Hey, fiddle-dee-dee, an actor's life for me... well, for Kel, anyway

Our daughter Kelly made the trip west safely and quickly, I am happy to report. My friends and I have been having a ball reading her blog (click on the link to Kelly’s blog on the right to see why). She took an oversized key-chain I gave her of a rat dressed as Ole’ Blue Eyes. If you press his hand, he sings “New York, New York”… very funny. She used Frank Sinatrat, as she named him, as a sort of roaming gnome traveling companion, and her pics of him are a hoot in and of themselves.

She celebrated her 34th birthday alone in San Diego, but Dave and I had laden the dining room table with birthday goodies, so she was alone, but not forgotten nor neglected.

I cannot believe my little girl is 34. I remember 34; the thirties are great. If I could age backwards, I wouldn’t go any further back than 30. I hope Kelly’s are as rich as my 30s were, but I really have no fears on that account. She was back in San Diego only two days when she was cast in yet another play. San Diego loves our girl.

Just to embarrass her as much as possible, I am posting some pictures of her. Here is a picture of Kelly and fellow thespian Warren Gore taken a few years ago. I love this picture of Kelly, because it really showcases how beautiful she is and how elegant she can be, though there is no convincing her of that fact.

I am adding a couple of shots of the scrapbook and scrapbook cover I made for her. The original cover started off as plain wood. I used acrylic paint to create a pickled effect, then decoupaged photos and other embellishments to make what I thought was an interesting and unique cover. Only one problem: due to a design flaw, you couldn't turn the pages of the scrapbook after the first couple. So I bought a traditional cover and embellished it for her pages and left the wooden cover for her to use for the photos of her trip west.

The second cover was colorful to begin with, so I just added text and star embellishments and Kelly's picture.

I could really embarrass her and publish some of her baby pictures, but I won't... because she if I do, she will knock me to a peak and kick the peak off when I return to San Diego. Just take my word for it, she has been gorgeous at every age.

She is also a bit OC- she has sent me pictures of her reorganization of the pantry.... and the kitchen... and the computer room... and the balcony. I won't be able to find ANYTHING when I return, which, I must add, will delight her immensely.

On the home front in Tullahoma:

Re cats:

Hobbes has recovered from his surgery and if we thought denaturing him would calm him down, we were sadly mistaken. I have learned that Patches is extremely possessive of the litter box, because when I filled it with shredded paper for Hobbes, she had a conniption fit and bit me on the leg. She forgave me after I showed her the new box filled with her favorite litter just for her. I'd bite her back, but a mouthful of fur doesn't appeal to me, and Hobbes bites her enough for the both of us.

Re My Woman's Club:

The GFWC Centennial Woman's Club had their international dinner at my house on Tuesday, and honey, it was a feast. We had an Italian theme, and we were inspired. Sandie Simms made her minestrone soup (to die for), I made chicken cacciatore and rice, Renee Keene made chicken spaghetti, Taffy Cayce and Johnnie Hill brought antipasto plates, Ida Smith brought a pasta salad, Ann Waggoner made something wonderful with puff pastry, Kathy Orr brought lasagna, Marcia Kribs made from- scratch Italian bread, Nancy Hale made an INCREDIBLE tossed salad, Shelia Burton brought pizza, and Yvonne Gilliam made a Bacardi Rum Cake that was the perfect ending to a most excellent meal. We Southern ladies know our way around the kitchen, let me tell you. Sandie Simms was our featured speaker and gave a wonderful talk on her native country and the small town where she was born. Her photo album was fascinating. Great time! But then, that fits our club's motto "Good Women, Good Works, Good Times". We always have a good time. I love these ladies. They really enrich my life. Here's a picture of Kelly and I and some of the good women of GFWC Centennial at 2004's fund-raiser. I am the rotund one on the far right in green gingham. Kelly is the beauty in the white hat and lavender dress.

Re Mama:

The big screen TV died while we were in California, and Mama did NOT kill it. She just made resuscitating it an experiment in terror. Constant readers know that Mama refuses to answer her phone, so coordinating the arrival of repairmen and the removal of the TV involved convoluted, triangulated phone calls between me, my son, and my housekeeper. We THOUGHT we had it handled. Stephanie was going to get to the house the day before the strange men arrived, and have Mama call me so that I could explain what was going on. I was also going to ask Mama to pay the repairman with the understanding that I would pay her back when I returned. Jake was going to be there when the repairman came so she wouldn't be uneasy about a stranger in the house. It is a plan that should have worked. Except- Mama was mad at me and wouldn't let Stephanie call me and refused to listen when Steph tried to explain what was going to happen. Any mention of the TV triggered indignant cries of "I didn't break it!" and temper tantrums. Poor Stephanie. Jake went ahead and made arrangements, but the repairman got to the house before Jake did and Mama wouldn't let him. When Jake arrived mere moments later, expecting to find a fully prepared grandmother, he found instead an irate banty rooster who first would not let the man remove the TV from the livingroom, and then refused to write a check because, as she so vocally insisted "It's not my fault. I'm not going to pay, it's not my fault. It's not my fault." Poor Jake had to write a check, and poor me had to over-night a check back to him to cover it, which cost me $50 just for the over-night mailing. The TV is back in good working order, and some good may have come from this, because Mama refuses to touch it now.

Gotta go. Gene Autry is on.

Westward Ho!

There is a line in the movie “Parenthood”, spoken by Jason Robards, which I will paraphrase here. On parenting: You’re never done. You never get to cross the goal line, spike the ball and do your touch-down dance. Nothing brings the truth of those lines closer to home than having an adult child on the road, driving alone from Tennessee to California.

I remember reading teen books when I was younger about young women on the road- Annette Funicello in her red roadster, for example- and it was all great fun and high adventure and absolutely nothing I would ever do. I was 32 before I ever drove on a freeway. I drove from Michigan to Tennessee with my then small children in the back seat, and had to stop in Toledo to get on top of my anxiety attack. We made the trip in 10 hours. It was and will remain the longest road trip I have taken where I was the driver.

I drove to Dallas with my sister in 1988 to see our brother, but that doesn’t count, because I was just the navigator, and because of my unerring sense of direction we circled a McDonald’s in Little Rock, Arkansas, unable to actually GET to it, until it began to feel as if it was enchanted- so tantalizingly close, so ephemeral as we approached. We finally did enter the McDonald’s and ate there, but from that point on, I was just a passenger. That’s the way I like it, if I have to travel by car, and I don’t like to have to travel by car.

So I marvel at the courage and panache of my daughter, who has just called to say she is on the road. I haven’t slept well in weeks in anticipation of this call, and have been fervently praying that she would find a traveling companion at the last minute… now I won’t sleep until I hear that she is firmly ensconced in a well-fortified hotel room, having had a safe drive and a good dinner and a day without incident. Then I will worry until the next day’s call. You never stop being a mother, waiting up to make sure your child makes it safely home. No touch-down dance. Sigh.

I won’t be here when she arrives; I will be flying to Tennessee as she drives through the Golden West. She will be coming “home” to an empty apartment. No one to help her unpack. No one to listen to her tale of adventure. It will be the end of a very long trip alone.
On the other hand… maybe it’s better that she makes this trip alone. After all, the Donner party traveled west as a group, and look what happened to them.

Take a little scrap of my heart now, baby

There is a lovely feeling of peace that comes over you when you finish a big project, a sense of accomplishment, a kind of release.  At least, I imagine that’s the case.  I can’t say I have experienced it first-hand lately.  The end of my big project seems to have the same properties as a mirage in the desert- it appears tantalizingly close but I never actually seem to get there.
I have been working on a scrapbook.  I literally started from scratch by buying an unfinished wood album cover and painting and decoupaging it myself.  It looks pretty good, if I say so myself.  I managed to give the wood a pickled look using acrylic paint and the effect is not too shabby.
I have painstakingly compiled photos, memorabilia, embellishments, papers and supplies, layed out almost thirty pages, cropped, pasted… I have put roughly four-five hours a day for the last two weeks into this book and last night, I thought I was finished.
I assembled all the pages and put the album cover together.  It was gorgeous.  Only one problem.  It was so thick that after turning the first couple of pages it became almost impossible to turn the rest.  So, I added extenders, and it did get marginally easier to turn the pages.  Marginally.  So today I will go and buy more extenders.  And if that doesn’t work, I will buy a traditional album cover, put the pages in it, and frame the wooden one I made.  Why not?  It’s art.  In either case, I have to invest yet another day on this “finished” project.
I have been making “this is your life (so far)” scrapbooks as birthday presents since March of 2005.  The first one I ever made was for my granddaughter Kendall, who, it appears, promptly lost it.  So much for sentimental value.  Delaney’s was next (she was six in May).  I made a mini-album for Dave in June, which, touchingly, he carries with him when he travels without me.   I assembled an album roughly the size of “War and Peace” for my son Jake, and looked forward to going through it with him, which never happened- that was August.  I made one for Haley in October and a very abbreviated one for Emily in November. Well, she is only two, after all.  The plan is to add pages at every birthday.
They are a lot of fun to make, but they are also a lot of work.  Scrapbooking is not easy.  It requires thought, planning, a rudimentary sense of design, patience, imagination and time.  Fortunately, I have lots of time.  Each scrapbook has been better than the last as my experience has grown.  I am proud of them.
I have one more to assemble, hard on the heels of this last finished/unfinished project.  It is for my daughter-in-law Becca whose birthday is next month.  I know Becca will appreciate it as she is a scrapbooker, too.  As for the others…  I fear I may just be amusing myself with this latest craft.  I really meant them to be acts of love as much as works of art, but then, they are just scrapbooks after all.  
I sometimes feel that everything I do these days is inherently trivial and pointless.  I enjoy myself, don’t get me wrong, but I used to be integral, I used to have an impact, make a difference.  I got a call a couple of weeks ago from students who were in my very first Anatomy and Physiology class, just wanting to touch base and say hello.  That happens a lot, and it means a lot to me.  I miss teaching.  I don’t miss all the bull-shit attendant upon academe, but I do miss TEACHING.  
So… maybe I will teach a class on scrapbooking.  Who knows?

My own private Jeffrey

     I remember a Bill Cosby comedy routine of many years ago about a flight he endured with a two-year old named Jeffrey.  Everyone knew Jeffrey’s name by the end of the flight because they had heard his mother say it so often-“Jeffrey, sit still!”  “Jeffrey, get up!”  “Jeffrey, don’t do that!”  “Jeffrey, be quiet!”  “JEFFREY!”  It’s the nightmare flight everyone endures sooner or later if they travel frequently.
     My Jeffrey was 13 and named Seth.  We met on the Dallas-to-San Diego leg of our trip west, a leg that began with our not getting upgraded to first class as we had hoped and finding that I was not the only person who had a ticket for my seat.  Dave to the rescue!  We got that fiasco handled and had just settled into our seats when young Seth appeared.
     He was carrying a backpack and had a plastic card holder around his neck, the badge and emblem of the child displaced by divorce.  It is shocking to me how many children are put on flights to fulfill their parent’s custody rights, and many of them a lot younger than Seth, who introduced himself and took his seat by the window.  
He immediately began to talk, revealing an astounding ignorance of a wide range of topics. He was a handsome boy with dark, dark eyes and long, thick dark lashes and a flawless complexion.  There was the suggestion of a mustache on his upper lip, which surprised me when he told me his age.  He was all legs and arms, knees and elbows, as thin as a rail with long, tapered fingers that were beautifully maintained.
He was also hyper.  He couldn’t seem to sit still, or to remain focused on anything- except his thirst- for more than 30 seconds.  He showed an interest in the book Dave was reading and the anagram puzzles I was solving.  I showed him how to access the tray, and he immediately was captivated by the cleverness of the engineering.  He then produced a nerf ball and challenged me to a game, the division of the tray serving as a net.  After trouncing me, he lost interest, and was off and talking again, obsessing for the next 30 minutes about his thirst.
I learned a lot about him.  He lives in San Diego with his mother, but his dad lives in Arkansas and he was returning from a mandated three week visit.  He talked about his little 5 year-old sister whom he does not get to live with and how much he loves her.  In two years, he will be old enough to choose whether or not he goes to see his father, and while his relationship with his dad is rocky, he will probably keep going so he can see his sister.  
He talked about his father’s lack of success in marriage and mentioned that marriage number three seems to be coming to a close. He talked about his school, his girlfriend, his role as school-yard counselor/therapist, his various career plans… and while he talked, he squirmed, rang for the attendant, and generated enough nervous energy to power a city.
He asked me if I was a Christian, and when I said yes, he said he knew it, he could tell just by looking at me.  I asked if he could tell I am Episcopalian just by looking at me, but he didn’t get it.  He assumed I was retired and yet was shocked when I told him I was born in 1949.  He didn’t do the math, but I am sure he thought me as old as Methuselah.  He bombarded me with questions: were there cars when I was a kid?  Phones?  Airplanes?   I told him I was 20 when men first walked on the moon and he was actually speechless for several seconds.  
After obsessing (verbally) about being thirsty, he was relieved when the attendant showed up with drinks.  He downed his first Sprite in about 15 seconds.  At last!  His thirst was slaked!  Then he started eating beef jerky.  A second Sprite… a glass of water…  Whenever the attendant returned, he bombarded HER with questions- how did she know who had buzzed?  What if more than one person buzzed at the same time?
I gave him my PDA so that he could play Solitaire and he enjoyed that for about half an hour.  About an hour out from San Diego, he decided to take a nap, but he couldn’t get comfortable.  He tried to curl his elongated body into the seat, which of course was impossible, and tossed and turned.  I offered him my shoulder and he rested his head on it for a minute or to, but then the tossing and turning began anew.  Shortly before landing, he did, in fact, doze off, but not before I had been elbowed and kneed into submission.
When we landed, Seth had to stay behind to be escorted off the plane by the attendant and so we said our good-byes. I told him I was pleased to have met him, and meant it.   I am old enough to be his grandmother and yet we almost immediately got along and were able to communicate.  There is something lovely that happens when adolescence meets menopause - as long as they are not related or sharing the same household.  
Seth was a very sweet boy, and he made me laugh.  I enjoyed his company, but his energy absolutely exhausted me.  Thirteen was never designed to be confined in small spaces for prolonged periods of time.  Especially not crammed into that small space with fifty-six.