...

2010-03-03T11:09:00.011-05:00

SHINGLES!! Or rather, we had a case of bad shingles, poorly installed. What we were hearing go boom in the night was the 70 mph wind ripping the shingles off the roof. What a racket. A kind of Hell-hath-no-fury loud and scary...

And on the next day, as we looked around the same-builder neighborhood where more than a half-dozen houses had expanses of plywood naked to the sky, we thought that maybe we had a class action law suit as well.

That morning we combed our front yard, picking up the fractured shingles that had sailed off the roof. Later, we tried to waylay any roofer that came near our cul de sac, telling him our pitiful story. Finally one agreed to assess the damage, part of which looked like this:

Since the thermostat already registered an inside temperature in the mid-fifties, we migrated to Señor's office where power had resumed after a lapse of just a few hours. Fresh coffee, hot showers and television... Internet, too. Needless to say, we camped there for the next few days, only going home to sleep under seven layers of blankets.

Smoke, out geriatric cat, seemed to endure the chilly house remarkably well, the only difference being that he doubled his intake of food and was very friendly, crawling into any warm lap at the earliest opportunity.

I spent a fair amount of time strolling up and down the corridors of the office, cheered by the wonderful prayer flags on display. This elementary school project was such a remarkable mix of down-to-earth and creative, I had to photograph some of the flags to share on the blog:

And my personal favorite, which sums up one of those basic existential truths:

As you know, I decamped to Ohio om Monday, March 3. The power at our house was up again on Tuesday, March 4 at 4:45 PM, an outage that lasted five days. Luckily, during those days, the temperature inside the house never dropped below 43º and frozen pipes were not a concern.

This is the second five-day outage in 14 months. I have but one word to say, Señor: GENERATOR.

I've Got the Power... or not

2010-03-01T08:11:00.005-05:00

We're just recovering from another horrendous storm in New Hampshire. It started on Thursday night with gale-force winds and drumming rain. The wind was a steady barrage of rushing, angry, white sound. The power had gone out at 10:20 PM, and we were asleep when the first thud sounded on the roof over our heads.

THUHHHHMK.

"What was THAT?" My senses were already on high alert.

Before Senor could answer, a WHMMMM-pa-tck-tck-hmmmmmm skittered across the shingles. Then another THUHHHHHHMMMMMMM, followed by a crash.

"Ummmmm..." Senor is a lot more laid back than I.

"Just listen..."

HUMMM. HUSSSSHSHHHHHH. WHMMMM-pa-tck-tck-hmmmmmm. Crash!!! ppp-pp-ppp-fff-tck-fff-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-shushh.

"Is there something in the attic?"

ppp-pp-ppp-fff-tck-fff-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-shushh.

"It sounds like footsteps. I'm going to go up and look."

"NO, YOU'RE NOT. There's no light up there and you can't see into the area over our heads. It's boarded up. What are you going to do anyway"

We're thinking raccoon... squirrel... tiny wet alien... carrying bricks.

Meanwhile the wind sounds like a freight train, the house is shaking, and I'm beginning to worry that the chimney which rises right behind our pillows will come crashing down.

"Why don't we move to another bedroom?"

THUHHHHMK.

"Just in case the chimney collapses." I'm feeling a kinship with those poor Haitians like I've never felt before.

RRRRRMMMMP. ppp-pp-ppp-fff-tck-fff-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-shushh.

HRRRMMMMM. THUHHHHMK. ppp-pp-ppp-fff-tck... It sounds like small keg of beer is rolling over our heads. But this is no party. We move to another bed and sleep fitfully because the wind is still roaring and the house shudders and shakes like it's going to be blown off its foundation.

To make a long story short, it's four days later and we are still without power or water. During the day we've hung out at Senor's office, staying warm, keeping abreast of the news, having conference calls with the governor's office strategising over whether schools will open or not. Happily, there's bathroom where we can shower and a kitchen for coffee and snacks. In the late evening, we've been going home to feed the cat whose fur is chilly to the touch, and to sleep under seven layers of blankets. Fully dressed.

Last night the house was around 45 degrees, and Senor wore his hat to bed. I wish I had a picture of that.

I'm escaping to my mother's house, where the Internet age has yet to commence.

Peace and Love

2010-02-19T13:58:00.001-05:00

Just an image to share:

Happy weekend!

Ashes, Ashes...

2010-02-17T15:35:00.005-05:00

I am a late-blooming Catholic - a transplant - finding it much more satisfying to worship alongside my husband than alone in a church across town. To my way of thinking, there are too many similarities and few enough differences between Protestantism and Catholicism to make me hesitate over the metaphysics of transubstantiation. I figure it's what's in my heart that matters, not what goes into my mouth. However, because I was raised in a Protestant faith, getting ashes on Ash Wednesday still strikes me as a strange observance.

I know it's supposed to be humbling, having someone wipe dirt on your face so you walk around all day looking as if you've had a run-in with a chimney sweep. Yep, humbling to be reminded that we are dust and unto dust we will return. But, at the same time it makes me laugh... (inwardly, trust me.) It's not as fun as war paint, but it's an outward and visible sign that we belong to the same brave tribe. (I love watching men in suits and ties walking back from the altar, their foreheads smeared with sooty, black crosses.)

This morning, I took a bag of home-made soup from the freezer, intending to serve it for a meat-free supper. I wasn't 100% sure that it was vegetarian, so as it thawed, I poked among the beans and zucchini, trying to discover some telltale chunk of chicken, sausage or beef. Meanwhile, I'm laughing at myself.

Also, on the inside back door, I've taped the purple ribbon cross that came with this week's parish bulletin. I figure if someone took the time to make it for me, I can do better than to toss it out with the trash. When I see it I smile and shake my head, wishing I were more of a believer than I am.

Oh, I believe... I'm just not sure that I believe all I'm supposed to...

My sister calls it hokum, all this religious stuff of which laudable Lenten weirdness is but a minute part. Perhaps it is... I respect her beliefs, and her attitude doesn't bother me in the least, even though it diminishes me and people like me. I consider this hokum to be a framework for self-improvement, modeled on the behavior of one supremely remarkable, holy man. It makes me ponder why and what if, and causes me to hedge my bets.

Lenten observance of prayer, fasting, and giving alms is all well and good, but shouldn't we be practicing such behavior (call it what you will) every day of the year? Why strive to be truly decent for only the forty days prior to Easter? Are we exchanging it for a time-share in Heaven? ;)

Decorating Committee Meets on a Snow Day

2010-02-16T04:39:00.010-05:00

It's around 3:45 AM and Señor is chatting on the phone with his superintendent buddies. They're trying to decide if today is going to be a snow day, because while the morning commute appears to be fine, later in the day - i.e. when school is dismissed - driving conditions will most like be a colossal mess. Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!!

Then again, driving conditions may just be a slight mess. Either way, he will be criticised. His buddies all face this occupational hazard and figure that there is safety in numbers. So they play phone tag in the wee hours, watch the weather reports, and hope to see other districts appear on the ticker at the bottom of the television screen. We know we're golden when Oyster River Coop flashes by at 5:01 AM.

What makes this whole process more hilarious is the code system we've set up with our neighbors, so they can be the first to know when school is cancelled. The evening before we set up a white Christmas candle in the upstairs window. Alert, Will Robinson!! Possible Snow Day Coming!!

There is an answering beacon in the window across the circle. (This allows neighbors on either side of us to Know the Code.) Here it is:

Then in the wee hours of the dawn, the beacon changes to red for a snow day or green for a delayed opening. When Señor cancelled school at 5:11 AM, I ran upstairs and switched the bulb to red. The beacon across the circle switched to red at 5:15. Pretty smart, no?

See... today, we're having a snow day... No School, Will Robinson!! No School!!

What makes this tricky is that there is no new snow on the ground. Nada. That's why the neighbor's lights went on shortly after. They thought we were playing a prank:

On another subject, the Fabric "A"/Fabric "B" vote has been a lot of fun. The "A"s have it, five votes to three. Sadly, Fabric "B", which I could have purchased Friday through Monday for 50% off is no longer on sale. "A" regularly costs $19.99, while "B" now costs $34.99. I think I'll save $60+ and go with "A".

Well done, guys. Okay, your next assignment has to do with quotations.

Last year I bought gorgeous blue and white batik fabric for shades in the bedroom. Curtain rods remain from the previous owner's distinctive pea green and poopy brown color scheme. I haven't been able to find anything that was a reasonable choice for a valance, so I decided to paint a quotation and add a flower or two that mimic the design in the shade fabric. (Actually, I had considered painting just flowers and a vine, but decided it looked too much like Pollyanna meets Pennsylvania Dutch.)

I have two lengths of 70" and two lengths of 40" to work with, each of which will have a finished height of 10". Any suggestions? Something inspirational in twenty words or less, worth reading every morning at dawn...

Decorating Dilemma

2010-02-11T13:01:00.007-05:00

After months and months of stewing about the right fabric and paint for the dining room, I have finally come to a decision... almost. Why it takes so long is a mystery - but now that I have figured it out, I am itching to pick up the paint brush and dive in.

First, I have to do the prep work, which includes filling nail holes, washing the walls, patching some gaps in the woodwork, taking down the current draperies left by the previous owner. They are the kind of gauzy, cheap sheers that were so popular in the forties and fifties. Ugh. Maybe they are always popular, but these reminded me of my grandmother's bathroom, the one that smelled of mothballs and was tiled in pink and black.

I did not realize until I took down the 8-foot window-topper scarves that were swagged over giant white pepper mills screwed into the wall, that they were oppressive. Claustrophobically so. Removing them was like lifting a ten pound weight from my chest. They looked absolutely funereal, evoking draped walls and casket liners. Ick.

The current Dresden blue walls will be painted the faintest blue with a tint of azure. The stark white wainscoting will be a the palest coffee white imaginable. And then I will tackle making the relaxed Roman shades, for which I need some guidance. Does one cut a curve at the bottom of the shade, or does it fall in a soft curve naturally once the shade is drawn up? Pointers, anyone?

For that matter, anyone want to weigh in on the fabric? I've narrowed the choices from hundreds to two. "A" has paisleys, flowers and flourishes. "B" is more of an art nouveau, stylized floral. I think I know what I want... maybe.

And the winner is?

Clothes Make the Man

2010-02-08T07:29:00.011-05:00

I try not to pester Señor too much about anything. We all have our foibles. And he is such a kind soul, he constantly overlooks mine. And I have lots and lots of foibles... beyond beaucoups, in fact.

If you worked with Señor on a regular basis, you'd swear he owned a white button-down dress shirt for each day of the week. His idea of dress-down Friday attire is a suit and tie. A yellow or blue shirt with tie, blazer and khakis is his idea of office casual. He is a paragon of old-school business attire. Once, when asked to attend a pajama party for a preschool reading group, he wore his bathrobe over his shirt and tie and khakis. Now that was something!

That being said, there is one area in which Señor wins the prize: sartorial frugality. As nice as he looks for work, at home he looks like a refugee. A rugby-shirt-wearing refugee. And he wears his clothes to death. I beg him to throw out certain items, and promptly get the response, "I don't talk to you that way!"

So, I've developed a plan. Thankfully, small details sometimes escape his notice. (...like I could replant half the garden and he wouldn't pick up on it.)

Here is Señor's current collection of red and navy rugby shirts. He has others: red and black; green and navy; gold and navy; white and navy; gold, white and navy; burgundy and navy; burgundy, brown and navy... but these are his favorites:

They vary in age from two and a half years to older than dirt.

This one has been in Señor's life longer that I have. But he won't part with it, even though the cuffs look like this:

So, I've developed a plan to wean him of this particular shirt. Next time he pulls it out of the closet, it will look like this... but I don't think he'll notice any difference:

And when he wears it at a later date, it'll look like this. (I'm hoping for a warmer than average spring day...)

And by the time he notices that his beloved shirt has become a dickie, we'll be deep into summer. But he'll forgive me... especially if I have a clone to replace it.

Mouse Saga Continued

2010-02-03T14:55:00.003-05:00

‘Tis with great sadness, head bowed, I confess,
The mouse relocation plan is simply in a mess
As two shocking events in a couple of days
Have altered the course of my kind-hearted ways.

We arrived back home in the dead of the night,
And found Mr. Mouse trapped – an unwelcome sight.
Heave into the trash was my prompt, hard decision
As his little jaw gnawed at the plastic mouse prison.

No freedom for him - no, not while I slumbered,
With two shopping bags the trap was encumbered,
Then passed to Señor, who bound it with litter
Soiled by the cat. Could an end be more bitter?

Unless you consider how, with a new store of traps,
I lured preggers Mrs. Mouse into the worst of mishaps.
She sniffed out the peanut butter and sought a wee taste
And got snuffed out by Ortho Jaws - her progeny erased.

No ride to the mouse preserve was readied for these victims -
No succor from a sucker represents a change in dictums
Espousing preservation - it seems I’ll shout NO MORE!! -
(Yet playing meanie mouser truly cuts me to the core.)

Sunny...

2010-02-02T19:00:00.007-05:00

My marvelous Senor whisked me away to a sunny place to soothe the pain of turning another year older. Four lovely days without subzero weather. Lots of fresh air and exercise. Three insomnia-free nights. No kitchen duty. And a wonderful son at home to care for the cat, with the aid of his sweetie. Bliss.

Where did I go?

Simple Things

2010-01-27T08:31:00.005-05:00

As I was visiting blogs this morning, I read about the Simple Things blog party hosted by Christina of Soul Aperture.

The idea is simple: list all the little simple things you appreciate in your life and link your post to this post over at Christina's blog. For every blog that links up a simple things list today, Christina will donate $1.00 to Doctors Without Borders Haiti relief efforts. (She is ready to donate up to $250.00.)

Thanks, Christina... Here's my list:

• Being in the presence of my husband.

• Watching the sun rise.

• Being in a garden.

• Having a paint brush in my hand.

• Sitting on the back porch.

• A hot shower.

• A good book.

• The smell of clean.

• A room full of sunshine.

• Dove dark chocolate.

• Snuggling next to my husband, the human furnace, during chilly weather.

• Gazing at the ocean.

• Petting the cat curled beside me.

• A good cup of coffee or chamomile tea.

• A cozy pair of slippers.

• Playing with Google earth.

• Jigsaw puzzles.

• The scent of a greenhouse or florist shop.

• Finding a penny on the sidewalk.

• My favorite fleece.

• Birdsong.

• A warm breeze in the middle of winter.

...just to name a few. And last but not least:

• Hearing my sons say, "I love you, Mom."

Disorderly Conduct

2010-01-26T12:10:00.004-05:00

A few days ago, the youngest son and I were making a collage of our trip to Las Vegas. I printed a bunch of little photos, from which he chose several to enlarge. We filled a large table with the detritus from our travels, including cashout vouchers from numerous casinos, plastic room keys, maps, ticket stubs, business cards, ads, coupons, and wrist tags. We agreed that a black background paper was better than dark blue. And we set to work, the son laying out the pieces, while I trimmed stuff with an X-acto.

"Do you think those vouchers would look better here?" I asked as I pushed them away from the edges where the son had placed them end-on-end. I tried fanning them.

He gave me a long look, and tried a couple of variations in a configuration that vaguely looked like Stonehenge.

"No... like this." I shoved them to the other side of the page. "Here, take some of these adhesive tabs to paste them down."

He started peeling the protective covers from one side of the tabs, and pressed the sticky parts where I showed him, assembling the vouchers into a rectangle. Then he started working on scraps and photos for the upper left-hand corner. He was about to place two photos of Red Rock Canyon.

"Wait!" I blurted. I took them both. "See how you can line them up? Though two totally different shots, they can be pasted together to create an amazing expanse of cliffs and sky... Where are you going to put those?"

He had a room key in each hand and was headed for the lower right corner.

"I don't know..." he paused, "Where do you think I should put them?"

"Well, maybe you should place some other pictures under them first."

I kept trimming, and he kept pressing sticky tabs on the corners of things.

I finally stopped and asked, "Aren't you going to paste those on the collage?"

He kept working at the tabs, making a sizable pile of pale blue squares from the cast-off bits. His eyes were downcast as he muttered, "Nope... You can do it."

Then he looked up and laughed. "Every time, I've placed something on this collage, you've picked it up and moved it. You know what you've got?... A C D ! It's sorta like OCD, but it's... it's..... Art Controlling Disorder."

Snort. Sadly, he's right.

Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie

2010-01-21T08:31:00.006-05:00

I'm hiding in the basement... stripped of my belongings.

Actually, it's pro-active. I've decided to divest. At last, at the minimal rate of one box per day, I am finally clearing the basement of lesson plans, books, unused sports equipment, kitchen paraphernalia, shells and rock collections, vintage magazines, travel souvenirs, board games, artwork, and antique chairs that Señor will never sit upon.

It's yeoman's work, with all the shifting, sorting, and shredding. There's an emotional toll as well.

Baby clothes, date books, extra wedding invitations, divorce correspondence, journals, bags of old photos, heirloom linens, sentimental gifts.

I've tried to get rid of my stuff several times before without success. This paring down, reduction, simplifying... Why is it so difficult?

Fabric, art supplies, never-used tools...

Blame it on frugality and future intent. This physical clutter is the surest sign of my need for mental housecleaning. So, don't worry if you don't hear from me for a while.

Like Punxsutawney Phil, I'll emerge on February 2nd. Hopefully, the basement will be cleared by then. If not, figure it will be another six weeks before you see me again. :(

Every Six Months Whether You Need To or Not

2010-01-14T07:19:00.006-05:00

I hate going to the dentist. The lady who cleans my teeth is a demon. Don’t get me wrong. She’s a very nice person, but it’s taken me years to convince her that I have sensitive teeth. Left to her own devices, she'd pick at my gum line until it bled.

She’s even refrained from using flavored cleaner, lest the Spring Mint or Bubblicious additive made me wince with pain. So what if my mouth tastes like a clean litter box, all grit and gray muck, at least I’m not crying.

The last couple of cleanings, I’ve graduated to Creamsicle flavoring. Mild, sweet, innocuous Creamsicle. And her fingers and tools flit about like hummingbirds… fast… light… graceful. No matter, I still sit on my hands to keep them from wringing.

Anyway, she offered me two types of pro-enamel sensitive toothpaste samples yesterday. But when it came to a brush, I refused the standard issue Colgate model. I told her I needed something gentler, something that wouldn’t scratch my gums.

She gave me a super conspiratorial look, and checked the hall to make sure no one was approaching. Then she beamed and promised, “I have something special for you.”

Then she started ferreting about in the bottom of her cabinet, and she came up with this:

“They don’t make these any more! I stole this one from another hygienist’s drawer.”

I thanked her profusely and promised to give it the utmost care. Then she had me hide it in my pants pocket under my sweater, so that it wouldn’t be spotted as I crossed in front of the reception desk on my way out of the office.

When I found my son in the waiting room, he groused, “I’ve been waiting for 40 minutes. What took you so long? Five minutes and I was done.”

“Well, we had to talk about her Roman shades, her mother-in-law moving in with her, and sailing,” I told him as we walked to the car. Inside we revealed our booty.

“Hey, you got two tubes.”

“Yes,” I smiled, “and get a load of this.” I showed him my red, Sensodyne Gentle brush.

It’s an antique. They don’t make them like this any more. Hey, look… it’s made in Poland. I have a Polish toothbrush.

The son frowned. “Mine was made…”

He looked down, “in China…

…with lead.”

Year Two: More Mice

2010-01-12T10:07:00.006-05:00

For his twenty-first birthday, our son and I
Flew to Las Vegas to place some bets,
Hike calico hills, and ride in the sky,
While Señor stayed home and cooled his jets.

Señor is a mensch; and he works so hard
At contracts, and budgets, and day-to-day
District fiascoes – so he let down his guard;
I couldn’t get mad when a mouse got away.

For while Señor awaited our pending return,
To move the mouse who was snared in the trap,
The mouse got busy - his bondage to spurn -
And chewed and shimmied his way through the gap.

Once home - briefly saddened - I vowed to prevail;
Seeing continued evidence of scat,
I knew our cute vermin - from whiskers to tail -
Couldn’t resist the taste of Kit Kat.

Within hours I caught him, pressed in the trap;
So I moved him to “holding” with a singular toss -
And told him, “No jail break, no gnawing, no crap!!”
As he stared from the jar that once held spaghetti sauce.

Because it was nighttime, when this drama transpired,
And photos work best when snapped during the day,
Our son, Señor, the mouse, and I retired –
But first set the trap before hitting the hay.

And lo and behold, by the glint of next dawn,
As Senor slapped cologne on his cheeks and his chin,
I looked ‘neath the sink while stifling a yawn
And discovered our captive’s captive, rodent twin.

I must have been smiling, cause my jaws felt an ache –
As I transferred to “holding” the second wee mouse;
And I pictured the camp and the view of the lake
We’d reach after driving five miles from our house.

(If there’s a scale in Heaven, would I see any increase
For my antics and efforts with mouse catch and release?)

In the Zone

2010-01-04T21:24:00.004-05:00

Year Two: Mouse One

The day after New Year’s I said, “Mark my words,
Señor, ‘neath the sink are two tiny mouse turds.
And we need a trap, since outside - near those holes -
Our Mice Cube got gnawed by some chipmunks or moles.”

Sunday we shopped for a new-fangled contraption
Which promised to lure mice with a fatal attraction.
In ads, to the relief of a faint-hearted momma,
It dispatched her rodents unseen, without drama.

So we purchased said trap, then baited and set it;
All the while I felt guilty… (a mouse death to my credit?)

Placed under the drain, the trap looked uncanny;
A portal to paradise, with music by Yanni
Reverberating through the pipes - a mousy New Age
For the rodent here-after - life’s exit – offstage.

Imagine my joy the next morn - and my chagrin -
That despite the MOUSE CAUGHT, a mouse cowered within;
A small, quivering ball in the trap’s rude caress -
Surviving by dodging the Ortho Mouse Press.

Arriving for breakfast our son asks, “What gives?”
I say with a smirk, “The relocation plan lives!!”

And grabbing the trap, I head for the car
And mouse-friendly woods – a drive not too far
But hopefully farther than a mouse’s wee brain
Can register its whereabouts and head homeward again.

I ready my camera, and unset the lever,
But before I can photograph, our mouse proves too clever;
And showing no sign of a post-pressing weakness
She bursts from the gate as if running the Preakness.

When I look, this industrious, chewing conniver
Has shredded the trap innards. What a survivor !!

For last year's mouse relocation poems, click on the sidebar in labels - mouse muse or mice...

What's for Dinner...

2009-12-29T08:22:00.005-05:00

After turning 21 in October, our youngest boy decided that a blender would be a great Christmas gift. A professional model, please...

"For smoothies, Mom..." was his excuse. Since then, he's spent months investigating the best juice joints on the East coast as proof of his motivation. You'd almost think he was ready to start a franchise.

Yesterday, however, he brought out a fifth of 1800 The Ultimate Margarita, which was "a gift from a friend." Ahem. And then he offered to help make nachos for dinner... as sort of a mini Cinco de Mayo celebration in the dead of winter for Señor, the boy, and me.

Since such meal-planning initiative rarely presents itself, I decided to go along with the plan. We shopped for ingredients and strategized about how to divvy up the dish so that black olives would cover two-thirds. (Señor hates olives) and tomatoes would cover the one-third with the majority of the fresh chopped jalapeno bits (Señor loves a degree of hot just shy of rendering your mouth numb and the boy hates tomatoes.) Refried beans, ground beef, onions, green pepper, Mexican shredded and nacho cheese from a jar rounded out the list of ingredients. And we couldn't forget the lime needed for rimming the glasses with salt.

At suppertime, the boy assembled a mountain of nachos that could have easily fed six people. (I guess watching all those episodes of Bobby Flay and Iron Chef paid off...) And he timed the margarita making to coincide perfectly with the nachos emerging from the oven.

He juiced the lime, using an antique that looked like this:

And with my help, rimmed the glasses with kosher salt.

Now, the boy loves lemonade and limeade, and he didn't want the remaining lime juice to go to waste, so he picked up the juicer and poured its contents into his mouth.

A big mistake. His lips puckered involuntarily and his face turned bright red; his eyes welled with tears, and he moaned, "It hurts, it hurts."

Meanwhile, Senor and I were laughing until our jaws ached. The boy laughed, too, between gasps for air, for several minutes, before he started tinkering with the ice, the mix, and the blender. He was a margarita-making novice after all.

And the nachos were delicious...

Christmas Wrap Up

2009-12-28T07:36:00.009-05:00

I hope you all experienced a joyous, blissful Christmas, full of happy times with family and friends! Or, if you weren't celebrating a religious holiday, that you took the time to strengthen bonds with those closest to you or do something fun or share a special meal.

This Christmas Day, there were no little ones in our household up at dawn demanding to plunder under the tree; so after putting the turkey into the oven just after eight, Señor and I went back to bed. Three hours later, all of us in various attire gathered to open gifts. It was a leisurely affair, with lots of conversation and coffee. And I thought our gifts were appropriate, and not over the the top, because gifting isn't the reason for the holiday. My children decided differently, however.

I opened the last gift, which was wrapped with such careful artistry that I couldn't believe it had been wrapped by boys. Here is an example of boy's wrapping style:

My package had an elegant bow and corners neatly folded with military precision. It was sizable and had a heftiness that made me hesitate. When I opened it, there was a laptop inside. It was a gift from my boys, and it made me cry.

You see, every computer I've purchased has always been shared with other family members, which is fine. Our 1996 Micron was replaced by a 2002 Compaq desktop, a slow and steady beast that has been the hub of my digital universe. A vintage Dell Latitude laptop, which came to us used, went off to college last year and came home totally befuddled with over 600 viruses clogging its brain. Our boys have their own computers, and Señor has his from work. Still, it seems selfish to have a computer to call my own... even though all my writing and photography exist only there.

But while it was special and meaningful to receive this spectacular gift, what touched me most was the love that went into buying it, how the boys worked together to make it happen. They explained that this gift was a thank you for all the things I've done for them over the years. That's what made me cry on Christmas Day, and today again as I write about the experience. It is the best Christmas memory ever.

How lucky am I to have such thoughtful, generous sons...

O Tannenbomb

2009-12-20T13:51:00.006-05:00

Trimming the tree twice was not on my to-do list, but Friday, within hours of hanging the last ornament, an enormous crash summoned us from our various pursuits.

The tannenbomb lay on the floor surrounded by shards of more than a dozen glass ornaments, many purchased almost thirty years ago: hand-blown glass globes the size of my hand, crystal bells and angels, and ornaments studded with sparkles and stripes. The saddest loss was the silver star that had graced the top of every tree since 1979.

We couldn't even blame it on the cat, who was sleeping next to my son upstairs.

The following morning, Señor and I took the tree apart, checked all the lights, made replacements where we could and started trimming again. We tied the tree to a window lock with fishing line. And then, with my mother's help, we re-hung the ornaments that remained.

The pickle survived, as did the nutcracker and the Santa who looks like a pope. The violin was unharmed, as was the snowy tree ornament, the giraffe, and the giant red pine cone.

In the end, our redecorated tree looked pretty good, even though its top is bare.

The next day tour snow-thrower died and we had to shovel the driveway by hand. It's the length of Runway 4L/22R at Logan. Actually, the auger drive chokes on the second time it's engaged, and I think it can be repaired. The problem is I need a truck to get it to the Sears repair center. They don't do home visits for snow-throwers. Sears sends a repairman for appliances, though, and our dryer has a squeaky belt. What are the chances that the dryer repairman can fix an auger drive?

Slim to none. Nil... I know. It's just wishful thinking.

And speaking of wishful thinking... Phil Johnson sent me a comment (unpublished) telling me that my blog is eye-catching and wonderful, and he advises me to log onto Bloggerzoomspot1000sitesearningyoumoneyrightnow.com. So, I've been spammed... Sigh. Has anybody out there heard from Phil, too?

These things come in threes, right? Let's hope we survive the rest of the week.