Planet Starla

Fresh Bread!

2010-10-31T13:00:00.002-04:00

I love making bread. I didn't always. The parts I didn't like were the mess it made on the cupboard (flour going everywhere when I kneaded the dough) and my uncertainty about whether I'd kneaded it enough, too much, used too much flour, too little. That's why I made sweetrolls more often than bread. Then I used the recipe that came with my first Cuisinart. Perfect. No mess, no fuss, no kneading, no guesswork. Loved it.

Friday I used my new Cuisinart for the first time and made the recipe for Classic Wheat Bread that's in the booklet that came with the processor. Lovely loaves. Lovely! And even though I think the water was a little too hot and almost killed the yeast. I was patient enough to let the dough rise properly and was graciously rewarded for that. We're already in need of more loaves so I have dough rising right now. This is another experiment because the only yeast I had in the house was the rapid-rise type. The dough was stickier. We shall see how it turns out. And I'll put a photo with this as soon as it comes out of the oven.

Then I'll invite you all over for fresh bread and butter. (NOT butter substitute. Never. Not on homemade bread.) Coffee? Well, I think tea goes better but I'll allow coffee. Better give me a call to let me know you're on your way so that I turn on the heater in the porch; it's so nice to sit out there.

See you soon?

Politics as Usual ... or Worse

2010-10-29T17:06:00.002-04:00

I'm so tired of hearing analyses, predictions, poll results, statistics, negative ads. For the first time since I turned 21 I actually don't feel like voting. I will, but my heart isn't in it.

Our country has become meaner. Too many are unwilling to see nuances, shades, possibilities; too many want everything to be in high contrast, black & white, yes or no. It makes for much easier decision-making when you don't have to take any mitigating circumstances into consideration. Shoot the bastard. He done wrong.

When Air America, the liberal talk-radio station, began a few years ago I heard or read why there had never been (and no longer is) a such a thing. The commentator said that liberals feel it's their duty to listen to all viewpoints and that kills the anger that listeners and callers are looking for. And then I heard Al Franken on Air America and he was doing exactly that: presenting three viewpoints on a topic. How can you have a good heated argument with THREE people? You need only two, and it's best if they hate each other. Needless to say, Air America folded ... last year? Anyway, it's gone.

I want the media to leave me alone in a political season. I want our political season to mimic Canada's: candidates campaign for 6 weeks. No more. I'm sure there's fundraising going on before that period but the actual campaign is 6 weeks. I don't want to move to Canada (partly because I haven't paid attention to their political system and don't have much of a clue as to how it works). But I don't want to be here either.

I'm tired. But I'll vote.

Walking

2010-09-27T10:34:00.004-04:00

My daughter runs. My other daughter does the elliptical. I walk. (I would be the oldest one here.) But I walk pretty doggoned fast, if I do say so myself--2.5 miles in about 42 minutes. I've walked for exercise for years and years and have decided that I simply love to walk. People say that runners become addicted to running and maybe I have the same affliction. If I don't walk, I don't feel out of sorts, but I definitely don't feel "in sorts." Walking makes me feel good. I know, I know, it's the endorphins. But I prefer to say that it makes me feel good.

These days I'm walking in "Adirondack fall foliage."

Saranac Lake, about 45 minutes into the mountains from me, was reporting that this past weekend was peak colors for leaf peepers. It's still fun to think that I'm living in a "destination" for downstaters who come up here just to drive around! And I'm sure that many of my readers (I believe I've added a few occasional peepers of my own--up from my 2 original readers, my daughters who read it occasionally out of obligation [But hey, that's what offspring are for, right? To be there for their addled elders.])--who live in equally beautiful parts of the world. But out here, New Yorkers, and even more so, New Englanders, make such a big deal out of it! So I try to appreciate the bejeezus out of it.

So go for a walk. It makes you feel good.

Top Ten

2010-09-18T12:20:00.006-04:00

Starla's top 10 reasons not to surround your house and yard with 50-100-year-old oak trees:

10. Acorns

9. The size of the mulch pile that never seems to decrease because it's made up almost entirely of oak leaves, which take about 30 years to biodegrade, and acorns, which apparently never do.

8. Big acorns

7. The bunker mentality one enters when the sound of acorns pelting down from on high and hitting the metal roof on the house creates the sounds of an artillery target zone

6. Little pointy acorns

5. The tiny caterpillars that rappel down by the hundreds from the oaks in the summer--even the county extension people don't know what they are--and that probably feed on acorns

4. Chenilles, which is what my husband calls the lame-o "flowers" oak trees produce, precursors of acorns, which, if not raked (like one is some serious OCD patient) will mat in the rain and create a walking surface much like that of a greased cake pan.

3. The need, aside from one's normal OCD needs, to rake acorns because it becomes impossible to walk across the acorn-studded grass, which is akin to walking on marbles--even in shoes it's not fun.

2. Injuries caused by acorns rocketing down from 60-80 foot trees any time a breeze stronger than 2 mph blows

And the number one reason not to surround your house and yard with 50-100-year-old oak trees:

1. The insult of being hit by an acorn while raking said objects

I'm thinking maples.....

A Night

2010-08-06T00:44:00.005-04:00

This is a night when we did something. Many of my nights are do-nothing nights spent in front of the TV, but never just watching. I have to be doing something else, too. Tonight, I'm just vegging, though.

We went to a lovely concert tonight on the old base. Around here, "old base" and "new base" meant a left turn or a right off US Avenue. The old base (left turn) has beautiful Victorian-era side-by-side duplexes. Each is three full storeys, apparently with butler's stairways and rooms for "the help" on the 3rd floor. They've all become townhouses and if I hadn't been married, I'd have bought one and worked however long that required! They are the 3-chimney, front veranda beautiful tall brick houses (slate roofs, of course, in this area). I believe they have hardwood floors, etc. Oh, to die for.

The old base "oval" also includes the lovely little Plattsburgh Memorial Chapel, where the concert was held--this was a fundraiser and I'd put together the brochure a couple of years before but never been (or even seen) the building. So I was happy to buy the ticket and then Bruce, who loves classical music, said he'd join me. How nice!

And the concert was good. The students at Meadowmount compete for spots there and I'm guessing are Julliard and Berkshire music students. They don't do light stuff for concerts, either. It was string quartets with 3-4 movements by Mozart, Shostakovich and Barber. Not easy going for these kids, either, I'd bet. But they were rehearsed and as a result made crisp, together entrances and only messed up the timing once or twice. String quartets have the same problems I've met in "foursome" vocal groups: Who's the boss? As I said, they did well most of the time. It was a delightful evening.

So I'm sitting here "after hours" with my martini and barefooted, as I love to be in the summer. It's August, and I'm just waiting to get older (the 23d for me). Meanwhile this is a lovely, warm (too humid) summer night. I hope yours is, too.

The Wonders of Technology!

2010-07-30T15:04:00.002-04:00

I just have to post about the cool thing I just did.

I'm editing my audio tapes--I think I've mentioned that I read novels for the vision-impaired--and this time it's Gone with the Wind. The way this is done is to make 30-minute digital "tapes" at a recording studio at the local PBS station, bring them home on a flash-drive and edit them here. The 30-minute tapes are edited for errors, stumbles, too-long pauses, mispronunciations, etc. You get the picture. They usually wind up being about 24-25 minutes long. Then I "mix them down" into 55-minute episodes (with a 45-second break in the middle) and return them to the station, where the program's coordinator adds music, an intro that includes a synopsis of the previous episode (which I've provided typed out), and a closing w/music. (This is all done with Adobe's Audition program.)

So I was editing along and got to a sentence with the word daguerreotype in it, and when I had read that sentence, I couldn't remember how I had pronounced it when I'd read it earlier in the book. (It has 2 acceptable pronunciations.) Being a topnotch reference librarian (still!), I went to amazon.com, and found the version of the book, GWTW, that you can look inside. I searched for the word daguerreotype, found the page on which it had occurred, opened my edited tape containing that page, found the spot where I'd read it before and heard the way I had pronounced it then so I could do it the same way for this occurrence. I'd read it both ways this time around just so I could do this while editing, so I just deleted the other one and my reading will be consistent.

Ya just gotta love the power of technology!

Being a Mom

2010-07-30T00:16:00.002-04:00

In the last 18 months I've seen several faces of motherhood: my niece being a stepmom; my daughter being a mom, and mom again; me being a stepmom/stand-in mom; a LOT of me being a mom of an adult child- or stepchild-in-need. It's amazing how similar all the situations are at heart. In the last couple of years I've coped with, in my children, stepchildren and nieces/nephews generation: serious mental health issues, geographic moves, near-death experiences ... and their aftermaths, hormones (I'd mistakenly thought that was over after middle/high school, silly me), and maturation in all of the above-mentioned children. Or so I hope.

What all the situations have asked of me is the wisdom of the sage. Like I knew what the hell I was talking about. I use common sense and love and common sense. I never took one Psychology course in college. But having taught and having been a research resourse for so many developing adults, I learned from what I looked up for them and from the questions they asked me outside of class.

Mostly people under 50 want to know: Is this a good idea? Am I looking at this thoroughly? Which path should I choose? And I REALLY try to say: Do YOU think this is a good idea? Have you thought of .....? What are all the paths? Answering a question with a question in my life has nothing to do with being Jewish (I'm not) and all to do with being a research librarian. All I could ever do was set someone on the path to finding the answer and hope like hell I'd helped them see where the signposts are.

Bruce says I should hang out my shingle as a therapist. I'm not sure he's wrong. I get off the phone after talking through a problem with any one of my "clients" and I'm exhausted. How do all you social workers/counselors/psychotherapists do it? All I am is a mom. Do you think you could talk to someone about creating a payscale for moms?

(The funny thing about this post is that there are relatively few crises now; last year was my damn-near-died year as counselor. I just decided to post this after the fact.)

The Fair

2010-07-23T20:03:00.010-04:00

People are either fair people or fair ignore-rs. I'm the former. I love fairs. I especially love state fairs, but I only want to go to a particular state's fair once. Our little Clinton County Fair I've gone to every one of my 29 chances, almost. I think I've missed no more than four. And now that I think about it, I may even have blogged about the fair once before--since I never tag my blogs, it will be up to you, dear reader, to tell me. And then to ignore this post. And its pretty pictures from a few years ago.

This year we went with friends who live in Montreal. I say it this way because they're both Americans from MA, older than I am, younger than Bruce, and they've lived in Montreal for 35+ years. Walt just retired from the geology faculty at Universite de Montreal and Anne retired a few years ago after many years teaching ... was it French to English-speakers or vice versa?, at the elementary school level. We four get along great and it was a lot of fun to have someone to go to the fair with.

Bruce & I always go to look at everything at the fair. We visit the commercial exhibits: Tupperware, gourmet dog treats, woodstoves, tie-dye t-shirts, RVs. You get the picture. We examine the crafts: painting, photography, crocheting, knitting, wood carving, quilting. Some entries are really very good and others are county-fair quality.

We watch the chainsaw "art" carvers. We go into the little museum that has old homely items set up in a house-from-back-when kind of exhibit. I see so many things that my grandma in Brillion, WI, had: crank telephone, hand pump at the kitchen sink, woodstove with bread oven. And since the horse barns are close to that, we walk through them and talk to the horses and their kid riders/caretakers.

The 4-H barn is one of my favorites. The displays of the projects made by kids, from 2-L Coke bottles made into penguins to dioramas of the stable and corral at someone's farm, are just too sweet for words.

With the small animals display--this year that category included Silkie chickens, a breed I think might be the Paris Hilton of chickenhood--the 4-H barn is the best.

The kids who take care of animals, from lop-eared rabbits to warmblood horses (I think there might have been one there) are so earnest it almost brings tears.

Walt voiced it nicely: "You see city kids. And their attitudes. Then you come here and see these kids. Their dedication and genuine care for their animals. It makes you think we just might have a chance after all." He and Anne hadn't been to our little fair and I think they enjoyed themselves. I know we were glad to have them along.

But in a purely venal vein (I can say that, right? I mean, venal doesn't come from vein, does it? Rats. Now I have to look it up! [cue Jeopardy music here] I knew it didn't!) I won about $9 in the quarter-push machines plus 2 little plush turtles I can send to K&C. And I didn't even mention the food!

No corndog this year. I went for the Southern heart-attack special, BBQ!! I dove into my "loaded fries" with gusto: lightly seasoned fries topped with your choice of pulled pork or chicken or beef--pork for me--topped with cheese and two kinds of BBQ sauce. I can feel my heart trying to _ _ _-dial (what's an internal organ equivalent of butt-dial?) a cardiologist right now. But the message will probably be slurred by the remnants of the maple-walnut ice cream cone I got from those adorable 4-H-ers, and the cotton candy I just finished, sharing heavily with a most appreciative large dog.

The rain held off until we were almost ready to go. We actually had great fair weather (pun intended) because it was cloudy and somewhat cool. It might be fun in the sun, but it can get hot, sweaty and very aromatic really quickly at a fairgrounds. Unfortunately, the rain put a damper on the truck pull, something Bruce wanted to see a bit more of. You notice I specified Bruce in that sentence. Me? I like walking through the cow barns better. And now I'll just let everything digest. If it can.

God, I love the fair!

The Gunns in the North Country!

2010-07-19T09:34:00.006-04:00

What perfect weather for a visit from little girls (oh, and their parents, too)! We went to the Cadyville Beach, a well-maintained and lifeguarded (!) strip of beach along the Saranac River. (The Saranac is world-renowned among fisherpeople as a Trophy Class trout stream.) As you can see, the girls had a bit of fun, and so did their parents, I think.

It's so much fun to watch those girls! Their behavior really takes me back to the years when my daughters were "two little girls." In this generation, Kaitlyn, the older, is the perfect first child, parent-pleasing, cautious but exuberant at the same time. That was Emily when I was still chasing after them. And Courtney, this time around, is the sword-swallowing, fire-walking, trapeze-artist daredevil personality, fearless and way too quick! Jenny was my death-waiting-to-happen second child back when. The saying that children are payback to their parents holds true, at least for now. :) Courtney loved running in the water, apparently the deeper, the better. Katie, once she discovered that she wouldn't go under water if she went all the way out to the floats on the marker rope, liked to be in the "deep end." We all had a blast. The cutest part was on Saturday, when there was a stiff wind that chilled any wet part of a body--Courtney discovered that she wasn't cold if she stayed under water so proceeded to sit in water that came right up to her chin. When moved to water just a bit more shallow, she protested loudly. And her shivers were absolutely heart-breaking. And they made her mad!

Having lived with a backyard pool for 15 years--my theory is that some whiz-bang salesman convinced the previous owners of our house to put in the first in-ground pool in town, and then all of Plattsburgh was his oyster; there are too too many pools for a place that has about a 60-day season--I'm so glad to have the beach about a mile away now. There is nothing like cool water to sit in when the temp is 85+.

Away from the beach, I'm trying to build a little toybox that the girls can use whenever they visit. My two still remember the Lincoln Logs at GrandmaMarie's, and I'd like to get something like that embedded in Katie's & Courtney's memories. Right now it's a stuffed sheep (that we got with our Serta mattress!) and ... my bear footstool. Stickers were a hit:

as were some of my small collection of bright blue New Beetle toys:

The porch swing that I made that hangs inside our "porch"--really a 3-season room--was pretty interesting too. A swing inside!!

Obviously, a good time was had by all. We're already looking forward to next summer!

Toe Flowers and Ring Tans

2010-07-14T21:05:00.003-04:00

While the toes aren't exactly beautiful, the artwork on my big toes is pretty cute. The man who did my pedicure gave me the most relaxing leg & foot massage, and then convinced me that I needed toe flowers! You have to know that anyone who massages your feet can talk you into anything ... um, almost.

I was with my slightly broken, but on the mend niece, Kate. She treated me and her stepdaughter, Abby, to our pedicures. Abby's was just what every 11-year-old girl should have for her first toe-painting: turquoise nail polish with white polka dots and 3 different-colored flowers on each big toe. It was awesome. Kate got toe flowers too, which I think helped her mood if not her bumps, bruises and healing road-rash. The flowers make me remember how lucky we are to still have her in our world; she could so easily have been sent to another. Her accident was a bad one.

As for the ring tan, I've been working on that since the weather got nice enough for me to walk outside without gloves. Amazingly, around here this year, that was about May 1! I've worn my father's wedding ring on my left index finger for years and this is the year I got a really good ring tan. It's not worth a photo but is my little secret trophy. Oh, I have a pretty good watch tan too. :)

My trip to Utah to help Kate was a good one. I think I helped, maybe mostly just by being there. I put a lot into the blender--baked pasta, yogurt smoothies, pea soup, fruit salad, etc. Kate is an incredibly good sport about eating everything in a liquid state. Her injuries were/are serious and I was kind of sorry to leave because she still needs someone there. But her sweetheart of a husband, Ryan, is a rock for her, and his kids, Nathan and Abby, are doing all they can to help and to let her know she's loved. It was heartwarming to witness the power of love, how it's support at its best.

I got to see my stepdaughter, Leanne, and her husband, Ashley. They live on the east side of Salt Lake City and came all the way to Kate's house to see me. I was so happy. The two couples went out with me to a great Thai restaurant. The four 30-somethings hit it off really well and that evening was just a joy for me. Leanne & Ashley were more relaxed and funny than ever and I just enjoyed myself to the hilt. They have a really good life and it's really fun to watch them grow. (Once a parent, always a parent, even when the "kids" are adults!)

This weekend my older daughter, Emily, is coming to Plattsburgh (!!) with her family and I cannot wait to see my grandgirls. This is their first visit since moving to Cleveland and the amazing Gunns are driving through the night to get here--it's a straight 10 hrs. for a lone adult and probably anywhere from 10.5 to 12 hrs. with kids in tow. But the girls should sleep pretty much all the way so that should work out great. We'll have them out here for a few hours, I'd guess. And dinner either Thursday or Friday. I'm so excited.

All for now. I'll once again say I'll try to get back here more often. I just have to keep convincing myself that anyone finds anything I do, interesting...

I’m Inspired

2010-05-27T17:26:00.002-04:00

Well, the workshop in DC went well. They usually do. Actually, thinking back, they always do. I get quite nervous beforehand, especially the last day or two before I actually give one. Workshops are a crapshoot in terms of time. Timelines vary greatly depending on the size of the group who attend. Because I don’t just lecture for six hours, I have to guesstimate how much time each component will take. And being a German-heritage librarian (see remarks about OCD that follow), I can’t estimate most things worth @#&. And while people—especially librarians (who became librarians because of varying degrees of OCD)—like structure, they also come to conferences to network, and often don’t have much time to do that outside the sessions they’ve signed up for. Add to that the fact that at the end of six hours of concentration, most in the group are pretty much brain-dead and just would like to sit and kibbitz, or go home, or go out for a drink. Or several.

So I try to plan and yet flex. This is the part that makes me nervous. I’m no longer terrified of being in front of groups of peers—who are usually the harshest critics of one of their own. But I don’t want my workshops to look haphazard or unplanned. At the same time, I can’t be a controlfreak and keep everything to the minute. See what I mean about being nervous? I'm not really scared. I just want it to go well.

And it did. My biggest mistake was my shoes. My feet hurt so much (the four blisters were not a laughable situation!) after a day of nothing but standing and walking around a “classroom” that I couldn’t go sightseeing at all. At all! My hotel--the Washington Hilton--was a good 4 blocks from the Metro and way too far from the Mall to walk there. And Washington is one of my favoritest places to be Tammi Tourist. RATS!

But I am inspired. The people at the workshop were all younger than I am (I’m pretty sure). And they all thought that graduate education for librarians should definitely include something like what I was giving them. So I’m in the process of revising my brochure and preparing to send it to every library school in the country to see if any is interested in having me for a day. We shall see!

Positive Strokes

2010-05-12T22:35:00.003-04:00

It’s amazing what a compliment will do. I’m working on my workshop that I’ll conduct in Washington, DC, on May 22. I knew I had materials from a different workshop that I could rework for this one; I just had to remember which previous one it was! Okay, it was the one I did at Rosemont College in Philadelphia, and it had been hugely successful. So I had a little bitty high from remembering how positive the feedback was from that one and I got an e-mail labeled “Workshop.” When I opened it, it was a request from the program chair for the organization that had brought me to Rosemont! They’re interested in a “Part Deux.” Apparently the people who had attended my earlier workshop had reported as positively to their organization as they had to me, and they’re interested in having me again.

My frame of mind is now about 1000% more positive than it had been on Sunday. And it wasn’t that bad on Sunday! The fact that I’m working on a workshop feels really good. My sister will say that I need to get out there and beat the bushes again to get more business, but I’m really not interested in doing that. I kind of like this 1-2/year thing! If I were doing 1/month, like I did for awhile, I’d have to really stay on top of I.T. Then it would be too much like work. And I am, how you say, RETIRED. I actually contacted a woman I know who taught public speaking and had run her own company for “corporate training” to see if I could work occasionally/sporadically for her. Unfortunately she has just retired, herself! And she said it was too bad I hadn’t contacted her earlier because I would have been perfect. In my younger daughter’s perfect sing-song: Oh well.

Meanwhile, add those positive strokes to the endorphins I’m earning because I’m going to the gym more and working harder while I’m there and I’m in a good place right now! (And the fact that I’ll earn some $$ and get reimbursed for my travel for next week’s work is okay too! :D )

Catching Up

2010-05-06T22:23:00.002-04:00

I really wanted to use this frequently but then along came Facebook and I get by on pithy sentences (and many, many not so pithy). So I’ll get a little caught up here before I wander away again.

My Mimi-sitting gig in Cleveland was terrific. (I did get some sort of stomach bug that made me SO sick that it almost overshadows the really good memories from that. No more about that!) Kaitlyn and Courtney are just beautiful. I’m as in awe of them as I was of Emily & Jenny at those ages. It surprises me how much I can love these little girls, again echoing how surprised I was about that capability with my own two beauties.

When I came in the house, Katie immediately gave me the “Vanna White tour.” I realize that 3-yr-olds talk constantly, but this was really amazing. The highlight was her tour of the guest lavatory, with its “toe-let” and accompanying “toe-let paper.” I was shown where the handle for flushing was and how to wash my hands. And in her and Courtney’s rooms, I had to see how the closet doors worked. And my camera was packed in my suitcase and not handy in my purse. Rats. A real opportunity missed.

But while Emily & Pete were away and I was the Mimi, the three of us went for walks and went to the park (I knew where it was because Emily & I had gone there before they left),

looked at flowers and threw stones off bridges into the creek that runs behind the house. Spring in Cleveland was all that I’d forgotten about spring in Iowa: so many things can flower simultaneously, it was truly beautiful.

The girls at the park were so much fun. Tiring but fun. Pushing on swings, climbing up and then sliding down slides. Playing in the big sandbox. And Katie’s propensity for finding 7-9-yr.-old kids and asking them, “Will you be my friend?” They then help push on swings and slide down slides. Those kids were so … wholesome, such good kids.

Meals were a challenge for me to follow the rules of the house. It was the timing more than anything that I tried to be conscious of. I was just really getting the hang of it, I think, when Emily & Pete came home … and I was really glad they were home. I was tired! I realized again why people my age don’t have babies!

The drive was easy, and good for me. I needed to get out into city traffic again to reassure myself that I could do that. Living in my isolated little part of the world, I lose my confidence in managing the big parts of the world. Busy cities are exciting for me, and I’m glad to know that I’m not that overwhelmed by them!

I’m probably willing to Mimi-sit again, but I’m not sure if I can do it with a baby again. Just carrying one of those infant carseats will kill me! But the joy from the kids? Priceless.

(BTW, here are my granddaughters sane and normal parents.)

Snowbirding

2010-04-01T13:30:00.001-04:00

Well, I’d do it. To be out of the real cold and into a climate that gets “cold” at about 40 is a doable for me. But in my life, right now, it was a one-time thing. So the following thoughts are mine, in this case an imaginary me alone. It’s not that I don’t love my husband; it’s that he would not do this again, so we won’t. But I would.

I really can see why people do this, snowbirding, I mean. The cold in the North Country has definitely lost its appeal for me; I don’t need to prove to anyone that I can survive a winter where –25 is a high temp on some days. So I would do this. I would find a site I liked in Florida, or maybe Georgia, but probably not any farther north than that, and I would move there for 2-4 months per year. How long I’d be south would be determined on what involved me in the north. And since I’m kind of a loner anyway, I might actually split it 60-40, and I can’t say right now which end would get 40% of my year!

Of course, the best possible world would be to be able to afford to own a home on both ends of your line. It would address many of the “hardships” (and those quotation marks are significant here) that a renter experiences: kitchen utensils and the like. So that's the way I’d do it if I could.

If you're thinking about it, spend one year or more scoping out areas you think you might like. If you’re in the East, that’s usually Florida and above. But the Midwest has different options: the area around Bronson, Texas in the Corpus Christi and Padre Island area, the Southwest. You need to spend some time in the area—I’d recommend a minimum of two weeks at a time—to find out if it has what you’re used to. My original idea of a month to try out really living there was a good one; two weeks would still feel like a vacation and not a move, to me at least.

What I missed in Crystal River, FL? Internet access! THE most. And that surprised me. I hadn’t realized how much I’ve come to rely on the research capabilities of the Net (which is why I’ll never update my textbook ever again). So get a place in which you can have Internet access in whatever way you can get it. Since I have only a pay-as-you-go cell phone I didn’t have access through it and that wasn’t good.

On your trial trip, and I’m seriously recommending you do at least one of these, look at the area’s social networks. Are they easy to add into? Can you easily find a way into them? Is there a location where you can get the best info on them? I happened into a Tai Chi program at the local public library—where I had to go for free wi-fi—and I would have used that as a stepping stone into other groups. Or go to the local grocery store that fits your economic situation, at about the same time every week and get to know your fellow shoppers.

IF you can afford it, buy a place where you want to spend about 1/2 of your year. (Renting is okay, but having a place of your own would be so much nicerr in terms of knowing what you had and what you needed to bring.) The places we looked at in the Crystal River area were either a) tiny, or 2) pretty high-priced because they had waterfrontage—usually on one of the many canals in the area. There were huge trailer parks in the area that we didn’t see at first; and I think they were hidden for good reason. FL has some trailers that must have been made when Marshfield Homes was still in business! But most of the newer communities are not double-wides anymore; we found one that we both liked and the houses were stick-built and very appealing. Of course most had water frontage and that puts them into that 2d category above. Sigh. And here’s a picture of a home that’s for sale—one canal over from the one we were on and on the river end of it—that I wouldn’t be thinking of buying—unless my husband died and I discovered he’d had untold millions that were now mine! Hahahaha :) But it certainly is attractive….

The Web makes realty browsing so easy that once you have an idea of an area you’re interested in, you can see what prices are. So I’m going to do that for amusement right now. :) If you want me to write anymore about this, give me a comment or two.

Snow, the curse of winter

2010-02-24T23:27:00.002-05:00

It’s still snowing. I’m not sure what our total is officially but looking at our metal roof, I’d say about 12” so far.

This was taken this morning, about 11, out the front window. (It’s Bruce’s “artistic” creation that shelters our fledgling birdsnest spruces.) So add about 3-4" to the stacks of snow here. The weatherman actually weighed a shovelful of snow on the news tonight: 15 lbs. Wet and not fun. It started snowing last night and as I write, at 11 p.m., it is still snowing. And another storm hits tomorrow.

Usually I would help shovel and just sigh. But this week we’re supposed to be leaving for Florida and our trip gets delayed by a day and then another. Initially we were going to leave on Thursday. Now I’m hoping for Saturday. Look at this weather forecast ! AAAARRRGGGHHH!

I’m telling myself that this is not a disaster. There are many people in far worse situations than I. (Can I unclench my jaw now?) I just had to vent.

I’m hoping the next time I write I’ll be sitting on our dock!

Ready to go

2010-02-20T15:54:00.001-05:00

So we leave for Florida soon. This should be a true adventure. I’ve never driven it before and I probably won’t be doing any of the driving this time either. But we will be going by car. I’m really looking forward to it. But if there was any one time I’d love to be beamed there, Scotty, this is it. Traveling with the cat … hmmm. I plan to give her a sedative and hope that she’ll sleep most of the way. Then once we’re there it’ll be a matter of not having her freak too much and try to run away. We’ll be on a canal, and I’m sure there will be cat-eating creatures not far away. And Susie just isn’t a kitten anymore—almost 15! (I’ve decided I want to be a cat in my next life; they don’t get wrinkles.)

Life around here is pretty boring right now so I’m doubly glad for the FL diversion. I need to find something to do … that won’t hurt me! I’m swimming and it seriously exacerbated my old tennis-elbow tendonitis so I even have to be careful doing needlework. Did you know that tennis elbow is affected by cross-stitch? It is. So I put on an elbow brace to do it! And that’s where I’m headed now.

Wish us safe travels. I’m sooo hopeful that Bruce will make it only a 3-day trip.

What Endorphins Can Do

2010-01-31T00:12:00.001-05:00

I'm back in the exercising mode. And I really really really want to stay here. It's so very easy to put this at the bottom of priorities, which I've done for years. But this week I got some pretty clear indicators: miss exercising for two days and gain .5 lbs. I realize that my scale goes by 1/2 lbs. And I realize that my water retention affects my weight so much so that I'm not sure what I really do weigh. But just going by the scale clearly means that I MUST work out in some way six days out of seven. Do you know how much of a day that takes? I can't believe anyone who isn't retired has time for this! If I leave for the gym between 9 and 9:30,I'm home at about 10:30 - 10:50. Then I have to blow-dry my hair. Wipe out my morning up till 11:00--or even 11:30. Then I might as well have lunch (I'm usually hungry anyway) and my working day starts at about 12:30. I guess that's not bad for a retired person, but I have to break myself of the years-long habit of doing nothing productive in the evening and get some stuff done then. I'm sure I'll figure it out. Meanwhile, I'm grateful that my health is good and my body keeps moving ... at least so far.

Later.

Retired Life

2010-01-13T02:00:00.001-05:00

I’m sitting here on a night after a day in which I did pretty much what I want to: I got up at 7:50, went to the gym at about 9:00, swam about ½ mile, came home feeling pretty righteous, farted away the next 1½ hrs. Had a really saintly lunch of salad w/o carbs, read at the station for 2 hrs., gave blood, farted away another 1½ hrs., and had dinner at Friendly’s and went to a PSU Men’s Hockey game. (It was a bloodbath; we won 9-3 against Skidmore). Then a nice conversation w/Laura, who has a new man in her life and is sounding so positive and upbeat. Bruce & I are so hoping that he isn’t another user/heart-breaker. She seems to be such an easy target for that kind of man.

I’m hoping I convinced Laura that we are NOT thinking of selling the house and moving … anywhere. I think maybe Leanne got that idea in her head and there is nothing further from the truth. We’ll spend a month in Florida and then … come HOME. I’ve said that if we ever vacate this house, it will be on Bruce’s volition. That realtor visit threw everyone. And *I* am laughing; Bruce would be too, if he knew what a tizzy it threw many into!! I’ll say it again: If we ever leave this house, it will be Bruce’s decision. I will NOT be saddled with the blame of “forcing Bruce out of his house.” He knows this. If anyone else needs to know this, they do now.

But I’m beginning to love being truly retired. I call the shots. My schedule is set by me. My only worry is that I’m limiting myself. Book myself not enough = boredom. Over-book myself = resentment (not true, I know, but it’s there nonetheless). That happy medium is there somewhere and I’ll find it.

Good night.

Help from afar

2010-01-12T00:41:00.001-05:00

I called Dell Support today to help me take off the password I had put on my laptop when just opening it for the first time. There’s no real warning to a tech-semi-moron like me that you really don’t need one of these passwords; I need the sign in all caps that yells: DON’T CREATE PASSWORDS! THEY’RE NOT NECESSARY! YOU’LL REGRET IT! AND THEY’RE ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO REMOVE!

So I went to Dell Support. I’d gone there last week and even though the tech somewhere in India/Bangladesh/Pakistan who answered the call after a 10-minute wait took my phone number, “in case we get disconnected,” he never called me back after I did get disconnected. So I called again today. Today’s tech had to transfer the ownership of my new laptop from Staples, where I’d bought it, to me. That took a bit, even though last week’s tech supposedly had done that too. Anyway, we finally started on my problem. I think I began the call at about 3:15 EST. I realized that my tech—I never did understand his name but it was probably Jeff … unh huh—didn’t have a clue about how MY laptop worked. After many unbelievably long waits while he “got some assistance,” we FINALLY removed the damned password. This was the one that I was required to type in every g-damned time I touched the computer. But we did get it removed. I think it was about 5:05 EST. At least that was free.

So now I’m watching “Men of a Certain Age,” a show that’s aimed at my age group … only about men rather than women. Will men watch this? I doubt it. Ray Romano, Andre Brauer, and Scott Bakula. Great guys all of a certain age. Of course, that’s now OMG younger than I am. But the things they obsess over are familiar. If not a problem I’ve had, it’s one a friend has had. Getting playlists from people 20 yrs younger, trying to communicate online with a stranger, pretending you’re as hot as you were 20-30 years ago. All familiar.

So I got my computer fixed. And I went for a walk. And I’m planning to swim tomorrow morning. I’m feeling like I’m back on track. While I like the job at Borders, it disrupts my life more than I want it to. Next year? I don’t know.

Eat healthy. EXERCISE!!! But be nice to yourself. If you don’t do either of the above, there is no lightning bolt from heaven that’s GPS’d to your location. So be nice to yourself.

(And it’s now clear to me that my next job with this laptop is to figure out how to download a clip art illustration into this blog. Stay tuned.)

Next project

2009-12-31T01:51:00.002-05:00

I have FINALLY finished the work on Marley & Me for the Readers Radio (I think that's what it's called). Gadzooks, what a loonngg process! You cannot imagine how boring it is to listen to yourself over and over and over and over. This is the best-edited work I've done and it came out alright.

Now I have to write the final report for the grant I did the application for; this is a completely different organization from the Readers Radio. My interest is flagging because I'm butting up against an ego that's pretty big and I'm not sure I'm interested in continuing. Meanwhile, I've just become treasurer and the organization has operating funds of nearly $20K, so I can't back out. I'll do my three years and then I'm out, I'm pretty sure.

Other projects: a polar fleece outfit for Courtney; Dots (candies) pj's for Kaitlyn--very cute fabric, a bed jacket for me (although I don't read in bed a lot recently--maybe I'll take it up again if I can be warm). Then it'll be off to Florida. Yay!

I'm all done with Borders and that's good. I'm really uncertain if I'll do it again next year. It surely isn't for the money, and this year it was a bit odd: I was assigned to the calendar kiosk almost all the time--probably because I could be relied upon to come in early enough to open (7:30 was a bit rough, but I did come in reliably)--and that is a one-person operation. Both good and bad: totally on my own, good, but no one to talk to and no way to sit down for hours, not so much. Luckily they got a cushion-y rubber mat to stand on or my feet/legs would've given out. Today was my last day, and I'm very okay with that.

Going to bed; it's 2 a.m. and that's tooooooo late. That editing kept me going until now; 1 1/2 hr. break at dinner but I've been at this since 4 p.m. Egad.

G'nite.

Just today

2009-12-29T01:13:00.001-05:00

I worked my penultimate day at Borders today. I was assigned to the calendar kiosk again today. I just can’t think of the word I want; it wasn’t “assigned,” but rather the word that connotes being banished, because the kiosk is a one-person realm and it is so boring it’s almost beyond belief. Even when the sales are steady, there is no one to talk to in between customers (or in brief asides afterward), so I arrange the calendars and rearrange them and straighten them and ignore them, and work an NYTimes Sunday crossword or double acrostic puzzle. Truly really boring.

But I get to text Jenny, the only person I know who is able to receive/read texts while I’m at work too. And I feel like a teenager when I text, so it’s fun for me. But only one day left means that I probably won’t think to text Jenny during the day. Maybe.

I’m in a great frame of mind tonight and I think it’s because I only have one day left at Borders. I remember it feeling like this last year. It’s pretty wise of myself, I’m thinking, to set Dec. 31 as my end date. I look forward to New Year’s Eve for several reasons as a result!

Which brings me to a whine. Bruce does not like New Year’s Eve. He hates the idea of drunks out on the road and is really negative about the night as a result. I don’t probe too deeply as to why it is such an anathema. But we don’t even go to a friend’s, so why is it such a problem? I gave him a bit of a hassle about this tonight. I usually buy a split of champagne—even on New Year’s Eve he won’t drink more than a swallow or two, and we are already home, for crissakes! I’ll buy the split again this year, but … yippee. Oh, yeah, I should constrain my enthusiasm. You get the point.

So positive things, positive things. Our trip to Florida is not all that far away now. The worst of winter is beginning—the snow today was very wet and heavy but not too deep. And the idea of not being here for the end of the misery is so attractive; I’ll definitely live through the interim!

So I’ll be around. Good night.

Quiet Christmas

2009-12-25T19:28:00.001-05:00

It’s about 7 p.m. on Christmas and I’m relaxing with a nice big glass of merlot. We just finished a dinner of ham, mashed rosemary potatoes, corn, fresh fruit salad, whole wheat rolls, and key lime cheesecake. Delish. The dessert is a little non-traditional, I realize, but who the hell says I have to follow someone else’s traditions? Bruce will eat whatever whenever so tradition means little around here. And most of the time, I don’t mind that. When I do mind, I follow whatever tradition I need. It works.

Talking to my daughters was a delight today. Of course, I wish I could see them in the flesh but I do, just at a different time of the year. And if I pause long enough to stop mental whining and think about it, that means I have Christmases at those other times. The visits—here or there—are always gifts for me. I haven’t yet talked to my stepdaughters, but I’m guessing they’ll call tonight.

Tomorrow I’ll really have to apply myself to my editing. I’m at a point that I really dislike: I have to make all the tapes that I’ve already edited down from their original 30 min. recording time into 55-minute episodes that include a 45-second break, and wind up with an even number of episodes, if at all possible. So I experimented a bit with “deleting silence” in them, but I don’t know enough about the settings so that resulted in silences between sentences being eliminated, but not necessarily those betweeen phrases. Aargh. So I’m listening to the last tape ( I fervently hope) that I have to add silences to. (And I want NO snotty thoughts about the difficulty of adding silences to Carla. Clear?) Listening to myself is eternally boring (this means I’m learning what YOU have lived through all these years; you have my deepest sympathy!) but it’s absolutely necessary. And I guess it’s not such a bad idea to listen to the episodes before I turn them in, something I haven’t done in the past; I’ve managed to catch at least 5 places where I’d somehow left in the “read again” comment I make when I know I’ve made an error. So while it’s very tedious, the process means I’ll get a quality product, one I really will be proud of.

Christmas was kind of a non-event here this year. I decorated and we have a tree and all, but my seasonal cheer was at probably an all-time low. I don’t think I’m depressed or anything. I just had to hear canned Christmas music for far too long. And the stint at Borders left me by myself in the calendar kiosk: no one to make snide cracks to or to hear about their college life from. I don’t think I’ll do Borders next year and I’m guessing I’ll feel a lot more like Christmas.

But I received some nice gifts, and I do have the love of my family and friends. I hope your Christmas was as good as mine.

New computer

2009-12-24T14:57:00.000-05:00

Well Merry Christmas to myself. I just got a new computer, a big, heavy laptop that has not too many bells & whistles. I got it mainly to take to Florida in March and therefore I got one big enough for Bruce to use. He says he doesn’t plan to go online at all while we’re in the Sunshine State, but he’s so used to spending pretty much his whole morning at the computer: on his “board” (an amazingly active bulletin board for fly rod fanatics) and eBay. I spend far less time connected than he does!

So this is a Dell Inspiron 1750. I wanted a 1720 but they were unavailable … anywhere, even at Dell. This cost the same and has a bigger screen. Nice for the graphics quality but it makes for a BIG laptop! It also has Windows 7 which seems, so far at least, to be an actual improvement to XP. This blog, for example, is one of the options on the dock (yes, it copied that from the Mac), which means I may actually write here more often.

For those who suggested I get a Mac, you’re probably right. But the one program I hope to use portably is my editing program for the audio tapes I make for the vision impaired. I would have had to buy the entire program in a Mac version and even then my tapes would probably not be compatible with those at the recording studio, which is all pc. So I’m sticking with Bill (Gates, that is).

I’m not going to write much more. I would like to get into the habit of writing here. And if it remains sporadic, I’d like to get to the less than widely-scattered-sporadic level, whatever that may be. Irregular, maybe?

So Merry Christmas to all who read this. It’s almost 3 p.m. on Christmas Eve. I hope your heart is happy.

Been Awhile

2009-12-11T22:43:00.003-05:00

So I haven't been here for awhile. I'm not sure I can say I've been busy. It seems that the very short posts on Facebook have taken precedence. That's actually not good. They embody the "sound bite" idea and discourage people from really spending time expressing themselves. I think they might be competing with Twitter, although I've never been to or looked at Twitter, so I could be entirely wrong. Anyway, the sound bite seems to be replacing the paragraph in just casual online writing and that is definitely less than good. So anyway, I'm back.

One of the reasons for my presence is that I had an interesting conversation a few days ago. An acquaintance who I hadn't seen in a long time asked what I'd been doing the last little while (i.e., a year) and I had to stop to think. I realized that what I'd done for most of 2009 is be ... a full-time mom. I was a full-time mom for one year, the 1st year in P'burgh, but otherwise was working full-time and mom-ing the rest of the time. I went to half-time from '82-'85, so I was with the girls much more of the time, but never home full time except for that one year. And then again in 2009. And this time I have 4 girls to deal with: 2 stepdaughters in addition to my 2 daughters. There were cases of depression, Seasonal Affective Disorder, pregnancy-induced hormones, emergencies of abrupt closings of homes, situations of NOT closing on homes, major moves across country, emotional crises, fallout of some of the above, etc. Think of that "etc." as in the King & I, with Yul Brenner saying, "Et cet-era, et cet-era, et cet-era." So now I don't feel so guilty about what I've "accomplished" in the last year.

What people who are working don't realize is that a life does not depend on what you "accomplish" in a year. Retired people begin to understand that "production" is not necessary. It was a slow realization for me. (I'm guessing this is true for others.) But I now know that my life is not lived in an ant colony where not producing means elimination. I "accomplish" things by devoting my time to helping a child--or step-child--get through a momentary situation where I truly can contribute. I can contribute time doing something or time listening and counseling. What's neat is that I don't care whether the girls take my advice or not. They're all adults. They make their own decisions. I can give them advice from my age-superior vantage point. But my life experience doesn't match theirs, so my advice may not obtain.

So anyway, realizing that made me feel much better. I really haven't "done" much. I haven't added to my garden, I only adjusted; I haven't created a lot of pieces either sewing or doing x-stitch, but my hands can't take a lot and I've learned to accept that; I started with the Oratorio--now Champlain Valley Voices--but couldn't perform at the concert because I missed too many rehearsals, but I'm becoming the Treasurer so there. It's been a full year even if I don't have a lot to put on paper about it.

Enough philosophizing.

More Nova Scotia thoughts, etc.

2009-10-16T21:44:00.002-04:00

These are the things I wrote down while in Cape Breton. They're not in chronological order or any kind of order for that matter. Just things that caught my mind.

* Road signs in Maine, two yellow diamonds--top large, bottom significantly smaller.

Main St. Closed
Use other end

* Wolf spider on my arm in the kitchen. Hairy kind. I brush it off and it drops on a web rather than just falling off. Hard time disconnecting it from my sleeve. I thought of Jenny.

* Three-day trip from Cadyville because of a blown alternator only 160.7 miles after starting. Amazing luck finding another alternator for Bruce's 1988 van, our transportation mode. (Don't get me started on that.)

* Half of 30-mile stretch on "grooved pavement" (read: blacktop removed and nothing put back yet). No line markings. Driven at night, valiantly, by Bruce with me white-knuckling for him. That van has headlights like candles--and he says so.

* Carmel (Bruce's friend, a terrific Cape Bretoner of Irish heritage): "One night I took an unbearable pain."
And about one of her brothers (I think she said she comes from 13): "If he wants to shovel his dirt outside he'll just have to ...." I can't remember the rest of the phrase.

I love to listen to her talk; her regionalisms are all new to me and so interesting, as is she.

* Mackerel fishing--caught about 14, kept 9. (This was the first day I fished.)
Beautiful fish: fast silver flash in the water, mottled blue and green on top with irregularly-shaped black stripes.

* Cluster flies. Aargh. Using a shop vac to suck them up makes me feel like Darth Vader with a light sword.

* I opened fridge and went to get butter out of the door compartment. There was a (non-hairy) wolf spider on the compartment door! (I figured out later that the spider probably got there when the fridge had the door propped open since J&S had closed the place for the winter.)

* Eagle flying overhead as I walked along the North River with the dog. The eagle was harassed by a very brave crow but it scared a murder of crows from their roosts anyway.

* Moose poop on the road about 100' from the driveway. Looked fresh ... and it looked just like the candy called "moose poop."

* Caught 12 mackerel today. Some were pretty big!

* I must be into poop: bear poop about 100' from the house today. It's definitely fresh, most likely from earlier this a.m. I'm glad we're on our way out!

And now I learn that no one develops 35mm film locally. I dropped the film at Walmart and will be able to get the prints in ... Friday of next week? So maybe pictures then.

Cape Breton, Nova Scotia

2009-10-15T14:28:00.003-04:00

I'm an A-One Mackerel Fisherperson, according to Bruce. That was our main fun on this trip to Cape Breton. I'm hoping Bruce got a good photo of me holding one of the many mackerel I caught (12 one day!). But since our camera broke right before we left I have no digital photos and the 2 cameras we did have use 35mm film which I'll take to get developed tomorrow. It appears that Target is the only place left in my little town that works with film. Geez. So we'll see...

Meanwhile, Cape Breton is still its beautiful self. Probably the best feature of the island is its people, all of whom are friendly and (like most Canadians) so polite. We stayed at our friends' house, John & Sue, on the southeast side of the island. They live in P'burgh but have bought the place in N.S. as a summer place. I do not know of anyone else who would choose Plattsburgh as their winter place! And I compare it to being at camp. (For any non-NY/Eastern U.S. readers, a "camp" here is much like a "cottage" elsewhere but it doesn't have to have waterfrontage.) There's running water, which means a flush toilet, and electricity--unlike the camp I used to have in the Adirondacks. Heat comes from a kerosene heater and I'm somewhat allergic to the fumes, i.e., headaches. But it can be quite cozy when the weather is typical Scottish weather, meaning cold mist/drizzle/rain, and that was what we had for several days this time. (Bruce goes up every year and the only other time I've gone along was 2 yrs. ago.)

I do have to tell you about mackerel, though. First, they're a lot of fun to catch. I don't fly fish--Bruce is an expert and I get all tensed up about doing it right, even though HE doesn't care--but I've done spin casting pretty much forever and what's handy about mackerel is that they won't hit a fly for love or money but give 'em a 1-oz. lure and they're hooked! They hit nicely and then fight, swimming hard back and forth to try to shake the hook. When you pull them in they manage to unhook themselves pretty regularly, which makes it easier on the person(s) in your party who are willing to get slimed and covered with scales. Bruce volunteered so that I could just catch fish and it was a ton of fun.

Then, mackerel are beautiful. I don't think this photo really does justice to how pretty they are. Apparently they get more color as they're out of water for awhile; I know that looking down into the bucket I saw gorgeous cloudy mottling of blue and green. The irregular black stripes just add to their camouflage from above--it must outwit eagle-eyed eagles, I'm sure. And we did see eagles. Anyway, when you catch a mackerel, it flashes in the surf just beautifully--it is solid bright shiny silver from its midline down, so you feel like you're landing a sterling silver fish. They are pretty oily so it's not a fish I'm willing to cook indoors, but they're tasty so I'll keep one package of fillets and grill them. The rest go to John & Sue; they usually bring home up to 75-80 fillets but John was ill and couldn't fish this year.

Oh, for you fisherpeople? I did say 1-oz. lure. Actually the guys--mostly old farts--around me were all using 2-oz. lures but my rod couldn't handle that, Bruce said. And I probably would've dislocated something casting with something that heavy. But one guy told me that my 1-oz. was okay because the fish were being caught as close in as I was casting--the 2-oz. guys had to do a lot more reeling! So I did have fun.

But Bruce didn't get to fish very much. His targets are wild Atlantic salmon and Cape Breton is one of the few places left in the world where those fish come every year. Not so many, anymore, but they do come back. But with the rain, and then winds, his rivers were pretty much unfishable. We did go to "the other side of the island," to the Margaree River, world renowned for its salmon but he didn't fish it. It was a disappointing trip for him. And the ride home (it's 850 miles each way) was L O N G.

I'll try to get some photos to add to this--if they turn out, I'll edit this and add them in a few days. I'd like to go back to go all the way around the island again, and spend some time on the N.S. mainland too, in Halifax and Digby, etc. This trip is sort of a "working" trip for Bruce: fishing is what he's there to do so touristing around doesn't happen much. Maybe in a few years I'll go back; I told Bruce he's like the salmon. Every year he says this is his last year for the trip, but Cape Breton waters just call him back again and again.

Whew!

2009-09-29T14:51:00.016-04:00

Boy, has this been a summer! These are things that made it into photos, or at least onto my calendar so I wouldn't forget to be somewhere at a particular time. (Y'gotta LOVE retirement.)

In June I gave what I thought was my last workshop, only to get a booking for May 2010. Sweet. June was also "Fireman's Day" in beautiful downtown Cadyville (which has only a post office and (volunteer) fire station--we don't even have a bar!) with parade and good food.

In July, my sister came to visit and we played touristas to places I'd either never been or hadn't been for years. Here's Alice at the Montreal Botanical Gardens. What a great visit.

Shortly thereafter I was in Omaha for a family emergency. No photos of that. Toward the end of the month Bruce & I went to Fort Ticonderoga, a trip he'd never made and I hadn't since my kids were about 9 & 10. (That would be about 20 years. Sigh.)

In August, both my daughters and both granddaughters came for a visit. Jenny isn't in this photo, but she stayed at her dad's so I didn't get many pictures of/with her.

In September, Bruce & I went to the NY State Fair in Syracuse. That was really fun, and another thing to cross off our bucket list. The photos below show the sand sculpture of the USS New York, apparently a trademark at the fair; Bruce with one of the huge warmblood horses in its stall; a small part of the miniature circus displays that just fascinated me; and a sort of overview of the fairgrounds.

Right after that there was the "Battle of Plattsburgh" quadricentennial celebration, with a re-enactment of the famous battle on Lake Champlain (in absolutely tiny and fragile-looking wooden boats), a period 18th century tavern, a big parade--for once--and fireworks. Quite the do for Plattsburgh. These are some of the re-enactors.

I also went to Tampa in September to babysit for the aforementioned grandgirls for 7 days & nights (that would be a whole week). Babysitting was just about what I'd expected. Only more tiring. Having been a working mom, I'd never really spent all day every day with the girls when they were babies. The first year in Plattsburgh, when I was home full-time, Emily was 3 & Jenny (who was too young then to vote against my desired Jennie spelling) was 18 mos., turning 2 midway through that year. So while I had one in diapers, she was mobile. Emily's house is two storeys as compared to my one-level and my knees got a real workout on the stairs! I actually got good a carseat straps and by the time I left I was getting Katie into hers without bumping her head ... or mine. The van with all the bells and whistles was nice, especially the start-before-you-get-to-it feature so the air conditioning was already working when I buckled up the girls. In 90+ degrees, that was a godsend. And so was the swimming pool! Everybody cooled off after a hot afternoon and everybody also got good and tired so bedtimes were a snap! I actually enjoyed myself but am considering the next job--I'm not so sure I'm up for a full week again. After all, we'll ALL be a year older then! But how could you not have a great time with this?

And now I'm packing to go to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, for two weeks.
No kids involved. Unless you count the dog. This is what it should look like again--the photo is from Oct. 2007.

It might get a little tedious when Bruce is gone fishing every day, but this year there are some other Plattsburgh women there with their husbands and I've been invited to join them for some day trips. That should be fun.

I think I'm ready for a do-nothing November!

Low Night

2009-09-08T22:26:00.003-04:00

I'm feeling very fat tonight. Yes, I know I'm loved and liked and appreciated. But that doesn't take away the fact that I feel fat tonight. And last night. And today. And I know I'm not obese. But I want to lose 20 lbs, need to lose 20 lbs. (My doctor: "You're overweight.") And I've upped my exercise--I'm either walking or at the gym doing strength training 6 days out of 7 most weeks.

But I have to eat far less than I do. And I really don't want to do that. I know it's under my control and that no one can do it for me. But I thought I was doing most things in moderation. Apparently not.

And I cook for my husband, who can barely boil water without written instructions, each step numbered. I do make healthy meals; I just eat too much of them. I'm going to have to start using a sandwich plate at dinner. Boy, that sounds really exciting. I could go back on the South Beach Diet. That worked for me and I still lean that way, staying away from starchy carbs. Getting back off the sweet things again is clearly necessary.

See? I know what I need to do. I'm trying to find a way to do it. First rule has to be NPO from after dinner on. Except for water or diet soda.

Okay. Done whining for tonight.

Best news of the day? I'm not hungry right now. And next time I'll post about our State Fair trip. With pictures.

Meditative

2009-08-27T00:04:00.003-04:00

I'm up late, having had two martinis and a bit of gin with the left over Mountain Dew that I bought for Jenny, and I watched the video Pete made for the grandparents. I just have to put down my feelings about this and the other ideas it engendered.

I am amazed at how beautiful the feelings of grandparenting are. Our best friend John (Bruce's fishing partner/pseudo-brother) became the grandfather of twin boys this morning--adding to his two + 1 step- grandchildren. He called us this morning, as excited as any parent! This, and watching the video (see below) have pushed me into thinking about generations.

I watched the excellent video Pete constructed from home videos. It included visits to the zoo & the beach, and also just regular weekends around the house. I thought about how much this would have been appreciated by MY mom, or MY mom's mom. She was the bold one, the one to leave the family acreage--that was gone when her family moved into Milwaukee from the rural "suburbs" of the '30s. When she & Daddy moved to Marshfield, her sibs thought she'd moved north of north. And while I'm sure she wrote faithfully, her sibs saw her on the annual (?) trips from Marshfield to Milwaukee that I remember. I doubt that it was every summer. I remember a few. And my experience mirrors hers, I realize just now, in that her husband's family came before hers always. Hence my multitudinous trips to Austin/Faribault, MN as compared to the almost non-existent trips to Marshfield, WI.

So I watched the video tonight. I'm so grateful that Pete has this skill! I've been lucky in my ability to "bop down" to Tampa so easily. I've been able to be a part of my granddaughters' development, and will try to continue it. But I know that it'll take effort on my part. My mom is a terrific role model for this: She came whenever I asked her--it wasn't often but when I asked I really needed her. And she didn't agonize over watching my two little ones by herself for 3-4 days. She survived the coldest winter on record in Plattsburgh; her 70th birthday in Plattsburgh while Chuck & I were in England; the H.S. graduations of two girls--she was there for both.

So I'm really looking forward to being "the one" for Kaitlyn and Courtney in September for about 10 days. And their parents can count on me to deal with whatever comes up and to savor every moment, as they'll be savoring theirs. This is the way to grandparent in the 21st century: The grandkids may not be just down the street, but they're only a flight away. I actually can't wait for this opportunity!

Visit

2009-08-22T10:30:00.004-04:00

It was terrific to see both of my great daughters and then my two adorable granddaughters in one visit. I'm sure it was hectic for Emily--I remember doing those visits all summer long, schlepping all the STUFF that little kids need. The fact that Jenny was there to help with boarding and exiting the planes must have been a huge positive factor. I'm so glad that worked out for them both.

And the babies? What can I say. I'm sure that everyone who reads this blog has already seen the photos on my Facebook page (but I'll put one or two here anyway :P !) so you all know how really gorgeous those girls are. And if they're pretty to you, just think of how incredibly beautiful a doting Mimi thinks they are! They're as different as day and night, at least so far, much like my two were. And Emily is sick to death of my comparisons to her childhood but the similarities are inescapable for me. Kaitlyn is super-energetic, on the go all the time, and as bright as any smart little two-year-old can possibly be.

Her command of language is great and conversations with her are really fun. She's constantly adding words and expressions to her vocabulary, and her body language, when she imitates her mom especially, is a hoot!

Courtney is just so happy to be alive. She wakes up this way: open eyes, smile.

She's a terrifically engaged baby, intensely interacting with whatever it is that's interested her--the nearest person, her hanging toys, the toy she's working towards when she's on her tummy, whatever. When you talk to her, she's right there. She would be the perfect baby to star in a remake of "Look Who's Talking." You can actually see her thinking up her response ... and sometimes getting frustrated that she can't say the words! But a non-fusser for the most part.

The weather was horrible during their visit: 80s-90 with accompanying humidity, and of course few homes in the North Country have air conditioning, mine or their dad's included. AND to add insult to injury, he filled in his swimming pool last year! Of course it was the adults who were affected; the little kids just took it in stride. We just had to go to the park in the a.m. before the equipment got too hot to play on ... and then had to take a towel on the 2d morning because we had to wipe off the dew. The slides looked like they'd been under sprinklers.

My girls got to see some friends but I'm appreciative of the fact that this visit was more about family than friends. I wish I could have a photo or two of the three of us but that was just lost in the shuffle.

It was so nice, just so nice to have them both here at the same time, given that they're so far apart from each other and from me and Bruce. (And both little girls loved Bruce. He wasn't quite sure how to take that and I bonked him on the head--not really--and said they were his granddaughters too because he's married to me!) I'm not sure we'll have the chance for any more visits of this kind but I'd love to have the girls' spouses with them the next time. Maybe when I'm old and (ALL) gray!

And after everything was returned to the people we borrowed things from, and all the things we're keeping are stored away--tub toys, chalkboard, tiny table & chairs, I walked into my bedroom and saw this forlorn binky on my dresser. So I know they were here......

Downpour

2009-08-12T11:35:00.003-04:00

It rained amazingly hard here last evening--looks like we got 2" in about an hour! And I didn't see or hear most of it, including apparently walloppingly loud thunder with lightning (Bruce said there was one where the flash and bang were absolutely simultaneous) because I was reading at the TV station in a studio that is obviously soundproof! The storm knocked the local NBC station off the air, ironically during the weather report. :) Bruce said that our front lawn was under water, something he had never seen in his 43 years in this house. WOW. But our basement stayed dry. I guess there was a small puddle below the take-out door to the chimney/fireplace because the rain had been driven down the chimney, and we have a cap on it to keep out critters! I didn't see any major damage on my walk this morning but there was a helicopter that I think was NYSEG's (NYS Elec. & Gas) checking the power lines for downed trees. I'm thinking our ground is now so totally saturated that any kind of wind will start pushing trees over because their roots are basically in mud. And because it's heating up outside right now, there will probably be thunderstorms later today. (I took this photo today; it's actually clouds across the lake where it's probably raining like crazy somewhere in VT.)

But as I sit here looking out my window, my garden is pretty ... and lush! Probably more greenery than usual but the flowers haven't done too badly, considering that during the months of June & July they were severely sun-deprived. I just wish there would be a few of the really pretty ones in flower next week when my daughters are here. Oh, well, if wishes were horses ....

A Bucket List?

2009-08-02T20:19:00.011-04:00

I'm afraid that Bruce has a bucket list in his head, you know, the list of things you want to do before you kick the bucket. We're doing some things that he hasn't done in his 40+ years in New York. (But I really don't believe he's thinking of things that way--he's good for a whole lot more years! Absolutely.)

A year or two ago we went to Parc Safari, a zoo/amusement park just above the border in Canada--about 30 minutes from here. That was a lot of fun. It's a drive-through safari place with large animals wandering free among the traffic (as in automobiles, no pedestrians!).

(I have a close shot of a zebra but you can't tell it was in the road so we'll make do with a "common" elk.) ANYway, we had a great time.

There were lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Really. The day was beastly hot and the carnivorous animals were all just lying and panting, but if it had been nicer there's a chance that the lions and tigers would have been walking over our heads as we walked through a (heavy-duty, I hope) Plexiglas walkway.

This picture was taken through that Plexiglas.

So that was in 2007, I think.

This year we went to Fort Ticonderoga, a fort built before the Revolutionary War, used through that war and then abandoned. It fell into complete ruin. In the early 19th century a wealthy man--Pell--bought it and began to rebuild it. It's now mostly reconstructed and impressive! It's a star-shaped fort --very neat design--and its historical organization has managed to greatly expand Pell's original collections of artifacts, Revolutionary and French & Indian Wars' weaponry, etc.

There was an adorable fife and drum corps (comprised of high school students working it as a summer job) and I took this video. I wanted them to turn about and march a bit but my batteries ran out before I could get they did. Rats.

I apologize for the pounding noise but it was a very windy day. In fact, immediately after the corps marched off the parade grounds it began to rain. It was a thunderstorm that then chased us pretty much all the way home--1 1/2 hours north. And while it was really fun to travel in Bruce's Audi TT, we discovered that the air conditioner wasn't working properly and wwe couldn't use it as a defroster. So we drove with the windows just slightly open, trying to stay un-fogged AND dry. But what a neat day that turned out to be. Bruce said he was really glad he went!

In the beginning of September we're going to the NY State Fair in Syracuse. I'll have a post after that for sure.

Nice Visit

2009-07-09T21:09:00.009-04:00

My sister, Alice, visited me for a few days this week. We had a great time. It was like when I first moved to Plattsburgh and I had all my family come to visit because none of us had ever had someone living in the East before. I actually thought of where I'd moved as the East Coast, but was embarrassed by some people when I said that at a luncheon in the first month I lived here. I learned then the Coast is actually about 5 hours further east. Hey, to a Midwesterner, this is STILL the East Coast!

ANYway, we toured about a bit. Friday we went to The Wild Center, a.k.a. the Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks, in Tupper Lake. That's about 75 miles from here, and we went on a rainy day (which has been pretty much every day so far). It's a very cool science-and-nature place, and the main building is a really beautiful piece of architecture. Probably the most popular exhibit is the otter enclosure where you can see the 2 otters playing underwater as well as above. They are so cute! I tried to copy and paste the logo for the place, which is an otter done in a sort of modern American Indian style, but I can't lift it. You'll just have to check out that link.

On Saturday we hung around Plattsburgh. We went to the totally disappointing and cheesy 4th of July parade. And we didn't go to the fireworks because it was too cold and rainy. Yuck.

Sunday was much better, with our trip to Saratoga Springs turning out well. The town is chock full of Victorian mansions, and I do mean mansions. The one I know for sure is occupied for a time every summer is the Whitney home, as in the money-dripping-out-their-ears Whitneys. They come for the Travers Stakes thoroughbred race at the track in August, and every few years someone breaks into their house while they're at the track and steals hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry. It's happened at least once, and I think twice, since I've lived out here. I forgot to take my camera along and I'm really sorry about that because I can't find a place that shows a photo of even one or two of those houses. They're gorgeous. We went to Yaddo, a place located just next to the racetrack and something Alice wanted to see. It's a retreat for artists of various ilk and she'd read that the writer John Cheever had been there a lot. So we went, but the HUGE house (former home of the Spencer Trask family) isn't open to the public. The rose garden is and we went to see that. Lovely but in sad disrepair. It needs about 3 full-time gardners to get it into shape. I'll bet it was stunning when it was cared for. Do look at the link; the house is not at all out of place in that town!

Monday it was the Montreal Jardins Botaniques--Botanical Gardens in downtown Montreal. Only about a 35-min. wait to cross the border (sigh). The gardens are in full bloom now and talk about well cared for! The place is just beautiful. And so much bigger and better than it was when I first went about 28-29 years ago. The tickets are not expensive and we spent a good day there--arrived about 11:30 and left at about 4, and saw maybe ... a third? half? Definitely not all of it.

This photo is of a pagoda in the Chinese Gardens, one of the loveliest areas. The last time I was here there were Asian wedding couples everywhere, brides running in their gowns, grooms trying to stay neat and pressed in oppressive heat. This time it was just tourists--it was a Monday, after all.

Alice went back to Wisconsin on Tuesday. I miss her. We had a great time and went places I only go when there are people here. (So it'll be years before I go again!)

Age and Grace

2009-06-29T19:36:00.003-04:00

About a week ago I was doing my lunges at the gym and they are hard! I was holding a 10 lb. dumbbell in each hand (I've always had strong arms and legs). On the last lunge I stepped forward and genuflected on my very tired legs, and in getting up I started coming back with my forward foot too fast. My legs were so tired that I couldn't straighten out the stationary one at all. I started going backwards and the dumbbells continued that motion. I was falling backwards in slo-mo and I couldn't stop! I couldn't pick my foot up fast enough to get my balance back. I'm sure I could have stopped the backward motion had I just dropped the dumbbells, but no way was I going to do that! The floor is elevated in the weights area and sort of hollow so that when a weight is dropped it almost gongs loud and low--VERY! Anyone who doesn't have earbugs in turns to look and I absolutely couldn't have that. So I grimly clung to the dumbbells and managed to stop myself from landing flat on my back--it was more a very, VERY deep genuflection with a backwards slant. I let go of the weights the nanosecond they touched the floor so it wasn't a complete disaster. And I didn't hurt anything!

Even when it happened I thought it was funny and I can only imagine what it looked like. I would love to have seen film footage.....

Before ...

2009-06-20T12:13:00.004-04:00

The family is starting our own Biggest Loser in July. I'm really ready for this. I absolutely need to lose more weight than I ever have in my life and the idea of my own support group is terrific. So I'm going to submit this as my before picture:

Actually, it's an "after" picture, as in "after 11 years." The car is my 2d Beetle (get over the "New" already! They've now been around 11 years!!) and while I loved my blue one, it was time to get a newer one. The color is much more sedate, which I'm not thrilled about. But it's a 2006 and only has 28K miles, so I was willing to take it, especially since the interior (black leather, very sexy) looks like it was driven by someone with no corporeal body. (I might just have used that word redundantly, but you know what I mean!) And it has an Audi engine with a lot of kick. So I really do like it. It'll take a little time to learn to love it, though, sort of like a pre-arranged marriage.

I'm in the house writing this because it's not nice out ... again. At least it's getting warmer, but everything is so wet. If we got a major wind, all the trees would fall over because the ground they're in wouldn't hold 'em. But as I look out my den window, I see my beautiful blue Siberian irises, and the white Siberians, too. Some bearded tongue is beginning to flower, and I realize I have to deadhead my cornflowers. Ah, summer.

And thinking of winter (nice segue, don't you think?), we're going to do a one-month snowbird experiment. For the month of March we'll be living in Crystal River, FL, with the dog and the cat. We had to have a pet-friendly place. I'm just glad the landlords didn't ask to meet the animals; Holly the dog is about 90 lbs. But both she & Susie the cat are older (almost 11 and 14 respectively) so they shouldn't be a problem. I'm very excited about this, because March is usually a miserable month here. Woohoo!

I guess I'll scan some more photos today. My endgoal is to scan all my pictures so I won't leave my daughters a million photos to sort through ... or not. I think they'll especially like our List family photos; there are such great memories. So Carla, stop blathering! Hitch up the scanner and get going. Okay. Okay!

You Should Live Here ... Really!

2009-06-18T11:25:00.007-04:00

I've uploaded a very short video of our dam--Bruce really does think of it as his property and gets possessive when he sees other people walking their dogs on hisproperty! The video shows only one section of the dam, and I've watched that tree in the middle grow from a pretty small, scrappy little rock-clinger to a tree that's just full of itself. ;)

Yesterday was our only summer day so far. So I'm sharing.

Don't you just love the sound?

I'll put a pan of the whole dam below. Because I don't know when I'll get another day like yesterday. Last night I had to close all the windows again and the temp today, at almost noon, is 58, which was forecast as the high for today. (Okay, here comes the temper tantrum.) I'm sick of being cold! I want a week where I can leave the windows open overnight! I'd like that week to have no rain! My flowers aren't getting enough warmth and sunshine this year and it's making me very crabby! (End of rant.) So here's the video. Again, just the sound is so nice to my ears.

In Memoriam

2009-06-14T09:57:00.004-04:00

My friend Tom died last night. He was the only male in our a cappella foursome, Eclectricity. He did almost all of our arrangements. He was a neat guy and I will miss him.

Tom's son died in early adolescence from muscular dystrophy and apparently that pretty much caused the break-up of his first marriage. But he married the only wife I've known, Jane, and she is one of the most remarkable women I'll ever meet. Their age difference is about the same as the gap between Bruce and me and we had interesting conversations about that. Both of us found so much better a man the second time around. And Tom adored her, couldn't have functioned without her. She saw him through to the end. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1998, I think, and had surgery. This was about 6 mos.-1 year before it was pronounced that most prostate cancers should just be left alone. Maybe things would be different if he'd gone to the doctor a year later; who knows. Tom had trouble from then on: bad after-effects from the surgery, the need for hormone treatments (we all complained about hot flashes together!), etc. About 3 yrs. ago Jane made one statement that the cancer had metastasized to his bones, and then we didn't hear about it at all. I guess he told Rachelle that denial could work wonders!

Tom & Jane moved to Florida, selling their beautiful house here, probably at a loss, and lived there for a year or two. But Jane hated it and they moved back here, in a smaller house--just as lovely. Tom had loved the personnel at the Moffitt Cancer Center at USF in Tampa, but transferred his treatment, which was apparently a little different from what was offered here, to the cancer center in Plattsburgh. And about six months ago he just got tired of it. He said he wanted to feel good once in awhile, instead of trying to survive the chemo and then getting "vacations" from it. So he said he'd let it go.

It went pretty quickly. He broke his neck, and I think that had already happened when Eclectricity got together for a group dinner in January. Tom and Jane were on the plane I was on in March when I returned from Tampa to Plattsburgh after Courtney was born; they had gone to visit Jane's father & stepmother. Jane said they'd spent the entire visit in the hospital because Tom was not doing too well. When the got on the plane to come home, Tom's broken neck disturbed the flight's captain and he kicked them off! Jane said she told that arrogant @*#&ole that she wouldn't risk her husband's well being but the idjit was adamant and they had to get off the plane. T(hey flew back the next day on a different airline.) It seemed to me that it went very quickly after that.

Eclectricity got together a few times at his house: about a month ago he could sort of sing with us, three weeks ago he made and effort but mostly listened, two weeks ago we sang around him, last week we sang to him, and yesterday in the hospital we sang to him again. I'm really glad we did that. Rachelle and Eileen, the other two Eclectricity women, said all the right stuff to him, I'm sure. I pretty much didn't say anything. He was completely oblivious, on a steady morphine drip to quell excruciating pain. But I didn't say anything. I wish I had.

Tom was funny. And he was a good friend. As Jane said, he was in love with all three of the Electricity women. I think he had adult ADD (not joking here) and it took awhile to get used to the fact that he started his sentences about 5 times before he completed them. His brain was already on to the next idea before his mouth could get out the first one. He could be a slave-driver about the music. But he had near-perfect pitch. He both hated and loved performing, and we women used to worry if he'd make it through any one number. But he always did, and I don't think the audience had a clue about nervousness. Our performances were pretty doggoned professional, I think. And fun. We rehearsed every week, almost always at Tom's, starting with a cup of tea (that was because of my addiction) and all our news. Sometimes it was hard to get to the singing part! But we did sing, and practiced and practiced and practiced. His beautiful baby grand piano got a workout, but mostly we sat around the kitchen table and sang. We have hand-written music for about 90% of what we sang, hand-written by Tom. He sang in Barbershoppers and he had another quartet--2 women and 2 men. But we three women were convinced he loved Eclectricity best.

He looked younger than he was and he had that beautiful, luxurious hair. When he lost it through chemo we all waited for it to grow back--he looked like Daddy Warbucks without it. And then when it did grow back there wasn't any gray in it still! Yesterday his crew cut was slicked down a little on his forehead and he looked like a little boy. An no wrinkles at 68.

So here's to Tom. Eclectricity was fabulous fun and I'll miss the singing tremendously. But mostly I'll miss Tom.

Good Day ... Mostly

2009-06-13T00:14:00.003-04:00

I got my car today. I will, in the near future, post a pic of me with it, mimicking the photo I had Bruce take, almost exactly 11 years ago, of me with my first Beetle. Because this is my second Beetle. And it's not, sadly, blue. It's green. A very nice green, not the almost-chartreuse that's out now because it's a 2006, but a lovely, gentle green. With black leather (let's not go there) interior. Very sexy. Oh, I just got it. It's like me. Quiet on the outside, sexy on the inside. (That would be my very lame attempt at a joke. On myself.) But my first choice was blue. Second: pewter. And the fact that I wanted a manual transmission got me a green. How can anyone even say "Beetle" and "automatic" in the same sentence, for heaven's sake???

The reason I got a blue car when I got my first Beetle is that it was my first "divorce decision." That was the day I pretty much decided I would divorce my first husband. And I wanted a car that was so "not-Starla" that I picked a color I never would have before. And it was a gorgeous decision on many levels. The car looked like a jewel. Someone told me that. Honestly. I never wore blue. I wore green. But the green color wasn't available for at least a year and I wasn't willing to wait, not for just the color! So I picked "Bright Blue."

Then my hair started going seriously gray and blue "became" me. (As in, "That becomes you." I never did understand that comment. compliment?) And I have more blue in my wardrobe than I ever did before. Of course that means like one thing for summer and one for winter, but that's two more than in my previous life! And my blue Beetle did for me everything I needed it to do: It showed me I could make a decision alone that turned out to be a great decision. And my line at the time was that it made me feel as cute as it looked. It still does. It gave me a signature--people have said they're going to have to change their outlook to find me in a green Beetle! (And then when I un-hyphenate my name next year when my driver's license expires they'll have to adjust to that too!)

So now I'm green. I don't know how "green" this car is; I filled it today and will figure out the mileage when I fill next time. The old bluebaby really did average 30 mpg--28.5-31--so I was pretty happy. An acquaintance has a Honda hybrid that gets far better mileage, but ... it's not cute. And I've always been about appearances. You know that.

I will post that picture. I promise. But I just went to try to post pictures of my grandbabies and there's something wrong with that function. I think I'll just wait till next post and try again. Au revoir.

Mimi Time

2009-06-05T10:54:00.002-04:00

I'm in Tampa and right this minute I'm babysitting Courtney, who's sound asleep and likely to stay that way until her mom & big sister get back from their errands. It's a tough job but I'll do it whenever asked! I'm here until Sunday, my visit a birthday gift from Pedro to Elise. We're all fast becoming true fans of Allegiant Air. Where else can you fly P'burgh<->Tampa for $29 each way? Well, $29 plus about a million "fees" added on but still, well under the $200 I used to think was the bargain basement. Even under the $158 I paid just once on some super sale.

Last night the temp hit 34 in Plattsburgh. (We broke a 42-yr. record one night last week when we hit 34. That's a record I don't like!) And now we did it again, although I'm not sure about the record this time. Aargh. We've tried so hard not to turn the furnace on after May 15, but have had to at least a couple of times; I think the last time was on May 31. Our house is actually a passive solar design--28" overhangs all around means that the winter sun, low in the sky, can shine in, but the spring/summer sun can't. That means in order to keep sweatshirts on their hangers IN JUNE, we turn the heat on in the early morning to get the house up to 68 because the sun can't accomplish this by 8 p.m. Then the furnace gets turned off again and we hope for a warmer night. When will this end? Our highs have only been in the 60s, once or twice into the 70s, with one freaky day at the end of April that it hit 90. Needless to say, I like this Florida visit!

And what beautiful grandgirls! Courtney is the essence of chill-baby, smiling, gurgling, eating, sleeping. No fussing that I've seen. And Kaitlyn is the opposite: on the go constantly, picking up nuances (typical first child), testing limits, trying to figure out if Mimi backs Mommy or caves to Katie. I'll be on my own with both of them tomorrow night as Pedro takes Elise out for dinner That actually should be fun for me.

I can't get over how much this grandmother thing agrees with me. Someone said that you learn about unconditional love when you become a grandparent and I thought, Oh, no, you love your own kids unconditionally. But it is different. When it's your own kids, you're helping them develop, helping them grow, teaching, learning. And while you love them unconditionally, they're still your job. When I became Mimi I discovered that it's just pure fun, pure love. I get to watch but not judge, to play without any goal outside of the moment. It is a blast. I'm hoping I get a boy grandchild at some point only because I want the opportunity to just watch. Having had only girls I'll be really interested in how it works with boys, and not have any responsibilites related to it!

Meanwhile Bruce is up in NY watching the Stanley Cup finals without me. I'll get to watch one game here after the girls are in bed on Saturday, and then will be home to share the yelling with him. That's fun too.

(Of course, when I'm home, there will be pictures to post!)

Cold!

2009-05-31T17:20:00.002-04:00

Boy, is it cold here. My computer's desktop weather program says it's 39 ... and it feels like 31. This is May 31, folks. What's with 31? or even 39?? I worked in my garden earlier when it was more like April (except that it's nearly June) and then the temp dropped when huge black clouds moved in. Of course, they moved by with only a spattering of rain, pushed by impressive winds ... again. I've probably said this on this blog before, but years ago a science librarian told me that global warming wouldn't mean that Plattsburgh would become Miami, but rather that the weather would give us higher peaks and lower valleys, i.e., more extremes than before. And almost every year since I learned that, the fluctuations have become more severe. Right now, as I look out my den window toward the west, the sky is mottled gray and the wind is whipping. And I may have said this earlier, but gee whiz, it is almost June.

Of course, I remember the first few years after moving here from what was, in comparison, balmy Iowa. My girls were never in shorts before June. Looks like we're back to that system. Brrrr.

Just a short note; have to go to dinner with the people across the street, who have done us so many favors. It should be fun.

Facebook vs. the Blog

2009-05-24T18:09:00.002-04:00

Boy, I don't think anyone is reading blogs these days. It's easier to post and read the short (and less introspective) entries on Facebook. I'm as guilty as anyone so I'm not sure if this is a complaint, really; rather, it's a somewhat sad statement of fact.

This is just to let you know that I do still read your blogs, and I promise I will try to write more often here.

We are such short-attention-span people. Sigh.

'Tis the Season

2009-05-22T14:11:00.004-04:00

Peepers trill at night
Lilacs exhale their perfume
Open your windows
Well, that's my pathetic little attempt at haiku. It was brought on by my short trip home from the gym with my windows partly open (it's not that warm today!) and my car completely filled with the scent of lilacs in bloom--all the way from the edge of town to home. Glorious.

And two nights ago when it was warm enough for open windows, I got to hear the peepers in the pond in the woods behind the house.

So it IS spring. I thought I recognized the signs!

Unfortunately the photo doesn't catch the two soft pink columbine stems I cut from the plants outside my front door. They're hybrids and are really pretty. The black one should be in flower soon; it has nice blossoms. And my magnolia bush has a few floweres too--it's still pretty small. But I love the fact that someone who needed something so beautiful in this growing zone got down to business and hybridized a hardy magnolia. Take that, you Southerners! (AND we have spruce trees too. Flowering shrubs AND evergreens. Hmph. I'd like to see what you can put up to that!)

But on a much friendlier note, here's another of my favorites from the non-snow part of the year:

Dewdrops on hosta
(You can see it better if you look at a larger version of the picture.)
Just outside the porch door we've planted hostas. Almost every morning when I go out to get the paper, the leaves have big dew drops sparkling in the sunlight. It's just so pretty that it starts my mornings off well. They're big blue hosta and are really nice to have: very little care in return for lots of elegant greenery. Bruce is nuts about them and has planted varieties in a number of places. (I know we'll never compete with the Kruse Mfld garden but then again, we're not trying to.)

And my garden--well, I can see my creeping phlox in flower from here, providing a nice low backdrop for my small (but tough, tough, tough) flowering crabapple tree in full bloom. Those 1 1/2 - 2 hr. shots in the garden

I'm just so happy it's spring.

Kleibers in Texas

2009-05-04T14:45:00.004-04:00

I went to a neat steak house in the teeny burg of Winchester, TX, on Friday night to celebrate the closing of Lana's home sale. The place was recommended by the guy who came to clean the carpets; he said he always made sure to take visitors there. The building had been something like a general store--a facade like you see in cowboy movies--and has been converted to a restaurant, and also houses the Post Office. Take a look: http://www.eatatmurphys.com/ (That door on the left in the picture on Murphy's home page is the Post Office.)

So anyway, there's what I thought was a neat display just inside the door of the restaurant that includes a section of old mail box doors, you know, the kind you have when you pick your mail up at the Post Office. Each one has a name on it. The first one I looked at, pointing at random and saying to Lana, "This is such a neat idea," had the names Tom (Tony? I don't remember) & Pat Kleiber. Well, Kleiber is my maiden name! And I'm from Wisconsin. And Kleiber just isn't as common as, say, Schmidt (or Schmitt or Schmit). So it was a real surprise! I knew there were Kleibers in Texas because when I was there in the '70s, there was an ad for a Kleiber auto dealership on a paper placemat in a restaurant somewhere down there. If I remember right, that restaurant was much closer or in the heavily German area--New Braunfels, et al.--and Winchester is between Austin and Houston. But it was so weird to hit that name on the first mailbox I saw! And then Lana said that that really was the Post Office! So apparently there are Kleibers in Winchester. I wonder if, but doubt that we're related.

But cool, no? And the steaks were pretty good. And the beer was great!

Ahhhh!

2009-05-03T14:36:00.003-04:00

It is so good to be home. I didn't realize just how much I'd missed Bruce. And I forgot to mention last night that when we got homeI walked into the kitchen to discover a vase of pink alstromeria with a Welcome Home card from Bruce. Just how sweet is this man? Yup, about that sweet!

So I thought I'd let you know where my stepdaughter is now taking up residence. Here's the link to Oakhaven, a spectacular horse facility outside the city and half as long a commute for her as it had been to her ranch. Her apartment is in the smaller building on the left, a lovely 2-BR with 30' ceilings.

Here's the link to the Web site for the stables: http://oakhavenpartners.com/facility.html

My flights to and from were pretty uneventful except for the fact that JetBlue lost my luggage for awhile. I was paged at the baggage carousel when I arrived in Austin and told that my luggage had somehow missed the plane in Orlando that I had had to wait 3 hours for. I guess that time wasn't sufficient for my baggage handler to find it. But I refused to make Laura take me to the airport the next day to get the bag; it was supposed to arrive in the airport at 11:30 or so but I think it didn't get there till much later. So I was working working working in the clothes I'd flown in. Yuck. A very nice man delivered the bag at about 4:30 p.m. (I'd landed at about that time the day before.) So much for JetBlue being perfect!

But I've just taken a long break and planted things in my garden, picked out a million more oak leaves (curses on them!), tied up my clematis that grew from about 8" last week to about 30" today, and generally wandered around looking at all the things growing. We're having another real spring--maybe all global warming isn't so bad--and I'm loving it.

Back Home

2009-05-03T01:36:00.003-04:00

I'm home from a week in Texas, where I helped to pack up the house of my step-daughter. Actually she sold her 63-acre ranch, the Dunbar Rose Ranch (I don't think that's its whole title but close).
It's a beautiful place with many roses ... and jasmine and spice bush and palms and philodendrons and ... And horses. She actually turned it into a working horse ranch where she kept her 8? 9? 10? polo ponies.
Because yes, she was a polo player. She says she's sworn it off and is moving to learning to jump. Oh good. From one dangerous sport to a perhaps more dangerous sport.

Here's an idea of what it looks like--I took these photos in 2007, just after she'd bought the place.

Meanwhile, the ranch was simply too much for one person to handle. Make that one woman who has a more-than-full-time job as an attorney expected to work 60-80 hour weeks. And who played polo as well as taking care of all those horses. Horses, I've learned, are like valuable, fragile and wrong-headed puppies who'll hurt themselves on a daily basis if left to their own devices for more than, oh, about 26 seconds. Luckily I'm far too old to be bitten by the horse bug now. I find them beautiful and sensitive and thoroughly someone else's responsibility!

I'm writing now because I'm just back and a little too wound up to sleep, but I'm starting to wind down so I'll sign off for tonight, but will try to be back very soon to talk about where said stepchild has moved to. It's amazing.

1-1/2 Martinis

2009-04-17T23:35:00.002-04:00

I try to have no more than two martinis. I found a pkg. of cocktail napkins in an airport mall store that had this poem:

Martinis are my favorite drink
But always two at most.
Three, I'm under the table.
Four, I'm under the host.

I am so mad that I didn't buy the packet. Oh dumb.

Because the verse is supposedly by Dorothy Parker, one of my heroes. She was the only female member (I believe) of the famed "Algonquin Table" of writers who met frequently (daily? weekly?) for drinks, and more drinks, at the Algonquin Table in ... some famous hotel in NYC in the '30s. She's credited with "Men don't make passes at girls who wear glasses" and a few other witticisms but I read her biography and like many comics, Dorothy was chronically depressed. But she still helped to write, and maybe even shared credit for, the screenplays of several very witty 30s-40s movies. But I do love that martini poem best of all.

So I'm off to finish my 2nd martini. Bruce is in Massachusetts and I've done all my duties with our dog--cuddling before her bedtime, etc. It's much like having a neurotic child, believe me.

I'm hoping for rain tomorrow, whether or not it's warm. We've had high fire warning messages for the last couple of days and I'd like those to go away, especially since I've heard our town's fire siren going off more frequently than usual recently. (This may well be because of the moron North Country idjits who insist on burning off their ditch grass regardless of the fact all the snow has been gone for awhile and we've had no rain. Duh.)

I hope you're having (or have had--it's 11:40 my time) a great Friday night. Today has been a much better day for me.

Ciao.

100-Year-Old Driver Day

2009-04-13T14:17:00.003-04:00

It's 100-Year-Old Driver Day here in the jewel of the North Country. While there's a Bad Driver Convention held frequently in Plattsburgh (begins on any Thursday with warm-up bad driving exercises, carries through Friday - Sunday, stragglers remain on Monday practicing the skills they learned, and early arrivers for the next convention begin arriving on Wednesdays), this was a "silver" opportunity. Pun intended. One geezer pulling out of a business onto the busiest street in town and he's basically walking his car into traffic. Brand new car, too. I guess he didn't want to get any sand or dirt on it.

No turn signals, driving well under the speed limit, turn signal on but not turning, oblivious to anyone else on the road, not turning right on red. All white-haired drivers. And I'm pretty close to that at this point, white-haired, I mean. It's still a lot of colors but the primary impression is: G R A Y. So I don't think it's the pot calling the kettle, if you know what I mean. I'm a very early retiree but being a retiree I believe I can say bad things about my cohort. Bad thing number one: Old people can't and shouldn't drive!

Okay, now that's done, let me give you what my menu was for Easter. It was such a nice meal, with friends over. I love to have guests for dinner and Bruce is finally adjusting to that idea. Anyway: Easter ham with real mashed potatoes, Roasted Butternet Squash with Balsamic Glaze, Shredded Brussels Sprouts with Bacon, butterhorn (homemade) rolls, and pastry tart shells filled with fresh fruit with vanilla yogurt. YUM. We just reran much of the meal and I'm stuffed again. But today was a trainer day so I feel about, ooh, that guilty.

But now I have to go drink an ocean. Working out requires water and the ham just sucked every drop of it somewhere!

Personal Trainer

2009-04-09T20:27:00.002-04:00

I have a personal trainer. I've been to two, yes, two sessions at the college's Fitness Center and its director is my personal trainer. He's developed a series of exercises for strength training that combine use of the machines (I'm not a fan of doing nothing but) and free weights. So my quads are crying for mercy and my back is "stiff." Bruce would say that rather than "sore." Take your pick.

There are way too many mirrors in that place, IMHO. I realize that when you're 20 and in shape, it's fun to watch your lithe and lithic body (lithic doesn't fit here in meaning but it sounds so good--I stole the phrase from a poem by John Updike, I think) go through its paces. But when you're a 60 year old pudgy wuss, it's not nearly as much fun. My muffin top is at souffle proportions now so mirrors are definitely not my friends. But I have a very simple goal: to go three times per week, faithfully, until the end of the semester. That's about 5 weeks. Then I'll look at Summer Session. I have no physical goals other than to work at keeping osteoporosis at bay. I'll have a bone scan soon to see if my osteopenia has advanced or abated. Wanting to score particular measurements is so self-defeating I can't contemplate it. So I'll just go for strength. We all need more of that, right?

The cost for the training is unbelievable. I pay $80 per semester. Period. No extra for personal training time. My sister is sooo jealous! I'll probably have Matt for 1-2 more visits and then a student trainer. That's fine with me. I told Matt I need someone I'd have to call if I weren't coming, a sort of personal shamer.

So maybe someday I'll post a photo of me with Michelle-Obama arms. How patient are you?

Bittersweet

2009-04-08T19:07:00.007-04:00

That's a nice word, bittersweet. It's the feeling I've had today, scanning old photo slides so that my kids can have the pictures Chuck & I took way back when. I'd started out feeling rather sad, as I have before when doing this, but I've decided to focus on the sweet part. We were a happy family, multiple-degreed spouses with two beautiful, truly gorgeous little girls. We were Yuppies with a capital Y. The girls are still lovely, the degrees are still there; we're just not that family anymore. But oh, my, were we pretty. (I'd put a photo of the four of us but I haven't scanned in all the pictures yet, so this one of the three of us will have to do.) Here we are in 1980, not too long after moving to Plattsburgh, and well before the coldest winter on record in this area (I'm pretty sure that record is still holding, too). Look how young I was, how small the girls.

I have loved being a mother more than anything. I liked being a librarian and it does suit my mild to moderate OCD rather well, but I probably should have opted to be a stay-at-home mom. Except for going crazy because I would have had no adults to talk to--and that lunacy would probably not have reached the involuntary-commitment level until the girls were high schoolers, when every mother is allowed certifiable madness--I actually was Martha Stewart. I just didn't have the modelling career that led to the connections. I guess, to be honest, what I really lacked was the level of gottawanna that it would have taken to build that empire. (The same could be said of my acting career, or lack thereof.) My daughters make me sooo proud, though, that not being Martha is acceptable. I was about as much Martha as anyone in my family could tolerate, I'm sure!

To look at those photos is to push myself back into a life that hardly seems real anymore. (I'm determined to find a 4-List photo. There'll be one here before the end of this post.

NO! The photo here is my youngest sister and her husband trying to claim parenthood of MY daughters. It won't work now anymore than it did back then!)

Being a grandmother, something I couldn't comprehend in those early years, I get to watch myself doing it again. I'm not saying that my daughter parents like I did. Good grief, we had NO money and I was a real make-do mom. But to watch her and her husband worry and love and care for their girls is more like watching myself than I imagined. I like it. And because I have few regrets about how I mothered, I'm fine with Emily picking and choosing the parts of mine that she uses. And whether she knows it or not, there are some that I see! But they're probably mothering styles that everyone uses so who's to say it's me she learned 'em from.

So I look at the pictures of young Carla and young Chuck and those baby girls. I remember the incidents that have been memorialized in stories that we've told throughout their lives. What else? Emily's girls brought back the smells of mothering and some (!) of those are nice. And the baby/toddler voices are a thrill to hear, to try to hear my own tiny voices again. But the photos are still awfully good to remind me how much fun it was to have kids.

Okay, okay. So here are not one, but two photos of the whole List family taken in 1979. The first was taken in spring--maybe around Easter? And I don't want to hear anything about my glasses! They were in style back then!

For more viewing pleasure, the photo here was taken on Mother's Day, 1979. The family was complete: Chuck 28, Emily 23 months, Carla 30, Jenny 3-1/2 months.

I'll do more photos in the near future. Check Facebook too, because I may post a few there.

Easter Fun for Mimi

2009-04-05T12:29:00.003-04:00

I was sewing this weekend, one of the activities I most enjoy. I made a dress for Kyrin. Actually it started out as a dress but I think it might actually wind up as a top, especially if I'm not able to get a bit more of the fabric to make the matching panties. The pattern was for a long dress but I'm not a big fan of long dresses on very little girls unless they're attending a wedding reception at the Plaza (wherever--there are Plazas everywhere I'd bet). I also didn't have enough fabric for that, so I cut it shorter. But I should have NOT figured in the 1-1/4" hem--should have left that allowance there and then I would have a dress. Ah well, 20/20 hindsight, as usual. Here's the completed piece (I still have to do the neckline hook-and-eye.)

The fabric is really very pretty. It's a color-on-color print, weave, actually, with waffle-weave squares alternating with squares in which a color-on-color Pooh Bear appears. Very Pooh--it's the perfect Pooh soft gold, and very subtle. Gorgeous. I'm not sure that a 2-year-old will appreciate it but adults who see her in it will (I hope!). I'll send this piece down and then if Jane is able to get me a bit more of the fabric and mail it to me, I can make the panties and send them as soon as they're finished. Talk about poor planning.

Making this piece was a surprising amount of work. There was far more handstitching than I like: the armholes, the entire bodice lining edges. It looks lovely but sheesh! And the pattern was labeled "Easy." If any inexperienced sewer were to try this she'd use her scissors to slit her throat! Adding a gathered flounce is not "easy." The concept is a snap, sure, but the execution of it isn't. Not if you have fairly high standards about the evenness of the gathers across the full breadth of the hem. I did remember my mom telling me years and years ago that the trick in making gathers even was to do it by quarters. Boy was that good advice. And if a novice sewer didn't have my mom's voice in her ears, it could be a nightmare and then a disaster. Note to self: check pattern directions before purchase next time!

Realizing how much I do enjoy sewing makes me kick myself into getting to the closest JoAnn's. Because that's an hour's drive from here--and that's not like an hour's drive in a metro area, all you metro readers out there; this is from city to city with mountains and little mountain hamlets in between--it's not something I just do without thinking. I like to have an idea of what I'm looking for before I go. So: I think I'll get fabric to make myself a summer shirt and maybe I'll try a pair of shorts, too (pants are not my strong suit but that could very well be for lack of practice), and then some fabric for Emily's girls, and maybe something for a summer robe (or a new winter one if fleece is available) for Bruce and maybe for me.

So anyway, I get to show off the results of my labors here. I hope you enjoy it. (I really should have taken some shots of the handstitching that my hands are still aching from!)

Love getting older....

2009-03-30T16:48:00.003-04:00

I'm feeling totally, completely awful today. First I came down with my first cold in about 3 yrs. yesterday. I woke up this morning feeling worse than when I went to bed (at 9:50) last night. And today is the "prep day" for a colonoscopy tomorrow. Oh how I wish it were tomorrow already! Ask anyone who's had one of these and ALL--totally unanimous and I don't even have to know how many there are--will say that the procedure is nothing; it's the prep. You have to "cleanse" your colon. Why medicine has not figured out a way to do that for me is a mystery. But the cleansing is drinking a purgative (look it up). That's not so bad. It's just that you have to drink 64 oz. of it in about 3 hours. Good lord. Who has a system capable of holding that much liquid? I guess that's the idea: Keep putting it in the top and it has to come out the bottom! Right now I'm almost finished with the first hour--read: 4 8-oz. glasses. And I will make it through; I've done it before. But I just needed to whine a little here.

So I'm going to weigh myself tomorrow because I usually do on Tuesdays and I'm going to VERY interested to see the results. Not only am I dehydrated from this cold (blowing my nose amazingly often) but I'm also going to "cleanse" everything else. Anyone want to wager on how much less I'll weigh tomorrow as compared to Wednesday morning?

And the weather is gray and rainy/windy. Not so much rain but it is gray. At least it's not snow, all you poor folks to the east of me. And that would be almost all of you except for the Seattlite.

Okay, whining done. I'm going to go rest somewhere for awhile.

Back in not-Tampa

2009-03-27T12:19:00.003-04:00

So I got home about 1 1/2 weeks ago. The weather has been bearable for the most part, especially yesterday and today: highs in the 40s & 50s, tomorrow it may get to the 60s. It rained last night and that sounded so good. I like the not-snow part of it.

The trip back from FL was fine, except for the fact that I should have listened to Elise and bought the $79 ticket online on Tuesday. To save the $13.50 "convenience fee" for online purchase, I figured we'd go to the airport and buy directly. Yeah. Brilliant. At the airport on Wednesday the ticket was $169!!!! Plus all the fees and taxes it came to $194. AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH. It really felt like bait-and-switch to me. I should have stayed for another week and bought the $79 ticket for the next Wednesday online. I'm still kicking myself for that.

Being home is nice, though. I really did miss Bruce and my house & neighborhood. The walks in Tampa could be 4 miles because they were over totally flat terrain; here there are two hills, one of which is truly a killer, so my walks are only 2.5 miles. But I never panted in FL and I do here! However, I did get some color in my face which, walking in the spring sunshine here, will only increase. I know all the medical stuff about tanning but dang, it looks good to have a face that isn't winter-pallor white!

I had to create an answer key for my textbook this week. Yuck. That was a royal pain. The assignments I wrote look perfectly understandable to me, but I guess I can understand why someone buying the book might want a clue on how to grade them! So I put my nose to the grindstone and churned it out, finishing yesterday. It felt good to just get it done.

Spring seems to be improving nearly everyone's lives: Jane is brightening up and her job sounds like it's evolving into a better one; Elise is less hormonal now that beautiful Courtney is here; Linda has her ranch on the market and there are people interested in it (!); and Lana is looking at job changes that can only be positive. Thank goodness for spring. As I said in earlier posts, this has been a nasty winter.

Bruce didn't like it either and is actually open to the idea of my ex finding us a student to house-sit for about a month next winter while we explore our reactions to living in Florida. I've looked at the Homosassa area and now will try to check out, just online, the Venice area that Elise likes a lot for us. And the central part of the state is something Bruce might be interested in too. Being there for a month would give us a chance to explore those areas in the flesh. The one VERY exciting thing is that we've agreed to get a realtor into the house sometime before the end of the year to give us an idea of what we could expect to ask, and as Jane & Elise both suggested, to tell us what we'd need to do to get the best price. Maybe we'll do a TV segment! (Joke)

Gotta go. I have errands to run and it'll be nice to be outside without my down jacket!

Tampa, cont.

2009-03-16T22:37:00.003-04:00

I'm probably going home on Wednesday--a $79 flight that won't be that price again until next Wednesday, so this one is looking good. I'm going to try to remember to ask why the Wed. flight is $79 and the Saturday one is ... $309!! What?!? But a non-stop here to P'burgh is the best.

Living with two little girls is funny. It sort of takes me back but not completely because I've forgotten so much. But that time was, I'm pretty sure, THE happiest of my life. E & J were perfect in my eyes: smart and beautiful to boot. (They still are.) Kaitlyn is in the process of beginning her adjustment to having a sister. What she doesn't realize is that, like being a parent, being a sibling is a lifelong adjustment! She can do a 2-yr-old whine, but her parents are pretty good about telling her to "use her words." And like my girls learned with Grandmarie, Mimi is definitely not as soft a touch as either Mommy or Daddy! (That would be the dark side of grandparents--they're tougher because they got toughened up raising Mommy or Daddy!) So Emily will have a blast being a stay-at-home mommy for awhile. I'd worked for so long by the time I was "off" for our first year in P'burgh that I went nuts. But we also had NONONONO $$ and that's not a problem here. So Emily will love it, I'm guessing.

Meanwhile, I looked into an area where some friends lived for a year--Homosassa, FL. It's about 90 minutes north of Tampa and there's a world of difference. It's much more rural--you pass pastures with beef cattle and fields with what look like feed crops on the way up. We drove around the area a bit and had lunch at Chili's, so it's not the total boonies (uh, like P'burgh, which has no Chili's?). Anyway, I looked online at houses for sale and there are a number that we could probably afford if we sold ours. But the idea of actually permanently relocating is not one I'm really ready for yet, I think. I'd love to be a snowbird, and think that if Bruce would be willing to let a student house-sit we could try it. I'll have to talk to my ex about finding us a student candidate; Bruce might find that acceptable. The idea of missing a month of winter is so attractive....

Okay, I only have about 1 - 1 1/2 hrs. to wait for the little Peapod to wake up for her feeding. So this is a sign-off till who knows when. Ta ta and sunshine to ye', all you Irishpersons-for-a-day!

New Life, Great Time of Year

2009-03-12T09:10:00.006-04:00

It's spring (of course, I'm in Florida where it is spring, not Cadyville where we skip that season entirely) and all kinds of new growth is appearing, including a little auburn-haired girl named Courtney. She's Emily's second daughter; Kaitlyn was turning 27 months old when Courtney was born on Feb. 21. And where Kaitlyn was pretty much bald from birth to 18 months or so, Courtney has straight, deep red hair. I'm not sure if it'll look quite so red once her little pink skin isn't visible anymore, but for now, it is red. She looks a bit like Katie did at birth but I'll have to compare pictures, and I can't add any here right now because I don't have the proper software for uploading them from my camera to the Macs in this house. Drat.

It's been a tough winter. I've been a working "mom" to all four of my daughters, mine and "the steps" too. Their plans have fallen through, jobs aren't working out, hormones took them hostage, neurochemistry tried to sabotage their lives. I believe I earned my Counseling degree this semester because I did my required internship spending many hours thinking about their situations and trying to offer sound ideas ... without running anyone's life. What a balancing act. I feel so good that they can talk to me, and actually often want to. But it is really exhausting. One half-hour phone conversation can wipe me out emotionally for hours, and I get physically very tired too. Wow. It's sort of "fun," in a very non-laughing sense of that word, to do this work, but boy do I feel the lack of education and training in that area. You know how you worry when the kids are tiny that every action of yours will somehow lead to their therapy couch later? Well, now I'm scared it really could! So I'm careful to not give anything but practical ideas.

(I just had to interrupt myself to feed Courtney. It is so ... what? wonderful isn't quite right ... to hold a tiny baby who's just getting her eyes to focus, and then she looks at you, unafraid, a completely blank slate. Anyway.....

I haven't been writing here at all, obviously. Facebook is nice for the Hi-how-are-you kind of stuff and I enjoy it, but I really have missed doing this. Nobody's fault but mine. I guess
I've kind of thought I haven't had much to say. And now you're saying, "You? You with nothing to say? Could someone check the temperature in hell? It must be freezing." But my life, apart from my work on that Counseling degree, has been pretty quiet.

Bruce and I have been sharing our hatred of the weather this year. I've taken a couple of bone-rattling falls and am convinced that my osteopenia must be better because if I had it badly or, god help us, full-blown osteoporosis, I would have broken something. And the first one gave me, I think, a very mild concussion or an almost-concussion, if there is such a thing. I hit my head without knowing it--saw my earmuffs an arms's length away and they had been on my ears--and got an instant headache, a bad one. I wound up taking Advil pretty much all day and woke up with whiplash. Man! I can only imagine what a car crash would do. This was a flat on my back legs and arms out smack onto sheet ice that was covered by snow at the end of my driveway. In addition to feeling like an untrained circus performer I felt like the village idiot: I'd walked on that same ice in my outside clogs to get the paper in my bathrobe about 2 hrs. before the fall. DUH. And about 2 weeks later I almost fell again, same spot, same idiocy.

-------Certainly lost my train of thought--it's 2 days later. Guess I'll post this and come back another time. That baby needs feeding again!

February musing

2009-02-12T00:27:00.003-05:00

I'm surrounded by fog. I walk through the house late at night and there is fog lurking outside every window. The lights in the the street show just deep enough into the yard to convince me that there's no escaping it. I am surrounded by fog.

I drove into town earlier tonight. The fog was some of the thickest I've encountered, and pretty predictable: wherever there were big spans of open land, make that open frozen land, there was thick fog. A large farmer's field that I love, planted in corn in mid-summer and not harvested until late, late summer, and then not cleared--or whatever you call chopping the cornstalks but not clearing completely--until the ground is frozen, often late November - mid-December, created the thickest fog tonight. It was the warm air hitting the ultra-cold ground that made the fog. Unfortunately I got behind a woman who'd apparently never experienced fog before while driving home. She went 30-35 and then 25-30 in an area where I'd felt pretty comfortable at 45 on the way into town. Oh well. She was probably white-knuckling it and that's completely understandable.

I was that lady in 1996 or '97. I was bringing Emily home from college in our van, stuffed to the hilt with her stuff--literally no space left--when we met suffocating fog on Route 11B outside Potsdam and had to make it to Malone on this back road. I could barely see the white line for more than 4 feet ahead of me on the right. And so I was driving about 10-15 mph and being passed--passed!-- by cars who obviously knew this road better than I did. And I was supposed to be home in time to see Jenny at her prom. That was one of the scariest times I've ever been driving; probably THE scariest time, come to think of it. But I did see Jenny at her prom--just dropped Emily at the house and went with the car still loaded, I'm pretty sure. She was beautiful and worth the effort!

The fog makes me think things I have to write tomorrow. I've been neglecting my writing endeavors because I'm scared of 1) not being successful and 2) being successful. And I have to stop focusing on writing about Nancy and just ... writing.

Tomorrow.

One Person's Junco ...

2009-01-18T10:25:00.005-05:00

We have a birdfeeder in our back yard and one on our front living room window. And this year, more than previous years, we have a local small flock of juncos visiting. They've become my favorite bird. They apparently come "south" to here for the winter (?!), living in Canada in the summers. We used to get them passing through for a few days, but I'm convinced it's global warming that's making this their southernmost stop. Whatever the reason, I'm so glad they're hanging around. They're pretty and their behavior is too cute for description. The best I can do is to remind you of the song and scene in "The Music Man" where the women of the town get together and gossip. They sing "Pick a little, talk a little, pick a little, talk a little, cheep! cheep! cheep! Talk a lot, pick a little more." That's exactly what juncos look like when they look for food. They're mostly ground feeders and like bare ground where they can kick things about to look for seeds. So under our birdfeeders is usually where you'll see them. But the front feeder, the one with a mirrored back that sticks on the window, is apparently close enough to a ground feel for them to get into the feeder sometimes and then I can watch them closer. What adorable birds--a little bigger than chickadees and busy, busy, busy.

Here's my photo of a chickadee in the front
feeder. It was determined to get its breakfast! I got relatively close and shot this. I love this feeder ... and so does Susie the cat. The other day she thought for sure she'd catch one of the birds. We call it birdievision.

I know this is probably not the "right" way to use a blog--I should maybe be more introspective but you can bet that won't happen this publicly, even if only 2 or 3 people read this--but I just had to share.

What birds do you watch?

2009-01-16T11:30:00.004-05:00

First things first: I have decided not to buy a car. My beloved Beetle will stay for an indefinite period because I don't really need to change now. If, at the end of 2009, I've put a gazillion dollars into it, I'll consider the Accent again. But maybe I'll look at some sort of energy-smart hybrid at that point. So bye-bye Accent. It was nice to meet you.

And I've already had a most successful morning with one simple action: I changed my kitchen table so that it now sits perpendicular to what it had been. It changes the room completely. I'm very happy that what I saw in my mind's eye is exactly what happened. The flow of the room is much more pleasing to me, and as an added bonus, we could bring in our too-big-for-the-house Norfolk Island pine from our beautiful but unheated sunroom/porch where it was dying. Literally. We'll probably have to lop off the top but I think we've saved the rest of it. It's now 10 years old, grown to about 5' tall from a potted plant that my ex-husband gave to me as a gone-away gift at Christmas in 1998. It's done very well and, like the Beetle, it's something I'd like to hang on to. (That's different from "hang onto" you know, as in, I'd hang onto a life raft but hang on to a memory. I think it's sort of more hang-on than hang onto. What do you think? Am I too picky? Am I ungrammatical?) So now we can, at least for another year or two.

Other than that my uneventful life continues to be so. It puts me at a loss, conversation-wise, but you who know me realize that's probably an overstatement. I mean, when can I NOT come up with something to talk about, always more than you'd ever wanted to know. As Mr. Monk would say, "It's a blessing ... and a curse." But I would switch that around for me.

Enough public introspection. Catch you later. I'll be off in a bit to catch "Gran Torino." (BTW, "Marley and Me" was good, but the book is way better, IMHO.)

Should I? Should I Not?

2009-01-12T16:47:00.005-05:00

There are articles in newspapers and magazines and reports on the radio (NPR, of course) that now is the time to buy a car if you're in the market. So today I test-drove a Hyundai Accent, their version of the Beetle. It's a cute car as you can see. It's much like the Beetle inside--except for that unbelievably deep dash, and not even that different on the outside; lighter weight, I'm pretty sure, but remarkably similar.

But do I want to buy a car? Am I really "in the market?"

I have my adorable and much loved 10-year-old blue Beetle, which, as I explained before, is dear to me as more than just a car. And in addition to all that emotional baggage, it's my first car that's been my very own. And it's my first new car, having always driven used cars before that were selected by my now ex-husband. Do I want to abandon it? Can I?

I think that because I just used the word abandon in that last sentence I probably won't buy an Accent. Financially there are good reasons: low interest rates, my ability to add to the trade-in I'm given so that my loan would be smaller, eager car dealers who are giving the best deals ever.

But ... but ... but ... do I want to buy a car? I told the young salesman, Matt, today to call me in two weeks; I know I'll have decided by then. And right now I'm thinking that if I can hold off for another 6 years--not an impossibility with this car--I'll be getting a Social Security check from which I could make the payments (that's of course relying on the premise that my entire retirement fund will NOT have disappeared!). Or maybe I should think about holding off longer and like my mom, sell it to a grandchild. (That's a joke, FHS!)

Since I have so little running around in my head right now I have the tools available to torture myself while moving towards a decision. Feel free to enter your opinion and just muddy my thinking even more.

Winter ... um ... wonderland

2009-01-11T16:44:00.006-05:00

It's cold. My computer weather says it's now "sunny and 8 F" (that's F for Fahrenheit, not what it might stand for!) and I can guarantee that's about right. I got back from walking the dog about an hour ago when it was a balmy 12. But there's a wind down near the river that my computer doesn't account for. I would've walked longer but my face was too cold. And the dog, who's part Husky, doesn't mind at all. That's snow on her nose in this picture, from sticking her head into snow listening for mousies under the snow-covered grass. Or maybe from just biting the snow as she is wont to do. She loves it.

I think I'm turning into a total wuss. I don't like the cold. I was born in this climate, for heaven's sake, and I don't like it. I'm not sure I ever did. Oh sure, when I was a kid and didn't know there were places that didn't get below freezing, much less below zero. I remember playing outside in the winter but I do NOT remember asking to go outside. It's what you did, especially when directed by your mother who was probably about nuts with too many kids in not enough rooms. But I could live without winter now, at this age.

It's pretty, I'll give you that. I made it snow, that trick that almost everyone has had done to them where the person just ahead of or behind you on a trail pulls on a snow-laden branch so it dumps half a tree's worth of snow, usually down your neck because your head is bent to watch the trail when you're on either skis or snowshoes. With the sun shining through it, it's pretty. But it's still cold. And it was cold enough last night and this morning to have the 3-5 inches we got come down in dry power. It looks like someone has covered the landscape with Ivory Snow. (I like to think about what would happen if that were true ... and then it rained. Would there be bubblanches, like avalanches?) So it was sparkly and skiers love this stuff, but I haven't been on my cross-country skis for several years now and I have no apologies. While I can walk out my back door and in about 5 minutes be walking along the beautiful Saranac River, the terrain is not conducive to x-c skiing, IMHO. Again, this is the wuss speaking, groomed trails that someone else has broken into the snow are the place for skis. Groomed trails tend not to have big bare patches or branches and old logs disguised as piles of snow. I'm not talking Florida here; I'd take, oh, maybe Tennessee or thereabouts. (Bruce shudders about that latitude because of their ice storms. I wouldn't mind those; they melt.)

I should have worn my snowshoes today. No snowmobiles had run the trail behind the house and I was breaking trail all the way to the river. And with 3-5"of new snow it all looks smooth, tricking the gullible (that would be me) into thinking that I could just walk like, well, walking. It was more workout than my legs expected!

I'll throw in one more picture and then I'll go start deciding what to make for dinner. In my life the excitement never ends.

Facebook or here?

2009-01-07T23:27:00.003-05:00

I'm starting to become more active on Facebook and it's put my blogging into second place, I fear. But I like to write paragraphs and not just 1-2 phrase/sentence messages so I'll come here to actually write something (even when, as now, I have basically nothing to write about). So here I am.

Bruce & I went to a PSU hockey game last night, a good, fast-moving game against Norwich University. I don't know how those young men do it, a total of 60 minutes full-bore skating. Wow, it was a fast game. And we won, which was good. One of our goals was a slap shot from almost the blue line; impressive.

Daughter Elise just posted a photo on her blog that scared the bejesus out of me. It's a pregnant woman's belly with the clearly visible outline of a fetal foot pressed against it, from the inside, of course. I was so relieved to see her write that it wasn't a picture of her pregnant belly! I did go to Snopes.com, the urban legend checker-uppers, and they said they're not sure if it's a real or doctored photo. It's apparently been around since 2004. Wow.

It snowed and snowed today and the radar weather maps show more on the way. (It looks like it's stopped for now.) I think I'll try to snowshoe tomorrow a.m. rather than a regular walk "around the block." I haven't gained back the 7.5 lbs. I lost before Thanksgiving--miracle of miracles--and would love to lose more. But I have to get back on the very low carbs wagon and I'm finding that harder than I thought. The exercise should help.

Keep up with my Facebook pages; I've added some funny photos as I'm scanning old slides from late '70s and early '80s.

This one, for example. It's my sister Alicia and me in 1979, according to the date on the slide. Don't you love the glasses? I think I'll eventually get all my photos onto my computer and then make discs for the girls and let them throw them away. I don't want them to have to sort through photos like we did when my mom died. And on that pleasant thought, good night!

Retirement for Real

2009-01-05T20:19:00.003-05:00

I'm trying on retirement-for-real, starting today. I have a little plan in my little head to try to give some little order to my days. I certainly do have a number of projects I want to do so this "organization" may help me actually DO them. Funny thing: when I went to type the headline for this post I typed "Retriement." I guess I really am retrying it.

BTW, I'm reading a book that is pretty interesting. As some already know, I'm a Christopher Moore fan after starting with A Dirty Job. This was his break-out book, got good reviews, was on the NYT Bestseller list for awhile, etc. It's called Lamb; the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal. The premise is cool: the New Testament skips Christ's life, basically going from the manger to the cross with no back-story for those "lost" 30-or-so years. Well, Biff has been imprisoned by the angel Raziel in a 20th century hotel room in order to write the back-story as he experienced it. I don't want to say more but would love to hear from anyone who's read this book.

I am trying to write, and am vowing to do it for a certain time period every day. I'll let you know how that goes. (As you can see, I'm getting more regular here.) And I'm experimenting with Facebook and will try to be a regular there as well. Not really resolutions, but an attempt to push myself by writing things down.

We shall see ...

Hockey Game for the Books

2009-01-04T14:15:00.003-05:00

We went to two hockey games yesterday: The first one was the consolation game in the "Cardinal Classic" tournament and it was between Wesleyan University (CT) and Castleton State (VT). In the evening we watched Plattsburgh State play Williams College. The first of the two is truly a game for the record books because it was stopped with only 7+ minutes left to play by, of all things, a fire alarm. The entire fieldhouse had to be evacuated; the boys had to go outsi

de into a bitter wind in their sweaty uniforms and on skates, and the crowd had to go outside also. (Bruce & I took the opportunity to break away to Burger King for a quick supper before the important game.) I don't think many hockey games have had the distinction of emptying the arena for a fire alarm.

But the real record-book component is the reason the alarms went off: There was a softball clinic going on inside the other half of the fieldhouse--indoor track, indoor tennis courts when they drop nets from the ceiling to create courts, basketball court (not used for PSU games--who knows why). And someone made a direct hit on an alarm box with a softball! I really think that should have been picked up by CNN Headline News. My opinion is that it would make better news than some of the car chases they show.

But everyone got to come back in, the last few minutes of the consolation game were played--Castleton won--and we then played and beat the Williams "Ephs." Yes, that's their team name. And apparently their mascot, which they do NOT feature on their jerseys, is a purple cow. If you're in the know, you pronounce it eefs, as in the beginning of the name Ephraim, as in Ephraim Williams, college founder. (I would say the name with a short e, but what do I know.) The Ephs are a very physical hockey team and in the last few seconds of the game their coach was either ejected or penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct! But we won anyway, so it was a good night. But a fire alarm. Sheesh!

Bye-bye Bug?

2009-01-03T09:25:00.002-05:00

Well, I just paid an inordinate amount of bucks to cover maintenance on my 1998 New Beetle.

Here it is as a "newborn." Note my appearance. Time shows on people, if not on cars! The blue Bug still looks the same. Sigh.

I've been a very good car-owner, taught well by Bruce, and have done all the required maintenance. He's been the best detailer ever seen; I'd have to pay about $200 for his work and he's done it at least once a year since I bought the car. But my baby is now 10 1/2 years old (they grow up so fast, don't they?) and I'm thinking about replacing it. I'd thought all along I'd get another Bug. One major reason is that I never have to guess about which car is mine in a parking lot! (Except I did try to get into someone else's blue Beetle once; couldn't figure out why my key and remote wouldn't work until I saw the daisied license-plate holder!) But the maintenance is soooo expensive that I'm looking at a Hyundai Accent this time around. I started my research yesterday and will go to the local dealer in the next week or two.

My wonderfully maintained car is given only a $3K trade-in value in Kelly's Blue Book and Bruce's reaction was, "Then keep it!" But the blue Bug will only continue to slump in value, new cars will not get cheaper and interest rates on loans will only go up. So now would be the time to get a different car. It just kills me to say that. I love my Bug. It was my first divorce decision and it turned out to be such a good car it gave me the confidence to make other decisions on my own. (If it had been a lemon I'd probably would have run myself over with it, thinking I was incapable of deciding anything.) So losing it is going to be fairly traumatic for me. And I'm not even a "car person!"

Stay tuned. I'll eventually have a photo of me with whatever I decide. Not easy to think about.

1-01-2009

2009-01-01T19:04:00.004-05:00

Happy New Year!

I hope your 2009 will be a year of good things. My only resolution is to stay as happy as I've been in 2008. There were bumps, of course, but absolutely nothing so bad I didn't survive. I mean, I'm here writing this, right?

I deconstructed Christmas in the house today: took down the tree and boxed all the "house deco's" (hey, that's what's on the box they're in; of courseI wrote that on the box but so what). It didn't make me as sad as it often has in the past, although I don't know why. But the house is back to just a house, and that's okay. On with the year.

Before I do get on with the year, though, I have to show you the only new decoration I bought this year. (I wish I could put pictures horizontally in a row but you'll just have to suffer through scrolling.) I didn't know which shot really shows this piece best so you get two:

That's actually a glass block, of the kind used for glass block walls/windows, wrapped in a beautiful bow and then, the coolest part, those are Christmas lights on the inside. I just love it. I had it on a timer so it went on when the tree did and until I went to spend some time in the living room, that was the only light in there. It was really pretty.

And since I'm doing my Christmas photos a bit late here, I'm adding one of Susie (or Suzi, when I think she looks particularly glamorous). The snowman she's in love with usually sits on a window sill but was knocked off when I opened the living room drapes. She could not resist sharing his space, so to speak. It was too cute. (She's a very private cat and unaccustomed to PDAs.)

His black hat and very white body must have attracted her! I took several shots and she didn't move. That's pretty committed, for a cat.

Not much to say

2008-12-29T20:53:00.002-05:00

I want to keep up my dedication to write more often but I find I just don't have much to say ... much of the time. I'll try to improve on that. For now, I have one more day to work at the bookstore and I'm pretty happy about that. I don't think I wrote here that I figured out why I took this job: It was to see if I actually wanted a job. My across-the-road neighbor is my age (maybe 1 yr. older) and retired about 6-9 mos. before I did. She lasted about a year before she took a part-time job at the college in food service. She works half-days, I think, and gets her summers off. But she's very local with her entire family practically within shouting distance so she doesn't travel as much as I do.

I'm finding that even volunteer work means a commitment that, while more easily adjusted than a paid job, is something that you have to try to keep up. My reading for the vision-impaired, for instance, is something that I'm supposed to do every week. I miss about 1 out of 6 weeks and always feel guilty about that. I just realized that I might be gone for 4 successive Tuesdays when I go to FL for grandbaby2's arrival and I'm wondering if I should have a laptop to put my sound-editing program onto so I could sort of keep caught up with the reading. I won't spend $500 (or more) to do that but it has crossed my mind. So keep this in mind, all you young readers: retirement, like old age, ain't for sissies!

The weather is weird: LOTS of wind yesterday and last night, the yard littered with broken branches ... again. Yesterday it got into the 50s, I think, and there are flood worries because of rain and ice jams just north of us; tomorrow it'll be snowing and then pretty cold again. Bruce thinks yesterday was our "January thaw." Oh, I hope not. At least we're not Utah ... or Seattle ... or southern Wisconsin ... or ... ... ...

Christmas 2008

2008-12-25T19:50:00.003-05:00

Happy Christmas to you!

As you can see, Bruce & I had a very nice--and rewarding!--Christmas. He gave me a very beautiful pendant: a blue topaz heart-shaped stone that's a "flower" with silver (or white gold) stem and leaf. It was designed and built by the local jeweler who designed my engagement ring. Really beautiful, delicate and feminine. I love it. I gave Bruce a shiatsu massage chair pad and he loves it. I'm glad.

Below is my attempt at a Martha Stewart table design. It's not too fancy this year; I just decided to use the bows from gifts to dress the table. It was fun to try, anyway.

And here is yours truly with Bruce, our Christmas portrait. I'm wearing my lovely Coldwater Creek winter sweater. It's too subtle to show up here but there are three white Christmas trees on the sweater, pearled and lightly sequined. Very nice and I feel lovely in it.

The ice cube snowman lights up blue and the light fades in and out. A little weird but I love it, and obviously so does Bruce because he got the batteries into it well before I got to it!

Ho Ho Ho!

About that job

2008-12-22T20:20:00.002-05:00

Darling Bruce snowblowed (snowblew just does not sound right so live with my approximate grammar) the driveway yesterday even though he should not even have been outside. But he honestly doesn't mind doing that (most of the time).

And then it snowed more last night. But really only a little. And I put together a crockpot meal last night so I didn't have to do that this a.m. And even more darling Bruce drove me in and I got to the bookstore at 9:00. That's where I discovered I was on the schedule now to work 11:00 - 7:00. HUGE sigh (and muttered curses, you can bet). I actually caught Bruce before he got home--no he doesn't have a cell but I knew he was going to the gas station--and he came and took me back home. Then lo and behold, my car started! (I'll get a new battery in the next week or so just to be sure of it.) So I drove to work. As I was leaving the training supervisor told me that if I'd come to her at 9:00 she would have had me stay and work till 5 or 6.

All that was just lead-in to this: Is it because "retail" hires so many students that managers can be that capricious with their schedules? Or is it that college students have taught managers that they don't need to know schedules more than a week in advance? Or is it that because there are so few full-time workers that capricious schedules are the rule (whether or not the part-timers are students)? There's a fundamental difference between the way retail in a mall situation is run as compared to the way upscale department stores are run. Or maybe they only used to be different. I don't think so, judging by my experience in some upper-end stores in Tampa: the floor salespersons were very well dressed and made up, knew the stock in their departments and provided VERY good service. Malls maybe began our decline to the McDonalds type of service in retail, and then WalMarts took that even further. I know I sound old and crotchety about this, but there really was a service standard that meant the customer was right, or at least knew something.

So a customer complained to me at the cash register that the service in the bookstore was "terrible." There were always lines, he said. (There aren't; it's the week before Christmas, for heaven's sake.) So I said, "We try to give every customer as much time as needed at the register, sir, and that's why the line sometimes moves slowly." I had done all he wanted, after all. He missed my point. But it was nice to hear from a customer about 3 people later that she was impressed by how quickly we kept the line moving. Yin and yang, I guess.

"Later That Afternoon ..."

2008-12-21T15:46:00.002-05:00

Here's the second video I did.

You can see the snow a bit better, I think. I have no idea how many inches we have now--looks like 3-4. Bruce is apparently feeling better and is out with the snowblower, which he pooh-poohed a couple of years ago. The birds are fun to watch on a day like today: They're puffed up as fluffy as they can get so they look like feather balls with wings! Even the tiny chickadees look big.

I called the bookstore and told them I wouldn't be there at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow. I told 'em my battery was dead and my husband was too sick to shovel. One truism & one slight exaggeration. I'll get there when I can. And they're okay with that. There won't be any shoppers until about 9:30 or 10:00 anyway. Duh.

2008-12-21T10:44:00.007-05:00

So we're getting the snowstorm that you all got (with the exception of the Florida contingent but at this time of year it's just better for my peace of mind to pretend they're getting this too). It started at about 8:30 this morning and will probably snow all day. As you can see in the little video, this is on top of the 10 inches we got two days ago.

(I think the snow coming down is actually more visible a bit more distant from the house. And I didn't mean to cut off like that; I thought my camera battery ran out.)

White Christmas? To quote Sarah Palin, "You betcha!" I'm not so happy about that because white could mean just enough snow to cover the grass; it doesn't have to be two feet deep! And Bruce has a whopper of a cold. I'm probably going to learn how to use the snowblower!

However, my Beetle's battery is dead right now. So I'll make a call to AAA because the car is in the garage nose-first, of course, and I don't want either Bruce or me pushing it out. Those AAA guys have a portable charger they can take into the garage, I'm pretty sure. I just can't decide if I'll call today or tomorrow. I think I'll let it go till tomorrow because I should drive it around a bit after it's charged and I absolutely do NOT want to do that today; the weather is just like it was when I was a pinata. I do learn from experience. :-)

The bad news is that I'm scheduled to work at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow. I may not be there at 8:00. I can take the Ranger; Bruce doesn't mind that. It's getting out of the driveway that might be problematic. When the plows go by we get an impenetrably packed foot or more of snow from them. It's like shovelling concrete. We'll see how it goes, and I'll certainly tell you, dear reader, all about it.

For now, have a relaxing Sunday.

Picture Postcard World

2008-12-18T15:57:00.002-05:00

I live in a world of picture postcard pines. Driving home from the bookstore today I passed countless evergreens (I was driving; I couldn't count them!) that are snow-laden just like those always pictured when showing ski resorts or the Adirondacks. The roads were slushy and brown but the pines were beautiful. I do love this area. Looking out my window right now I see about 4" of snow on the cedar rail fence around my garden. It's so pretty. (It covers all the leaves I didn't rake off my garden. But my plants seem to do fine with a bit of insulation through the cold cold months. How's that for rationalizing?) I think I really am gearing myself up to walking outside again; I miss walking around the block here and keeping an eye on snow-covered trees, the now-frozen now-not river and its winter changes.

The bookstore was busy all day today, and I'm probably in a pretty good frame of mind because I only worked 8:00 - 3:00 today. Next week will be a long one again: 8:00 - 5:00 on Monday, Tuesday and ... dah da dah dah (think mournful, threatening music) Friday. I'll just paste a smile on that day and try to deal with all the people who want to return things without receipts. Maybe I'll try to find an attractive flak jacket between now and then! But that schedule means I'll be able to make my cinnamon rolls--yes, just like my mom made every Saturday--for friends. I won't eat too many of them because I'm still working at staying low-carb. My cookie and candy intake has been remarkably low this year. I'm not sure how long that will last but I'm trying!

Light is fading outside; it's getting close to that shortest day. The air seems blue.

Have a good evening.

Am I Just Too Old?

2008-12-15T21:25:00.002-05:00

This job at Borders is far more wearing than I had thought. It hadn't occurred to me that I would suffer so much from being on my feet so long. I'd made an appointment with a podiatrist back in August; their first opening was Dec. 3. When I went I was told I had bunions, no big news, but I'm finding that those bunions that almost never hurt me are being really badly affected by this job. My feet and legs ache all the days I work and it takes about one day (I've had F Sa Su off all this time) out of three before they're really pain free. As you might guess, I'm looking forward to having this job end: Dec. 30 is my last day. That means only T - Th this week, probably M - W next week, and M - W the week after.

I'll start walking outside again in January. It might not be every day for awhile but it's going to be several times a week. Last year I didn't go when it was about 10 degrees or colder, but we'll see about that this year. I may up my wimp quotient and not go when it's 15 or less.

Right now the wind, as Bruce would say, is "blowing a gale." It sounds strong and feels soooo good to be in our nice tight house. And I'm off to soak in a hot tub (no, it's not a hot-tub!). Mmmmmmm.

First "gift" under the tree

2008-12-13T19:12:00.003-05:00

We put up the tree this afternoon/evening, just getting it up and the star on top and then broke for dinner. I made a stir-fry so the break was about 90 minutes, but dinner was good. As I was walking through the living room after dinner I noticed something on the tree skirt. It was too big to be kitty throw-up/fur ball and too far under the tree to be doggy doo. And when I asked Bruce whether he had put it there he said no. So here's the first "gift" put under the tree by HollytheDog:

It's her bone! Yes, it's blue, but it's a big rubbery thing that we were advised to get for Holly because she's a hard chewer. (NylaBones can chip and if you've ever stepped barefoot on a well-loved NylaBone you know just how sharp those chips can be. I guess they're dangerous to a dog's insides so she doesn't get them anymore.) I don't know if she didn't want the cat to get it, or was being considerate about us tripping over it (she's never been considerate that way before...) or whether she was pretending to be outside because her walkies got cut short today when she stepped on something or twisted an ankle, anyway she got hurt. So I just had to put the photo up here. That dog is way to much like a human sometimes.

BTW, just a thought that occurred in my usual free-association way, here's a quote attributed to Groucho Marx: Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

Hallelujah

2008-12-11T20:00:00.003-05:00

I forgot to say anything on Sunday about our concert on Saturday night. The Champlain Valley Voices, F.K.A. the Champlain Valley Oratorio Society, presented portions of Handel's Messiah oratorio. We did the whole first section, virtually nothing from the 2d section, and much of the last section. We had a 20-piece orchestra and 90 voices plus 4 soloists. The soprano had a glorious voice, pure, clear and effortless. She's a local girl, the 23-yr-old daughter of a pediatrician and she's studying currently at Mcgill University in Montreal. Just an angel of a voice. The alto soloist was the former director of CVV (when it was CVOS), the tenor was a college student currently in NYC, and the bass sang the part his dad had sung 20 years ago with CVOS. I'm pretty sure that performance was the one I sang in; I very vaguely remember it but it would've been the first time I ever heard the whole Messiah.

The chorus sounded pretty good from where I was and I actually bought the CD so I could hear what 90 voices sounded like in the college's auditorium with the worst acoustics. Here's the PSU Web site's image of E. Glenn Giltz Auditorium:

It's pretty but you have to work to get the sound out to the audience. We were onstage--all of us--so it was a bit crowded. And the orchestra was, of course, in front of the chorus, so we really had to work! But I think it went well.

And the Messiah was certainly a good way to get me into the holiday spirit, anyway, so tomorrow I'll get out the house decorations and probably do the tree on the weekend. Let the holidays begin!

A very interesting video

2008-12-10T20:47:00.003-05:00

My friend Wayne, another librarian, sent me this link for "Old Fat Naked Women for Peace." (He's further left than I am, even.) It's pretty neat. I think I'd have to have a very personal reason for such a protest--a child serving in Iraq or the like--or I couldn't do it. But a lot of women can, obviously!

So here's the link.

Still here, part deux

2008-12-08T19:31:00.003-05:00

So after I finished talking with the trooper, who almost fell again getting INto his patrol car, I got back on the road and drove about a block from the intersection of death to the next intersection of death. (This is literal; there have been fatal accidents at both intersections in the last 10 yrs. Both times they were caused by drivers on the Rand Hill Road running their stop signs and either broadsiding or being broadsided by someone doing 55 mph on NYS 374 or even just 40 mph on NYS Rte. 3 [the latter would have been me]). ANYway, I sat at the stop sign at 374 while a long string of cars made its way slowly up that highway, led by a person driving a red Jeep convertible. She turned left in front of me and started to go past me, only HER wheels had nothing to grip and she continued to pirouette until she hit me in the LEFT rear fender. She was truly crawling and although the crunch sounded disastrous, again my miraculous blue baby didn't get even a scratch in the paint!

However, two bangs like that are two too many for little me. I felt like a pinata! I drove home evereverever so carefully, very grateful for Bruce behind me, and STAYED HOME the rest of the day.

This doesn't compare in danger to the accidents that have befallen my sister in the last couple of weeks: a blown rear tire--while she was talking to me on her cell phone (I've said that it's my familial duty to be the one to hear her death, and I'm truly not joking about that, just really really hoping it doesn't happen)--and an exploding rear passenger window while driving on I94 in Wisconsin. At least we weren't talking when that happened; I would have been the casualty!

I know she won't read this but there was a conversation yesterday on NPR, her favorite radio station, between an NPR reporter and an expert on the neurology involved in "multi-tasking." Turns out we really cannot multi-task. What we do in reality is pay attention to one thing at a time, switching among all the demands on our attention and managing them all worse than when we concentrate on only one thing such as, um, driving. Our brains simply can't do more than one thing at one time. And the PhD who was making this statement specifically addressed driving and cell phone use, saying that our attention is naturally more on the conversation than on the driving. Just as an aside, a trooper told Bruce and me that they're familiar with "cell phone lane-drift." Apparently it looks a lot like inebriated driving but it's really people paying more attention to the phone than to the road.

I've always found it too distracting to talk on the phone and drive. It's one thing to have the person there and carry on a conversation; they see that you have to ignore them to pay attention to traffic. I'm glad to learn that I'm not really working with an under-developed brain!

Okay, okay, I'm off my soap box. I'm going to veg in front of the TV: Chuck, Heroes and CSI:Miami are a 3-hr. no-brain-required evening for me. Yay.

I'm still here!

2008-12-07T23:11:00.002-05:00

This will be very brief and I'll try to expand a bit tomorrow. I'm really, really tired because my adrenaline was so high for a period today and then it dropped and I made about 8 dozen Spritz cookies and wrapped presents, on either side of making lamb chops for dinner (for the first time in my life) ... and they were very tasty!

Why was my adrenaline up? you might ask. Because I was in a minor accident that almost was a T-boner--either I would have broadsided someone or he would have done it to me. As it was I managed to pull my car to the left and scraped across his front bumper. Then I slid across the opposite lane and headed directly for a sturdy wooden fence in someone's front yard but I went onto the grass where my wheels finally got some purchase and I didn't even get a scratch -- on me OR the car. But the other guy never even came to see if I was okay; he just took off. I did call 911 (after a call to Bruce) and reported it all to a very nice trooper, who nearly fell on his fanny getting out of his car. Slippery doesn't begin to describe it.

More tomorrow. I'm going to bed.

Our Feast

2008-12-03T23:24:00.002-05:00

Here's what we did for Thanksgiving: I cooked and we ate. But I've been very good lately (lost 6.5 lbs. so far) and didn't blow it on too much food. But I ate carbs for the first time in awhile.

What you see here is my traditional Thanksgiving menu: roast turkey with stuffing (still in it), mashed potatoes, gravy, asparagus, and cranberry relish. No rolls (as if they were necessary!) and only a few crudites.

And here is what we look like this year: older! Bruce NEVER smiles in photos. I smile like the Village Idiot (minus drool ... usually). And next time remind me to try to coordinate what we're wearing; print with plaid is a bit hard on the eyes!

Long Ago, in a Galaxy Far Away ...

2008-11-29T19:21:00.004-05:00

Actually, it wasn't THAT long ago that my first daughter was born. And since my sweet niece Kitty asked me to put it here, I'm posting the picture that was taken of me when I was in labor before delivering my darling Emily.

I then owned that little Honda "mo-ped." It wasn't a real moped because it had no pedals, just a little engine that topped out (with a governor) at 25 mph. And I had driven it to work that morning, then my water broke at noon. My husband came and picked me up, then took the bus back to the library and brought the scooter home. By the time this picture was taken I was truly having contractions.

You have to realize that my official due date was actually one month hence. That pic was taken June 3, 1979, and my due date, according to the OB, was July 4. So I'm not as horrible a pre-mom as you might think! But that due date was obviously wrong, as Emily was born at 12:50 a.m. (I'm pretty sure; she'll have to check her baby book) on June 4--NOT July 4. And she weighed 7 lbs. 10 oz., so I'd hardly call her a preemie. What's a little weird here is that Emily's first baby was due on Dec. 20, 2006, and she went into labor on Nov. 20. Her dr. stopped her labor temporarily, so Kaitlyn was actually born on Nov. 22. But she, too, weighed 7 lbs. 10 oz. And she had jaundice, just like her mom. And they treated her like a preemie, but a little more relaxed-ly than had been done with Emily--I didn't get to hold her for 12 hrs. while they kept her under what I call the McDonald's french-fry lights.

I just thought people might get a kick out of this. And aren't the glasses a piece of the past? Were they big enough, d'you think?

Long Day

2008-11-24T21:52:00.000-05:00

This is one of the last really long days I'll have--I worked 9:30 - 5:00 and then had Oratorio rehearsal 6:45 - 8:45. The Champlain Valley Oratorio Society is trying to change its name (and image) to the Champlain Valley Voices so that we might attract audience members who like more than Handel, Mozart, Faure and Mahler. We're actually doing some OMG American composers: our Spring concerts for the last two years have been Gershwin and then Kern, Berlin and a few others. This coming spring will hear another "chapter" in the Great American Songbook. I'm not sure if I'll be here for the concert but I'll probably attend rehearsals because I love that music so much.

The rehearsal tonight was for Handel's Messiah, which I haven't sung in an unknown number of years. It's really the only oratorio I halfway enjoy; I'm just not that big on classical vocal or choral music. But I'm participating enough to even be a member of the board! So I'm doing my part. And the Messiah should sound spectacular. We have 90 voices plus a hired orchestra and soloists, 2/4 from NY City. The director is just a dynamo--a Wisconsin native and Packer fan. She's very funny ... and a good conductor. She's also a fabulous pianist, doing a number of shows here there and everywhere.

Gotta go catch CSI:Miami with my sweetie. Nye nye.

Random Subject 1

2008-11-23T19:08:00.003-05:00

I've set my computer up to go into the My Pictures folder and randomly fun them across my screen as my screensaver. It's having two effects: 1) I'm cleaning up my photos--I appear to have a LOT that are less than interesting--even to me, and 2) I'm going to write about a few of them here. So I'll let my screensaver kick in and see what comes up right now. I just have to sit here patiently...

Okay. Here are tonight's photos. (I decided to do a few because it shows the story better.)

And here's the story: My ex-husband teaches philosophy at PSU. In this job he is now teaching a class on fly-fishing. For credit. It's part of the Expeditionary Studies program (created and run by my former boss's (dean's) husband, a current golden boy on campus). He's been joined before by my husband and my husband's oldest fishing partner, John. So Bruce & John helped Chuck teach his students to tie flies, and then how to fish them. There was a third TU member (that's Trout Unlimited to gill-free readers) who joined them, my friend Hap, who was in my first music group, Happenstance. Plattsburgh is truly a small world, no? Anyway, someone took these photos at the final exam, when each student had to tie flies, three, I think. You can see that the teachers had probably more fun than the students.

Just to identify the photos: Top is Hap, John, & Chuck (L to R); middle is students working on their flies; bottom is Bruce clowning around with John.

I'm not sure what I think of this course. I know that Chuck has taught sport and philosophy for a long time, which is pretty ironic since one of the first jobs he applied for was teaching the philosophy of sport at ... UNC? North Carolina State? Anyway, a school in that area that was pretty much jock heaven. He scoffed then. (That memory just popped into my head right now; I remember the phone interview he had. Wow) And I'm sure that he does teach philosophy and require the students to read and write philosophy as well as tie flies. But ... like I said, I'm not sure. I'll leave the judgments to you, Dear Reader.

Anyway, that's the pic of the day. I wonder what will come up next time.........

Bummer

2008-11-22T19:08:00.004-05:00

We went to a women's hockey game tonight. PSU Women won the Division III National championship last year, beating hated Middlebury, and that's who they were up to play because there was a small tournament here: Middlebury, Elmira College, Williams College, and PSU. Yesterday Middlebury beat no.1-ranked Elmira and we beat Williams, so it was Middlebury against us. Again.

The only problem with our going to the game tonight is that it was held this afternoon. True bummer. These tournaments almost always have the games afternoon & evening, afternoon & evening. So we got to the arena at 6:30 or so and there wasn't one car there. We figured we'd blown it but didn't know how. So much for assumptions. Had we checked the schedule that we have magnetted to the fridge we would have seen that, duh, the game WAS this afternoon. So right now I just spent about 15 minutes trying to find the score. So much for the Internet being on top of things. The only place I could get it was on the Middlebury page: 2-2, a tie. I checked the college's women's hockey page, the local radio station, local newspaper and local TV station and no one had an update of the "they're going to play Middlebury tomorrow" stories. Sheesh.

So now I'm going to try to find something ... make that anything on TV and do some cross stitch/bead stitching. Here's what I'm working at:

It is totally beautiful, or will be when I finish it. It's an angel and was given to me by my sister about 5 years ago. No joke. I am determined to finish it. It's a mind-boggling design. (I could give you the title of the piece and have you search it out on the Web, or even give you the link for it, but I don't want you to see it finished until I finish it!) I had someone ask me if my sister gave it to me because she likes me or because she doesn't like me. I thought that was pretty funny. But you notice I'm not answering it.

Tired

2008-11-19T20:56:00.003-05:00

Boy, I've apparently gotten very used to being retired. I worked 9:30 - 5:00 M,T,W this week and I'm wiped. And I saw the schedule for next week: M 11 - 7, T, W 9:30 - 5, F 7 - 4. Holey moley that's a regular work week! I may have to rethink this "part-time" job.

That's it for today, I think. At least I'm trying to get myself into the habit of writing daily.

So Much for Good Intentions

2008-11-18T21:12:00.002-05:00

So, I posted two days in a row and then missed one. Big surprise. But I wasn't feeling too great last night--my back almost seized at the bookstore and I took 4 ibuprofen at once, something I haven't done in a long time. It sort of plays havoc with my stomach. So I mostly lazed around and didn't do anything last night, even skipped Oratorio rehearsal. (We're doing the Messiah and I haven't sung that for probably 15 years so I thought I'd stay in it this semester.)

Workwas not great today. The idiot boss scheduled me for "lunch" at 3:00 p.m. This is after my starting work at 9:30 a.m. That's 5 1/2 hrs. without a break, which is not only unpleasant, it's illegal. My immediate supervisor came to me and apologized, saying she hadn't set the day's schedule and this would NOT happen again. I've thought from the get-go that the top manager might be not the best person there to have that top slot, but what do I know. The woman who supervises me is probably one of the smartest people there; I hope she climbs the store's ladder.

I sent my sister a little present-for-no-reason today. I love doing that. (I do wish sometimes that people would do it back but that is definitely NOT why I do it.) Anyway, the gift is a little box with a book, iPod for Dummies--and I think a pair of earbuds. I think she'll get a real kick out of it.

I shouldn't be working at a bookstore, especially one that sells all those little cute sort-of-tschotchkes. And pop-up anythings. I'm a total sucker for pop-ups. And animated things. And ..... I should probably get my pay in merchandise because I usually make it only a work day or two without buying something. I'm sure they love me!

Day 2 of My New Regime

2008-11-16T16:31:00.003-05:00

So here I am back, two days in a row. For me, that's an attention span that's twice as long as usual! And I do have something to report: I figured out that my darling dog may not be neurotic; I think maybe she has an autism-spectrum disorder. She LOVES patterned behavior; is frightened of loud noises; has almost preternatural hearing and can hear thunder approximately 50 miles away (judging by her immediate exit from wherEVER she is to her hidey-hole in the basement); sometimes exhibits behavior inappropriate to the social situation, e.g., barking and bristling at friends and probably sniffing the crotch of and/or licking bad guys (not that we often encounter those but there's a strong chance this behavior would ensue). HOWEVER, we love her bundles and bunches anyway, and since she's now an upper-middle-aged dog (10) who probably doesn't have all that many years left, we'll forgo therapy. Here's a great photo of Holly.

The other news is that there was a giant fire in Plattsburgh yesterday. After our favorite pre-hockey-game restaurant, Lum's, closed we migrated to the Perkins that opened about a year ago. It burned along with the Comfort Inn hotel it was connected to, along with the Legends Sports Bar that had opened about 6 mos. ago, if that. There was a visiting college basketball team staying there and they lost everything from their laptops to their jerseys. I really feel for them--as college students the loss of their laptops probably means their entire semesters' notes, quizzes, assignments, etc. Yikes. A conference that was in session had people leave, thinking it was a fire drill, and the attendees left purses, laptops and ... car keys! What a nightmare. I cannot imagine what the total bill will be that goes to the hotel's insurance companies. Wow. And my little it's-all-about-me take is that now we'll have to find ANOTHER pre-hockey-game restaurant. (I'll just put in paren's that this is the second of our favorite restaurants to meet its demise through fire. I think we'll just keep that off the Burgh's restaurant radar!)

Here's the local paper's and TV station's takes on the fire: the Press-Republican and WPTZ.

New Approach ... Maybe

2008-11-15T17:09:00.003-05:00

I think I'm going to try to be a better blogger, writing a little most days rather than waiting for something momentous to report. Lord knows there's not a lot momentous in my life these days and we're only just heading into winter. At least that's what I'm thinking today. Tomorrow when I remember something I HAVE to get finished I'll change my mind about regular posts but we'll wait till then for that to happen.

Today I did nothing. Nothing. Truly. I made spaghetti sauce because I realized that the way I make it is a no-carb recipe so I can have it--just no spaghetti, whole wheat or not. I only have one more day in the no-carb part so next week I can have leftover spaghetti sauce ON spaghetti! I've been trying to move in the direction of "the Mediterranean diet" for awhile. You know, olive oil and whole grains and more fish, the regular litany. So now I'm going to try harder. We'll see how that works. I figure I'll do a regular Thanksgiving blow-out but try to limit "bad" carbs to only one meal per day. So if I have cereal for breakfast (yes, it'll be high fiber) I won't have a sandwich at lunch, something I've done for a long time anyway. The hard part will be the evening meal, but I've been trying to do sweet potatoes instead of white for awhile, brown rice ditto. I'm just going to try to pay more attention to that.

It's raining and has almost all day, which is why I read literally all day rather than raking. Tonight I think I'll watch "Volver" (via Netflix) while Bruce listens to the away hockey game. And so our exciting life goes on.

Owning a dog

2008-10-20T00:05:00.001-04:00

I'm not of the group that thinks that you don't "own" a dog. I believe I do. But my dog is unbelievably neurotic--more on that later. Meanwhile, I've just started a part-time job that has me on my feet for my entire shift: tough on my arthritic hips and all those other joints above, below and in any remote way involved in locomotion. So.

I came home from a 7-hr. shift (six plus a 1-hr. break) and my feet & legs were killing me. I came in the door at about 8:20 p.m. and wanted to feed Holly-dog immediately, since I'd been gone since about 9:30 a.m. (extended office hours for my LIB105 students that day--and I actually had students up through 12:00!). Poor Holly had had diarrhea, and I, not realizing this, stepped into it right inside the door. So of course I tracked it through the kitchen a bit. Caught it and then cleaned from about 8:30 until after 10 p.m. Holly was, of course, mortified. But I let her know I wasn't mad and she seemed to pick up on that. But sheesh, this part-time job stuff seemed to be a big mistake after that! Not really. I'll come home if I have to, to let her out. it was just really really tiring to have to come home and clean, with bleach and Spic 'n' Span and paper towels and carpet cleaner, etc., etc.

I know why I've never lived alone.

Haiku

2008-10-09T20:08:00.003-04:00

While walking the dog today, beautiful sunshine at 5 p.m., pretty stiff wind blowing on and off, the smell of fallen leaves, I decided it was just a day for haiku. So, for your enjoyment:

Yellow leaves blowing
Browned by October wind
Reds already left

Flat October sun
Harder, somehow, than summer
But not cold, not yet

Jobs for retired librarians

2008-10-07T20:31:00.003-04:00

I guess it's just one job, really. I started on Sunday at our local Borders--that is, at Borders Books and Music in Plattsburgh (said with lilt in telephone voice). Right now I'm a "greeter:" I have to greet every customer who comes into the store and say, "Hi, may I help you find anything specific today?" What's really terrific is that about 1/3 - 1/2 the customers who come in actually want help! So I don't feel like a completely intrusive doofus.

It's actually enjoyable: It gives me the people contact I know I need (I'm still amazed how much I like "cocooning"). And of course I've seen enough books already to spend ALL my earnings! I'm very carefully staying away from the picture book section! So far the baddest thing is that I cannot wear jeans of any type. Rats. I'm going to ask about corduroy "5-pocket pants" that I'm hoping will slide by. I don't feel like buying too many clothes for a job that'll end after the holidays. But I'm definitely buying some black sneakers. I'll be on my feet for my entire shifts so I need truly comfy shoes and I absolutely REFUSE to be that "little gray-haired lady in sneakers!"

So I'll be a bit busier than I have been, and that's a good thing. Maybe I really will lose a few lbs. since I won't be near food while I'm working--thank heavens the mall just moved Aunt Annie's Pretzels way up the row from Borders!

Ooooooh! as in aaaaargh!

2008-10-02T17:07:00.002-04:00

Bruce & I JUST got home from going to get our season tickets for the PSU men's hockey team and having lunch. It's 5:08 p.m. We left the house at 12:10 p.m. Tickets went on sale at 1:00 p.m.--JUST to last year's season ticket holders (LYSTHs from here on)--and there are enough excited Cardinal hockey fans to go early to get in line. So we met our friend Bill and were joined by our friends John & Sue; since we all sit together we all bought together. (No one can buy for anyone else. Go figure.)

We walked out of the Fieldhouse with tickets in hand at 2:50. No joke. It took us 2 hours and 20 minutes to pay for 2 season tickets. The set-up for ticket sales was THE worst designed "system" I have ever seen. Literally. I have never in my life seen such poor planning. Add to the wait the fact that the one, yes that's right ONE, computer being used was slow.

Absolutely nothing in the clusterfrak was computerized. The lone computer being used was to re-enter all of our information into a database. For some reason last year's database was not being used for anything, but the Athletic Dept. had printed out the list of LYSTH, so it's clear the database did exist.

The biggest error was that the Athletic Dept., almost certainly after a "meeting with all the stakeholders" and probably thinking they were getting a jump on things, had assigned seats to each LYSTH, in approximately the same place the seats were last year. This is because the seating changed considerably, going from bleachers to theater-style seating. But most LYSTHs didn't like the reassignment. This was the first line to stand in.

The second line was for each single or pair of LYSTHs to go individually (or as a couple) into the actual rink and put a hand on the desired seat(s). Why, I do not know.

The third line was to get that laying-on-of-hands approved by the guy from Line 1. The fourth line was to get each LYSTH's info entered into the database on that one computer. The fifth and last line was to get the actual tickets, one for each home game.

It is truly amazing that no one killed the Athletic Director, who was the guy at the destination end of Line 1. Apparently the idea of using clerical personnel or even work-study students for some of this never occurred to anyone in the Athletic Dept. But I forget, it IS the Athletic Dept. Duh.

We had lunch at 3:10 and after a short stop that I'm sure I'll tell about some time later, we came home. Now I'm going to take 1) a Tums, and 2) a nap.

But we got our tickets.

Awww

2008-09-22T09:47:00.002-04:00

I used my new Webcam on Saturday to connect to grandbaby Kaitlyn. Actually I connected to her mom, who then called Kaitlyn over to say hello to Mimi (that's me in Kaitlyn-speak). I was looking right at the camera saying hello and smiling (probably being just a bit silly and the poor little darling was mystified. She had this puzzled half-smile. Emily told her to blow a kiss to Mimi, which she didn't do, so I blew a kiss to her. And when Emily asked her if she could give Mimi a kiss, Kaitlyn bent over and kissed the keyboard!

Things don't get much sweeter.

Powerhouse and Wind Mills

2008-09-21T19:47:00.005-04:00

Today Bruce and I took a beautiful drive about 20 miles north to lovely Altona. We were looking to find an old powerhouse that just got a bunch of money from the wind energy company nearby. There had been a picture in the paper and Bruce said that although he knew exactly the dam, which was going to be removed, he couldn't place or picture the powerhouse. So we went to look for/at it. It turns out to be the building below and the dam in front of it is the one that Bruce knew--a few years ago he grabbed hold of a piece of rebar sticking out from it and with a light pull he pulled out a big chunk from the (off-stage left) pillar that's pretty much like the one that says "Built 1923." So both he and I don't share some locals' concern about removing the dam. I think it's ugly and Bruce says it's useless as a dam, too.

So I took a few pictures. The one above is the only one I could get from that side; the others were all from the back and I've put just one here.

I think that refurbed it could be gorgeous. I would put a theatre in it. But what do I know.

The marching pillars in the shot below are what carried the "penstock," which is apparently the name of the big pipe that carries water from a river to the turbines of a powerhouse. The pipe is about 5 feet in diameter (at least the one behind our house that goes to "our" powerhouse is). This particular old powerhouse was built by a local entrepreneur, William Miner, and that makes it special to folks around here.

So what about the wind mills from my title? That powerhouse is not too far from one of the wind farms in the area. The last time we were up in this neck of the woods there was no evidence of wind turbines, now there are a bunch of them and here is a shot of me (in red sweatshirt)sort of near one. You really can't see me--click on the picture to enlarge it and look for a red blob--but if you can you might get some sense of how bloody big these windmills are!

Here's my best photo of the day. I really like the sculptural aspects of the turbines; I've said before that I think they're beautiful. The ones near us were revolving very slowly and silently (they're not online yet)and the sun was in the perfect spot. Put your sunglasses on.

Years

2008-09-19T11:00:00.002-04:00

These are the roses Bruce gave me for our 7th anniversary on Wednesday. We went out for a very nice dinner and then shared a split of champagne when we got home--my contribution to the celebration. When I asked Bruce if he had any symptoms of the "7-year itch" he didn't even know what it was so I guess the answer was no. :-) (Me either, BTW!)

I planned to wax philosophical about those seven years but my niece has reminded me of something that I try to remember--and too often forget: I'm very happy with what I have. What I don't have will take care of itself and I don't have to spend any of my energy on it.

I have:

a loving husband (funny, gentlemanly, protective and caring)
two unbelievably beautiful and talented daughters who love me (and I don't have to put "I think" after that)
two sons-in-law who adore their wives and whom I love truly as sons (and I didn't have to go through the scary growing-up part!)
one perfect grandchild with another equally perfect one under construction
a snug, comfortable lovely home in one of the most beautiful parts of the country
an income that lets me live as comfortably as I want to
a good life

I'll take another 7+ years of the same. Happy anniversary to us.

Rainy Saturday

2008-09-13T15:10:00.003-04:00

It's a rainy day today and that's actually a good thing. A month earlier I'd have been whining about moremoremore rain, but for unknown reasons, today it feels good. When I walked this morning I was in drizzle about half the time but it wasn't cold drizzle so I was fine with it.

It's a good day for napping. This is the way Bruce (and I've decided to use real names 'cuz no one really reads this!) looks when he "rests his eyes."

Actually, this isn't even the best. When he dozes off after starting to work on the crossword puzzle he never even puts down his pen! He really looks likes he's still awake if you just glance at him. What a talent.

I just took an apple pie out of the oven. Bruce asked me today how many pies I've made in my life and I realized that it isn't really all that many. I gave myself a (rather generous) rough average of 6/year and I've been making pies for about 30 years. That's only about 180 pies. I'd thought initially I'd been doing it for 20 yrs. but I remember baking pies in Iowa, I'm pretty sure. I started well before I got my Cuisinart and I realized today while making piecrust in it that I've had it since 1982, so it's more than 20 years. But still, it's under 200 pies. That's not that many.

Maybe Bruce should have asked how many cupcakes I've made.....

"Conversation Starters"

2008-09-09T16:23:00.005-04:00

The last time I got some foods from Omaha Steaks (yum) they enclosed a packet of "Conversation Starters." Here's the first:

If you could star in one movie, what would it be?
And what part would you play?

Being a genetic actress--meaning I truly was born with it, whether I'm good or not--I have a hard time with the question. There are soooo many good movies, and very good parts. For unknown reasons, The English Patient popped into mind. So right at this very minute, I'd take the role played by Kristin Scott Thomas.

How about YOU?

Holy Birthday, Batman!

2008-09-04T13:05:00.005-04:00

Did I have a 60th birthday or what? All you loyal readers are lucky I'm still here; I almost succumbed to heart failure last Saturday. But I didn't. I DID find out how sneaky my relatives are ... all of them, apparently!

It all started innocently. (I promise not to drop into purple prose here. Really.) Daughter Elise invited me to Florida to grandbabysit Kyrin while Elise & Pedro went to two weddings in two weeks. I leapt at the chance: a chunk of time with Kyrin? What's not to want? So I booked my flights and then Stan said he wanted to come down and fish for grass carp in warm weather since he hadn't known what fish to be prepared for when we went in January. He flew down on the same day but returned a week later, while I stayed a few more days. And you realize that I threw all my previous good-teacher-ethics to the winds and missed the first class of the semester, leaving my two sections in Grad. Assistant's hands. (Ask me how guilty I am. Go ahead, ask.)

The first weekend wedding was actually on my birthday, so no celebrating, no drinking, no whoopdidoo at all. Bummer. But I WAS looking after my favorite, okay, okay, my only grandchild so all was not bad. And all my sibs called, which was very sweet. Elise remembered the occasion after I mentioned the phone calls and her sister Jane didn't call till Monday. I was wounded, deeply wounded. But Pedro & Elise gave Stan & me a gift certificate to a terrific restaurant and I decided to use that as my birthday gift from them (they said it was a thank-you for babysitting). Meanwhile, Stan really wanted to go to a less fancy restaurant and he grumbled about that so I answered that "No one made any big deal about my birthday and this was a big one, so I'm HAPPY to go to a fancy restaurant!" And it was fancy and it was good and I, for one, thought it was fun. The next day Stan went home.

So Friday Elise said that before they went to the wedding on Saturday she wanted to go out for lunch with me & Kyrin, spend some mommy- and daughter-time. Fine with me. On Saturday Pedro decided to join us. But I'm watching the clock, wondering if they aren't cutting it damned close for making it to the afternoon wedding. I AM a good mother and M.I.L., however, so I didn't say anything. So we all trouped off to Ruby Tuesday (BTW, this is probably where Stan wanted to go).

We're at our table, drinking our just delivered raspberry lemonades and looking at the menu when I looked towards the entrance and saw a woman who looked so much like my sister Alicia. I looked away and was just starting to tell this to Elise when I looked back and in the same space stood daughter Jane. I was dumbfounded. Really. I could NOT process the idea that Jane was there in FL saying "Surprise!" And then the woman who looked like Alicia appeared and good lord, it WAS Alicia! From Milwaukee. And then sister Amber from Seattle. And then niece Julianne from Florida. And then Elise was saying, "Oh, BTW, Mom, there is no wedding today." Which I also couldn't process.

I was laughing and crying and I said to Elise, "I feel like such a whiner." And now that's the code for the whole weekend. I guess EVERYone, including Stan, felt like telling me to stuff a sock in it about no fuss, but I truly did not have ONE clue that anything was going to happen.

Then, on top of everything, I got gifts! A beautiful jade necklace from China and a sweater set that is just gorgeous, a bouquet, balloon and great birthday cards. I don't have pictures from the restaurant but I have a few from Elise's house, to which we all repaired after lunch and where Pedro made a great holiday BBQ dinner on the grill. Cake and everything. I'm still reeling in amazement.

Three of 10 cousins ... plus one

Oldest sister in her own portrait

Twins separated by 17 months of our mother's hard labor!

Last but not least, an idea of the level of conversation I was capable of all afternoon. But of course, this is daughter Jane discussing politics ... or Pooh Bear ... with Kyrin.

I cannot say enough about Elise's planning skills. How she pulled this together is a mystery and I prefer it to remain so! But I think she should start thinking about being a wedding planner. If she can herd Kleibers, she can herd anyone!

So do they love me? I guess so! And do I love them, even the ones who couldn't come? YOU BET I DO.

Food for thought ... and comments?

2008-08-27T09:14:00.003-04:00

I just read an article in the NY Times, "One First Is Celebrated. What About the Second?" It addresses the fact that the Democrats seem determined to downplay Barack Obama's race in the campaigning that leads to the election. I found myself pretty divided (which is a very bad way to find oneself, BTW, because you're not sure you're finding all the pieces) about this issue/idea. I can see why race shouldn't be a factor: it shouldn't define who one is, nor one's capablities, etc. But I can see also why it should play a part: Obama IS the first non-white candidate e.v.e.r (!) and as such is a huge symbol of the (slow but steady?) work of many, many Americans to eliminate race as a factor.

So there's a pretty interesting dilemma, I think. Play up race too much and you risk the loss of disaffected white voters who see affirmative action as always bad--and many other negatives about non-whites of any color. Downplay race too much and you might not get as many non-white votes as you would otherwise. (Not that I think many would vote for McCain because of that.)

I'm no political pundit, obviously. But I think this is an interesting question and worth discussing. Want to make a comment?

Grammy Again!

2008-08-09T15:37:00.003-04:00

I can finally say in public that I'm going to be a grammy for a second time. Elise is due with Baby2 in March! I'm very excited. And I deserve a gold star because I didn't say anything to my siblings, etc., at the wedding; Elise was so thoughtful: "Mom, it's Alex & Jessie's day, not mine. I won't say anything till after."

So Stan & I will go down in a couple of weeks to visit & babysit while Elise & Pedro go to other weddings. I'm really looking forward to that. Then I come back to teach two sections of my old course. Ugh. BUT ... the course will be over mid-October. I can make it through.

I'm off to a Trout Unlimited summer picnic. We finally have a day (so far) without rain--I think it's the first in August!

Of Birds and Bees

2008-08-04T14:47:00.003-04:00

My sister Amber sent some photos of her fabulous fuschia plant. Wow. I haven't had a fuschia since I left the "city" (that would be Plattsburgh) and came to live in the boonies (that would be Cadyville--well, actually we have a Saranac phone exchange, we pay property taxes to the Town of Schuyler Falls [pronounced skyler in this neck of the woods], a Cadyville zip code but we live in the neighborhood [?--not sure what its official designation is but we have a road sign that tells you you're in it!] of Woods Mills).

ANYway, Stan & I buy a new hanging plant each year for the front corner of the porch and this year we chose one that we both thought was a bit unusual.
What do you think?

It's a begonia. At least that's what the tag stuck into it said. Who knew there were begonias like this??

There's a hummingbird feeder just behind it (talking about second photo here) and the birds like to hang out in the plant and ambush any bird that's not supposed to be at __(any given bird's name here)__'s feeder. They also sit on the cable TV cable just above and to the left of the feeder and dive bomb interlopers from there. The dogfights are amazing to watch. Stan & I are convinced that one day one of us will innocently step out the porch door and get nailed in the forehead by a mach-speeding hummingbird--looking much like we just got hit with a dart since they fly FASTFAST beak-first!

This last hummingbird one is dreadfully out of focus and I apologize for that but the little bugger was just about to leave and I hit the zoom on my camera and snapped a nanosecond before it took off, so focusing just wasn't possible. You can see the beak that will someday wind up in my forehead if you look at about 2:30 from where it joins the bird's head. It whited-out near its head but the last part of it is visible as a diagonal line.

We really do love these birds, and Stan is filling the 2 feeders we have about every 2-3 days now. We figure all the clutches of eggs have hatched!

As long as I have your attention I'll throw in a couple more pictures--to make up for last night's post. These are Blackberry Lilies, so called I think because of their seeds, which for such small flowers--only about 1 1/2" - 2" across--are pretty big. Think of the seed balls that form on many Asiatic lilies or common tigerlilies. Impressive seeds. These are my only checkered flowers. (I'd love to get fritillaries, another checkered flower, just so I could say "I have fritillaries in my garden," love that word, but we're too cold for them. Check 'em out in a bulb catalog.)

August

2008-08-03T21:00:00.002-04:00

I'm not a very good blogger. I just don't have the push to do this every day. I admire those who do but it'll be awhile before this becomes a daily task for me. Mainly because I'm just not that interesting. And this isn't meant as a whine, just an observation.

I did have fun at my nephew's wedding in Milwaukee last weekend. Jane & Dan came from NE and Elise & Kyrin from FL, so I got to spend a lot of time with them and it was a blast. Kyrin got to know me enough to come running down the hall in the hotel saying, "Mimi!" Or "Grammy" sort of. (I think Mimi is pretty neat.) She's at the age where she's growing so fast that a break of a few months in seeing her (like 6!) means she's a whole 'nother person. And a total cutie. And dancing with Jane & Dan was so much fun. First I love to dance, and second, I'm always in awe of my daughter's gracefulness. Elise was a gymnast--perfect petite bouncer--and Jane a dancer--totally focused ballerina, and I got to see that in them again for awhile. What fun.

It is rainininininininig here, what feels like constantly. Actually real raindrops have not fallen from the sky for a few hours now and it feels 1) like a miracle, and 2) like they don't have to fall because the air is already so wet. It's been raining for what feels like forever. In June it rained 27 out of 30 days; July it was 21 out of 31. So far August is 3 for 3. We're all beginning to check for mold or algae in armpits, elbow and knee bends. The house smells a bit musty--no sun to dry ANY air will do that here. My garden's flowers are working hard at being pretty but ... ah, it is NOW falling out of the sky, and we so needed the rain ... they could use sun, really! Snails will be taking over everything soon. GACK. Stan picked about a dozen snails off the hosta just outside our back door last week--I mean picked up with his fingers! Talk about GACK. But I saw my snake in my garden today so some bugs will meet their demise; I wonder if snakes eat snails.....

Okay, no photos this time so I'll go away. Maybe I'll get back more frequently; I'm trying to turn over yet another new leaf (do I look like a shrub to anyone out there?).

Woodsmen's Days

2008-07-13T13:02:00.002-04:00

We did a fun thing yesterday: went to the "Woodsmen's Days" in Tupper Lake, NY. It's a (very) small town in the heart of the Adirondacks, beautiful to drive to, about 80 miles from here. The weather was gorgeous--you should see my sunburn. Or maybe not.

ANYway. Readers from Wisconsin will recognize this kind of event as one held in Hayward every year; I'm pretty sure Hayward's has been on ESPN. Tupper's is probably smaller but it's still a really big deal to them.

We got there at about 10:30, the time that the newspaper had given for amateur competitions to begin. All that was beginning at that time seemed to be the set-up for the competitions, which IMHO should have been done the day before! So competitions didn't begin until about 12:30. Truly annoying, especially because we never intended to stay all day. As it was we left well before the events I had really wanted to see. What we did watch were chain-saw slicing--three slices as fast as you can from a clamped-down debarked log; log-rolling--40' in one direction until it touches a stake at either end, then 40' back to touch stakes again; ax throwing--double-headed ax thrown at a target; and bucksaw log slicing--a 4' bucksaw to slice 3 slices from the chain-saw log. Impressive. Really. Fairly dangerous, especially in inexperienced hands, I imagine! And there was a chain-saw-carving competition from which the resulting sculptures were auctioned. (I cannot imagine what the liability insurance must cost for an event like this. Got to be godawful!)

The events that we didn't hang around for, which probably didn't take place till 5 or so--grrr, were a springboard chopping contest and a tree-felling contest. The latter was to be done using about a dozen 20-25' poles (basically limbless trees) set into the ground that contestants went about debarking and marking for their cuts. I heard another spectator say that not only would they be battling for the best time but the "tree" was also supposed to smash a watermelon. So it had to be fast and precise tree-felling!

The other event was to take place using a larger-diameter but shorter limbless tree, about 7-8' tall. On the top of this was staked a 2-foot "log" similar to the ones used for the chainsaw competition (but much shorter ;-) ). The contestant had to use an ax to cut a chink into the "tree" and drive in a springboard, then hop onto that and chop the log on top. Apparently this is somewhat equivalent to what loggers actually used to do to top trees in the forests. Sort of like standing on a moving limb, I would guess. Talk about dangerous.

You can see why I did want to see these events, but it just wasn't worth getting caught in the traffic jam that would happen when everyone left. Traffic jams in small towns are more annoying than in big cities, I'm convinced, because they never happen. So we left about mid-afternoon. I didn't bother to take my camera because I knew I wouldn't get good photos of the events.

It was fun. The equipment was impressive, probably the most eye-opening piece being the bucksaw. Four feet of unbelievably sharp steel teeth--teeth about 4" deep--that apparently cost $1500-3000 and $500 to sharpen! The women pairs we saw competing were tough, tough, tough. Wow.

And we ate Italian sausage with peppers and onions, which is standard "fair-fare." Yum. Now my sunburn will tan so I'll look great at the wedding in Wisconsin in a couple of weeks. Cannot wait for that!