It's official... I am my mother... and other horrors

Last May, I went on a shopping binge for Dave's mom, who was celebrating the big 77. Among the things I got for her were two floral house coats. I remember her AND my mom practically living in house coats during my childhood. Of course, they were never worn out of the house- they were HOUSE coats. Actually they were/are short sleeved, cotton, calf-length, button-front or snap-front robes. Women of my grandmothers' generation put them on over their day clothes while they did housework and cooked. The house coat protected their clothing like an all encompassing apron. If some one came to the door, the house coat was slipped off and the lady of the house looked presentable for her company.

The next generation- our mothers' generation- didn't bother to put on day clothes most of the time. Off came the night clothes, on went the house coat and that was dressed for the day- unless she had to go out. And by that I mean REALLY out. She might wear her house coat to pick up the kids at school as long as she didn't have to get out of the car, but she would never wear it to the grocery store or post office. She didn't bother to change out of her house coat if she had company, either, since her company was usually family, neighbors and kids. If a salesman or stranger came to the door, she would dash to get dressed, but those exciting events were few and far between. She had coffee with the milkman and the next door neighbor three times a week- in her house coat.

I remember thinking that I would NEVER be so slothful as to spend a whole day in a house coat. It was analogous to spending the whole day in your pajamas, in my opinion, and what was with all the florals and lace, anyway? Hideous. However, whenever I remember my Mom, I remember her in her house coats. She had tons of them.

SO, based on history, I naturally thought Dave's mom would be delighted with the ones I bought her for her birthday. I was wrong. She tottered into my bedroom with them one afternoon and gave them to me. "They're too big", she said. "I want you to have them." I had already washed them, so there was no returning them, and I accepted them gracefully. "I'll go get you some in a smaller size," I said, to which she hurriedly replied, "No, no, thank you, no." Guess she really loved them :)

And, of course, you know what happened. One day late in the week when I was WAAAY behind in the laundry, and feeling fat and dreading any article of clothing with a waistband, I slipped on one of the house coats. Damn, it was comfy. Damn, it IS comfy. So comfy I carried one with me to San Diego. Its' the perfect article of clothing. Too bad it looks like bed clothes, lacks style, and only comes in assorted florals.

So... gray hair... allergies... asthma...dry skin... crooked mouth...and now, house coats. I am my mother. When we meet again, she is SOOO going to laugh at me.

Bill Murray and Harry Potter

I have found myself sobbing over the deaths of people who have never existed twice this week. Admitting I am emotionally vulnerable since the recent death of my baby brother, I found the experiences cathartic.

The first heart-wringer this week was the quirky film "The Life Aqautic with Steve Zissou" starring Bill Murray, an actor whose characters aren't usually noted for their emotional depth. Something has happened to Bill Murray in the past couple of years. He seems to have found his own heart.
Evidence 1: He was speaking of his life and his six sons with Jay Leno and in the midst of describing how deeply he loved them, he wept. It was touching beyond words.
Evidence 2: "Lost in Translation" was the first cinematic hint that Murray had finally learned how to convey feeling in a way that suited both his personality and his persona. He made scenes believably moving without being maudlin.
Evidence 3: "The Life Aquatic". Perhaps it is entering middle age that has allowed Murray to plum the depths of the heart while maintaining his superficial cool. It is a tough time of life, when a person is neither young or old, but can see too clearly the end of days on the horizon and cannot help but wonder if anything really made a difference. "The Life Aquatic" is classified as a comedy, and it is droll and funny and subversive, like Murray himself; it is also a very moving treatise on loss. All the relationships in this movie are bizarrely complex in deeply human ways, and Murray threads his way through them with a dignity and grace that is fragile, redeeming, and beautiful.

"The Life Aquatic", with all its droll poignancy, triggered the first of my cathartic weeps. I have always, and will always, cry at movies. I am an embarrassment to anyone who goes into a theater with me. But I was at home in my own apartment watching this movie, and so felt free to weep freely. As I wept, I realized that, in this case, at least, the word "movie" really fits.

The second cathartic weep came upon reading the latest installment of the Harry Potter saga. I will not give away any of the plot, but as I read the last few chapters, I was sobbing unabashedly. Books can make me cry almost as easily as movies do, and the Potter books are, in their own way, treatises on loss as well. Think of the poor child Harry. He witnesses the murder of his parents at the age of one. He is sent to live with an aunt and uncle who, for ten years, mistreat and neglect him. He is so starved for connection that, when he goes off to school, it becomes the home he has never had even though every time he goes there, something tries to kill him, he ends up in the hospital, and he suffers trauma, fear, injury, and- in the later books- the deaths of friends. Harry has a loving heart. Where did that come from? He is not needy, he is not manipulative, despite all the years of emotional barrenness he endured. He makes real, committed connections with other people and cares for them deeply. Dumbledore comments on Harry's remarkable ability to love several times; because love is the one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is one of Harry's most powerful weapons. But how do the unloved learn to love? How does Harry manage to go on, book after book, fearing the loss or losing someone he loves?

And why do I care? Harry Potter does not exist. Neither do Ron, Hermione, Neville, Ginny, the Weasleys... But I do. I feel his losses as I read, and weep for those who have never existed as emblems of those who have. Life IS about loss. When you reach middle-age as I have, you begin to see that. But it is also about love. And both can make you cry.

Sears-Mart... Who needs it?

I don't know what is happening to our K-Mart back in Tullahoma now that K-Mart and Sears are merging, but I DO know what is happening to the K-Marts here in the San Diego, and it sucks.

Let's start with the new name. I thought it would be a marketing coup to rename the conjoined stores S-Mart; S for Sears, Mart for K-Mart... S-Mart for s-mart shoppers. Dave was pretty sure Sears wasn't going to give up its name and I am glad I didn't bet with him. The new stores here are called "Sears Essentials". Yuck.

I don't see how that is going to help them, keeping the Sears name. It's not like the store has been doing banner business in the past few years- ESPECIALLY since they got rid of the world renowned Sears Catalog. How stupid was that- getting OUT of the catalog business just as it, and on-line sales- were starting to boom?! IDIOTS!

I personally have always hated Sears, and it's been literally years since I have shopped at a Sears store. The only things that store was good for, in my opinion, were Craftsman tools and Kenmore appliances- which are really Maytags and Whirlpools, anyway. When, after being a Sears card holder for over 20 years, Sears refused to deliver or install a very expensive refrigerator we were going to buy with cash to little out-of-the-way Tullahoma, I was done with that store. We got our refrigerator- for less- from Lowe's in little out-of-the-way T-Town.

I've never cared for K-Mart, either. It is a really hateful place to shop. There is no climate control, and that is a nationwide phenomenom. The stores are hot in the summer and cold in the winter, poorly staffed, poorly stocked, and often dirty. There is one and only one reason to go to K-Mart and her name is Martha Stewart.

I heard from one of the employees at the K-Mart here that, short of a miracle of negotiation, Sears Essentials will NOT be carrying the Martha Stewart lines. PUH-LEEZE! What else did K-Mart bring to the table? As much as I hate K-Mart, I was in there all the time because I love Martha Stewart. Her products are well-thought out, well- executed, fashionable, functional, and damn good values. Without Martha Stewart, I will have absolutely no reason to step into another K-Mart, regardless of what they choose to call it.

I am a world class shopper. I like to shop. I like to spend. God has blessed my hubby and I at the end of our working careers with a pretty hefty disposable income, and I dispose of it. K-Mart used to get a big chunk of it. Sears didn't get a dime. Sears Essentials will not be getting a dime of it either. I will go where the Martha Stewart line goes for my housewares, linens, towels, and accessories. I like her stuff. I have no use for Sears or K-Mart without it.

Wonder how long Sears Essentials will last without it? Maybe she'll go to Target. Think we'll ever get a Target in Tullahoma? Gee, I wish I had Martha's number...

No vampires??

I have had a weird sort of disappointing relief upon returning to San Diego. You may recall that I was suspicious that my new neighbors are vampires. I have seen them only once, and they were beautiful in a scary, anorexic, cowboy Goth sort of way. They never come out during the day. Or night, for that matter. As I said, since they moved in, I have only seen them once, that first night as they glided up the walkway in the moonlight and disappeared into their apartment. No sound, no smells of cooking, no music or sound of running water have come from that apartment since. An eery silence descended that has been disturbing yet thrilling.

On my return, however, it appears the "romance" is over. First of all, Kelly has, in fact, seen the neighbors and in the daytime, too. I have grilled her about the people she saw- did she actually see them come out of or go into THAT apartment? What did they look like? Was it really day- was the sun out? She seems pretty confident that she has seen the new neighbors. And in the daytime.

And as if that wasn't bad enough... I could discount her reports but I cannot dispute the evidence of my own eyes. No, no, I have not seen the new neighbors. I have seen their door mat.

It has lady bugs on it. Lady bugs. What self respecting vampire would put out a door mat with roly poly beetles on it? It is depressingly cheery. One part of me wants to believe that it is just a lure- sure, come on in, it's safe in here, heh, heh, heh- but no. No. You'd have to see this door mat to understand my disappointment. It's cute.

Well, there goes the last vestige of adventure and intrigue in my life. If you can't count on your neighbors to be vampires, what's left?

Sigh.

Pet peeves, Volume I

I don't generally write about bodily functions, but I can't discuss my most recent pet peeve without alluding to some of them. Let the squeamish be warned.

Some wrong-headed environmentalist*- probably from California, which is where most wrong-headedness seems to come from- thought it would be smart to invent- and then foist on the American public- the low volume toilet. The reasoning behind this abomination is that using less water per flush will conserve water and help to ensure a cleaner, less processed water supply.

This reasoning might hold water if all people even did was pee, but as we all know, people produce other denser products that need to be flushed. Low volume toilets are not up to the task. SOOO... for every normal flushing of the large intestines, there follows a minimum of three toilet flushings to move the detritus out of the commode. Three, times the number of people in the household, times the number of evacuations per day. Low volume toilets. What a savings.

And, of course, low volume toilets don't have a large volume of water to produce the good hefty pressure needed to move solids so at least a couple of times a week, it's PLUNGER TIME!! Is there any task- other than changing dirty diapers- more hateful than plunging a backed-up toilet? I don't even like the fact that I produce fecal matter, so you can imagine my joy in having to deal with it. I want one big flush and everything gone at once! I hope you're with me on this.

* There are right-headed environmentalists, by the way. They aren't in the toilet business.

Nature and nurture

My son is a very remarkable and interesting person, and has been since the moment he graced the planet and my life with his presence. Note I did not say "easy" or "sweet", though he can be sweet when he makes an effort. He has never been easy. He is too smart, too talented, too eclectic, and too damn stubborn to ever be easy, and he was born in a hurry. Patience is not his strong suit.

My son is a big, handsome charmer with a smile that knocks you off your feet, and dimples the size of New Jersy. Though he is truly is own man, he is also his father's son; intelligent, intellectually curious, physically skilled, a problem solver. More than anyone else, however, he reminds me of his two grandfathers. In any argument over which has the greater influence in the development in a personality, nature or nurture, the answer is almost always "both". My son proves the rule. He has known my father all his life. He never knew Dave's father. Yet both men live on in him, and I see little evidences of them in his complex personality every day.

My dad, who calls himself "Lovable Bill" is mercurial, charming and a natural salesman. He is not an easy person either, (though for different reasons). At 80, he is still a handsome man and he knows it. He thinks very well of himself. Bill is alternately completely selfish and completely generous. He has an incredible green thumb and used to have some of the most beautiful lawns and gardens in town, back in the day when he owned his own home. He has always been a bit of a male chauvinist, loving women without really thinking they were worth much, though he thought my mother, at least, was a "lady". I see some of these attributes in varying degrees in my son, especially the charm.

Dave's dad never got to meet my son. Dominic died two years before he was born, which was a terrible shame, because they would have really loved one another. Dominic could be stubborn and/or unreasonable, but most of my memories of him are filled with love. Dominic was blessed with so many gifts- everything but an education, the lack of which negatively affected his self-esteem. He was a master mechanic and could make or fix anything. He created a pen with a radio in it years before they become available on the market. He was a brilliant craftsman. He crafted his own violin and taught himself to play it. He taught himself to play the accordion, though he played it upside down because he was left-handed. He was a master builder, building or remodeling every house he ever owned. He was a master gardener. I remember helping him in his huge garden many years early in my marriage, and getting the benefit of the bounty that came from it. The first year of my marriage, Dave and I were helping rake leaves and Dave's wedding band slipped off his finger. We looked and looked and could not find it. As it started to get dark, we gave up and went home. The next day, Dominic called to say he'd found it. He'd gone out with a flash light to look for it and hadn't stopped looking until he found it. Such a romantic. He was a beautiful man, both physically and in his soul. My son even walks like him, an almost tiptoeing, rolling kind of a walk.

Like his grandfathers, my son is a beautiful man. He has many talents, skills and gifts and many of the personality traits of both my dad and Dave's. He is more than the sum of his parts, as are we all, but in my son, the influences that helped shape him are easy to see. It's not that I don't see traces of myself, or Dave, and any number of other people in my children. My daughter, for example, reminds me very much of her Aunt Rita. It's just that, with my son, there are times when it's almost like stepping back in time and seeing my dad as a young man, or Dave's dad as a young man. He's a better man than both of them, but they are there in him.

New World

My grandparents were adults during the Great Depression. Both sets were blessed in that my grandfathers had jobs and because they were gardeners. My grandparents produced flower gardens that literally stopped people in their tracks, back in the days when folks still took drives without destinations on Sundays after church. As beautiful as the flower gardens were, the important gardens produced vegetables and fruit. I can remember helping them harvest corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, rutabaga, turnips, cabbage, carrots, beans of every type, squash, pumpkin, peppers, onions, chives, herbs, blueberries, strawberries and grapes. My paternal grandparents had an apple orchard. My maternal grandparents had grapevines.

My own parents followed in this tradition, only my mother blanched and froze most of her produce while my grandmothers canned. Summers were scorching and there was no air conditioning, but the canning went on despite the heat; pickles, jams, jellies, stewed tomatoes, beans, and carrots were put up for the winter when they would not be available. Fruits and vegetables were still seasonal commodities in my childhood. You didn't get watermelon in the winter. Apples came in fall. You'd find an orange in your Christmas stocking.

But in the summer, the air was redolent with the smells of canning, of salt and sugar and vinegar, tomato and onion, as various fruits and veggies took their turn in the harvest. In the summer a hungry child could drag a carrot from the earth, tug a cucumber from a vine or pluck off a tomato and taste the soil and water and sun that had produced them. They had smells and textures.

Men and women both gardened, but it was women who did the preserving. Such hot, hard work, but the shelves in the root cellar would slowly begin to fill. Sometimes they would buy a couple of bushels of peaches from down south, and make wonderful cobblers and jams and syrups. People truly ate the fruits of their labors.

My maternal grandmother made her own bread three times a week. A slice of homemade bread hot from the oven, slathered with butter (not margarine) and dotted with homemade blackberry jelly... or homemade strawberry jam... oh, my.

The thing is, while other people stood in bread lines or at soup kitchens during the Great Depression, both sets of my grandparents were able to feed their families- and less fortunate neighbors- from their gardens. They shredded newspapers for compost, they saved food scraps for compost, and leaves and grass clippings, and traded compost for manure with their neighbors who had cows or horses. The compost and manure were combined to feed the gardens that fed them. They understood the nature of want. They were conservative in the truest sense of the world.

I do not garden or can. I am entirely dependent upon the contents of my local grocery for my nutrition. And I begin to notice that tomatoes may be red, but they have no smell or taste. Most produce is mass produced, which means it is moderately palatable and moderately nutritious. These are the sacrifices required to have fruit and veggies "out of season"; the summer air is redolent of nothing but refrigeration. Maybe it is time to return to the Victory Garden, if only to rediscover- or discover for the first time, depending on your age- what a real tomato smells and tastes like.

I fear all produce is being hybridized to a uniform mediocre sameness for the sake of commerce; inbred for better resilience during shipping, for longer shelf life, for greater resistence to pests. When the last grandchild of the Great Depression has died, will the memories of summer produce pulled from the ground die too?

Things I have learned from living with my daughter... again

From just about the time Kelly could talk, she told us she was moving out the minute she turned 18. She said it more frequently the older she got. By 16, it was such a litany that I stopped hearing it. So imagine my chagrin when, at 18, she really moved out! She has been living more or less on her own ever since, with periodic significant others sharing space for variable periods of time. She and I had not shared space for any prolonged period of time until January of this year when she came to San Diego for a two week visit and kept getting cast in plays. It has been an education for me living with her for weeks at a time. Here are some of the things I have learned so far.

1. I am an inherently aggravating person. Most times, just the sight of me is aggravating.
2. No matter where I am, I am in the way. I am an in the way kind of person.
3. Everything is my fault, but it's not my fault it's my fault, that's just the way things are.
4. There is no way I can help with anything. It's my fault, I should just get out the way, I am being aggravating.

Living with an actor is a challenging thing. To quote a line from one of my favorite plays, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" (Tom Stoppard): "Actors are the opposite of people", which, I guess by definition, makes people the opposite of actors. Actors are high-strung, sensitive, semi-hysterical creatures. People may live on the edge of hysteria. Actors build condos there.

Despite my shortcomings as a person, I think she kinda likes having me around. I kinda like being with Kelly, too. She really is a force of nature, and sees the world so differently than I do. We share some traits in common; we are both obsessive, though about different things; we are both funny, though in different ways; and we are both smart, which makes things fun. We stay up late nights she doesn't have rehearsals and just hang. It's really cool. If she wasn't my daughter, and there wasn't a 22 year age difference between us, we might have been destined to be friends. I am sure we must have been friends in our previous lives, because she really tolerates me rather well in this one.

Lovingly dedicated to my daughter, the actor. Break a leg.

Random thoughts

I am having another sleepless night, so thought I would post a few thoughts that have been rattling around in my fevered brain.

• I have beome obsessed with a game called Super Text Twist, which is addictive. The game is simple. You are presented with six or seven scrambled letter from which you are to make a six or seven letter word, and as many other words as you posssibly can, in under two minutes. The game does not recognize many genuine words, but seems to have invented some of its own. That flaw aside, it is a compelling game. The problem is two-fold. Once I start playing it, I am riveted for ungodly amounts of time, aggravating the daughter and alienating the hubby- not that I care :) - and I am pathologically unable NOT to start playing it. The other problem is what has led to my sleeplessness. I keep anagraming words in my head. A word will pop into my brain: say, crackles. From crackles, you can get crackle, cackles, kale, sale, seal, ace, aces, ale, ales, leas, lea, lacks, lack, slack, sack, lakes, lake, slake, arcs, arc, cars, car, real, cracks, crack, creak, creaks, laces, lace, racks, rack, races, race, larks, lark, arks, ark, are, era, eras, ears, ear, sear, sake, scar, scare, acres, acre, rakes, rake... okay, my two minutes is up but I continue to anagram as other words pop into my head. I can see the words in my mind and it is very distracting. Hence writing a post at 3 am. Post, stop, spot, opt, opts, pots, pot, tops, top, sop.
• The Kiwis have to be celebrating tonight. Michael Campbell, who is part Maori and so as New Zealander as you can get, won the U.S. Open Golf Tournament, only the second Kiwi to do so, and he did it with dignity and panache. Tiger Woods finished second, finally, on Sunday, playing with the aggression he seemed to dampen earlier in the tourney. It was a remarkable comeback, and he was breathing down Michael's neck right down to the wire. I like to watch golf. It's the only sport I like to watch. I don't know if I would like to play the game, but it is a great game to watch. People who think it is boring are not paying attention. It is a head game that requires a great deal of mental and emotional toughness. I was actually rooting for three players today, Michael, Tiger and Jason Gore. And what happened to Goosen? He went all to pieces. Such a shame. Give golf a go sometime. Like baseball, it is a game of subtlety, grace, and strategy- it's just individual where baseball is team.
• Kelly's play opens on Friday but we will miss opening night. We will catch her performance in July. She went to a theater party last night and had a great time, got lots of recognition and validation. San Diego is just so right for her. I know she has to return to Nashville to take care of business, finish her lease, and store all her worldly possessions that she doesn't ship out here, but I wish she didn't have to. She has built momentum here, I hate to see that stall.
• Today we celebrated Father's Day with presents, cards, and home made pizza. Tomorrow we will celebrate Dave's birthday with presents, cards, stuffed pork chops and a trifle. Jeez, I have to be nice to him two days in a row. Shouldn't be asked.
• I bought a subscription to the Old Globe Shakepeare series. A Winter's Tale, A Comedy of Errors, and MacBeth, all in the open air theater, Shakespeare under the stars. It will be so cool. I got the teacher appreciation rate, which made it affordable. I printed out all sorts of things from the Motlow and AAUP websites, and sent them in to Kat, the lady who solicited my patronage from the Old Globe, to document my career, short as it was. This really is a theater town. I am looking forward to Shakespeare nights.

And so, thus endeth the random thoughts. I am going to try to get to sleep now. Sleep. Lees, lee, eels, eel, pees, pee, see, else,peels, peel. Oh, dear.

New neighbors and bad dreams

No sightings of the new neighbors since the first... though I am not surprised. I suspect they only come out at night, and they may come out as bats for all I know. I doubt they will come out as wolves, unless they can turn into little bitty ones that look like coyotes. You don't see many wolves around here, though you do see bats and coyotes. If I ever encounter them, I will work my diabetes into the conversation- I'd be a bit of a snack rather than a full-course meal for them. Wonder if they have blood type preferences? Of course, it is entirely possible that they are NOT vampires... nah.

A bad dream about someone I loved a long time ago woke me out of a sound sleep this morning. I think we maintain a small cache, a tiny residual, of every love stored somewhere in our brains which we tap into during unguarded moments, like sleep. In my nightmare, this person I once loved was badly hurt and might die. Friends were gathering to keep vigil, but I could not let my fear, worry or love show, because he was someone else's. In the same dream, as we were leaving the scene of the original injury by car, following the ambulance, I guess, we witnessed a horrible crash of a green VW bug with three people in it, hit with such force that the car became semi-liquid and molded to the people thrashing around inside it until they were still. The adult driver was decapitated. The two slightly younger passengers were dead. I woke up.

So you tell me- where the hell did that come from? And how do I shake it? I hate nightmares because they hang around after waking, and put the whole rest of the day on unsettled footing. I am used to my dreams having an internal logic that makes no sense once I am conscious. I can even recognize some dreams as types- wish fulfillment, fear confrontation, past revisiting- but nightmares are a different kettle of fish. They are like a trip to the Twilight Zone, so surreal and yet so present; so charged with emotional energy that the return to the waking world carries wisps of that energy with it. I've been having nightmares a lot recently. I wish they'd stop.

We have a superstition in my family to never tell your dreams before breakfast unless you want them to come true. I have just ignored that superstition. Kelly and I were up until 5 am yesterday/today, don't ask me why. She is still asleep, but I was awakened by a bad dream at 9 am and haven't eaten yet. It's time to let some of my superstitions go. My dreams affect no one's reality but my own. I hope. I'll keep my fingers crossed, just in case.

Birds, vampires, and really good coffee

Dave is leaving for New York for a week beginning tomorrow (June 12) and will return on the 19th. I hope he doesn't miss the Gilliam's visit. He'll be back for Father's Day and his birthday. Wish Mama and Jake and his crew could be here for that.

Kel and I have been enjoying the joys of Starbucks. Mocha frappacino. Yum. Caffe latte. Double yum. We have also found a WONDERFUL place to eat called Mimi's Cafe. We took Dave there for breakfast this morning. Kelly had Pain Perdue, which is french toast stuffed with cream cheese and orange marmalade. She let me try a bite. Unbelievable. Dave had corned beef hash and poached eggs. I had eggs benedict made with blue crab cakes instead of ham. Exquisite. Kelly and I had mimosas. It is almost worth the trip out here for the food. Sadly, for pudgy me. Sigh. (Burp).

The weather here is cool and there are wonderful breezes. Not much sun; lots of cloud promising rain that never comes. And everything is in wild bloom here. It is so strange and so beautiful.

Speaking of strange and beautiful... I am getting new neighbors. Sadly, the obnoxious young drunk downstairs is not moving away. No, the sweet and quiet Maria and her hubby next door have left us, for greener pastures, I hope. I think I have caught a glimpse of my new neighbors. I spend a lot of time in the office, which is on the corner of the building, and I usually keep the shades open during the day, so I see a lot- and a moving van is hard to miss. I watched an amazing number of furniture pieces and boxes being pulled from that van all day yesterday and yesterday evening, just as the sun was setting, I think I saw the neighbors. They were very tall and very slim, dressed entirely in black, with long, silky black hair, both of them looking like models for a style that could be called Transylvania meets Urban Cowboy. Kind of goth buckaroos. Beautiful, but scary. And I have only seen them at night, which gives me pause. I must remind Dave and Kelly to NEVER invite them in should the occasion arise. I think I have garlic...

I have the window next to my desk open. I have been missing bird sound since I got here. From my window I hear vehicles and music and loud conversations but not much in the way of bird sounds. Today, however, I had two lovely moments with the California avians. I watched a dove building a nest in the inner courtyard by the elevator. She was so close to me I could have touched her- habituated to people and unimpressed with me, at any rate. The other moment came through this window that is now permitting a night breeze to brush past me. This afternoon, during an unexpectedly quiet period, I heard the songs of birds. It made my day.

It also made me homesick. In Tullahoma, my house is set back from the road and protected by a stand of woods from street and neighbor sounds. My living room juts into the woods at the back of the house and I can not only watch birds fly back and forth between the trees but I can hear their clipped, musical conversations. From my kitchen, I can watch them congregate at the bird feeder, and see and hear hummingbirds argue over the lush red liquid in their feeder. Titmice have tried to drink the hummer's food- too silly. And the obligatory squirrels tamper with the bird feeder, but that's okay- seed in the garden for the ground feeders. My bird books reside in the kitchen bookcase, close at hand. Simple pleasures.

Watching the birds makes me think of Pat, who loved bird watching. The great and good ladies of the GFWC Centennial Woman's Club of Tullahoma took up a collection and placed two memorial books in the Coffee County Lannom Memorial Library in his memory. I can't think of a better remembrance. He would be so tickled. I need to get my binocs with my books when I get home. In the meantime... I wonder if the new neighbors fly?

Life's little ironies...

I am here in San Diego, and my hubby is on a plane headed for... TULLAHOMA! This is all a Cubic conspiracy to keep us apart, and/or to drive me crazy (yeah, short drive, I heard you). He will only be there tonight and tomorrow, just long enough to meet with the Atlanta customers, pick up the nine hundred thousand things I forgot to bring, leave the household money I forgot to leave, and confuse the hell out of his poor mama.

I am drifting badly here lately. It's like I have lost my bearings. Mostly I drift off to sleep. Do you think 12 hours a day is too much? Well, I do, too, so I have been making some Gatsbyesque "resolves" to do better and to stop being such a slug. I decided to revisit my old craft skills. Thought I'd try my hand at knitting; bought needles and ribbon yarn and spent three days screwing up what should have been an easy project. I bought big needles figuring they would be easier to handle with my insensate fingers, but now I'm thinking they may be too big. I have jewelry craft stuff here, maybe I will tackle that next.

I have also been working on the policy manual and job descriptions for the Mother's Day out we are trying to start at my church. It is very slow going, but I am plugging away at it- when I can get to the computer. ;) My beloved daughter and I have just amicably resolved a jurisdictional dispute over the computer, so I should be a lot more productive.

In the meantime, I have to go shopping (darn!) for sundries and other things too personal to mention, so I am signing off for now. (I am actually encroaching on Kelly's computer time while she is in the shower, and her revenge will be swift!) More later- I have the night shift.

So long and thanks for all the fish... or something like that

No, I am not leaving the planet. I am just preparing for my last day at home. Sigh, sigh, and sigh again.

Marcia stopped by today and we watched one of my favorite flicks, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" and had a good chat. My brother Bill called- he and Dad are NOT going to move to Tullahoma and live in the house on Mac's Lane, so it will be going on the market as soon as I can get it ready. My "goddaughter" Kat called, all excited because a CD and three volumes of a manga we are reading, Fruits Basket, arrived. A manga is an interesting sort of thing- a kind of graphic novel in serial form, it's like still-life anime, read from back to front and clockwise, so it takes some practice to get the reading sussed. I will take the three she just brought over to me to San Diego, as she will be visiting me there, and maybe will have the newest three with her so that we can make an exchange. Kat and I are true buds.

In San Diego, I will be finishing the plans for the LOTR party, working on the "Mother's Day Out" program we are starting at my church, and doing some painting. Kel and I will be running around, I am sure.

Tomorrow Dave and I will finish off some household chores and tie up some loose ends and pack. We are skipping the company picnic to spend a day with Mama before we leave her here "unfriended and alone"... Her caretaker says she does well enough after the first day or two, and she has been feeling better, so I hope all will be well. Last night, Jake, Becca and the kids came for dinner, and Emily tried to feed herself with a spoon. Mama was the primary victim of baby-food fall-out and had a ball. I hope the kids stop in to see her once or twice while I am gone.

Off to bed, me, and then soon, off to the friendly skies.

New blog name- my real one

Just a note- I have changed my blog name to Kate. Old blogs will still list me as NeeNee, which is what my grandkids call me. New blogs.... you get it :)

Off again... sigh

The last day of May is fading, and so am I.

I started my day with saying good-bye to Dave- again- as he is off to Washington until Friday. That cheery start was followed by blood work (yuck) and a general feeling of malaise. I just have a few more days at home. We are leaving for San Diego on Sunday, June 5th, and it appears we will be there until the 25th. In Dave-speak, two weeks = 20 days.

I really don't like being gone that long- Mama doesn't do well when we are gone for too long, and I haven't even taken a dip in my pool yet- but the change may just be good for me. I am still depressed about losing my brother and haven't seen my daughter in a good long while, so maybe this trip is just what I need.

It might be good to make myself scarce for awhile. Mama and I went out to dinner with Jake, Becca and the kids tonight, and I had a sudden illuminating thought that it might, at least where my granddaughters are concerned, be a good idea to go away long enough to be missed. I don't know if it is their ages, or if there has been a change in me, or whether I am unrealistically expecting them to feel about me the way I felt about my Grandma Brooks, but lately, my relationship with the girls has not been particularly satisfying. I don't get any spontaneous affection from them and I have been feeling both taken for granted and neglected at the same time.

Maybe I am just emotionally vulnerable right now. I don't know. But sometimes I fear they are outgrowing me and that makes me very sad. I never outgrew my Grandma. But that was me. Grandma Brooks was my emotional mother; that was true the whole of our relationship. My granddaughters are better blessed than I was; they have Rebecca. Jake and Becca have created a stable, loving, enriching environment in their sweet home in Manchester. Maybe I need to become superfluous to the girls. I don't need to fill the "mama" role for Kendall and Haley any more. I just have to learn how to be grandma, I guess.

So, off to San Diego I go, determined not to let myself miss them too much, and to spend some time redefining myself- and giving them the opportunity to miss me, maybe. In the meantime... I will be packing and making lists and preparing Mama for our absence from here... again. Sigh. If only San Diego could come here. Here is where I really like to be. Off to bed, me.

A pretty good day

We celebrated Mama's 77th birthday yesterday. Mary Irene (Lakowski) Lapczynski Richards was born in 1928 in Detroit, the seventh of eight children. She had five brothers and two sisters and has outlived them all. She was two when her father died, and has outlived two husbands, one daughter and a granddaughter. She has endured 38 operations, most for the replacement of the joints of her hands and toes destroyed by arthritis, and has survived several microstrokes that have left her mentally impaired. She can no longer manage her own money, run her own household, drive a car, or remember to take her medications. She lives with us but mourns the loss of her apartment and the remnants of her independence. Most days, she is pretty melancholy but yesterday... well, let's just say she was really looking forward to her birthday, even if she can't always remember how old she is.

Because of the strokes, Mama is very childlike. So we kept that in mind planning her birthday. Knowing that kids don't like to wait for presents, we started the day with gifts from Dave and I right after breakfast- lots of them. Four pairs of shorts, five tops, two housecoats and lots of new undies; a new summer wardrobe she wanted, and other things she needed. She had a ball pulling each tissue paper wrapped gift out of the three gifts bags. She carried everything to her bedroom cackling with delight.

Dave had the day off, so she got to spend the day with her son. She and her "baby" sat on the porch swing and watched westerns together. In the early afternoon, the Rose Cottage delivered a bouquet of helium balloons and a small flower arrangement in a teacup from George and Stephanie. Mama LOVES getting flowers and was as excited about the balloons as a kid.

At 4:30, Jake, Becca, Kendall, Haley, Delaney and Emily rolled in. Mama had requested meat loaf and mashed potatoes for her birthday meal, so I made that and all her favorites- corn, salad, cottage cheese, crescent rolls. I bought bright "Happy Birthday" paper plates, cups and napkins for the table, made her a cake and bought her favorite ice cream, Purity strawberry. We decorated her chair with her balloons, and had a nice supper together. We sang "Happy Birthday" and the goonies helped her blow out the candles. They helped her eat the cake and ice cream as well. Everyone was in a good mood, and the goonies were especially attentive to their Busha (Polish for grandmother.)

Before she went to bed, she toddled into the livingroom in her big pink bathrobe to give Dave and I a kiss and to thank us for the party. She looked adorable. Before I sat down to type this, I looked in on her. She was all curled on her little bed. She looks so sweet when she's asleep- just like a child.

And the new challenge is... pick-axe handle

My son has issued a second writing challenge to my daughter Kelly and I, and again has chosen a weird topic, this time an axe-handle (check his blog- there is a link to it on this page).

My son is a very interesting person. Despite having IMS (Incurable Misspelling Syndrome), he is a wonderful communicator with many gifts. He is an artist, a mechanical savant, an engineer without portfolio, a builder, tinkerer, musician, athlete, and lover of music. He is also an extremely good son. Even though he has his own yard to tend, once a week he comes here to care for ours, sparing his Aged P (aged parent, for those unfamiliar with Dickens, and Dave in this context, thank you). Lately, however, the demands of his life have precluded his doing an optimal job here and I have toyed with the idea of hiring someone else.

I actually gave one guy a try-out. He showed up early one morning- waaay too early to suit me. Polite convention makes it uncool to start making loud noises in the neighborhood prior to 9 AM. By 9 AM, all decent people who don't have night jobs should be up and about; it's an unwritten law, like no phone calls before 8 AM and none after 9 PM. Courtesy codes. Had the lawnman been a caller at that time, I would have hung up on him, but by the time my mind cleared, and I was fully awake, and in some fit state to be seen, he was disappearing behind our copse. He was using his own push mower instead of our riding mower, and he was being scrupulously meticulous, so his mowing seemed to go on forever. He took a break at about 10 AM, and then broke out the weed eater. He also broke out his CD player and a platform of speakers, setting them up on the tailgate of his truck and plugging them into the outlet on my garage. He cranked up his noise machine and the weed eater at the same time. I was expecting hip-hop or something, but instead, a lush swell of classical music swept across the lawn. He used the weed-eater in time with the music and it was almost like a ballet, he dancing nimbly, the weed-eater his partner, the music his muse.

At first, it was fascinating, this dance in the afternoon with the sweet smell of grass in the air. And then... then, somehow, it became irritating. He had only brought one CD with him and he played it again and again and again. I like classical music as much as the next person- unless the next person is my husband- but the drone of the weedeater and the endlessly repeating music from the CD very soon were working on my last nerve. I have a lot of nerve, so you can imagine. I signaled to him to lower the volume. He smiled and waved back. I walked out and asked him to turn off the music. He smiled, and nodded, and turned off the music. I went back into the house. After a five minute reprieve, the music was back on. Once again, I rushed to the door and signalled for him to turn off the music. This time, he pretended not to see me. I stomped out and asked him to turn off the music. He didn't smile or nod, and he didn't turn off the music, either. Instead, he reached over my shoulder and turned the volume down. I believe in compromise. I thanked him and went back into the house. You guessed it. Five minutes later, the volume increased to ear-bleeding levels and the house began to shake. When I ran to the door this time, he wasn't dancing, smiling, nodding or weed-eating. He was standing with his arms crossed and his legs spread out as if defying me to come out again. I turned, went through the kitchen, grabbing my cash en route, and went out to him by way of the garage. I did the only sensible thing to do when a seemingly amiable bully pulls your chain. I threw what I owed him plus another $40 into his face and took my pick-axe to his Handel.

Jake is back on the job. Such a good, quiet boy.


FOOTNOTE TO KELLY AND JAKE: I win :)

FOOTNOTE TO OTHERS: Everything about the lawn guy is fiction. I never considered firing my son.

Oh, frabjous day!!

In just four short days, on Friday, May 27th, two wonderful things will happen.

The first is the 77th birthday of Dave's mother. Mama is like a kid on her birthday, so we will do it up right. Balloons, cake, presents, birthday hat, the whole nine yards.

The second is that it is the last day of school for the Goonies! Oh, frabjous day! I get to see Emily, the Amazing Perpetual Motion Baby, several times a week while I am in town, but I don't get to see Kendall (AKA Rangy Lil, age 10), Haley (AKA Noodle, age 8) or Delaney (AKA Pixie Dixie, just turned 6) anywhere near as often or for as long as I would like. It's all because of school. Damnable school. While I believe in education, I really hate school because it separates grandchildren from their grandmother. It tires them, and gives them homework, and makes it impossible for grandmothers to kidnap them on a week night and have some fun. My goonies go away on the weekends- Kendall and Haley to their mother, Delaney to her grandmother- which leaves me goonieless on the weekends as well. I now live for vacations, and summer vacation begins on FRIDAY, MAY 27!! I am going to get them en masse, and one on one- I am going to throw them in the pool, and do arts and crafts, and build tents, and go parading and I can't wait. I don't expect to see them everyday- just everyday I am in town. And some nights, too! I anticipate sleepovers and makeovers and staying up late to watch movies and eat popcorn. I used to say, when they were little, that I was their favorite toy. That's not true anymore. They are growing up and away from me, faster than I am prepared to accept, of course. "That's what kids do," Haley said, wisely, "they grow and change." But summer turns back time. If I can be a kid again, so can they :)


FOOTNOTE FOR JAKE: BUCKETS and BUCKETS of kudos to you for figuring out how to finesse the writing challenge. Now, can we move on? :)

Falling back into greased grooves

It has been a hectic couple of days.

Dave, Jake and I didn't get in from our flight home from Michigan until 11:30 PM on Monday, May 16. May 17th, around noon, my brother Bill and his girlfriend Anna stopped by for a short visit on their trip home to Texas. I juggled preparing for my woman's club meeting with being a hostess, with mixed success. About 4:30, my dear friend Taffy popped in to hang out until it was time to leave for the meeting. Mama and Anna joined us as well, so at 6 PM, after loading the car with everything that needed to go, the four of us headed out for the Butler's Pantry. We had a great meal, a good meeting, a fun fundraiser and only one brief moment of poignancy: the good ladies of GFWC Centenniel Woman's Club collected money to be used to place a book in the Coffee County Lannom Memorial Library in Pat's memory. I was very touched.

Today, May 18th, life began to settle back into greased grooves again. I fought with the pool guy- whom I have decided to fire- did some grocery shopping, cooked two meals, and did a couple of loads of wash. Becca brought the Goonies over for a short visit with Uncle Bill, but he is temporally dyslexic and didn't get back from Lynchburg in time to see them before they had to return home. As today is her sixth birthday, I gave Delaney her birthday present, a canopy bed and matching dresser for her My Twinn doll. Her reaction was disappointing, but I think she may not have been feeling well; she was uncharacteristically bratty when it came time to leave and cried for no good reason all the way to the car and down the drive.

Dave left for Atlanta where he will spend the night tonight. He has a meeting with a customer there and will be back tomorrow. He called around 8 pm while I was still farting around with the pool so we didn't talk long.

Shortly after his call, Mama woke up- from a nightmare, I suspect- and was horribly distressed because she couldn't "remember" if it was day or night. She kept saying she was losing her mind. It took some doing, but I got her calmed down. She pointedly asked me not to put her in a home, which reinforced my suspicion that she had awakened, disoriented, from a bad dream. Poor old thing. I finally got her tucked into bed again.

Around 11:30 PM, Bill and Anna left for Houston.

Tomorrow Becca wants to make a quick run to Murfreesboro but I will have to call Marcia before we go as I think she said something about our running around tomorrow. I need to get to Walgreens for presciptions, pick up Dave's shirts from the cleaners, and get my goddaughter Kat's birthday card to her; she shares Pat's birthday, May 17th. I also have to swing by Tullahoma Floor Covering to price a new countertop for the house on Mac's Lane we are going to list soon.

Friday Donna is delivering the mugs she made for our "Lord of the Rings" film festival, coming sometime this summer. All three movies, back to back, and all seven Hobbit meals- breakfast, second breakfast, elevensies, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner and supper. It takes a lot of provender to feed Hobbits, you know.

Off to bed, me.

Home again from Pat's memorial

At 4 PM yesterday, in Chicago, Dave, Kelly, Jake and I parted ways after a weekend with my family. Kelly returned to San Diego. The rest of us came home. It was a hard, strange weekend, but it did, as I had hoped, bring me some closure.

Saturday was spent with my dad. Sue, Andy, Bill, his friend Anna, and those of us from Tennessee, met at Dad's and then traveled to South Lyon to Mike's house. My brother Mike is the sweetest guy in the world, and we don't get to spend enough time with him. I had, as I always do, a good time with his wife Yvonne and my gorgeous niece Megan.

We had a good time together. Kelly and Jake got to engage with aunts, uncles and cousins who have only been on the margins of their lives. Kelly had not been in Michigan for the past almost 10 years, so some of her younger cousins had no memory of her at all, though they had heard about her.

My kids are closer to Dave's side of the family. Mama and Paul came every Easter, and often returned for a visit in the fall, and in each of our trips to Michigan to see my family, we would spend a day with Dave's. My family, with the exception of Bill, has been generally remiss in making visits to Tennessee. For the most part, to stay connected with the Michiganders, the Tennesseans have had to make the effort. And we did make the effort regularly when the kids were younger. But one does not have to be a rocket scientist to know when the need for connection is not reciprocated- both of my kids commented on it several times during the weekend, how they missed out on so much because we had moved away, and I felt sad for them.

And I felt sad for myself, as my siblings continued to tease me about things from our ancient past. It's always the same few memories that get dredged up again and again. I burned a steak when I was 14. I am 55 now, I've cooked since then. Have they no more recent memories of me to draw on? I seem to be a frozen image for them, a set piece of half-remembered, mostly negative, incidents. They don't know who I am now at all.

Sitting in Mike's kitchen, I could not remember a single incidence of such a thing happening in mine- all of us together, playing games, catching up. Well, we weren't all together this time, either. Pat and Barb were not there. Maybe it was all to the good that the gathering seemed so... surreal. It was the first gathering without Pat, at least for my crew.

Sunday we spent with Barb and the girls. At 5 pm, we went to Temple Beth-el for the memorial service. There were about 250 people there. Sue spoke, then Mike, then me, and then Bill. Each of Pat's siblings said their good-byes. Jack Austin spoke, Carol Middel spoke, and a couple of Pat's good buddies spoke. Pat's youngest, Jessica, tried to speak and couldn't do it, which broke the hearts of everyone in the room.

But there was also a lot of laughter during that service, as there should have been. Pat had a great sense of humor, and was making people laugh right up to the end of his days. It was what people remembered and loved the most about him. There was a nice meal after, and my children got to meet some of their more distant relations; two of my great-aunts, my cousins Debbie and Lynn...

We returned to Mike's that evening for a visit with a dear friend we hadn't seen in years. Monday, we lunched with Barb at her parent's house and then headed for the airport. The four of us together, our own little nuclear core, with beloved satellites waiting for us on our return- Jake's beautiful wife Becca, the four fabulous goonie sisters, Mama. We are a tight group, we four plus five plus one. It was a comfort having them with me. Becca and Mama comforted me here. My children were a comfort there. Whatever nostalgia I may have for how things might have been had we stayed in Michigan, I have no complaints about how things are here and now.

It was good to spend time with my siblings and my dad. But on the flight home, I realized we were returning to, not leaving, the people who know us best.


Today would have been Pat's 46th birthday. May perpetual light shine upon him.