Airy Persiflage

What I Wore

2012-02-16T00:02:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned a few weeks back, my goal each time I'm at the book store is to choose a book that is short enough I can probably finish it in 4 hours. The idea was that I could read something I probably would never read otherwise. I've successfully done that during each of my afternoons there and am getting into the hang of it, and even starting to plan.

Since I was going to work on Valentine's day, I thought about what would be good and appropriate to read on that day. I decided I should pick out a Harlequin romance novel because a good bodice-ripper seemed to be appropriate for this holiday of romance, and I had never actually read a Harlequin romance because it just isn't my cuppa tea and this would be my chance to get a feel for them.

Well, I couldn't find a Harlequin romance (perhaps because owners, Susan and Peter, have better taste?) so that left me looking for something appropriate to read on Valentine's day.

Elizabeth Berg's "Until the Real Thing Comes Along" concerns a 30-something woman whose biological clock is ticking and who is madly in love with her gay ex-fiance and can't see herself with anyone else. My review is on my Books Read in 2012 page, so I won't repeat it here, but it did kinda fit into the whole Valentine's Day theme, being concerned with love and marriage and that sort of thing.

The problem with the book was that even though it was nearly 300 pages, it was a very fast read and I ended up with an hour and a half left of my time before I was going to be leaving, so I went to look for another very short book.

I ended up choosing a book I'd heard of for some time, Ilene Beckerman's "Love and Loss and What I Wore." It's a very short book and half of it is cartoonish drawings so I knew I could finish it in plenty of time. If you aren't familiar with the book, it is Beckerman's life as told through the clothes she wore at significant times in her life -- school dances, her wedding, the period of time after her divorce, job interviews, etc. One page explains the situation and the facing page is one of her cartoons, showing herself in that outfit.

Someone reviewing this book on Amazon wrote, "So much of our memories have an affiliation with an outfit...this is a celebration of being a woman."

This was a book I could not relate to at all. I started thinking about it today and tried to remember any clothes that I wore throughout that made such an impact on me that years later I could remember them.

Beckerman starts with her Brownie uniform and so far we were doing well together, she and I. I do remember my Brownie uniform, with its little beanie with the tag on the top of it. I even remember my green Girl Scout uniform and the sash that went across my chest, where my mother sewed on my merit badges.

I also remember my school uniforms, the white middyblouse with blue collar and cuffs and the navy blue pleated skirt that went with it for grammar school, and then the green plaid skirt and white blouse, with green sweater for high school.

It would be surprising if I didn't remember these uniforms, since I wore the grammar school uniform for eight years and the high school uniform for four years. I maybe losing my memory occasionally, but if I forget what those uniforms looked like, we can all start to worry.

But I sat here today and tried to remember "significant" clothes throughout my life. I remember the matching Easter outfits that Karen and I wore one year. They were grey tailored outfits made by a Russian seamstress named Olga Gayno (that last name may be spelled wrong...probably is!). I don't know why I remember that except maybe because having clothes specially tailored for me was a big deal. I don't know who Olga was or how my mother found her. Presumably through my grandmother.

The only other piece of clothing that I can remember during grammar school is a circle skirt that was black and quilted with a gold thread. I loved wearing skirts that "swirled" and this was a good swirling skirt. I usually wore it with a short-sleeved blouse or sweater and a neck scarf because I loved how Audrey Hepburn looked wearing a neck scarf. Somewhere there is a picture of me in that skirt in 8th grade (which is maybe why I remember it).

I've tried and tried and can't think of a thing I wore during my high school years except the yellow dress I wore to my junior prom and the green emerald satin dress I wore to my senior prom. There is a lovely picture of me in that emerald dress.

Of course I remember my wedding dress and the pink suit that was my going-away outfit, but when I think of all the significant events in my life I can't connect any of them to dresses. I don't remember what I wore to any of my job interviews, or what I wore to any of the kids' baptisms. I don't remember the clothes I wore to my children's funerals.

Oh, I can remember some clothes I owned, I remember photos of me in certain dresses or other outfits, but I could not, for the life of me, tell my story by the clothes that I wore.

Heck, I can hardly remember which t-shirt is under the sweatshirt I am wearing as I sit here.

I have to face it -- clothing has never been a big deal in my life, at least not to remember how I felt at certain times by remembering clothes that I wore. Ilene Beckerman, you're a better (wo)man than I am!!!

Ten Facts about Chocolate

2012-02-15T00:02:00.000-08:00

This being the season of chocolate, I thought I would do some research and see what interesting facts I can learn about chocolate.

1. People spend more than $7 billion a year on chocolate. The fact does not state if this is each or grouped together, but I figure that I have significantly helped to reach this total.

2. According to the fact sheet, the per capita consumption of chocolate indicates that each person consumes 12 lbs of chocolate a year. I want to know if this is my limit, like the monthly data usage for Verizon. If this is my limit, I am in big trouble--and it's only February.

3. David Gerrold consumes well over 12 lbs of chocolate a year.

4. In the movie Psycho, Hitchcock used chocolate syrup to simulate blood in the shower scene, which may be why Janet Leigh spent so much time in the shower--she wasn't screaming; she was opening her mouth to catch the chocolate!

It is a little known fact that she gained 5 lbs during the filming of that scene. (OK, I made that last part up.)

5. The first known use of chocolate was by the Mayans from about 250 to 900 A.D. They used cacao for many things, including money. 10 beans would buy you a rabbit, or a prostitute. Of course if you spent all your beans buying a prostitute, you would have no way to keep her happy because you couldn't offer her chocolate truffles.

6. The first recorded case of "Death by Chocolate" occurred in the 17th century when the Catholic church in Chiapas, Mexico issued a ban on chocolate. The townspeople refused to uphold it and the bishop was found dead from poison mixed in his own chocolate. (Even then the clergy were issuing "do as I say, not as I do orders".)

7. More than 60 million Hershey's kisses are made each day. My mother buys most of them.

8. More than twice as many women as men eat and crave chocolate (and this is a surprise to anybody?)

9. The biggest chocolate structure ever made was made in Belgium, using at least 50,000 chocolate bars.

10. People rarely buy chocolate for fat people.

So. Given #10, I have watched each year as Walt buys chocolates for the kids. We've never done gifts for Valentine's Day (such a silly custom), but sometimes a girl just wants to have an excuse for chocolate, you know.

So this year I set about deciding how I was going to treat myself. My first thoughts always turn to See's, the candy I grew up on, but I'm not sure you can actually buy See's in Davis and I certainly wasn't going to drive 20 miles to get myself a few pieces of chocolate. And besides, someone had brought a box to See's to my mother recently and I had had some there.

I thought about getting myself a candy bar, but that seemed too mundane.

I thought of going to the candy store in town but I get all flummoxed when presented with a number of choices behind a glass when someone is waiting for me to decide. And what if they weren't really good, or at least not the taste I was looking forward to.

I bought chocolate croissants for us for breakfast this morning, and served them with strawberry smoothies (Walt found two awesome cards, one from him and one from "the girls.").

I also went to the supermarket and bought a bag of Lindor truffles (which I love) to take with me to the book store.

(I wanted to read a Harlequin romance novel because I've never read one and I figured a good bodice-ripper might be just the thing to read on Valentine's day, but I couldn't find one, so I read this instead...I couldn't pass up the baby feet in the picture!)

There is one of the pen palling bloggers who has been touting her chocolate product. I keep seeing ads for it everywhere, and even sent some to Jeri and Phil for Valentine's Day.

I was recently in the supermarket and noted that it is not available on the store shelves, so I treated myself to a block of chocolate on a stick, which you immerse in a cup of hot milk and let melt for a hot chocolate treat to end the night.

I think I'm all chocolated, now, and able to go for another year before such a splurge! (But I'm dangerously close to my 12 lb limit for 2012.)

Letters...We get Letters...

2012-02-14T04:51:00.001-08:00

Actually today, it's postcards that I'm more concerned about, though I did get a couple of very nice letters.

I have been on PostCrossing for over a year now. I have exchanged somewhere near 300 postcards with people around the world, cards which have traveled, my stats tell me, 1,630,078 miles. I am part of a group of people who have sent, over the years, more than ten million postcards!

Pretty impressive numbers.

This is what my map looks like:

(This isn't entirely accurate, though, because I have received a couple of post cards from Brasil and I notice that South America isn't tagged here and I've had a card from South Africa, though Africa isn't marked either.)

I have been tossing postcards in a box for a year and today I got a bee in my bonnett and decided to sort them by country.

Every surface within my reach was covered with a stack of post cards. It was a surprise to me that I had at least three times more cards from the U.S. than from any other country. I rarely send cards to the US and hadn't realized that I had received so many.

I was also surprised to discover that I had received the most cards from Germany. I would have bet that it was Finland or the Netherlands, but Germany had the thickest pile, with Finland and the Netherlands probably the next thickest.

I have a lot of cards from China, Taiwan (all of whose residents have a very distinctive handwriting, I discovered), and from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.

There were several countries from which I have received only one postcard: Croatia, Norway, Turkey, South Africa, Thailand, the Czech Republic, Vietnam, Italy, Belgium, Moldovia, Estonia, Trinidad & Tobago, and Slovenia.

And I love the dellightful Inge Löök old lady cards from Finland. I only have a few of them, but I'm all ready to go back to Helsinki and go looking for them! Löök was born in Helsinki and her cards remind me of Char and me...how much fun we would have had when we were in that city shopping for cards!

It's also interesting how people write their postcards. Most write short things about the picture on the front, or about their lives (that's what I do, mostly), some write amazingly long personal notes in teeny, tiny print. The disappointing ones are the ones that come with nothing on it, or just "happy postcrossing."

The only down side of Postcrossing (other than the increasing cost of international postage!) is that you don't really make friends on the site. You have the address of someone to mail a card to but unless you want to include your own address, the recipient doesn't have your address. I have received one or two personal messages, but mostly this is about the cards and not findings friends. Still, I have received some really fun cards. If you'd like to see my favorites, you can follow this link.

I also made a major dent in the letters I have not answered during (a) Christmas, (b) my mother's pneumonia, and (c) the computer problems. Still a long way to go, but I'm getting there!

Five letters today alone, along with a bunch of post cards mailed! What's nice about this pen pal project is that some of these pen pals are starting to feel like friends. That's nice.

Arrgh

2012-02-13T00:02:00.000-08:00

I spent the day with pirates...and it's not even "Talk Like a Pirate Day."

With my computer back and all set up again, I have been ploughing through letters that need to be answered. Boy...start a little hobby like letter writing and it's amazing how quickly you get overloaded when you can't write for a few days!!!

Anyway, one pen pal is a guy named Lucas, who is fairly new to pen palling, and who contacted me from the address posted my Pen Pal Project blog. We are in the "getting to know you" period, but when I told him about being a theater critic, he gave me his theater background, which involves touring with Riverdance for a year and then going into a show called The Pirate Queen, which was headed for Broadway, but apparently ran out of steam (and money) in Rochester. Lucas was going to be an understudy.

I was intrigued with the show for two reason, first because I was wondering about all the special effects he talked about and second because, well, with a name like Pirate Queen I wondered if this was Gilbert & Sullivanesque, something historical, or a gay musical. It turns out to be something historical, about the real-life legendary Irish chieftan, Grace O'Malley. Reading through the musical's web site made me want to know more about her, but a brief check didn't yield much in the way of books that sounded interesting on Amazon (which is just as well, since I have too many books waiting right now anyway).

But I did pull up the show on iTunes and listened to enough of the music that I was intrigued and downloaded the whole album.

This musical was from the people who brought you Les Miserables and also the people who brought you Riverdance and there certainly would be no guesswork involved with that! We played part of the score on our way to Sacramento this afternoon and not only is it unmistakably by the people who wrote Les Mis, but even the voices of the performers have the same distinct sound to them. There is the Jean Valjean character (who is the heroine's father), and the heroine who sounds like a grown-up Cosette and there is even a "Master of the House" number with a guy who sounds for all the world like the actor who played M. Thernardier on the original recording.

Shortly before we reached our destination, the music shifted and suddenly there was a Riverdance-like dance number.

Overall, I am liking it, but have only heard about 1/3 of it so far.

Our destination for the afternoon was a LOTS (Light Opera Theater of Sacramento) production of Pirates of Penzance. This show is running two week ends in Sacramento and a week end in Davis and I figured if I could catch it in Sacramento, the review would make a nice bit of promotion for the Davis shows.

Though this company was begun by someone who performed with the Davis Comic Opera company many, many years and left to start his own company (which is now celebrating its 31st year), I had only attended one production. I guess in the early years there was such competition between LOTS and DCOC that it felt somehow a slight to DCOC to cross the causeway and see a LOTS production.

But a couple of years ago, the daughter of some friends at The Lamplighters was playing Katisha in a LOTS production of The Mikado and I went to see her. I thought her performance (even though she was too young for the role) was one of the stronger performances and had some negative things I felt about the overall production. I probably thought the tempos were too slow (after nearly 50 years of Lamplighters productions, I usually think all other companies have tempos too slow...I even challenged film director Mike Leigh about the tempos in his movie, Topsy Turvy, but he very imperiously informed me that they were "absolutely, completely accurate."

Anyway, I hoped that this LOTS Pirates was going to be a good production.

The theater is in a neighborhood in Sacramento in a building which may have been a school at one time. When we were parking, I saw a lot of people in pirate garb walking into the theatre, which seemed very odd, but I thought that maybe the facility was so small that they had to come to the show in their costumes (what a silly thing for me to assume! The very thought of that would give costumers heart attacks!) but, no, it turns out that about 1/4 of the audience had come in pirate costumes to get into the spirit of the thing.

Aargh.

As for the actual Pirates on stage, I was blown away. For one thing, the orchestra may be one of the best community theater orchestras I have heard in this area. Definitely professional level (though I can't figure out why the musical director cut 2½ minutes from the start of the overture, and have written to ask him to give me his thought process before I write the review).

The cast was uniformly excellent. There were a couple who could have had more volume, but man when that first male chorus started singing it was electric, and the women were as good or better. "Hail Poetry" sent chills down my spine. The leads were great, especially the woman who played Mabel, and the young woman in the small role of Edith was the kind of actor you just can't take your eye off. The group should do Oklahoma. She would be the perfect AdoAnnie.

Kelly Daniells as Edith

So the matinee did not disappoint and I look forward to writing the review. I love writing reviews when I am totally and completely familiar with the work...and especially when I actually like the production!

Sunday Stealing

2012-02-12T00:02:00.000-08:00

The 99er Meme, Part 3

51) Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong?
Only one person. But I got him back. A word to the wise: Never do something wrong to a writer.

52) What is your astrological sign?
Aquarius, and from what I know of stereotypical traits of Aquarians, I am the quintessential Aquarian.

53) Do you save money for anything? What?
Not really. I have a small savings account that I haven't touched and now that I'm not working, my income (the money for "miscellaneous sundries" that is kept separate from our joint acount) is from Social Security, most of which goes to the Compassion children.

54) What's the last thing you purchased?
Clothes to wear when I found myself unexpectedly spending the night at my mother's...I couldn't pass up the 60-70% bargains at Macy*s.

55) Have you ever had a relationship that you realized was lust not love?
I don't think so. I can't remember back that far.

56) In a relationship?
Does married count? :)

57) How many relationships have you had?
In my dating years, they weren't really "relationships." We were all so good (or at least I thought we all were so good). But before Walt and I married, I had dated 5 other guys, two in high school and three in college. One went into the seminary; two were gay.

58) What do you want to tell us about your day?
This is "catch-up" day. I have been without my computer for a week and now that it is back, I'm getting caught up on all the useless stuff I would have been working with all week long.

59) Where were you yesterday?
I just went out to drive to the next town over to pick up my computer; otherwise I was at home.

60) Is there anything interesting within 10 feet of you?
Depends on what you consider interesting. What is mostly within 10 feet of me from where I sit, in any direction I look, are books.

61) Are you wearing socks right now?
Yes, some wonderful slipper-sox that I bought when Borders was going out of business. They are thick and soft and I love them.

62) What's your favorite animal?
Favorite domestic animal is the dog, of course.
Favorite farm animal is the horse.
Favorite wild animal is the elephant. I am fascinated by elephants.

63) What is your secret weapon to get someone to like you?
I don't have one, which is why I have so few close friends. :)

64) Where is your best friend?
My mother has been my lifelong best friend, and if you ask "where" she is, I'd say she is still there, but slowly slipping away.

65) How did your last relationship end?
The last guy I dated before I married Walt was his best friend, who married my roommate. The "dating" part of our relationship just ended when he told me he was too old for me. Seeing how we have both aged, I'm very glad that he ended things. We would have killed each other eventually, we are so different.

66) What is your heritage?
Scotch, Irish, and a bit of German thrown in.

67) What were you doing last night at 12 AM?
I think I was asleep by then.

68) What's new?
My newly un-infected computer!!!

69) What is the key to seduction?
Damned if I know.

70) What was the weirdest thing that happened to you this week??
Nothing really weird, but having to detour around a long stretch of road on which there were multiple accidents, was out of the ordinary. But it gave me the opportunity to drive through some lovely scenic areas and listen to my audio book, so I didn't really mind.

71) You are walking down the street on your way to work. There is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. Your boss has told you if you are late one more time you get fired. What do you do?
I mentally rewrite my resume while I'm rescuing the dog.

72) You are at the doctor’s office and she has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. a) Do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? b) What do you do with your remaining days? c) Would you be afraid?
I'd come home and write a blog entry about it, so everyone would know. I would try to get my kids to come and spend time here, and I would be afraid, but not "deathly" afraid. I think.

73) You can only have one of these things: trust or love.
Love.

74) What's a song that always makes you happy when you hear it?
"Thank God, You're Doing Fine" by Lawsuit

75) Who has your cell phone number (other than family)?
A few friends and my computer guru.

Saturday 9

2012-02-11T12:37:00.000-08:00

Inspired by "One Gal's Musings," I'm doing this meme today.

1. Do you enjoy going to a casino now and again?
No. Too loud, and I never win when I try to gamble. I'd rather go to a show.

2. What makes you happy most of the time?
A clear, clear day in San Francisco, the sound of the ocean, my dogs...

3. Are you jealous of someone right now?
Yes

4. You're stranded on a desert island with one fictional character. Who is it? Why?
Kay Scarpetta. She's clever, she's interesting, she'd probably be a great survivalist, she's a great cook...and I'd like to ask her why she let Patricia Cornwell change her character so much.

5. Have you ever been in the emergency room? If yes, for what (most recently)?
Many times when my kids were growing up, for myself only once in 2003, when I fell over the handlebars on my bike during a charity ride and dislocated my shoulder.

6. Where is the last place you drove to just for fun?
I drove to Sacramento (20 miles from here) to have lunch with a friend, and then since the day was so beautiful, I drove out into the country for a little ways just for the heck of it.

7. If you were to make your living as a photographer, what would love to shoot?
I love photographing so many things, primarily small children and dogs. But I love to take nature pictures and just anything that happens to catch my eye at the moment.

8. Tell us about a band you like that we might not have heard.
Anybody who has read my blog for any length of time knows about the band Lawsuit, but for those who have not...enjoy...

(Sorry the quality isn't great...but it may grow on you)

9. Where was the last place you went shopping?
I went to SaveMart to buy milk and coffee creamer for my mother

My Pet (Dust) Bunny

2012-02-11T00:02:00.000-08:00

I picked up my computer this afternoon. This is one of the many photos my guru showed me to let me know how full of dust the machine had been...

There was an even bigger blob in an earlier picture. Very embarrassing! But who knew you should clean out the inside of your computer? I've had a computer for about 25 years and I've never cleaned out the inside. Walt says he's cleaned his once, when he dropped something and had to open the machine to retrieve it, and decided to get some dust out at the same time. In fact, the guru had even told me when last serviced it that it wasn't all that bad and that I should see some of the computers he had to clean out. I suppose I now have become one of "those" computers.

He says you should open your computer twice a year and blow out the dust. So all of you who, like me, never thought of doing such a thing should take heart! Get yourself some canned air and give your computer a blow job.

The other thing he told me is that reg cleaners, like My Clean PC, are scams. They charge for a program which accesses your files, gives the company your vital information and eventually will infect it with a huge virus so they can charge you another amount to fix the virus. DO NOT BE FOOLED BY THE SLICK ADS FOR MY CLEAN PC seems to be the lesson learned!

This guy really knows his stuff, but I'm not sure if he thinks I'm an idiot or a savant (or perhaps an idiot savant). His office is on 3rd street and he told me that as I entered town, I would see 6th street, then I should go to 5th and then 4th and then 3rd. Like I couldn't count down from 6 to 3. But then he gets me into his workshop and he tosses out so much technospeak which just spews forth in a continuous stream. He's sitting down, I'm standing up. He can see the screen, I can't focus in it, and when I do see what he's talking about I can't make heads or tails of the stuff I'm seeing on the screen. And even if I could, it takes me longer to process and by the time I'm starting to process, he is 4 lines of code ahead of me.

We got the computer home and set back up again. The Guru has the laptop, now, which started just fine for him, though I tried for 2 days to get it to start, unsuccessfully. Walt is happy. He has his computer back, and I only added a dozen bookmarks to his system! :)

For those who have been following my mother's health problems, you must read the journal entry I wrote one year ago today. It is called "The Road to Wellville" When I read it, I called her and we both laughed a lot.

Pooh Bah and the Pill

2012-02-10T00:02:00.000-08:00

In The Mikado, the character of PoohBah, in explaining how he came to be such a powerful politician says to Nanki Pooh, "When all the great officers of State resigned in a body because they were too proud to serve under an ex-tailor, did I not unhesitatingly accept all of their posts at once?"

Pooh Bah later talks with KoKo, the controversial new Lord High Executioner, about the arrangements for his upcoming nuptials.

Koko says, "I want to consult you about the amount I should spend on them."

Pooh Bah responds, "Certainly. In which of my capacities? As First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Chamberlain, Attorney-General, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Privy Purse or Private Secretary?"

As the conversation continues, KoKo learns that if he consults one of Pooh Bah's roles he might get a desirable result, but then there is another role which would deny him that result. "Speaking as your private secretary, I should say that as the city will have to pay for it, don't stint yourself, do it well.....Of course you will understand that, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, I am bound to see that due economy is observed." etc.

I thought about Pooh Bah's many roles when I was listening to the latest about the kerfuffle over birth control coverage for employees of Catholic institutions (medical, educational, etc.).

In its role as a religious institution, the church has every right to control its followers, those who are willing to be controlled, and to refuse to make something it considers sinful available to its followers.

BUT in its role as a business which employs not only Catholics, but also members of other religions, and even people who have no religious affiliation, is it right to act as a religious organization and impose its beliefs on non-believers?

Suppose you run a hospital. Your top surgeon is Jewish and your chief cardiologist is Buddhist and a nice Muslim runs the pharmacy. All of these MDs are women and all want to use birth control. Should the BUSINESS wing of this organization force its RELIGIOUS beliefs on these employees?

Seems to me there was a time in this country when everybody was up in arms, certain that a Catholic president would take orders from the Pope, and furious about how wrong that would be.

I had lunch today with a friend who heads up one arm of one of the Catholic businesses in the area. I asked her what was happening in her office after all this brouhaha erupted. She said essentially nothing. She said it's no big whoop. It just means that if they don't now offer a medical plan that includes birth control options they now need to offer one.

I don't know about you, but when I was working I had my opportunity each year to change my medical plan. We have always had Kaiser, but we also could have chosen a number of other plans, most of which offer coverage for birth control.

This is not a religious issue, it should be a labor issue.

Even local religious organizations here acknowledge that. But this is a great attack point (isn't everything?) against the Obama administration. This is going to be a big scary monster talking point in the coming campaign for the White House. Twenty-eight states now already require insurance coverage for birth control...but nobody thought to scream about it until now.

This is why I hate elections and their rhetoric and the made-up crises that want to strike fear and terror into the hearts of voters. And it ain't only the Republicans, I admit. But this particular issue is all anybody is talking about today.

Maybe someone should start interviewing the Groom of the Back Stairs for a change of pace.

* * *

Our lunch today was such fun. We discussed this birth control/religion issue at length along with lots of other things. We go our separate ways after our lunch and never call, write, or visit until another month has passed and we do it all over again. I so miss talking with people about current events, books, religion, work, and lots of other things. Today she called me "one of my intelligent friends," which tells you why I enjoy her company so much!

I am still without my own computer. I thought I would get it back today, but no. Maybe tomorrow morning. I am still limping along in HTML coding on Walt's computer, which I apparently screwed up (he can't find his home page any more because I checked my g-mail and now it thinks that he is me and has erased his home page), but my guru assures me I will have it back tomorrow...and I told him I would be trading my desktop for my laptop so he can fix THAT too.

So far my cell phone is still working!

Gooe Deeds? Feh.

2012-02-09T00:02:00.000-08:00

Someone once said "no good deed goes unpunished." That's kind of how I'm feeling this afternoon.

I worked my shift at the book store yesterday, Walt picked me up, we came home, I posted yesterday's journal entry, packed up my stuff, got into the car and headed to my mother's. She had called to ask if I could pick up half a gallon of milk and some coffee creamer for her, so my first stop was to the supermarket to buy her stuff.

It was about 9 or so when I got there and when I handed her the stuff she had asked for, she sheepishly admitted that she had forgotten (a) that I was coming (despite three phone calls), and (b) that she had asked me to bring anything, so she had called my cousin and SHE had brought milk and coffee creamer. At least she won't need either of those items for awhile now.

I could see right away that this was not going to be a "good memory" visit. I was very sleepy, for some reason, so I wasn't up for visiting very long, but I answered the questions "what is my doctor's name?" and "why am I seeing him?" over and over again. She also insists she never made this appointment and had not even given the woman on the phone her personal information, though the FIRST thing you do on the phone before you walk to anybody is to give your medical record number.

But we went to the appointment. This was her orthopedist. She has a "trigger finger" which is extremely painful and the pain is eased by a cortisone shot, which lasts about a year. This was her third injection, the last being given in March of 2011, so it was just a routine visit and went without incident, which was a good thing.

I'm still trying to solve the problem of how to get access to my mother's records on line. Kaiser has a web site which I tried to set up for her and--totally my own fault--I screwed up because I forgot which log-in name I had used and which password I had used. I tried to get the password re-set, and it had to be mailed and then that re-mailed password didn't work either. Twice. I gave up, but with my mother's increasing memory problems, I felt it was more important that I stay on top of her appointments, her meds, and access to her doctor.

So this morning I called member services and the person I talked with told me that if I brought my mother to the member services office they could solve the problem for me right there.

Well. Not quite.

First, the member services office had moved. Ironically it is now about three blocks from my mother's house. We met with a rep, who says that no, they can't do anything for me. Nothing. But she did give me the number of their web master (it's an 800 number, so I don't think it's all that special a number!) and told me to call as my mother and see what they could help me with. ("but I never told you that.")

I can't do anything about it until I get my computer back, because all of the information I need to identify me as my mother is on the hard drive. Of course.

So I headed on home before lunch so Walt could have the car to go to San Francisco to meet Mike & Char for the symphony.

There is a road (Hwy 39) that connects Hwy 101 (where San Rafael is) to Hwy 80 (the road to Davis). It takes about 30 minutes to drive across it. Except for today, when there was an accident on 39 and the entire road was shut down, barricaded by Highway Patrol cars. We were all shunted off toward Napa as a detour. It took forever because there was a major accident on that road too. We were stopped long enough for me to send pictures and texts to Walt. When we started moving, it was about 2 mph for a long time.

I didn't really mind because I had my book to listen to and I could see that I would still get home in time for Walt to get the car, so I just relaxed and kept driving and listening.

I got home, gave the dogs their treats and went to turn on the computer. I had left it "shutting down" when I left for my mother's. It never occurred to me that it would not shut down. But it had not.

I finished shutting it down, then fired it up again and it got to the screen that says "Windows is starting..." where it has sat for 3 hours now. I tried starting it in "safe mode," and it starts just fine, but as soon as it gets to that "Windows is starting..." screen it just sits there.

I had been so cavalier about having the desktop with the guru because I had finally gotten my laptop set up so that it behaves like the desktop.

And now it, too, has screwed up on me. I guess when the desktop comes back, I will give the guru the laptop. And will beg and plead with Walt to let me use his laptop in the meantime and continue writing blog entries in HTML code (hoping I have gotten it right here!)

Addicted? Why yes I am addicted, why do you ask?

I * I * I

2012-02-08T00:02:00.000-08:00

I'm writing this the morning of February 7. I am going to work at the book store today, then going to my mother's so I will be there to take her to the doctor at 9 a.m. tomorrow (the orthopedist this time!) So I'm doing this list that I got from Kwizgiver (the queen of meme!) and posting it now so I don't have to worry about not having a new entry in the morning. (Compulsives can be so frustrating!)

Ten things that begin with the letter I:

Some things I am not fond of:

1) Idiots.
Now that we have an election cycle that lasts two years...or longer...there are more and more idiots out there, some of them parading as smart people.

2) Intolerance.
Whoever thought Rodney King would become the spokesperson for a generation, but to quote Rodney, "can't we all just get along?" The devisiveness I see based on arbitrary classifications (race, religion, sexual orientation, body type, nationality, etc., etc.) is just appalling. What would Jesus/Mohammed/Buddha think of all this stuff?

3) Illness
I am very fortunate to have fairly good health, but I am not fond of illness, especially when it affects my mother.

Things that make me happy:

4) Internet.
Kwizgiver had this as #10 but it has to be higher on my list. I love being connected to the world, to be able to check anything I want at a moment's notice (thank you, Google). What can I say? I'm addicted

5) Ireland.
Kwizgiver had this on her list also. I remember the very first trip to Ireland, by ferry across from Holyhead to Dun Laoghaire (the port for Dublin) and seeing the land come into view. I had the strongest feeling of "coming home" and that feeling has never left me on several trip to the auld sod.

6) Ice cream.
I feel like Kwizgiver and I could be good friends. This is also on her list and I loved her answer "What can I say? I'm a fat girl. I like ice cream."

7) iPhone.
OK. So it's really a droid, but it is iPhone-like and I have finally come to love it. The problem with it is that now that I'm learning how best to use it and take advantage of all the features, and the more I've watched all my friends and kids using them, it's making me realize that, despite what I've said, I really do want to have an iPad some day!

8) Iceland
I've never been to Iceland, but the thought of maybe going some day makes me happy. I don't know why I feel the desire to visit Iceland, but I have for many years.

9) Impressionists.
I love the Impressionists, especially Van Gogh. I've been to several Impressionists exhibits and always am blown away by what I'm seeing.

10) Indigo.
Indigo runs "That's My Answer," the first web site I go to each morning. She asks usually 3 questions a day on many different topics and a nice little community has grown up around the people who answer the questions. If you haven't checked it out, please do! It's such fun and only takes a couple of minutes a day.

As an example of the diversity, the current questions are: "What is the longest bridge you've ever been on? Did it make you nervous," "How do you deal with jealousy?" "What were your favorite Super Bowl commercials?"

Rocking My World

2012-02-07T00:02:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning to the announcement that there was a 6.8 magnitude earthquake in central Philippines this morning. Little Fred, my favorite of my Compassion children, lives in the Philippines.

"At least 13 people were killed and 40 are believed missing, most of them along the shore near the epicenter of the 6.8-magnitude quake that struck in a narrow strait just off Negros Island."

Eight year old Fred lives near La Carlota City, with his parents and sister.

To put it in geographical perspective here is a map of the Philippines, with the earthquake area circled.

Compassion is pretty good about letting sponsors know about things that affect their children, but this quake is brand new and, as with the Haiti quake, it will take a long time before they know how bad it is.

Fred's family has already had such tragedy, with the death of his younger sister a year ago. My heart aches for them and what they must be going through right now.

Compassion supposedly improved connection between sponsors and kids last year. They devised this new great way to correspond with your child--all done on line, where you write a letter and include photos, and it's all printed at the compassion office, translated, and sent to your child.

I love it and write more frequently (though don't send as many letter with gifts attached, since I'm doing so much on line....you can still send things via snail mail, but this way is so easy).

The apparent downside of this new thing that we are all so excited about is that more people are writing and so it takes longer to get letters. Before the new system started, I was receiving at least one letter a week from one of my 11 Compassion kids. Now I have received none for over a month and the Compassion rep, who used to sound so encouraging and comforting, now sounds testy and wondering why I am so impatient. They can't seem to understand that I'm worried about the fact that NOBODY has written, where before almost all of them did frequently.

I'm just glad we can get letters from the children, but this new apparent slow-down means that it will be literally months before I know whether Fred and his family have been affected by this earthquake, when it appears that he is very close to the epicenter.

You know...those Compassion folks are really sneaky. They actually have me praying for the first time in years, that this little boy I have grown to love and all of his family are safe.

Sunday Stealing

2012-02-06T00:02:00.000-08:00

The 99'er Meme: Part 2

6 February 2012

26) Are you happy with the person you've become?
Is anybody really? I'm happy about some parts of who I am today, not happy about other parts of the today me.

27) What's a sound you hate; sound you love?
I hate the sound of a crashing car; I love the sound of the ocean.

28) What's your biggest "what if"?
What if I had not dropped out of college...?

29) Do you believe in ghosts? How about aliens?
I do believe in ghosts. I wrote an article about a house full of them. As for aliens, I think it is the height of self-centeredness to think that in this vast universe this little speck is the only place where there is intelligent life (and lately, I'm wondering about the "intelligent" part of that!)

30) Stick your right arm out; what do you touch first? Do the same with your left arm.
The right arm first touches a bucket where I keep all of my incoming, to-be-answered letters; my left arm touches my cell phone, on top of my desk.

31) Smell the air. What do you smell?
Brewing coffee. Mmmmmm....

32) What's the worst place you have ever been to?
I'm not sure if I can remember "the" worst, but I'm sure it was on a camping trip with the Blackfords.

33) Choose: East Coast or West Coast?
I was born and raised in San Francisco and have never lived out of California, so I definitely choose the West Coast.

34) Most attractive singer of your opposite gender?
Placido Domingo

35) To you, what is the meaning of life?
42

36) Define: Art.
I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.

37) Do you believe in luck?
Yeah, I do. Take me to any casino and have me gamble for a bit and I'll prove it. I have zero luck!!!

38) Patriots or Giants? Or, who gives a rat's ass?
Don't really give a rat's ass, but if I have to choose, it would be Patriots, because (A) our daughter lives in Boston, and (B) the Giants beat the 49ers, and that's just not fair!

39) Will you watch the game? If yes, with who?
I will have it on; I doubt that I will watch much.

40) Do you drive? If so, have you ever crashed?
Yes, I drive. I had an accident my first day of driving when I ran into the back of a parked car. Later that year, I took off both right side doors on my parents car trying to drive into the yard of my high school. Fortunately, nothing since then.

41) What was the last book you read?
"Talk to the Hand" by Lynne Truss

42) Do you like the smell of gasoline?
Love it! Whenever I pump my own gas, I realize that I could easily become addicted to the stuff!

43) Do you have any nicknames?
Does "Mom" count?

44) What was the last movie you saw?
The latest "Sherlock Holmes" movie.

45) What's the worst injury you've ever had?
Flying over my bike handle, landing on my head, and dislocating my shoulder. My first and (so far) only trip in an ambulance.

46) Have you ever caught a butterfly?
I am ashamed that as a child, when on vacation in Sonoma County, I used to catch butterflies and pin them to a collection board and watch their wings flap until they died. It never occurred to me that I might be causing them pain.

47) Do you have any obsessions right now?
Writing letters and post cards.

48) Do you go to church?
I left the Catholic church over many things, but primarily its treatment of gay Catholics and the nun and priest who created a gay ministry in San Francisco. Neither situation has changed and so many other terrible things make me glad that I made that choice.

49) Ever had a rumor spread about you?
Not that I've ever been aware of.

50) Do you believe in magic?
I've seen too many magicians and heard their tales of how they do their tricks to ever believe in magic. I believe in magical moments, but not magician-magic.

God's Still Laughing

2012-02-05T00:02:00.000-08:00

I started out the week talking about how if you wanted to hear God laugh, tell him your plans. That was the day that my plans had been to work in the book store, until my mother called to ask me to take her to the doctor, and I ended up spending the day and night in San Rafael.

I certainly had no plans to spend last night cleaning my office, disconnecting the computer and trying to set up this lap top to use while the computer is off in ICU until the virus can be removed.

And my plan for today had been to attend a 5-hour photography seminar north of Sacramento. It was to start at 4 so Walt and I planned to have our sushi dinner in honor of David's birthday tomorrow instead.

First I called my mother and was pleased to learn that she is starting to feel better. The meds are finally kicking in.

Next, I took the computer to my guru in Woodland. Fortunately, I already had the laptop set up here, so I didn't have to beg him to get the computer done speedily...just get it finished.

I came home, took a nap, and then went to get the camera I was going to learn on and get ready to go to the class. The battery in the camera was dead, so I went to change it, but I couldn't open the door where you put the battery.

That little slider at #1 was corroded and immovable and it was impossible to slide the battery door in the #2 direction. I tried and tried and Walt tried and tried and it just would not budge.

By this time I really wasn't feeling like going to the class anyway and so I decided not to go at all. I dropped a note to that effect to Facebook and someone suggested that I use a paste of baking soda and water on the lever. I did and miraculously I was able to free it up so that it slide back and forth, but I still couldn't move the battery door. I guess I'm going to have to take it to a camera shop, but there is none in Davis, nor in nearby Woodland, so I'll have to wait until I'm next going to Sacramento during the daytime.

In the meantime I had a call from the guru who told me that my computer was filled with so much dust and debris that it had been in danger of starting a fire, should a spark erupt near it. I don't know how often you open your computer to dust the inside, but he says it should be done twice a year. He said that the two memory sticks were so covered with dust that it explained why I've been having memory problems on the computer and that once he got all the dust cleared away, it showed that I had triple the usable memory than I had before. Who knew? Turns out Walt has cleaned the inside of his computer but never thought to suggest that to me. I honestly never thought about doing it, it being an enclosed system and all.

Anyway, he rattled on and on, as computer geeks do, explaining things that went way over my head because I don't have the technical lingo, but something about the CMOS burning out and his replacing it (I read the explanation of CMOS on Wikipedia and I'm more confused than ever...anyway the replacement will be less than $5.) He will get on eradicating the viruses starting on Monday and will call me next week. Thank goodness I am comfortable with this laptop.

While I was talking to the guru, Walt's sister called from the road and said she would be here in about half an hour. Walt invited her to go to a Japanese restaurant with us, which she was happy to do.

We went to Osaka Sushi in Woodland and had a lovely dinner, though I ended up not eating sushi after all.

This was on the "senior menu" and was just the right amount. We remembered David and enjoyed our food before coming back home.

Rather than face the dogs eagerly awaiting us at the front door. Alice Nan decided to just get in her car and head to her next stop, their brother's house, where she will watch the Super Bowl before heading back to Santa Barbara again.

I have no plans for tomorrow, which is probably better, since if I had, who knows what sort of monkeywrench God would toss into the works at me!

The one thing everyone remembers about Dave was his big smile.
Happy birthday, David, wherever you are...

Pulling My Hair Out

2012-02-04T00:41:00.001-08:00

It had been my intention to address all the commotion around the Komen Foundation's decision to remove funding from Planned Parenthood. The reversal of that decision took some wind out of my sails, but still doesn't really restore the full funding, merely states that they are free to apply for funds in the future.

However, I didn't have time to research the issue fully because my computer blew up on me.

It was a return of that Security Shield virus I got a couple of weeks ago. This is an alarming notice that pops up and tells you that you are in danger and you can only get out of danger by buying a program, supposedly (but not really) from Microsoft, that will clean up all the viruses that have accumulated.

It's insidious. It makes many of your program unusable. I tried opening up Notebook and got the blaring message that the program is infected and it won't let you use it. It also gives you a list of all the files on your computer which are infected with nasty viruses. It looks all official 'n' stuff.

When you try to open a supposedly infected file, a big red warning appears and you can't do anything. It keeps asking you "are you SURE you want to proceed without protection?" It's very effective, using lots of scary red and exclamation points and incredulity that you would even THINK of proceeding unprotected.

The "protection" "only" costs $80 and from all I've read, does nothing. There are tons of sites on line which say they can help you remove the virus and I tried one, waited 20 minutes or so and went through all the steps only to discover that this, too, wanted money to fix the problems and remove the virus.

I tried following some instructions for deleting the virus and I don't remember what I did at that time, but doing whatever I did and then doing a system restore seemed to work and I've had a few weeks of blissful ignorance.

But I picture this virus like some science fiction monster, which, when defeated, retreats to his cave and licks his wounds and then comes back bigger and stronger than ever.

The big strong Chtorr-like virus returned today. In spades...big, red spades. The faster I tried to work around it, the bigger the warnings got until I got a warning, when I tried to get to the System Restore screen, that filled my screen and could not be removed. I could only reboot the computer and the second I rebooted and got back in again, there was that damn blocking screen again. I was dead in the water.

So I called my guru. I wasn't even going to TRY to do anything with this thing, because I don't know how to tell the fake fixes from the real fixes. I wanted it done professionally. I made an appointment to take the computer in to his office in the morning.

That meant disconnecting it. Do you know how much dust accumulates on computer cords in a space of a few short years? I tried to take careful note of which cord went where, and tried to label which cord did what so I could restore it all when the computer comes back.

In the meantime, no problem--I would just use the laptop . I'd done it before. Only this time nothing went right. I finally got the cords straightened out and connected both of my back up hard drives to the computer, so I'd have access to most of (but not all of) my files.

When I fired up the computer, it showed that I was connected to the Sykes router, but that I had no internet connection. Walt and I tried almost everything and I was so frustrated. It was 10 p.m., and too late to call anyone at DCN to get help. I just figured I would have to go to Mishka's in the morning, which seemed crazy, since I have a perfectly good wifi connection here--heck, my CELL PHONE works, but neither computer did.

Finally Walt tried a different plug for the router to connect to the modem and suddenly we had internet connection again.

I always swear I am going to remember how to do all this stuff, but the problem is that I may go months or years before I need to know whatever it is that I learn during crises and since I can only barely remember things better than my mother, the chance of remembering something highly technical is essentially nil.

But I am back on line again and I can post this, I think. This will probably be a good time to install my new printer, now that I can't connect the current one to the laptop and I will go nuts without being able to write letters while the virus is being killed. But that probably won't get done tomorrow.

Have I mentioned that I hate computers? When they are good, they are very, very good--but when they are bad, they are horrid!

Oh What the Heck

2012-02-03T00:02:00.000-08:00

Let's finish this tsatske project and be done with it. Here are the last two shelves.

It's actually one long shelf and here is the left end of it.

The little bell on the left was given to us by Suzanne, a woman from Switzerland who stayed with us for awhile. She was amazing. She wanted to buy a car and rode one of our bikes from Davis to the far side of Sacramento to car-shop, and then had us drive her back to pick it up the next day. I believe Jeri visited her in Switzerland that year.

Next to the bell is a thing that looks like a hockey puck. That was a gift of appreciation given to all of us on her committee from Joan Sallee to thank us for working on her campaign for School Board.

There is a jester ceramic mask-ish thing that I bought as my souvenir of New Orleans when we went with the jazz choir to be a chaparone. Next to that is my prized "cuteware" box, by Davis artist Heidi Bekebrede. I got that at one of Walt's office White Elephant games at a Christmas party. I couldn't believe someone wanted to get rid of it.

Behind the cuteware you can make out a silver statue of a horse pulling a wagon load of hay. That also came from Suzanne in Switzerland.

To the right of the wagon is a little vase that I bought on an Apache reservation we were driving through. We stopped to look at all the vendor stands and I stood there waiting for Walt to go back and get money. I still remember the stoney face of the woman and how she never even looked at me during that awkward period.

The two copper things, a tiny teapot and a little vase-like thing, came from a guy from Chile who stayed here. I'm not sure about the two glass things (one a vase, one a glass). I think they both came from Cousin Nora in Ireland, but I'm not sure. The dark statue on the left was a gift from Walt's mother after she had visited Thailand. The two beeer steins were from another of her trips, this one to Germany.

This is the other half of the shelf. There are two plain ol' plastic water bottles, one from Weathervane Playhouse in Ohio, where Jeri worked summer stock for a couple of years, the other from Kilbarri park in Australia, where I visited with Peggy. The last bottle was from our friend Eric's wedding to his wife Nan. Behind that is a square thingie which, I believe, came from Chile, though I could be mistaken about that.

The photo frame shows pictures from Walt's surprise 50th birthday party.

To the right of that is a Mexican chocolate stirrer, which a guy from Mexico (from the town where XX beer is made) brought. To the right of that is a glass from New Orleans, which held my Hurricane (drink).

The cool mask is something Paul made. It was a school project and it fit his head. Doesn't come close to slipping on my big head.

The candle in front has no significance, other than I put it on the table as a decoration one Christmas and somehow it just never got packed away again.

And there you have it...all the stuff on our glass etageres and the stories behind them. If we ever get to all the rest of the junk around here and puttin them back in their place again, I will do another record.

The Oz Shelves

2012-02-02T00:02:00.000-08:00

You'll be happy to know this is the pentultimate tsatske entry. Today I'll deal with the Judy Garland (more accurately Wizard of Oz) shelves. The thing is that I've been a lifelong Judy Garland fan, but never really a big Wizard of Oz fan, but it seems that lots of people give me Oz stuff. And, in truth, I have even bought myself Oz stuff. So here is that collection of stuff. It occupies not one but two shelves on the etagere.

As I look at this shelf, the embarrassing thing is that I don't really remember who gave me most of these things. That glittery ruby slipper in the back was the "box" that came with a Wizard of Oz watch that my mother gave me one year. The star isn't technically anything having to do with Judy Garland or Wizard of Oz. My friend Ann gave it to me one Christmas many years ago. It has glitter in it which floats around when you turn the star upside down. It just seemed the right shelf for it.

I think I bought the water globe myself, but it may have been a gift and if it was, I abjectly apologize to the person who gave it to me!

I do know that the picture at the back of the shelf...

...was the only one of those "put your face in here" souvenir pictures I have ever taken...but how could I not? This was taken in the tourist trap shops along Waikiki Beach on a trip Walt and I made with a couple of Brasilian couples.

This is the second shelf.

That Dorothy doll that is on the left is one that Jeri made for me and you can't see it, but at Dorothy's feet is a little brown Toto. I know I bought the two plates, and I don't remember who gave me the two little sets of figurines that line the "Oz" bell. I also don't remember who gave me the Dorothy box on the right.

But I know where I got the framed card in the middle.

It was a birthday card given to me by Ned's friend Brendan (who died in March of last year). He was afraid I might be offended, but it was the only card I think I have ever framed, and it's had a place of honor in the living room ever since.

Naturally the inside of the card says "Toto--I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more."

What's missing on these shelves, which must still be packed away somewhere, is my Dorothy cow that Tom gave me--a cow dressed in Dorothy's gingham pinafore and ruby red hooves. One of my favorites!

The Mask

2012-02-01T13:50:00.000-08:00

You know what they say about the best laid plans.. or "if you want to hear God laugh, just tell him your plans."

Well, my plan for yesterday had been to work at the book store, but then my mother called early in the morning. The minute I heard her voice, I knew she was not well. When Peach and I had been there for Cousins Day last week, she had the start of a cold. She almost canceled, but decided she didn't feel that bad and she really wanted to see us.

Other than some coughing, the obvious signs of a cold, and going to bed early, she seemed OK. In the morning she was feeling sick, but not all that bad.

That was a week ago.

Each day I've been calling to check on her and each day she has felt worse. Finally, when she called yesterday, she said she thought she needed to go to the doctor. For my mother to agree (let alone ask) to see a doctor she needs to be at death's door, so I knew this was serious and I called the guy who is the manager of the book store, told him I couldn't work, and I was on the road about 10 minutes after she called.

I was halfway there before I realized I had forgotten to put on my bra. Fortunately, I was wearing regular pants, not pajama pants!

It was obvious that she was really feeling awful. She said she was so disoriented that she didn't even know what she was supposed to do. She was coughing continually. She ached all over.

We went off to the doctor. "Wouldnl't you know the ONE day I need to see a doctor is the day of a nurse's strike," she said many, many times, though the nurses had walked off in sympathy with another union and it hadn't affected my mother's doctor at all.

But anyway, we got in to the see the doctor and the nurse handed my mother a mask to wear so she wouldn't spray germs all over the office.

Well...my mother hated the mask. She kept taking it off because she didn't want the doctor to see her looking like she did with the mask. I kept telling her it was to protect the doctor from her germs. She did keep it on until we left the office to go to x-ray to check for pneumonia. She took it off in the elevator because she didn't want to look "stupid, stupid, stupid" (her frequent comment). I told her she needed to keep it on for the safety of the other patients. Sitting in the waiting room, she took it off because she felt stupid. She didn't want the x-ray tech to see her looking stupid.

We went back to the doctor and yes, she does have a mild case of pneumonia and she prescribed some antibiotics. The doctor also asked me to spend the night with her, which I had already figured I should probably do.

We went to the pharmacy, which was packed with people and my mother took the mask off because she didn't want to look stupid. She kept asking over and over again, "how did I get pneumonia. I haven't been anywhere but Safeway and church." I commented, dryly, that she probably got it from someone in Safeway who was sick, but who refused to wear a mask to protect the other people in the store. So then she put the mask on, but took it off when she was about to have a face to face interaction with the clerk because, you know, it's better to cough germs on her than to look stupid.

When I try to talk to her about her responsibility to other people she becomes "cute." She acts like some co-ed who is flirting with a guy, thinking that because she is being cute, I won't give her a hard time. I did stop short of saying "With the mask on you look like someone who cares about not making people around you sick. With the mask off you look like someone who is more concerned with your appearance than the health of others around you."

(I had to write that because I wanted to say it SO often yesterday, but didn't want to hurt her feelings.)

So anyway, we finally got the meds and came home. I left her to take a long nap (which she did) and I went off on an adventure. Sort of.

Since I hadn't planned on spending the night, I had no change of clothes and I desperately needed a shower and to wash my hair. I figured if I could buy some sort of "thing" to wear while I washed my clothes then I could take a shower and we'd be just fine. Well, when you're my size, just try to find clothes. Any clothes.

There was no fat lady store in the Northgate Mall, so I tried Sears. Their director says there is a fat lady section, but darned if I could find it. I walked through the entire mall and to Macy*s. Their clothes are on the second floor, but their fat lady section is on the 3rd floor (I don't know why I was offended by that) and I actually did find a pair of slacks that fit me and two tops that fit me. Everything was at least 50% off, some where 60% off. There was no underwear anywhere.

I told the sales clerk that I didn't have my Macy*s card and that I hadn't used it in years, but that I could charge on Visa, which I did.

On the way downstairs, just on a whim I checked out the "intimate apparel" department, certain that there would be nothing for me because there never is, but lo and behold, they did have things in my size and I bought 3 pairs of underpants and a nightgown (the "thing" I was looking for in the first place) that was priced at $70, but with the discount was only $20. Too good a bargain to pass up.

Ultimately, since I didn't get back home until nearly time to go out and buy pizza for dinner, I never did take a shower that night and didn't need to wash my cloths. But I did need the clean underwear, so it was good that I went shopping...and now I have new clothes to wear after all!

My mother had a horrible night and slept hardly at all. I knew if I stayed longer, she would feel the need to sit up with me and be gracious so I packed up and headed home. I've already had two phone calls about things she can't remember. I'm still toying with going back down there maybe tomorrow, but she has an army of people who have called to do things for her, so I probably won't, unless she needs me.

A Quandary

2012-01-31T00:02:00.000-08:00

My quandary is one that will make most of you roll your eyes, especially Jeri, who is all about the beauty of silence and a gadget-less life, and Walt, who has to live with me.

When I moved into my first apartment in 1962, it was the first time I'd ever lived alone. I turned to the television to keep me company. It didn't matter what the show was; I chose the one that most appealed to me, however little (like Popeye cartoons, for example) and kept it on in the background. It may have been that I didn't ever watch it, but I liked the background noise.

Some people turn to radio or their personal collection of music, but somehow if I have music on, it's because there is music I want to listen to, so I listen to it. I don't just have it on in the background. Background music makes me nervous for some reason.

But I can have TV on in the background and it is company.

It's also my clock. Weekends are difficult because there is no set routine, but Monday to Friday it has been: The Today Show, Regis and Kelly (before Regis reteired), The Today Show again, marathons of Criminal Minds, NCIS, SVU, or something else like that to 4 p.m. when I may or may not turn on Chris Matthews, then Keith Olbermann, then Rachel Maddow (for 30 minutes), then Jeopardy, and then the evening shows, which end at 11 p.m. with The Daily Show. I go to sleep to The Golden Girls, and wake up to the local news before The Today Show starts it all over again.

If I want to know what time it is, I don't need a watch. I just need to see which show is playing to get a general idea.

I've watched The Today Show since Dave Garroway wrestled with J. Fred Muggs. I have been through Barbara Walters, Jane Pauley, Deborah Norville (never liked her as co-anchor), Katie Couric, Meredith Vierra and now Ann Curry. I missed some of the earlier "Today Show girls." I remember watching Hugh Downs, Frank McGee, Tom Brokaw, Bryant Gumble, and Matt Lauer.

Regis Philbin was my guilty secret. I actually enjoyed Regis and Kelly, more since Kelly Rippa joined him (I never did like Kathie Lee. Still don't and am glad that hour of The Today Show is not shown here.). Philbin is a marvel. He is famous for being famous. The things he does not know astound me, though he's pretty up on most things show biz.

While I like Ann Curry, I don't like her as forever co-anchor. I don't like the 3rd hour of The Today Show, and since Regis left, I find Kelly Rippa's fawning over men annoying and I'm not enjoying that show any more.

The cable networks have changed their programming too and it's harder to find marathons of Criminal Minds or NCIS. I can't take House marathons. I start not liking him, and I don't want to do that because I love Greg House.

So here I am with my nice predictable schedule all discombobulated.

This week I have taken to watching OnDemand marathons. They don't work as a "clock" for me, but it makes white noise, or, if I want to zero in on the plot, something to watch. I'm starting with a Dexter marathon. For those who have never watched Dexter, he's a sociopathic serial killer. But a nice sociopathic serial killer. He's good to his sister and his kids and probably little puppies. He works as a blood spatter analyst for the Miami Police Department and only kills bad people, but enjoys chopping them into pieces. If they are really bad people he lets them experience the pain of being cut into pieces. The lucky ones get killed first, chopped later. (This is the show Ned recommended his mother watch, by the way.) I guess I can't really call that "white noise," more "red noise"!!

When I finally get caught up on Dexter (which leaves OnDemand on 1/31, so I have to work fast), there are tons of other shows to catch up on. Maybe by the time I've worked through all of those, I will have figured out a regular schedule again.

I'm really pathetic, ya know?

Sunday Stealing

2012-01-30T00:02:00.000-08:00

I've answered several of these before, but we just came from a belated sushi dinner (we always have sushi on Paul's and David's birthdays and should have gone out last night, but we were at Roger's party). I am so stuffed full of food and watching the SAG awards, that I decided to do this collection of questions anyway.

1) Put your iTunes on shuffle. Give me the first 6 songs that pop up.
* Do you Hear What I Hear? (Perry Como Christmas album)
* Belle of the Ball, (Leroy Anderson Favorites )
* The Marvelous Toy, (John Denver)
* Orange Blossom Special, (Johnny Cash)
* I Wanna Be Like You, (Heigh-Ho Mozart)
* Don Oiche Ud I Mbeithil (Glenstel Abbey Monks)

2) If you could meet anyone on this earth, who would it be?
Betty White. I would love to talk with her about animals and her career in television. Another choice would be Daphne Sheldrick, on her haven for orphan elehants and rhinos in Kenya

3) Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 23, give me line 17.
"It must be sewn on," she said, in a rather motherish tone. (It's a book of Peter Pan which I'm getting ready to send to one of the Compassion children.

4) What do you think about most?
Dogs

5) What does your latest text message from someone else say?
"Enjoy! I've heard it's good." (Jeri replying to my message about seeing "In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play.")

6) Do you sleep with or without clothes on?
Since I sleep in chair, under a dog, with.

7) What's your strangest talent?
I think I can still wiggle my ears; I haven't done it in years.

8) Women....(finish the sentence) ; Men....(finish the sentence)
Women can be very open with their feelings; men mostly keep feelings bottled up inside (of course there are lots of exceptions to those rules)

9) Ever had a poem or song written about you?
Actually yes. My friend Melody wrote a poem about me for my birthday once, I think.

10) When is the last time you played the air guitar?
Never

11) Do you have any strange phobias?
I am convinced I am going to die by a big semi truck to the right of us on the freeway toppling over on top of our car.

12) Ever stuck a foreign object up your nose?
No.

13) What's your religion?
Recovering Catholic

14) If you are outside, what are you most likely doing?
Picking up mail or getting into the car.

15) Do you prefer to be behind the camera or in front of it?
Definitely behind the camera!

16) Simple but extremely complex. Favorite band?
Simple. Lawsuit. Of course, they haven't played as a group since 1997.

17) Do you prefer talking on the phone or video chatting online?
Actually, I don't do either. Most of my interactions are by snail mail or e-mail.

18) Do you believe in karma?
Not really. If there is such a thing as Karma, it's made some big mistakes in my life!

19) What does your URL mean?
"Airy Persiflage" means light banter. It comes from The Mikado, where KoKo asks, "Is this a time for airy persiflage?"

20) What is your greatest weakness; your greatest strength?
My greatest weakness is my lack of self control. My greatest strength is that I can be a pretty good friend, given the opportunity.

21) Who is your celebrity crush?
I don't think I have one at present.

22) Have you ever gone skinny dipping?
A couple of times right after my parents got a swimming pool and my father INSISTED that I try it....then made me feel dirty for doing it.

23) How do you vent your anger?
Eat. Cry. Write journal entries that probably don't sound angry, but which I know really are.

24) Do you have a collection of anything?
Dogs. Dust bunnies.

25) What was the last lie you told?
I moved this from #17 to here because the last lie I told (actually small fib) was in one of the previous 24 answers.

Another Milestone Birthday

2012-01-29T00:02:00.000-08:00

"You certainly have been going to a lot of birthday parties," my mother said to me when I called her to chat at a rest stop, while we were en route to San Francisco. I hadn't thought about that, but I guess with today and the recent 102nd birthday of Herbert Bauer, we have been to a couple of birthday parties.

We went to San Francisco this afternoon to help our friend Roger Pierson, from The Lamplighters, celebrate his 70th birthday.

Roger hasn't performed with the Lamplighters in many years, but he began his career with the company in 1968, so he is definitely one of the "old timers," and is part of the Gilbert dinner that we hold each year in memory of Gilbert Russak. The members of the company who came to Roger's party were some of our best Lamplighters friends. There were also people from his work, and neighbors and probably other people there. Since the party went from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m., people came and went and while the apartment was always full, it was never crowded.

At some point there was the usual "Happy Birthday" song. It always gives me chills...you have never had that song sung to you until you get a room full of professional singers doing it in multi-part harmony!

The birthday boy wanted his picture taken with everyone who was there, and the apartment size being a limiting factor to taking a group photo, it was done in groups of two or three, and we all lined up for a quick shot with the guest of honor.

I handed my camera to a woman for her to take a picture for me, and then, as she had to leave herself, I became the official photographer, following Roger around and taking pictures for him on his camera.

I'm looking at that picture now and noticing something strange. One of the guys there, Bill Neil, who has performed with the Lamplighters off and on since 1965 (he still shows up on occasion for a small role) was commenting about how he's not as tall as he used to be and how when he went to a family gathering he hung out more with the women because he was now shorter than all the other men.

I have always been taller than Walt but with age (and the stooped posture I seem to have permanently acquired), I am now shorter than he is!). And yes, I really do have two boobs, but one seems to be squished in Roger's armpit.

Anyway, it was really a nice, low key party, with Roger supplying all the food as his gift to us, and I got a chance to visit with some of my favorite people.

We left around 8 to get home to feed the dogs and when we got here there was some 'splaining to do to Lizzie because the last thing I did before we left the house was to have a nice conversation with this lovely cat, recently clipped for health reasons.

She rubbed her head all over me and I know Lizzie was confused!

As I head off to sleep, there is a tickle in my throat and that pre-cold feeling in my nose. I hope I have not caught the cold my mother had on cousin's day. When I talked to her today, she was still feeling miserable.

Saturday 9

2012-01-28T10:27:00.000-08:00

1. How did you cope with your biggest heartache?
I'll let you know if I ever do. Still working on that one.

2. Who was the last person you visited in the hospital?
My cousin Kathy, who died a week later.

3. How many jobs have you held in your life? How many of those were part of your chosen career field?
About 8, I think. Since I guess my "chosen career field" was clerical, I guess most of them.

4. How did you discover Saturday 9?
From Kwizgiver who has the most interesting memes.

5. If you could take the train from anywhere to anywhere, where would 'anywhere' be?
I have always wanted to take a train across the Canadian Rockies, or else through the Alps.

6. When was the first time you cooked for someone else?
My cousin and I cooked an anniversary dinner for her parents. We chose to make liberal use of food coloring (red mashed potatoes, blue "green" beans, etc.) My uncle took my aunt out for dinner.

7. What is the worst beverage you've ever tasted?
Gatorade

8. Is there anything in life you are "certain" about? Firm in your beliefs? Strong in your convictions?
Nothing in life is certain. Of that I am sure.

9. Do you know anyone who has as very unusual pet?
My friend's daughter is a teacher and their classroom had a gila monster that got to walk the halls free, until it got so big it was attacking people's feet and they had to give it away.

Lunch with Peter Pan

2012-01-28T00:02:00.000-08:00

I had lunch with Peter Pan today.

Well, she used to be Peter Pan.

My former roommate, Jeannie, was going to be passing through Sacramento today and suggested that we meet for lunch. The last time we saw each other, I was pregnant with either Tom or Paul...or maybe David. Suffice to say it was a long time ago.

I found a picture of my first roommate, Judi, the one I didn't get along with. Perhaps the fact that she appears only by accident in the background of a group photo give some sort of indication of how I felt about her.

This was our little home on the hill on the campus of UC Berkeley. When looking for lodging before I moved to Berkeley, I secifically chose Mitchell Hall because it was the smallest dorm on campus and I was terrified at the idea of going into a big dorm my first time away from home. I think Mitchell had 50 girls compared to >100 in the other dorms in this 4-building complex and many more in the "new" dorms down on the flat. Also, living in Mitchell meant I got lots of exercise since I had to climb the long hill up Dwight Way every day.

At the end of my first disastrous semester as Judi's roommate, Jeannie took pity on me and invited me to be her roommate. I was delighted.

As I said, Jeannie had been Peter Pan. There was a park called Children's Fairyland in Oakland (it still exists) which was a favorite of little tots and hired older kids (maybe high school age?) to dress as various storybook characters.

I don't know how long Jeannie was Peter Pan, but what a perfect person to play the part. With the air of magic about her and how much she even looked like Mary Martin at the time, they must have hired her without much of an audition.

Her love of Mary Martin was one of the things that helped us be good roommates...she had a passion for Mary Martin that matched mine for Judy Garland, only I had met Judy Garland and she has received a personal letter from Mary Martin.

I have had great guilt for many years about our two semesters together as roommates. During the Judi semester, I had run away to Newman Hall and established a social life there so I didn't have to interact with Judi. Consequently I wasn't the close roommate that I'm sure Jeannie expected because of my social life at Newman, which kept me away from the dorm much of the time (though she did tell me today that I hadn't been such a bad roommate, so I finally feel better about that!)

We met for lunch at a Thai restaurant Marta had recommended and we sat and talked for 2½ hrs over some of the best pad thai I've ever had. We discovered that there was no awkwardness, despite the passage of >40 years. We slipped into chatter as if we had just seen each other yesterday.

We talked about our time at the dorm, and I was pleased when she rolled her eyes when I mentioned Judi. She also remember Char and I gave her the history of the Pinata Group. We discussed our grandchildren and books we had read.

We talked computers and cell phones. We talked music, and her feeling that her husband, who was a music teacher, would love to talk with Jeri, should the occasion arise. We also talked theater, since her husband has done lighting design and they have been active in theater (mostly in the musical part) for many years.

Jeannie has a masters degree in religious studies and she now teaches English to a group of Afghani women, which led to a discussion about the middle east. . She positively glows when she talks about her students and proudly showed off pictures of them. I swear, if more people would get to know people of other nationalities, colors, sexual orientation, religion, there would be less hate and more friendship in the world.

We compared notes on places where we had both been (especially the South of France, which we both loved).

The time just flew by and I was sad that we both had to leave. We parted in the parking lot with the hope that we will find an excuse to get together sooner than 40 years from now.

I was so pleased to discover the same person I remember from so long ago, just a little bit older, but still with that sparkle of pixie dust in her eyes and an enthusiasm for life that I remembered so fondly. She is Peter Pan, all grown up, but retaining the magic that made her special in the first place..

Sunday Stealing

2012-01-26T00:02:00.000-08:00

For once Jim of Jim's Journal beat me to this meme.

36. Have you watched American Horror Story?
Nope. I don't know what that is.

37. Baseball hat or toque?
I am not a hat person, not by choice, by size of head. I have almost never found a "one size fits all" hat that is large enough for my head. I can't even wear baseball caps because at the largest setting, they aren't big enough. I did buy a hat on the ship in China, it fit, it did the job (kept the sun off my face), looked incredibly stupid!@

38. Do you shampoo or soap up first in the shower?
Shampoo.

39. Wet the toothbrush or brush dry with the toothpaste?
Eww...definitely wet!

40. Pen or pencil?
Pen, I think. I've been trying to find my "pen personality" and at the moment I am using a Sharpie ultra fine point. It's tricky finding the right pen when you are left handed.

41. Have you ever gambled at a casino?
Oh sure. When you live this close to Nevada, you end up taking a lot of people there to try it out. But I don't like it. I'm not lucky and whatever money I gamble, I lose. Walt and I once lost all the money we had playing the slot machines at StateLine, Nevada. Fortunately we were playing penny slots and only had 13 cents between us, but that was enough to get me to swear off gambling forever.

42. Have you thrown up on a plane?
No. I've been queasy a couple of times in rough patches, but fortunately I've never had to use that flight bag.

43. Have you thrown up in a car?
Oh lord, yes. When I was a kid my father hated to drive anywhere with me, especially on a winding road (which we had to take to get to my grandmother's house) because I always threw up. Fortunately that doesn't happen now--I can even read in the car.

44. Have you thrown up at work?
No.

45. Do you scream on roller coasters?
I don't do roller coasters.

46. How many shoes do you have?
There are 4 pairs of shoes that I wear--Birkinstocks, loafers, trainers, and some shoes that I bought as "good shoes." They are old lady clunky, but they are comfortable.

47. Who was your first roommate?
Like everyone with a same-gender sibling, my sister was my first roommate. When I moved to college, I roomed for a semester with a girl named Judi who was the only one who still needed a roommate. It didn't take me long to realize why she was the only girl in the dorm without a roommate...I changed roommates the next semester.

48. What alcoholic beverage did you drink when you got drunk for the first time?
I don't remember, but it was probably some sort of frou-frou rum drink. We drank a lot of those when I was in college

49. What was your first job?
I washed bloody test tubes and poopy slides for a medical laboratory. I also held the arm of terrified people getting blood tests.

50. What was your first car?
I have never owned my own car.

51. When did you go to your first funeral?
I have never figured out why my grandparents took me to the viewing of a friend of theirs when I was five years old. All I remember about it (and I remember it vividly!) was that the room was small and filled with people, so very hot. The casket had a blanket of gardenias and to this day they make me sick to my stomach. And I could only see the woman's nose sticking up out of the coffin.

52. How old were you when you first moved away from your hometown?
I was 18 and left home to go to UC Berkeley (and move into the dorm with Judi!). I never went back. I was never so glad to be out of a house as I was that house.

53. Who was your first grade teacher?
Sister Mary St. Patrice, a nun of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or the BVMs, as we called them.

54. Where did you go on your first airplane ride?
We flew home from So. California. I had won a cruise ship ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles in an essasy contest. But it was one way and the ship was headed off to Hawaii, so we spent the weekend, went to see Disneyland, and then flew home. This would have been about 1957. My father was 72 when he died and he had never been on an airplane.

55. When you snuck out of your house for the first time, who was it with?
I don't remember ever sneaking out. You really didn't do that in San Francisco, I don't think.

56. Who was your first best friend and are you still friends with them?
Gayle Tarzia and I walked to school together for all of grammar school, and I spent a lot of time at her house because she had TV and I didn't. I found her a few years back on Facebook and friended her. She accepted my friend request and to date has not so much as said "hello" to me. Could be because our views on things seem to be diametrically opposed!!!

57. Where did you live the first time you moved out of your parents’ house?
Mitchell Dormitory, on the UC Berkeley campus

58. Who is the first person you call when you have a bad day?
I can't think of a person. I would probably sit down here and write a journal entry.

59. Whose wedding were you in the first time you were a bridesmaid?
My cousin Peach's wedding.

60. What is the first thing you do in the morning?
Feed the dogs

61. What was the first concert you attended?
Judy Garland played a week at the San Francisco Opera House. I had saved up enough money that I was able to make it to 3 of the concerts. (When she brought her Carnegie Hall concert through several years later, I was able to see that too)

62. First tattoo or piercing?
My only piercings are one in each ear. Ned was a baby when I got my ears pierced (that would have been 1967). I left him with my father and went to a jewelry store downtown to have it done. I felt like I was having an abortion, because in my Catholic school only the "bad" girls had pierced ears. But I've never regretted it!

63. First celebrity crush?
Judy Garland, after seeing A Star Is Born in 1955.

The Grace of a Gazelle

2012-01-25T00:02:00.001-08:00

I was really looking forward to writing this entry today. It was going to be filled with cute little puppy pictures and telling you all about the little 2 week old doxie puppy that I was now bottle-feeding.

Sharon (SPCA) sent me a text to ask if I wanted to take him and I enthusiastically said yes, but asked if I could wait a day to get him because we would be in out of town.

I hadn't heard from her by the time we got home, and then there was still nothing from her in the morning, so I sent a note asking if I was going to be picking him up today. She eventually answered that yes, and that she was just waiting to find out what time he would be dropped off and ready for pickup and would get back to me when she knew the time and place.

Later in the afternoon an e-mail arrived saying that "The vet tech that was taking the dog over the weekend decided to foster until placement through animal services, so the puppy will not be coming to us after all."

I guess he was just too cute. So no cute puppy stories. No cute puppy pictures. And especially no cute puppy at all.

This is probably best because I'm working at Logos tomorrow, going to Cousins Day the next 2 days (my mother would have LOVED to have a bottle feeding doxie--she loves them) and then reviewing two shows on the weekend, as well as having lunch with my college roommate (the good one), whom I have probably not seen in 50 years. Fitting bottle feeding in around all those activities was not impossible, but it would just be easier if I didn't have to.

But that left me with the question of what I was going to write about tonight, since all I did today was fold laundry, write letters, clean my desk, and watch 9 episodes of Dexter, as I try to get through all five seasons before 1/31 when they will be taken off OnDemand.

As I sat at the dinner table watching a glob of meatloaf roll gently down the front of my favorite sweatshirt and into Polly's mouth, leaving behind a little trail of grease, I decided I needed to address one of my biggest problems: I am a real klutz.

This shirt, for example, is a great sweatshirt which my friend Olivia gave me when I visited her in Salt Lake City. It sports the logo of the business she owned then, and I wear it pretty much all winter long, unless it's in the washer. Which it is almost every day because of spillage of juice or something off of my dinner plate, or a glop of yogurt, or melted butter from a warmed tortilla. The shirt is falling apart, probably mostly because of how often it has been washed. (I ordered a new one, without logo, from Amazon yesterday--and hope it is going to fit as well and be as comfortable. I have no doubt that it will be bounding meatloaf off of itself as well.)

Polly lives under my chair at meal time. Sometimes I share bits of my dinner with the dogs, but, like a dog under a toddler's high chair, Polly and Lizzie won't leave my side because they are pretty sure that sooner or later something will fall on the floor.

When Peggy and I were together, whether here or in Australia, she so often rolled her eyes at my klutziness. At least twice she ordered me out of small shops after I tripped and nearly knocked something over. "Wait outside," she would say sternly, pointing at the door.

One night at dinner in Australia she told me that she could tell me why I always spilled food down my front. It was, she said, because I needed to get closer to the plate. I've tried that here at home, but it seems that even having my chin ON the plate itself is no guarantee of no spillage. My chest just seems to be a food magnet. Perhaps the bountiful endowment that seems the blessing of the Scott women may have something to do with that.

I can't leave my office without knocking something over. Truly. It is about 8 steps from my desk to the door and even knowing that I am prone to knocking things over and taking precautions not to touch anything, I still do. Papers go flying, notebooks topple, the TV remote crashes to the ground and the batteries roll out. This has been going on for years -- and since I go in and out of my office dozens of times each day, you'd think I'd have devised a solution by now.

Walking from the family room to the bathroom, I trip over things on the floor, or the door of the dog crate, or one of the dogs or one of their toys. I knock things off of the dresser in the family room.

Now of course some of this could be solved by having pristeen surfaces, but I think we can all agree that's unlikely to happen.

So I will just, I guess, keep knocking and spilling my way through life and hoping that my final act won't be to knock myself out hitting the corner of a dresser while tripping over a dog when I was trying to get to a wipe to remove some food from my shirt.

Though, if you think about it, what a perfect way for my life to end!

I have let it be known that after my death, I want to be cremated. I'm betting that somewhere, someone is going to spill the ashes.

Losing Another One

2012-01-24T00:31:00.001-08:00

It was March of 2011 before we had our first (of 11) death (Walt's mother) last year.

January isn't over yet and we have already learned of the death of a second friend.

I met Mike Kelley first on line in one of the CompuServe forums back in the late 1980s. He and his husband Bill (who, we learned later, through comparing genealogy records, was a very distant cousin of mine) were both active in the Gay/Lesbian Issues forum (Section 17), one of two forums I was most active in (the other being Women's Issues, Section 16).

I never had much to do with him on line, but of course read all the stuff he posted.

It was probably 1994 or 95 when Section 17 had its first social gathering. Walt and I joined the group in Reno for a weekend and that was when I met Mike and Bill for the first time. It was no surprise that he was ascerbic and funny and...yes...campy. I enjoyed being part of the group.

Mike loved to party and Tanqueray was his beverage of choice--he was kind enough to share some with me in Reno.

Someone on line had once called Mike a "hateful old cow" and he adopted the moniker and made it fabulous. He was "the Hoc" and he had the largest collection of cow crap. Everybody gave him things in a cow theme. Naturally, I carried it to extremes. I sent him a cow mailbox once and Walt and I bought a lawn ornament in Maryland that had to be disassembled to fit in my suitcase.

Everyone in that group was so supportive when David died. They were very solicitous when Walt and I joined them in Las Vegas in 1996 to celebrate the 50th birthday of Merrell Frankel (who left us in 2010). The highlight of that trip was a tour of the Liberace museum. Trust me, you haven't lived until you've gone through the Liberace Museum with a group of gay guys!

In October of 1996, we went to Washington DC for the last display of the entire AIDS quilt and for the candlelight march from the capitol to the Lincoln Memorial.

Somewhere there was also a trip to San Diego with the group (where the "camping" picture above was taken).

Then there was the month I spent with Mike and Bill in Houston, after Bill had been released from the hospital and Mike was afraid to leave him home alone, because he didn't want Bill to die while Mike was out. So I moved into their house and cooked and cleaned for them. (Houston. July. Was I insane?) A big part of what I did was to carry Mike's laundry to the laundromat...he had a huge collection of white t-shirts with various logos on them and sent a bunch out to be cleaned each week.

I returned to Houston a couple of times after that but Mike and I had a disagreement on my last trip and though I continued to communicate with Bill until his death (I spoke with him on the phone the morning of the day he died), I didn't really hear much from Mike.

He went through an "event" that nearly killed him -- I'm still not sure what exactly happened and what the aftermath was, but he was forced to leave his job because he couldn't handle it any more.

We became Facebook friends, when all the Section 17 people were gradually finding Facebook. I was, quite frankly, surprised to see photos of him because he had aged so much and didn't look like the Mike I knew. (But then I'm sure I had too!)

I think of Mike and Merrell and Bill all fit and healthy and together again, maybe laughing the way they always did, and it makes me smile, but with a little tear in my eye too.

102 for 102

2012-01-23T00:02:00.000-08:00

What do you get a man for his 102nd birthday?

If the man is Herbert Bauer, "the conscience of Davis," the answer was simple: books. The man (who does not wear any corrective lenses) is a voracious reader, reading often a book or two a day. His friend Nancy Keltner has been keeping him in books for a long time, visiting used book stores and garage sales and asking friends to loan books, which will either be returned to the owner, or donated to the pubic library after Herbert has finished reading them.

Two years ago, on Herbert's 100th birthday, Nancy headed a committee which threw one of the biggest parties the town had ever seen. The Davis Art Center was packed with people and I was pleased to be a part of the planning and execution of the gala celebration.

On the event of his 95th birthday, I quoted from an article I had found on line: "In addition to working at his medical practice, Herb has dedicated his life to children, to those less fortunate, to those in need and to those who cannot advocate for themselves. He served on the city's Social Services Commission, was the first chairman of the Davis Peace and Justice Commission, the precursor to the current Human Relations Commission, and was a founder of Yolo Family Service Agency."

Recently, Nancy, my friend and Scrabble buddy Joan, and I were sitting around discussing Herbert's upcoming 102nd birthday. We realized we could never top the 100th celebration, but Nancy thought we could get Davis columnist (and long-time friend of Herbert) to write a column inviting anyone in town who wanted to participate to bring a book to a collection site in several locations, wrapped or unwrapped. Nancy would gather up all the books and wrap those that were not already wrapped, and then give Herbert 102 books for his 102nd birthday.

Happy to oblige (and who can ever say no to Nancy?) Bob ran the article and Nancy set up collection stations.

Nancy's great fear was that we wouldn't get enough books. She needn't have worried. She got three times the amount asked for, enough that she could weed out books that weren't approriate, or that Herbert had read and still have enough to make that pile of 102 books.

She invited Walt and me to a small party at her home and I was amused to see that she had decorated the front of the house with three perfectly appropriate books for the occasion!

A photographer was there to take Herbert's photo with his books for the newspaper, and then we sang Happy Birthday to him as he blew out the candles on his enormous German Chocolate cake.

It was over quickly and we made our way home again, but very pleased that we had been included in yet another celebration for Davis' most famous Centenarian!

Oh...and it appears that we aren't going to be puppy-less for long. There is a 2 week doxie that came into the shelter, so we'll be back in the bottle-feeding biz very soon.

Oranges and Puppies

2012-01-22T00:02:00.000-08:00

I hold in my hand...the last orange

Every year for more years than I can count, about a month before Christmas, a guy named Don Kessler calls to ask if we want to order oranges or grapefruit. It's a fund raiser for a local musical group. When we had kids and foreign students here I always got a box of grapefruit and 2 boxes of oranges.

As our population has diminished around here, it got down to a half a box of oranges, but we went through that so quickly last year, I ordered a full box again.

The citrus comes from Florida and I can say that I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the pieces of bad fruit we have had in all these years. They are ripe, sweet, juicy, and delicious.

When everyone was home, on Christmas morning we would squeeze a full pitcher of fresh orange juice. Now I just cut the oranges in half, cut each half in thirds, and eat them right off the rind standing over the sink. No worries about my vitamin C intake in December and January.

The fruit arrives about 2 weeks before Christmas and today, I sadly ate my very last orange. It's a long time to December 2012. It's too bad that these oranges are so good that they spoil me for oranges that you get at the supermarket, which are sometimes good, sometimes not.

Today was also Buddy's last day here. We had our last cuddle times.

Even Polly, for the very first time didn't chase him away when he climbed up into the recliner and went to sleep.

And finally it was time to take him to Petco. I packed up all his stuff in the carrier he came in and we put it in the car, Buddy in my lap. As we approached Petco with all the dogs barking and all the confusion, he began growling and barking and trying very hard to get out of my arms. I've never seen him so confrontational. I put him in the cage but he barked bloody Hell, so Walt went and found a tiny collar and we put that on him and attached a leash made for a huge dog to it. He immediately marched up to the nearest cage and began growling and barking. Then he started rushing off through all the legs, barking, and beginning to sound panicked. I think he thought he was lost. He had never been on a leash before and I'm sure he didn't know I was at the other end of it.

I finally picked him up and he calmed down, but we had to leave for another engagement (about which I will write tomorrow), so we took the crate to the back of Petco, put him in it, and left him with the SPCA volunteers there. I raced out of the store before he could start whining and crying, because I didn't want to remember that being my last sound of him.

Mazel tov, little puppy. Today you are a man. Sort of.

We came home this evening and picked all of the towels off the floor, didn't have any puddles to step in, and only 3 meals to fix for dinner. I wonder what Buddy is doing with his new "brother."

Goodbye, Buddy!

Saturday 9

2012-01-21T19:42:00.000-08:00

1. Do you live close to where you grew up? Why?
How close is "close"? I was born and raised in San Francisco and now live 80 miles east of there. Nobody in my family lives in San Francisco any more.

2. Have you ever been so angry that you almost lost control?
Yes.

3. Are you a fan of a musical act that slightly embarrasses you?
I don't think so.

4. Is there a movie that always makes you cry?
Oh lord yes. All I need to see is the last 5 minutes of Affair to Remember and I'm a basket case no matter how many times I've seen it.

5. Who is the most famous person that you've met?
Judy Garland (met her in the lobby of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco) and Carol Channing (had cocktails with her before an awards show in LA)

6. Before you leave your home, what must you have?
My keys, my camera, my cell phone.

7. What do you miss the most about being a kid?
Someone to cook for me, and someone to bring me soup in bed when I'm sick.

8. Tell us about a passion of yours that your readers would not expect.
I think that over the past 12 years, I have written about just about every passion that I have.

9. At what age do you think you'd be able to think, “I've had a great run”?
Any time now.

A Buddy for Buddy

2012-01-21T00:02:00.000-08:00

I am writing this on Buddy's last day here.

I received a note that the SPCA has another 6 week old (which is probably Buddy's approximate age) pit bull mix puppy who was turned in, another singleton, and they have decided to put the two of them together for companionship and to test for "alpha personalities."

I had earlier written to Sharon that I felt strongly that Buddy should not be put in a family that has small children. He is sweet, but he can also be aggressive, and as he gets older this is going to have to be watched and trained out of him. I am not the person to do that. Too much of a wimp!

But having a sibling for a couple of weeks before they both go up for adoption will be great and will give time for observation of both of them to help find the right kind of home for each.

So tomorrow we will pack him up in the crate he came in and take him back to Petco. I know people think I'm going to cry when he goes because all the pictures have shown how much I've enjoyed loving him, but there comes a time when they all go. I could never work in a kill shelter because as each animal reached the end of his or her time, I would want to adopt them. It would be so easy to be a hoarder!

But long ago I had to come to peace with the fact that they all leave. If I were to keep all the ones I fell in love with, I would have less and less attention to give to them all. I might love them, but you have responsibility for the animals you choose to live with. As it is adopting Polly has meant less time for Sheila and Lizzie, especially as she is so incredibly demanding of my time. But I still think it was the best decision all around. As I watch her now running to greet Walt, her tail wagging a mile a minute, jumping up on him and demanding to be petted I am in amazement of the change that has taken place in that scared little girl who first showed up here. It has taken two years, though and she still doesn't like other people ... and there are still times I wish we hadn't adopted her, but who else would have taken her? When she cuddles up with me in the recliner, I'm glad she's ours.

The past few days have really been very nice, since I made the decision to give Buddy lots of body contact. For one thing, I have watched all but 3 of the Showtime Homeland which won the Golden Globe as Best TV Drama and won an award for Best Actress in a Drama for Claire Danes and nomination for BestActor for Damian Lewis.

I was so glad to find Homeland as an OnDemand option, especially since we subscribe to Showtime. With all this time spent cuddling Buddy, I used it to start watching the show. I found this "post 9/11" drama very entertaining, following CIA agent (Danes) as she spies on Marine (Lewis) who had been held captive by al-Quaeda and whom she thinks has been "turned" by his captors. It's a great story and I am happy to learn that it has been picked up for a second season, to begin sometime in 2012. I will have finished the 12 episodes of Season 1 by then!

So thanks to Buddy, I have had guilt-free daytime television watching and worked my way through a great new TV series. If you have Showtime, and if you have OnDemand, I highly recommend it.

The storm in the Pacific Northwest has turned into a big disappointent for us. Steve is giving a benefit concert in Olympia along with one of my favorite groups, the Righteous Mothers, writers of "Old Fat Naked Women for Peace", "Big Legged Women," "Missing Molly Ivens," and "She Shanty," the hilarious song about childbirth. I have a couple of their CDs and just love them. This was going to be my chance to visit Steve, see another of his concerts, and to finally get to see the Righteous Mothers live.

But the weather is just too iffy. Right now Olympia has 4' of snow, though people think it's going to melt by Friday. But we are not too keen on the iffi-ness of it all, so I canceled the motel reservation, Walt canceled the flight and we will let the money we paid for tickets be our donation to PFLAG.

But I won't get to see Steve (assuming he can get to Seattle from New York!) and I won't get to see the Righteous Mothers and for that I am very sad. I won't even have Buddy to cuddle to make me feel better.

Double Click

2012-01-20T00:02:00.000-08:00

Many years ago, when I had only been on the internet for 2 or 3 years, when things were all brand new and when a lot of people my age were afraid of using computers at all, I decided I was going to start a computer training business geared for people my age and older. People whose eyesight wasn't as good as it had been, whose hands weren't as nimble as they used to be, people who were a bit leery of "breaking" the computer, and people who didn't remember things as well as they used to.

I got the idea when I helped someone -- I don't remember who now -- start to feel comfortable with their computer (yes, I hate using "their," but I don't remember if this was a man or a woman). It was when I saw that my student didn't understand what it meant to "double click the mouse" that I realized that you couldn't just give general instructions; you had to slow waaaay down and plan to spend a lot more time than you planned.

I think it was childbirth lessons which helped me achieve some modicum of success.

When we are trying to teach something we know very well, our instinct is to whiz through it and get to the impressive ending as quickly as possible. "Do this...and then this...and then this" and the student's problem was solved.

But with someone older, you have to go in very slow stages. You give instruction, once...twice...three times. Each time you give less and less help and you take long, slow breaths and you wait until the student figures it out. But when they figure it out...they. have. figured. it. out themselves. And maybe they remember. Or maybe you go back for a refresher course in a week.

Anyway, it was a good idea. I was going to call my business "Double Click," but then Davis Community Network came along with free lessons. They would have people like me who knew a thing or two about a thing or two and have us share our information to small classes, all for free, and that pretty much ended my computer assistance business before it ever really got started

The thing is that anybody who was born after computers started becoming household necessities (and for whom "double click" is a concept they learn as toddlers, or so I assume, having seen Brianna at the computer!) has no concept with how to train older people so they can actually understand.

I learned this some time ago with my computer guru, who would come in here, sit at my computer push this, that and the other things and fix my problem and rattle off all sorts of things that he did and things would flash on the screen and things would be different after he left and I'd have to figure out how to get it back to the way that I liked it. But in the end, I hadn't learned a thing about my computer. It just had it fixed.

Today I went back to Verizon.

After my time on the phone with two different Verizon reps early in the week, trying to figure out why my phone was eating all the internet data, they had me turn off a couple of settings and suggested that they send me a "like new" phone to replace mine, because perhaps mine was having a glitch they couldn't figure out.

In the time between that conversation and yesterday, when the "like new" reconditioned phone arrived, my regular phone seemed to be working just fine. But I had this "like new" replacement and decided I should go ahead with plans to replace the original phone anyway. Making a very wise decision, I decided to NOT try to follow the installation instructions and instead take it to the Verizon office where I got the phone originally and have them do it for me.

So the guy took my phone, removed the innards, put it in the new phone, punched lots of buttons and options and grumbled a bit and hemmed and hawed and finally decided that my "like new" reconditioned phone was broken.

There we were -- the original phone which had finally been working fine, and the "like new" replacement which was obviously broken. We decided to just put everything back in the original phone and send the "like new" replacement back. To get it set up, the clerk's fingers moved so fast as he held the phone just out of my sight (I could see it, but my eyes weren't good enough to read what he was doing, and his hands were moving too fast anyway).

He added apps that are going to help a lot--except he didn't tell me what they do or show me how to check the options. He rearranged things that I had already set up. In the end, I have my same phone back, it seems to be working and is no longer eating up data. I'm not sure why it was originally and why it isn't now, but I'm not going to question it. I'm just going to send the "like new" phone back and let them pawn it off on some other dumb smuck like me!

Buddy's Mom

2012-01-19T00:02:00.000-08:00

It's a lot more work mothering a singleton puppy. Buddy is getting older and more able to do things and he doesn't need a bottle any more, but I'm realizing that with no mom and no siblings, and still too young to be put up for adoption, he really needs hands on mothering. He follows me everywhere, usually firmly attached to the cuff of my pants, me either dragging him along behind me or trying to avoid stepping on him if he decides to tug in front of me.

He has obviously identified me as "mom" because when Walt picks him up and tries to cuddle him, he only wants to wrestle, to growl, to bite...not angrily, but all as rough puppy play.

I won't let him do that to me. The first growl and he goes back on the floor. Sometimes I have to put him on the floor twice, but by the third time he may mouth my arm, but doesn't bite, never growls, and settles into my armpit to go to sleep.

I started thinking about how all those litters of pups cuddled up to each other. They play-fought with each other and they learned acceptable limits from each other. Buddy doesn't have siblings. He needs to cuddle up to the nearest thing he has to a mother. He's so cute because before he sleeps, he sits there just staring at me, like he's trying to memorize my face (or figure out why his mom looks so weird, so unlike other dogs).

Then he sniffs and licks my face. Polly, who hates having him around, but knows that she has to leave him alone, sulks on the other side of me, every so often giving disapproving grumbles, but as long as he stays on one side and she on the other of the great divide that is my abdomen, things go all right.

Then Buddy finally settles down and will sleep with his head either on my chest or buried in my armpit, making little sucking noises, until I finally have to get up.

It's the little nursing movements he makes at times like these that made me realize that he is really too young to be left to his own devices, no matter how good he is about it. So I am now factoring in a couple of hours a day to sit and watch TV and let Buddy pretend he has a Mom. It's actually very nice.

Last night when I thought he was out for the night (he does sleep in a bed alone all night long) I was in my office working. Earlier in the day, Buddy had managed to climb up the footrest and get himself into my recliner and seemed quite proud of himself, as he knocked things off of the table next to the chair and then settled in for a nap.

Apparently he tried getting into the chair again last night. Polly was sleeping there and next thing I knew there was a great commotion, with lots of yelping and whining from Buddy. I went in and picked him up and he put his front paws around my neck, his head down into my chest and literally whined and sighed as if he was so glad Mom had come to make him feel better.

I let him sleep in my lap for an hour and then when I put him in his bed, I put a bathrobe that I wear, which must smell of me, over him. He stayed asleep all night. This period of time in his life is very short, I realize, and I think that what I'm doing will help him be a better adjusted puppy when time comes for him to look for a forever home.

If I'm Buddy's mom, does that make me a bitch?

Sweet Baby from Bev Sykes on Vimeo.

Day Two

2012-01-18T01:09:00.000-08:00

Today was my second day at the book store. Walt had a meeting at 1 p.m., and I work at 2, so he dropped me off at Mishka's Cafe (where I go when I have no internet access here at home) and I sat with coffee and a lemon bar...and my cell phone (presumably unable to access the internet any way but with Mishka's wifi) and waited for about half an hour.

I finally walked over to Logos and relieved Peter, who seemed happy to be out of the shop for a few hours. He told me it had been a slow morning. He left and I went looking for something to read. I decided that each time I'm there, I would try to find something reasonably short (so I can read it in 6 hrs), and perhaps a greater variety of things I'm not likely to read normally.

The book I picked for today was written by Katharine Hepburn.

This actually is something I would read otherwise, but it's probably out of print. What a fun book. Hepburn obviously wrote it with minimal editorial input. It reads like the transcription of an afternoon chat over tea at her apartment. It is her distinctive voice, her memories of a film she had made 30 years before, the principal characters of which were then all dead (the book was published in 1987). And what fun hearing about the trials and tribulations of making this classic film (which certain was never expected to attain "classic" status!). If nothing else, it makes me feel better about probably never going to Africa!

If the morning at Logos had been "kind of slow," the afternoon was anything but. I was alone and seemed to have a constant stream of browsers, many of whom bought book. A woman came in with ten large boxes of books she was donating. The cash register jammed and I had to call Susan to find out how to un-jam it. But there was also enough down time that I made great progress with Katharine.

I finished the book around 4 and was faced with the choice of getting out my Kindle or finding a new book. Sorry, but I just don't want to be in a book store surrounded by real books with paper pages 'n' all and reading a storm on a Kindle.

Well, here is where being in a used book store is a great thing. You have access to all sorts of books, the kinds of things you would never go looking for. This was my second selection:

I actually never heard anybody talk about an Akubra (an Australian hat) when I was in Australia, but I remember Olivia being very proud of having bought one when she was there herself. This book is actually kind of cheating to say I "read" it (though I did). While it covers the history of the Akubra it is mostly very nice photos of the people who wear them -- station hands, property owners, roustabouts, trappers, shooters, and soldiers, to mention a few. Each photo is identified by the name of the wearer and what he has to say about his akubra.

This guy is has been a policeman for 2½ years and has made five arrests. His territory covers 5,000 square km.

My favorite quote about a hat was the guy who said. "Without a hat on you'd die in this country! You're blind without it. Lose your hat and you can lose a hand...A hat is never any good until it's been through the dip twice. You throw your hat thru the door and if it's not shot full of holes you can walk in after that. It's handy to pick up hot things with."

Now see? If I had never gone to work for Logos, I would never have known any of this! I also would not have heard of "wooly butts" (which I think are sheep) or "pandanus" (a type of palm-like deciduous tree) or "larrikin" (a mischievous person) or salmon gums (a type of eucalyptus found in Western Australia).

I actually finished reading this book before Walt arrived. Even before Susan arrived, in time to chat with her about how the day had gone. Walt had parked 3 blocks away and it was so cold (the cold has finally arrived here!) that, since I had no coat, I made him go get the car and drive to the door to pick me up.

Another fun day of "work" (if you can call sitting and reading for 6 hours "work"). I'm really enjoying this job!

Flunking "Smart Phone"

2012-01-17T00:02:00.000-08:00

In times past, when the internet was new and there was no such thing as a cell phone, I was the guru for all of my friends, for the offices I worked for, for the family. I was the go-to person. I read computer and software manuals like novels.,

I never got into the "guts" of the machinery, but boy I became a whiz at any program that I used. I knew how to do magical things with WordPerfect and amazed everyone at how effortlessly I was able to set up complicated pages with that program.

I knew several photo manipulation software programs and when I finally got into PhotoShop, quickly learned how to use that program, watched endless tutorials, have attended day-long seminars.

I learned web design before anybody I knew was doing web design -- not even David Gerrold (he actually had me help him set up his first web page).

On the internet, I could find just about anything I wanted to find, became queen of Google (never could understand why people called ME to ask what I knew about something and then were so amazed at how quickly I came up with an answer, when all I did was to put the "something" into Google).

When we got our Star Trek Communicator flip phones several years ago, I mastered mine pretty quickly. I could whip out a text message, add a photo, keep a calendar, set an alarm, create and assign ring tones and do a whole host of things that the little phone could do. There were lots of things that the phone had on its list of choices, but I didn't see any use for those, so I never used them.

But this new smart phone is making me feel like a first class idiot.

I learned how to change the wallpaper so instead of the harsh metalic droid screen, I could add my own photo

(Though this is a picture of both girls with Santa, and I couldn't figure out how to resize it to include the both of them)

I found all sorts of fun apps to add to the phone and proudly showed them off to Walt. They were all free apps. I was happy.

But then the problems started. My phone is allotted 300 MB of Internet data a month. I wasn't watching it too carefully since I almost never used the phone out of the house, so I was going through our wifi connection, not the internet, and supposedly that didn't count against our internet data.

But suddenly the records showed that I had used almost half of the usage allotment. I panicked. I couldn't figure out what was going on. The next day, I used the phone hardly at all. No calls, no texts, nothing that accesses the internet at all. Records showed that I had now used 75% of the allotment. The data use table on the Verizon web site showed that two of the big uses were made when I was asleep (and the phone was sitting on my desk), the other uses were made when I was at Concetta's funeral (and not using my phone), and when I was home (supposedly going through wifi).

I called Verizon yesterday and actually got a person who, naturally, couldn't tell me what the problem was. She passed me along to Amanda, her supervisor. Amanda had me change some of the settings that came with the phone (which the salesman who sold us the phone set up for me) and said she would call me this morning.

She called at the appointed time and I told her that yesterday the only times I had touched the phone were to send two test text messages (which supposedly have nothing to do with any internet activity, since they are the phone) and answered one phone call. The data usage had gone up by another chunk.

I figured that if I turned off the phone and did not use it for anything for the rest of the month, I would still exceed my monthly allotment by whatever the phone was doing that counted against my internet usage.

She explained a lot of things to me, none of which I understood and the bottom line is that she is sending me a new phone, since she can't figure out why when the phone is sitting 3 feet from our wifi source it would be accessing the internet and maybe it's a phone glitch (but she can't reduce the usage already accumulated). She also talked me into upping my internet usage to 2 gig from 3 MB. We figured that would cover this month and I'd be OK after that. Maybe. It's only $10 more a month and if it brings peace of mind, that would be worth it.

But I feel like a total idiot that I don't understand most of what exactly data delivery is, what data saver is (though both are now turned off and that apparently is going to help my data usage). I don't understand why if it shows me I'm using wifi, I'm still also using internet as well, but apparently I am. I don't understand why when programs automatically update they do it through the internet and not the wifi when the phone is sitting less than 3' from the wifi hot spot.

I'm wondering if after all these years, the smart phone has finally turned me into a blithering idiot. But we'll revisit this subject in the next couple of weeks after the new phone comes.

Sunday Stealing

2012-01-16T00:42:00.000-08:00

The Never-Ending Meme, Part 2

21. Did you go to your high school prom?
I went to the prom in my junior year and the "Senior Ball" the following year. My prom date was Bill Farrington, whom I dated all through high school until he entered the Jesuits. My Senior Ball date was a guy named Marty, who lived in the flat above ours. I didn't really like him and I'm afraid that I didn't do much to make the ball enjoyable for him.

22. Perfect time to wake up?
I don't know if there is a "perfect" time for me to wake up, but I really like it when I'm able to sleep until and even a little past 7 a.m.

23. Perfect time to go to bed?
After The Daily Show.

24. Do you use your queen right away in chess?
I'm not a chess player, really, but the few times that I do play, I save that queen until later. The last time I played chess, I was soundly whupped by a kid who was maybe 10.

25. Ever been in a car accident?
Minor only, thankfully

26. Closer to mom or dad…or neither?
In our family it was my father against the world. You could not "get close" to my father because if you thought you could, it always played against you. My father died in 1987 and I did not mourn his passing. My mother is still my best friend.

27. What age is this exciting life over for you?
There is always something exciting out there, something you least expect around the next corner. I don't even want to think that "this exciting life" is over, until I've breathed my last.

28. What decade during the 20th century would you have chosen to be a teenager?
I was a teenager in the 1950s and I love looking back at that era. I think I'm glad that I didn't come of age in the 60s. With my addictive personality, I probably would have become a flower child and fried my brain.

29. Favorite shoes you have EVER owned?
I am not and never have been a shoe person. Shoes always hurt my feet until I've had a chance to break them in. But I remember a pair of shoes--I don't even remember what they looked like--that I tried on in a shoe shop in Berkeley. They felt good right away and I remember expressing surprise. The salesman drew himself up proudly and said "Madam, Old Main Trotters always fit." (I wonder if they still make Old Main Trotters...)

30. Do you have an article of clothing you have had since you were in high school?
No.

31. Were you in track and field?
My high school was one square 2-story building on a busy street corner in San Francisco. Our "yard" was about the size of the average grammar school playground. So, no track and field.

32. Were you ever in a school talent show?
We didn't have talent shows per se. I sang in the school choir and was in the senior play (underclasswomen did not perform in school plays)

33. Have you ever written in a library book?
Heavens no! Isn't that a capital offense?

34. Allergic to?
Probably something but I've never been tested for allergies. In the last year I sure have been sneezing a lot, though. I'm probaby allergic to dog fur!

35. Favorite fruit?
I like lots of fruit. Fresh strawberries are probably my favorite, followed by bananas and oranges.

The Pinata

2012-01-15T00:02:00.000-08:00

Of course there was a pinata. This was a gathering of pinata people (and others). Of course we had a pinata.

Actually, when I first mentioned it to Char, I thought I was joking, but she took the idea and ran with it.

It was at my mother's when I was talking about Concetta's death and realized that there was going to be a funeral and nobody had mentioned a pinata. I sent a message to Char and she said she would talk with Concetta's daughter about it. Next thing I knew, her daughter thought it was perfect, Char had found a pinata and stuff to put in it and we were on...a funeral mass, followed by a lunch and a pinata. Concetta would have loved it.

It was surreal. I walked into the Newman chapel and saw Concetta's open coffin at the front door. I don't think I've ever seen an open coffin at a funeral before, especially when there had been a "viewing" a couple of nights before. In fact, it seems odd to be burying people in coffins at all these days...so many people are cremated.

But she looked peaceful and I hugged one of her daughters and made my way to the pinata area. I noted that people in the 2nd generation were seated toward the back and those of us in the 1st generation were in the front pews on the side. It's so hard to express how much I love this group and how I love how we just always gravitate to each other. In fact, Liam had flown in to Sacramento last night, staying with his brother Kevin and Ned had dinner with the two of them.

It warms the cockles of my heart when stuff like that happens.

Church has changed since I last attended. People all around me had bottles of water (I, who always has water with me, had left mine in the car). Children were eating snacks.

I'd forgotten how much I hate that building, Newman Hall in Berkeley. I worked for the building committee for awhile, and lived across the street. But I never liked the cold concrete structure. It seemed, somehow, even colder with the body of Concetta lying in that covered casket.

It was a funeral Mass and many people participated in readings. The only people in the Pinata group 1st generation who went to communion were Mike (who helped distribute communion) and Walt, who couldn't pass up the chance to get communion from Mike. We have obviously instilled more of religion in our children, some of us, as more of the 2nd and 3rd generation attendees were in the communion line.

Char and Jeri (Liam and Kevin's mother) gave a eulogy from the Pinata group. I have posted the video here, but the sound quality is not great (better for Jeri than for Char, so stick with it if you can't understand Char) and those who don't know the Pinata group or Concetta probably won't be interested, but I posted it for all of the Pinata group who were not able to make it. It was emotional but both of them did a wonderful job.

Our friend Phoebe read a beautiful poem Concetta had written in 2000, which ends

The months fly by in an endless rush
Memories and possessions are moved away
Quickly shattering hopes and dreams of a different world
Happinesses take such different forms

There was a lunch -- no ham -- and people started leaving. I thought they had decided not to do the pinata, but then there were Liam and Kevin out on the patio putting up the pinata, as their father had done so many times in years past.

In fact, the first funeral pinata had been at their father's memorial service several years ago. It was when the torch (or in this case the stick to hit the pinata) had been passed to the younger generation.

After our very first pinata, which was the hardness of concrete and had to be broken with a hammer, we joke about not being able to break the pinata. Liam and Kevin had assured us that the two of them could break anything if need be, and Kevin promised to bring a hammer just in case.

But there was no need for a hammer. The kids lined up, as they always did, smallest to biggest -- only these were the third generation kids, and I didn't recognize most of them.

The little guys made tentative whaps at the pinata and the older the group got, the more "hearty" the hits became. Char's granddaughter, Haley, is a force to be reckoned with.

I can't remember which child finally broke it, but somehow there was some poetic justice in the fact that the son of Eric, Concetta's oldest son, never got a chance to hit it. Eric always broke the pinatas when our kids were younger.

So we have said goodbye to another friend and we have had a pinata and life goes on, a little less rich for the person who has left it. As we were leaving, Concetta's daughter said we need to have a happy occasion to get together, since we seem to be showing up at more funerals than parties these days (funerals for both Char's and Concetta's mothers in the past couple of years, and now for Concetta herself).

I just kind of feel numb tonight.

Time for More Tsatskes

2012-01-14T00:02:00.000-08:00

When I was visiting my mother the other day and she was talking about the difficulty of getting rid of all of the "junk" on her shelves (very, very, very few), I was telling her of my own difficulty getting rid of mine (lots and lots and lots) and how few things I was able to actually throw away and I told her about my project of photographing things, posting them here, and telling the stories about each thing.

It reminded me that I haven't done that in awhile, so here are the next two shelves.

The figure on the far left is stamped "Jamaica," so it must have come from Walt's mother's house. It's one of the few things I have kept. It reminded me of someone dressed for Carnaval in Brasil and I just liked it.

The bell next to her was given to us by a friend named Susan Ware, whom we knew from Tiny Tots nursery school in Oakland. We had given a dinner party at our house in Oakland, some time before 1973, and she brought this bell as a hostess gift.

Next to that is a little Liberty Bell, which I bought when I spent a day touring Philadelphia. The silver cup has a crab engraved on it and I think Walt brought it back from one of his trips to the DC area. The bell next to that is from Boston and again, I'm not sure but I think I bought it in the shop which supposedly stands where Paul Revere's shop did back in the day.

The two black figures are models of terracotta warriors that I bought in China, and next to them is a Pilgrim couple that I bought in Salem just before Thanksgiving one year.

OK...going to the back row now, the blue vase is a lovely vase that was given to us by the proprietors of the wonderful Maxfield Inn in Naples, NY when they learned that it was our anniversary.

I can't remember where the rose vase came from, but I kept it because I liked it. Next to it is a square vase which can't be used as a vase because it's cracked, but it was made in a special class by Celso Gutman, a friend of our Brasilian son Eduardo, when the two of them were living in Davis in 1981 (Celso lived with a different family).

Next to Celso's vase is a statue of St. Anne and Mary, who would grow up to become the mother of Jesus. My godmother gave this vase to me, because my middle name is Anne, when I made my first communion.

There is a black statue of St. Brigid next to St. Anne. I bought it at a convent we visited in Ireland, because I went to St. Brigid grammar school.

In the middle are two little Wedgewood dishes that I bought in England. I decided on our first trip that I wanted to "collect something" and I decided to get an affordable little plate, but somehow that resolve disappeared by the time we were making our third trip to England.

I'm not as good at identifying these as I am the other stuff. The top shelf is the "box shelf." I don't collect boxes, but people give them to me. The one in the middle is a box Gilbert decorated with green mosaic tiles. It holds the stereopticon slides of the Palace of Fine arts for the viewer on another shelf. To the right of that is a box I bought at the Library of Congress and to the left of it is a box I bought at the Philips Gallery in Washington, when I was working there. Left of the Gallery box is a small container made out of an animal bone with a wooden top and bottom and a shell on top. The other box is made of marble, I think. It came from someone from Chile. I can't remember where the boxes in the back on the left and right came from, but I kept them because they were so pretty.

On the bottom shelf, the first two clay things on the left were made by Walt when he was in school, the yellow bowl was made by Tom and I don't remember who made the round head (I hope one of the kids will tell me!). The wooden shoes were brought back from Holland by Walt's mother.

(We're almost finished with all this stuff, you'll be happy to hear!)

It Wasn't a Prune

2012-01-13T00:02:00.000-08:00

We used a Groupon tonight to go to dinner at Bombay Dreams, an Indian restaurant here in Davis. I had heard very good things about it from people on Facebook and was all set for some of their Tikka Masala.

The ambience was very nice, though there was no room in the main dining room, so we sat in the bar area. It didn't have the plush feel of the main dining room, but it did have a TV set playing Bollywood Wedding Videos...kind of like Indian MTV. I loved that.

The service was a little slow, we thought. Our dinner came with soup and we assumed it would be served first. But when the meal arrived, we could see why it had taken so long. It all came together.

I'm not sure when they filled the soup bowl, but it was not quite cold...only a bit of warmth. The problem with eating foods from other cultures that you aren't really sure how they are supposed to be served. Maybe it was supposed to be luke warm, so I didn't complain.

I had the lamb tikka masala which I thought was a bit over-salted, but still tasty. Walt had lamb curry and had asked for his to be medium heat (I am a wimp; I always ask for mild). When his dinner was finished, he picked up a wrinkled bean-looking thing. He had a flashback to our Indian dinner in London when he took what he thought was a green bean off of Jeri's plate and bit into it heartily...only to discover that it was a very. hot. pepper. Smoke nearly poured out of his ears and he probably has never drunk so much water in his life (yes, I know that water doesn't quench heat-hot, but he had nothing else to use).

Anyway, with a memory like that he wasn't going to bite willy nilly into this something in his hand, but he was curious, so he nibbled. Hmmm...he said. "It tastes like a prune." He asked if I wanted to taste it. Fortunately I was very full. So he nibbled a bit more at it, wondering exactly what it was.

Suddenly his face turned red and smoke poured out his ears (well...not quite). It had gone down smoothly...you know...like a prune. But when it hit some vital part of his anatomy, fumes came back up again. He downed his glass of wine. I finished his glass of beer. He ate rice. When we left, he was panting like a dog from the heat of what had obviously been another very. hot. pepper.

If we learned one thing from dinner it's ... don't ever taste something that looks like a solitary green bean in the middle of some Indian dish!!

Buddy Outside

2012-01-12T23:31:00.000-08:00

Buddy Outside from Bev Sykes on Vimeo.

Back to San Rafael

2012-01-12T00:43:00.000-08:00

I spent about 2-1/2 hrs with author Tess Gerritsen today. Technically speaking, I guess I spent the time with Susan Erickson, reading Gerritsen's "Girl Missing," the audio book I was playing while driving to my mother's today. Reviews from Audible.com are that people are upset to learn this is an old book, not a new one. I don't care. I'm enjoying it, old or new. I'll have another hour with it tomorrow, driving to and from my lunch in Sacramento.

So. The visit with my mother. Good and not. She's grumpy because her back is really bothering her. It is so frustrating watching her suffer, knowing that the doctor has told her repeatedly that there is nothing that can be done to help her. Essentially her coccyx has outlived its usefulness and is disintegrating. As this is where all of the nerves end, it causes great pain and she is unable to stand on her feet for very long. Now it's starting to wake her up at night. I asked the doctor about acupuncture and she told me that it wouldn't work. And because it's nerve pain, there are no pills that will help.

Sadly, the pain is making her grumpy and she feels "dumb, dumb, dumb" because she can't make it go away. It embarrasses her to have to sit down when she volunteers at the Hospice Thrift Shop and she doesn't want her friends/co-workers to know that there is something physically wrong with her. Sigh. Pride can be such a self-destructive thing.

She asked me to get her a cup of coffee today because her back was hurting her so much that it hurt to walk, and when there were no cups where they were supposed to be and I made the mistake of asking her where the cups had gone. She got up and walked all over the house trying to find her own cup, instead of telling me where she thought she left it. Sigh.

We had a nice visit, sticking to the same topics we always discuss. She seemed to be more "with it" than usual and when she again told me about her mother's problems with speech before her death, I decided to try telling her about the book I'd read about aphasia. But when I finished, she went back and told me the story all over again.

There was some other thing I made the mistake of trying to tell her and after a brief silence, she talked about how disgusted it makes her to look at her "filthy" rug and about all the places where it just turns her stomach to look at it and how she needs to have someone come in and shampoo. But she won't ask someone to come in until she has moved all of her stuff and her back hurts too much to do that. I'm thinking that maybe for Mother's day I can get Ned and Walt to come and help me move stuff for her and pay to have shampooers come in and get the job done.

The rug is, of course, cleaner than any rug I have ever had and I can't even see the spots that disgust her, but all she sees is filth.

But all things considered, things pretty much went well and we had a nice lunch and a nice visit. I also helped her clear away some books. She is so eager to get rid of "all this junk" around her house and I realized that I could take a big bag of books home to give to Dr. Herbert Bauer on his 102nd birthday. He is a voracious reader, who reads a book a day and will read anything. There is a project going in Davis to collect 102 books to give to Herbert on his 102nd birthday, so I cleared away the equivalent of one whole shelf of books, which made my mother very relieved!

I was feeling very "antsy" on the ride home and had to make a stop just to shake the kinks out of my legs, so I decided to wander through Michael's craft store. Always a bad mistake. But I did get some cute things I'll be using soon, including a book of Peter Pan which I can easily take apart and send to one of my Compassion children in chapter form (since what you send can't be thicker than 1/4")

Then I stopped at the book store to pick up the camera I'd accidentally left there yesterday so I could finally post this photo:

(Self portrait!)

The plan had been to go to an Indian restaurant that I had bought a Groupon for, but when I went to print it, it was not in my Groupon account, so I had to send a note to customer support to see how I get it back, and then find something to cook for dinner here!

A Potentially Expensive Venture

2012-01-11T00:02:00.000-08:00

I didn't realize that it was going to cost me money to volunteer at the book store. (I had a couple of photos for this entry, but left my camera there, so...owell!)

Today was the big day, my first day at work, and I was nervous, realizing I had already forgotten everything I thought I had absorbed so well at orientation. Not that there is much to learn, but it did involve a (very simple) cash register and a credit card machine. As I was mentally reviewing things, nothing came back.

I wasn't really worried. As I said, this is a very small store, extremely low key, and Susan had assured me several times there was nothing I could do wrong. Well, probably almost nothing.

I had a plan in place for how to spend my day. This is not like a Borders, with lots of clients milling about. It's very small and I expected that there would be lots of down time. I had seen a copy of "Greyfriars Bobby" on the shelves in the older book section during my orientation. I remember the story of the little Scotty dog from our days in Edinburgh and I figured this would be a good book to read during the down times.

I packed two bottles of water in my new insulated lunch bag (purchased at a fund raiser for Brianna's school), since I had noted no water cooler or little fridge in the back room, and off I went. Walt had to drive me because there is nowhere to park downtown for longer than 2 hours (I hate downtown parking rules!). He said he didn't mind. There may come days when he is not available to drive me and I may have to, after nearly 40 years in this town, learn the bus system.

Susan was not there when I arrived, but her husband Peter was behind the desk and greeted me warmly. He got up and let me sit behind the desk, and reviewed a few things with me. We even did a sham charge on the credit card machine (if you charge one cent, it doesn't go through). There was a customer already there and Peter let me handle the sale...turns out the guy is someone I've known forever, but I don't think he recognized me and I was only 99% sure I recognized him, so we did not exchange familiarities.

The first sale went all right and I was feeling confident so Peter went into the back room to do some book sorting and left me to my own devices. It was time to go and get "Greyfriars Bobby." Argh! It had been sold!

Obviously I was going to have to find something else to read. I drifted over to the cookbook section ('cause I always check out cookbooks, even though I rarely use them any more) and my eyes lit up when I saw the John Steinbeck House cookbook. Steinbeck's birthplace and boyhood home was turned into a restaurant in 1974, the 72nd anniversary of the author's birth. I probably learned about it sometime in the 80s, since that was when I fell in love with Steinbeck's writings. I have been saying, off and on, since then that I wanted to visit the place some day. (There is now even a Steinbeck Center that I also want to visit, which I think about every time we zip through Salinas on our way to the Burger Queen).

But here was the Steinbeck House cookbook, with wonderful photos and great recipes. It was only $3.50 and I decided I would charge it, so I could get practice charging a real purchase. It was then that I realized that working in a book store might be like putting a not-quite-in-recovery alcoholic in charge of the bar at the nearby Irish pub!

I went looking for a small book I could read while I worked -- I figured that if I were going to sit in a book store, I probaby shouldn't be reading on a Kindle. I wandered over to the biography section and saw a thin volume of excerpts from the diary of Samuel Pepys. I first encountered Pepys in the Museum of the City of London was was naturally drawn to anybody who was a journalist. I'd always wanted to read some of it. I sat down to check the book out.

The first chapter dealt with lots of money stuff I couldn't really follow and I was about to put it back when I encountered "Deb." Deb was Pepys' wife's maid, a comely lass who apparently caught the author's eye. He writes about her in French. Like "she come into the coach and je* did baiser her" and "I did speak to her and she to me, and did get her pour dire me ou she demeurs now, and did charge her para say nothing of me that I had vu elle, which she did promise."

Anyway, it goes on about his infatuation, the brief encounters, his wife's discovery of the infatuation and how she reacts, to insisting he dismiss the maid and then making sure that he never goes anywhere unaccompanied.

What was strange about this was that at the time I was reading about Pepys and his extramarital liaison and his difficult relationship with his wife, two men were in the store comparing notes, first about their children's schooling and then about their relationships with their wives (one had divorced, apparently NOT amicably; the other seemed to be in the negotiation phase with his wife and things did not appear to be going well). I smiled as I realized that really nothing has changed much in male-female relationships since 1660!

Throughout the day I saw more people I knew -- a woman from the SPCA and an older married couple from our days with Acme Theater company. There was enough business to keep me from being bored, not enough to make me feel overwhelmed.

Susan came in to be with me in case I needed her help, but kept herself working on the books that had been donated, pricing them, and putting them on shelves. We had several lively discussions, one of which has ruined Char's reputation with her extended family (as I shared some of the crazy escapades Char and I had engaged in in our youth), and another comparing reasons why both of us have left the Catholic church.

Many of the customers were interesting, including a professor, originally from Ireland, but who teaches German at the university . He made the largest purchase of the day ($36). This guy and Susan had lively discussions about books I had never read and I realized how being well read could make all the difference in this kind of work!

A woman demanded to talk with Susan personally because she had found two books on the $1 sale table outside and she felt that they were important enough books that they deserved a place indoors in the Literature section, for sale at a higher price. Susan placated her, telling her it had nothing to do with the "worthiness" of the writing, but on the condition of the paperbacks. The woman left mollified, I guess.

The time really flew by. Around 5, I let my eyes wander through the cookbook section again and found two more books I liked. I was going to buy them, then put them back, then took them out again and ultimately bought them. By the end of the day, my volunteer job had cost me about $10 and I had seen lots and lots of other books that I could easily be talked into buying.

Obviously I am going to have to exercise restraint in this store, but I'll only be there 4 hours a week, which should be a help.

All things considered things went well. I just wonder what is going to happen if Susan and/or Peter check the cash register tape and discover the $1,600 sale I mistakenly entered when my elbow hit the wrong keys on the machine! (Fortunately they don't use the tape for anything important!)

A Pain in the Neck

2012-01-10T00:02:00.000-08:00

We saw two stage shows this weekend, a fabulous Chicago by the Davis Musical Theater Company (it got a rave review...not yet published), and Cyrano de Bergerac by the wonderful Acme Theater Company, which is made up primarily of young people, with an adult director.

Cyrano was at the Veterans Memorial Theater and we settled into my favorite seats, at the back of the theater. Midway through the show, I was massaging my neck, trying to work out the kinks.

It had nothing to do with the theatre or the seats, but with the stiff neck and shoulders that I have been suffering for several weeks. On a scale of 1-10, it's probably only about a 2-3, but when it gets to the point where I get up from my desk to go sit in the recliner for a bit because it hurts to keep my head erect, it's bothersome.

As I sat there massaging my neck in the dark of the theater, a lightbulb went on over my head: I have a daughter-in-law who is a massage therapist. Doh!!!

So I sent off a message to Marta requesting an appointment for a neck massage, and today, I went to her house. She suggested a 30 minute massage since if I had been having the problem that long, it might take a while to get the muscles to relax.

Now, I have to admit that I am not of the massage mentality. Before today, I'd had exactly two massages in my life. One was when Marta was teaching a class and needed "victims" for her students to work on. It was not long after I had dislocated my shoulder and they decided that Marta's teacher should work on me, rather than one of the students. That was one of the best experiences ever. For the first time since my accident, my arm felt really good.

I went to Marta a week or so later for a follow-up, but never went back.

I've bought massages with Marta for friends, but just never could justify the cost of a massage for myself.

I watch Kelly Ripa each morning going into ecstacy as she awards a spa vacation to yet another viewer with the right answer to the daily question. I see videos of massages and it just never had an appeal for me. Couldn't see paying big bucks to have someone put hot rocks on my back. Though my friend Lynn told me about a massage she had one time that was...um...interesting.

But this was different. I was hoping that a massage might bring some relief.

So I arrived at her house and she had her massage chair set up. We talked for a bit about how long I'd been having the pains. Then we got the chair fitted to me and she went to work. The butt sniffing by the dog, Bouncer, came at no extra cost.

I certainly have a greater respect for masssage therapists. She worked on me for half an hour and her hands must be amazingly strong. She poked and proded and pinched and poked and pounded and massaged.

She massaged my scalp, which was the best part of the procedure. I told her that I always hate to have my head shampooed at the beauty shop because they always apologize for being too rough as they barely touch my scalp with some mealy-fingered hands. Marta got in there massaged hard and it felt so good.

At one point she had to stop and have me sit up straighter because I had relaxed so much that she couldn't get to my neck any more. I wasn't even aware of having relaxed that much.

Those of you who get regular massages will find nothing extraordinary in this report, but I left there realizing that my shoulders, which had been aching on the ride over, weren't hurting any more.

Did it work? Well, I've been sitting here at the computer all evening and have had no problem holding my head upright on my neck. I still can feel the sore spots, but I have to think about it. It's not forced on me any more.

I think that I will return to Marta again...don't know when...but it felt so good, I'd like to have her poke, prod, pinch, pound and massage some more.

Thanks, Marta!!!

Sunday Stealing

2012-01-09T00:02:00.000-08:00

Never-ending meme, Part 1

1. Song that always makes you sad?
Sarah McLaughlin's "In the Arms of the Angel," which Marta and Audra sang at Paul's memorial (and which is now used to shed light on the plight of hundreds of homeless, and abused animals).

2. Last thing you bought?
A surprise that will be delivered to one of my daughters-in-law any day now.

3. Last person you argued with?
I'm not an "argue-r." I can't remember the last argument I had. (Maybe I'm just repressing it!)

4. Do you put butter before putting the peanut butter on?
I use either butter or peanut butter. Rarely the two of them together

5. One of your stuffed animals’ names as a kid?
I'm sure I had stuffed animals, but I can't remember any, much less remember their names. I was more a baby doll kinda kid.

6. Did you ever at one time own a Barenaked Ladies CD?
No, but I remember the time when my then 82 year old mother-in-law, after getting Web TV expressed her disappointment because when she decided to check out "this pornography stuff on the internet" apparently googled something that brought her to Barenaked Ladies and she was unhappy that it was "just a band." One of my favorite stories about her, which I know I've told here more than once, but you never know who may be reading for the first time.

7. Favorite day of the week?
When you are retired, every day is pretty much the same, so my "favorite" at this time in my life is determined by what is on TV on any given night. I think new episodes of NCIS are on Tuesday, so that would be a favorite day now.

8. Favorite sundae topping?
Hot fudge, lots of whipped cream and toasted almonds (hold the cherry)

9. Did you take piano lessons?
Oh yes, For 4 years. Sister Mary Victor and the ruler she used to hit my hands with if I didn't hold them properly. I quit after 4 years (it might even have been only 2) and my father never let me forget all the money he "wasted" on my piano lessons.

10. Most frequent song played?
I haven't played a lot of recorded music in a long time (except for Christmas carols), but I think that the cast recording of Wicked still tops my list, particularly the songs "Defying Gravity" and "For Good."

11. T.V. show you secretly enjoy?
Project Runway and any of the Top Chef challenges. Also Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations.

12. Would you rather play basketball or hockey?
Bwahahaha. I'd rather play spectator. But if I had to make a choice, it would be basketball.

13. Date someone older or younger?
It's a little too late in the game for me to think about that.

14. One place you could travel right now?
Ireland, back to the cottage we rented on our first trip.

15. Do you use umbrellas?
Almost never. I love the feel of rain on my face and in my hair. I am blessed with hair that pretty much looks the same after drying out from rain as it did before I went into the rain.

16. Do you know all the words to the Canadian national anthem?
Oh Canada, something something something. Or something like that.

17. Favorite cheese?
Swiss. I'm not a big fan of strong-flavored cheeses and some of the fruit/cheese blends we had in England were amazing.

18. The Smiths or The Cure?
huh?

19. Do you prefer blondes or brunettes?
Doesn't seem to matter. It's the whole package that makes a person appealing, not just the hair color.

20. Best job you ever had?
The Physics Department at UC Berkeley. I was a private secretary, set my own schedule, loved working with my boss, I had my own private office. I hated leaving that job. Second best would be transcriptionist for Women's Health Associates in Davis. When Sutter bought out the office and we became a part of the grand Sutter Complex, I continued to work there for several years, but the good feeling was gone.

Doin' a Girly Thing

2012-01-08T00:45:00.001-08:00

I don't often do "girly" things. I have nothing against formal girly things, like teas and coffee klatches and Red Hat Lady events, but I rarely have the opportunity and I've lost the ability to wear gloves and balance a tea cup on my knee.

However, I got invited to a meeting of the Woodland Shakespeare Club by my friend Sue Abdi Lincoln. Sue actually invited me to a meeting nearly a year ago but I was unable to attend at that time.

This was a club which was founded in 1886 and is now, Sue tells me, the oldest literary club on the West Coast. She has been a member for about 10 years. Her mother for 30. It's limited to 50 active members. (She had to wait 5 years until someone died to get in). Sue assures me that they don't just discuss Shakespeare. When she first invited me, they were reading "Reading Lolita in Tehran" and at the moment they are reading "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society," which I read when Jeri and I were in France and Italy...so at least I figured I would be able to follow any discussion.

The group meets Oct-Apr on the first Saturday of the month. Members can bring guests to the January meeting or the April meeting. I didn't make it to that meeting last April, but I was able to get to this one.

As I pulled up to the Lions Club building in Woodland, I watched all these women walking in, some dressed up, some not so dressed up. One woman had a very large hat with purple swirls of fabric, lots of netting and some feathers or something. I only really saw her from the back. Many were women "of size" like me. One reminded me so much of my friend Diane Clark, who died a few years ago, that it brought tears to my eyes.

It was like the first Neil Diamond concert I attended in Sacramento, when Ned's friend Greg was working on the light crew. I remember parking the car and walking to the auditorium with Walt and saying that the depressing thing was knowing that we looked like all these old people who were filing into the place.

Yes, I fit in, and that's always a shock to see my "peers" en masse.

However, they seemed to be a congenial group. Sue had also invited another friend, Jan, who, as it turns out, is my neighbor. In fact, she and I were discussing her daughter's love of puppies and I told her about Buddy...and Buddy has a play date at their house tomorrow morning.

I'm not really too clear on the rules of the Woodland Shakespeare Club and what happens at meetings, but today it started out with a group of women reading selections from the book. Then a woman gave a fascinating account of the history of the Channel Islands during World War II. (I didn't realize that Britain had decided that they were of no use to the country, and so left them undefended, which allowed the Germans to move their troops in and occupy the islands for several years).

There was what was described in the printed program as "loose comparison of Woodland Shakespeare Club to Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society."

Then we broke for "tea and social," with lots of delicious finger foods, even more delicious desserts, and either coffee or tea or punch.

This was followed by all returning to their tables where each table was given a discussion topic to talk about amongst ourselves for 5-10 minutes. Our table's topic was "how has technology affected letter writing." NowTHERE's a topic that is right up my alley! It was easy to overcome my usual reticence to speak in front of strangers and to participate in the discussion.

There was no real "end" to the meeting. Each group had a representative who gave an overview of her table's discussion and the meeting was officially ended.

I was actually surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I talked with very few women and still don't know how it operates when there are no guests, but Sue asked if I would like to come to the next guest meeting in April and I said that I would.

I may actually send a request to join the group. Your request needs to be accompanied by written recommendations from two people in the group...but I actually know three people, so that should be simple.

Then all I need to do is wait for someone to die so I can take her place, though given the age of most of the women, that might not be such a long wait. (Bad Bev)

It would be kind of fun and different to add a little something girly in my life once a month for 7 months. I could adjust to that.

A Writer's Meme

2012-01-07T00:02:00.000-08:00

1. Who are your favorite authors?
John Steinbeck, Pat Conroy, Bill Bryson, Michael Connelly

2. Who has had a major influence on your writing?
Steinbeck, without doubt. Perhaps not lately, but I read a lot of Steinbeck back in the late 70s/early 80s and whenever I was reading one of his books I was very aware that my writing became much tighter and more descriptive.

3. Name a book you never finished?
"The Mind's Eye." I absolutely LOVED it for the first three chapters, but in the fourth chapter he got into a subject I was very uncomfortable reading, because it related to me rather than to someone else. I kept reading, but I began to lose interest and ultimately I moved on to something more interesting...which surprises me because that first part of that book was one of the most interesting things I had ever read!

4. What word or words do you always have trouble spelling?
Meredith. I don't have trouble spelling it, but I have the devil of a time typing it. I have been typing it Meridty for literally YEARS (difficult, since one of my bosses had a daughter named Meredith). (I just typed it "Meridity" again!)

5. What three adjectives best describe you?
Fat, funny, compassionate

6. Which of your characters would you want to be and why?
I must have picked this meme up on Tess Gerritsen's web page because the answer I have here is one of her characters (Jane Rizzoli). I think I would prefer to be Kaye Scarpetta, intelligent, self-assured, unbothered by nasty odors, and a great cook!

7. Which authors would you invite to dinner?
Tess Gerritsen, Patricia Cornwell, and Kathy Reichs. Now THAT would be an interesting trio

8. Where do you write?
At my computer, looking at a wall covered with "stuff."

9. When do you write?
All the time.

10. What makes you happy?
Puppies, babies (not necessarily in that order. It depends on the day, the puppy, and the baby!)

11. What do you most fear?
It used to be something happening to my children, but so much for that. Now I think it's becoming incapacitated and dependent on other people for everything. I think about how Concetta lived for most of her life and I just don't know how she did it. Of course...what choice did she have?

12. What is your favorite vice?
Peanut butter

13. What is the quality you most like in yourself?
My love of animals....is that a quality?

14. What are the qualities you most like in your friends?
The ability to share our lives, a sense of humor, the ability to laugh together, and to cry together, or just sit and be quiet together. To always be there for each other.

15. What part of your personality do you detest?
My shyness in social situations. I have a feeling I have missed out on a lot of fun in life because of it.

17. What is your favorite adjective?
Probably "cool."

18. What is your favorite book?
"East of Eden"

19. What book would you read three times?
I have read "East of Eden" at least three times and in my youth, I read "Marjorie Morningstar" many times. Nowadays there are so many books I want to read, I doubt if I would re-read a book.

20. To whom would you award the Nobel Prize for Literature and why?
Steinbeck has already won the Nobel Prize for literature, so I'd have to choose someone else. Pat Conroy is out because he is not consistent, I don't believe, in his writing "Prince of Tides" was amazing, but not all of his books live up to that standard.

Most of the books I read today are lightweight, so I can't really come up with a suggestion, though reading Tess Gerritsen's choice, "Abraham Verghese, for his masterpiece 'Cutting for Stone.' The best novel ever written about the practice of medicine." Made me check that book out and mark it for download for the Kindle some day.

Parenting Puppies

2012-01-06T00:02:00.000-08:00

Wow. It's been more than a year since I wrote about bottle feeding puppies, puppy pee, puppy poop or puppy breath! Haven't you missed it?

I've bottle fed a lot of puppies, but I don't remember if I've bottle fed an orphan singleton puppy before. Probably, but I don't remember. After raising many litters of orpans, I realize that Buddy, as an "only child," needs more than I have given the litters.

Puppies need body contact. Put 4 newborns at 4 corners of a box and they will very quickly find each other, even though they are blind and deaf at birth. They crave the warmth of their siblings. As they get older, they learn how to interact. Even before their eyes are opened, they are batting at each other, blindly...but they know a sister or a brother is there.

When I had mothers with puppies, I studied how they were with each other. The puppes are constantly kneading her side while they nurse, they act frantic and move from one teat to another, climbing over siblings in their frenzy to get to the food. Buddy acts the same way with my hand when he's taking the bottle.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;!--webbot BOT="HTMLMarkup" endspan --&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;!--webbot bot="HTMLMarkup" StartSpan --&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

The mother is always grooming them. She washes them all over and it is from her tongue licking their genitals that they learn how to relieve themselves.

Well...I do draw the line at licking the genitals, but fortunately Buddy arrived here with opened eyes and working genitals, so that wasn't necessary. But I really feel the need to give him the body contact that he should be getting from his mother and siblings.

With the other puppies, I could put them in a big cage together and, when they got older, add a fence to double their free range. But I can't really do that with Buddy. He sleeps alone, of course, but when he is awake, he hasn't learned how to play with toys and he craves contact.

These days I feel like Konrad Lorenz, who studied imprinting in young animals, and how they learn a lot of their behaviors from their parent. I think about Lorenz whenever I am near Buddy, who immediately lifts his head and runs after me, literally "dogging" my footsteps. When I'm sitting, he comes and rests his head on my foot. When I'm working in my office, he sleeps alongside me. For a "big sleep" he goes into the crate (I don't usually lock him up any more, unless the other dogs are eating and he runs the risk of their wrath if he gets too close) and sleeps on the furry stuffed dog that came with him (this dog isn't being mothered by my white mother teddy bear). He pulls it out of the crate to play with and then sleeps on it when it's nap time.

When he sits in my lap I talk with him and he looks at me so intently it's almost like he understands (of course I just finished reading a book about a dog who lived many lives, so I'm more likely to think that at the moment!)

He has pretty much free run of the house, which means we are back to policing for puddles and what passes for puppy poop at the moment (runny and icky). But I am going to be getting some puppy kibble tomorrow and will start introducing that to him and that should firm things up quickly.

Now, haven't you missed entries like this?

Unfortunately, Polly, the alpha dog around here is starting to exercise her dominance. She sits in Walt's chair and growls at Buddy when he's eating. Tonight Walt found her humping his head (which is all about dominence and nothing about sex) and when I tried to sneak out and see her, she came running toward me, cowering, as if she knew she had done something wrong and was convinced I was going to punish her.

Don't know how long Buddy will be here, but he won't be ready for injections (prerequisite for going up for adoption) for about 3 weeks yet. That's a lot of puppy poop under our feet in the interim. Good thing he's cute.

I think he's ready for solid food!

Not Quite Charing Cross

2012-01-05T00:02:00.000-08:00

Charing Cross Rd. is one of my favorite streets in London. Not quite a grand promenade, not quite an alley, it's a book seller's street with one book store next to another as far as the eye can see. It's a book lovers' dream. Something for everyone. Some stores are of general interest, some of special interest (Walt liked the book store that sold only map books and old maps; I liked the show biz store and bought two biographies of James Mason there on one of our trips). Most are little hole in the wall stores, with one room filled to the ceiling with piles of books, and Bob Cratchit himself sitting at a desk watching as you check out his wares. They really are all just like the movie 84 Charing Cross Rd., which I loved so much.

It's quite a contrast from the nearby Foyle's bookstore, once listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's largest bookshop in terms of shelf area (30 miles/50 kilometres) and number of titles on display.

Book stores, new or used, are becoming a dying item. We haven't quite come to Fahrenheit 451, but with kindles and audio books, and a decline in reading in general, how many more decades will used book stores find clientele?

When Borders moved in to Davis, two book stores were pushed out. One remained and has actually outlived Borders, which closed last year. Two lovely used book stores closed during the Borders era and I'm not sure about the third.

Into this fading market has come Logos Books, a used book store run by Susan and Peter Linz.

I met Susan long before she and Peter decided to open their store. She is Charlotte's cousin...or second cousin, or kissing cousin or something like that. Daughter of Charlotte's cousin. On one of her rare trips to Davis, Char and I went to lunch at Susan's house, which may have been the first time I met her. I found her to be a lovely woman with a wonderful sense of humor and entirely too organized house, and a woman who put together a mean ladies' lunch.

Some time later, Char heard that they were opening this book store and shortly before their official opening celebration, we stopped off to see the store. It had very few books at that time, but we had a lovely visit with Peter and learned about the philosophy of the store, which I love. They aren't in it to make money, but only wanted to cover their expenses and any profits they made would be donated to charity. This was a project to help Peter fill his time in his retirement doing something he loved to do, which was to work with and around books and to meet other people who loved books.

After Char's mother died, she gave me several bags of books, which I took to the store to donate. I was happy to see that business seemed to be going well and that the shelves were more fully stocked than on my first visit.

Some time in December, a local on-line Davis magazine did an article about the shop and about Susan and Peter and said they were looking for volunteers to help work the store. I wouldn't have paid attention if I hadn't known Susan, but I read the article and that they were only looking for volunteers for something one day a week, or one day a month--just enough to give them a little break. So I volunteered.

Susan and I communicated when I was in Santa Barbara and she set yesterday as the day for my training. What fun. It helped that she started by saying "there is no way you can break anything." Then she went on to give me a tour of the small store and the shelves, which vary by the books which have been donated (at present there is no shelf for erotica, because they only have two donated books, which are shelved up high enough as to not attract the notice of young people).

Their love of books and encouragement of reading is particularly evident in the children's "room" (really just a closet) where the books are divided by age appropriateness and there is a basket for "kids who are still at the chewing stage."

I went through my orientation and screwed up my first sale, but it only affected me, not anything/body else. But I start volunteering next Tuesday and will be working once a week. I already have my eyes on several books I want to read. I hope nobody comes in to shop. :)

Concetta

2012-01-04T00:02:00.000-08:00

Our Pinata Group has lost its first real core member. Concetta Finocchio Jorgenson died last night. It is an amazement to all who knew her that she lived to celebrate her 70th birthday. She was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis before we moved to Davis in 1973. I cannot remember the last time I saw her with movement below her neck. Yet, despite her condition she lived a full life, traveled as much as she could, ran the Newman Hall Alumni Association for perhaps decades. She was an amazing woman.

I met Concetta when we were both attending UC Berkeley. I was the latecomer and missed most of the brouhaha surrounding the National Newman Club convention, which Berkeley hosted in 1961 ("Follow the Sun in 61"). That convention became the glue that bound together a large number of people whose experiences during the planning and execution of it became the stuff of legend. Out of its ashes, over time, arose the phoenix of the Pinata Group, my oldest and dearest friends.

Pinata Group (and others) at Concetta's daughter's wedding
(the priest in the back row was the priest who married Walt and me;
he died several years ago)

Just to briefly recap for those who may not know what the Pinata Group is, we were five couples who met, dated, and married at Newman Hall, Berkeley, in the 1960s. Many of us were attendants at the weddings of the others. Among us, we birthed 22 children, who have all been raised as cousins to each other. Many of us are godparents to many of them. We lived near each other in Oakland for a few years until the 70s when we started spreading out, geographically. Many of our children went to nursery school and early grammar school together. Each New Year's Day we would have a big party (because we didn't want to exclude the kids and have an adults-only party on New Year's Eve), which centered around the kids. From 1966 forward, each party included a pinata, for which there were strict rules, like lining up in birth order, youngest to oldest. The last time we had a pinata for the "second generation" was at the 40th birthday party for the five kids who had been born in 1966. They lined up like they always did. There was a pinata at Jeri & Phil's wedding, which was hit by the children in the 3rd generation, lining up, youngest to oldest.

I met Concetta around the time of the convention. Of all the Pinata People, she was probably the one I knew the least. Her parents owned the famous San Francisco night club, Finocchio's (a popular stop on the Greyline tour for decades) and Charlotte, with whom she attended high school, remembers seeing shows there when she was probably far too young to be night-clubbing.

Her wedding to Eric was a gala affair, with reception at Oakland's famed Claremont Hotel, overlooking the San Francisco Bay Area. They moved into a beautiful home high in the Berkeley hills. I remember the big bear skin rug on which many of our naked Pinata babies had their photos taken.

I remember the Pinata party we had there, where all the kids played downstairs, pretty much unsupervised. I don't know if they EVER got the candy out of the wooden floors, from the pinata which was broken down there. All of us "responsible adults" were pretty embarrassed by the behavior of our children.

It was late 1960s or early 1970s when she began to experience double vision and was eventually diagnosed with MS. She continued to be active and I remember parties she hosted from her wheelchair. Her husband left her not long after her diagnosis, leaving her to raise their four children. She raised their children alone in that house, with the assistance of caregivers, and the kids themselves.

When the fire erupted in the Berkeley Hills, all the houses on her block were destroyed except Concetta's. If you ever saw the movie made about that fire, her story is featured prominently, how she was rescued from the house and taken through the flames to safety. We hoped she would move off of the hill, but she was adamant. She wanted to stay in her house. Concetta was always adamant about most things!

MS never slowed her down. We all, at one time or another, were drivers for her to parties and other events. Char & Mike, and Jeri & Bill put in yeoman's duty, especially Char and Mike who even accompanied her to Australia to visit her daughter, who had married an Australian. Concetta wanted to be there for the birth of their first child. She made several trips to Australia, until her daughter and family finally moved back to California.

with her grandchildren, at son Eric's wedding

The last time I saw her was at her 70th birthday party, where we all marveled that she survived to 70. The time I saw her previously was during one of her hospitalizations, when we wondered if this was "it."

Our friend, Audrey (also a pinata mother) put it beautifully: Having known Concetta as a vibrant young woman continually engaged in a whirlwind of activities, never walking, always running, it has for many years been heartbreaking to see her so confined by the effects of MS. Yet she epitomized a level of faith and courage that was astounding, always smiling while enduring so many hardships, always concerned about the well-being of others in her life. She will be missed, for she has left us with a vision of true endurance and faith, and our faith tells us that she will be happy and with God in heaven forever.

At Concetta's 70th Birthday

Bonding Pains

2012-01-03T00:02:00.000-08:00

"STOP DOWNLOADING!" came the anguished cry from Walt, who had just checked our usage on Verizon's web site and discovered that I had completely used up the entire 300 mb of data allotted for the month of January in only two days.

This made absolutely no sense to me, but I checked the chart and there it was--almost zero usage for Walt and 297 mb of data for me. In two days. But the chart that showed usage didn't make any sense. I hadn't done THAT much on line, I hadn't thought. I think of myself as a "light" user, though of course in these early days, I am doing much more, trying to learn the machine and set it up, but most of the work was done off line.

The biggest thing we found out was that all the time I thought the contact was going through our wifi, it actually was using the internet connection. Wifi = free, internet = counting down time! We tried and tried to figure out what happened. I had given Walt the password for our wifi and he got in just fine, but when I tried, it would connect, say it was accepted and then immediately disconnect. I was ready to go to the store and demand that they remove all the time from my phone because obviously there was a defect.

When I gave Walt the password, I mentioned that I couldn't remember if it used a certain punctuation or not...sometimes I use it, sometimes I don't. I thought it did. Well, he got in right away and I didn't. After 24 hours, trying to figure out why it took the password for Walt and not for me, I decided to cancel the connection altogether, install it again and try NOT using the punctuation. Voila! I was in. I was now working off the wifi. Walt said "Oh yeah--I didn't use the punctuation." Sheesh!

Anyway in the intervening hours of frustration, apparently Verizon had logged a billing because instead of using 297 mb of data, it now showed that I had used only 3 mb. Apparently crisis averted. I'm still not convinced that Verizon won't own our house by the end of the month, but we're monitoring it!

In the meantime I have gradually, and very slowly, begun whittling away the "problems" I thought I had. I finally figured out that the little button on the bottom left of the screen, which is supposed to bring up options, brings up DIFFERENT options for each app you are using. Thus, while I was frustrated because I could not get a full Google Calendar to display, it turns out that if I push the options menu gives me that option.

I also somehow managed to sit somewhere where the GPS can find my position. Not sure how that happened.

Again, using that handy little option button, I was finally able to create and send e-mail instead of just reading what was in my in-box.

And after mistakenly sending a photo of Walt to Facebook, that I meant to send to Jeri, I think I finally did send it to Jeri.

Walt decided he wanted to take a picture of me playing with the phone and send it to the kids and while he was trying to figure out how to do that I took HIS picture and did the same thing.

I told him we reminded me of that old couple on the viral video that are trying to figure out how to make a Skype call.

We're very cute too.

I spent the entire afternoon trying to update my Google contact list. I've managed to reduce it from >1600 to >1000, no mean feat. Who are all these people anyway and how did they get on my list?? But I'm only in the Ks at the moment, so there are miles to go before I sleep--and lots of unknown contacts to kill first, as well as eliminate four of the five e-mail addresses that some people have and only keep the current one.

I was able to set quick dial numbers and I learned how to make personalized ring tones work, so I can get those back again, though I can't quite do it yet because somehow I erased the one I installed (which worked) and I haven't had time to go through the steps and recreate it.

At some point this afternoon, I found a book called "Droid x2 for Dummies" and I got the Kindle version of it. It's very good--I knew it was for us when it warned against putting your cell phone in the washer and then talks about the machine dozing "just like Uncle Walt after Thanksgiving dinner."

Unfortunately, I began to share little tidbits like that with Walt, who decided to borrow the Kindle while I was cooking dinner. As I write this, several hours later, he is still reading it. But his cell phone is a Droid 3, which is slightly different from the Droid x2. I checked Amazon and found that there is a "Droid 3 for dummies," so he is (eventually) going to order that and we will each have our own "for dummies" books for our respective smart phones.

I also learned that Ashley also has a droid and at some point we may get together and let me see what wonderful things I can learn from her.

It's Day #3 and I don't love it yet, but I'm liking it a lot more. And it's nice that most of the concerns and questions I had I have been able to answer...eventually.

Sunday Stealing

2012-01-02T00:02:00.000-08:00

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?
I climbed the Great Wall.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I didn't make any last year and I haven't made any this year...it's easier not to break them that way!

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Of course. Our daughter-in-law presented the family with Lacie Ann in September.

(She seemed a bit surprised about it all!)

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Sadly too many--9. The one that hurt the most was my cousin Kathy, even though we expected her death. Cousins Days won't be the same ever again.

5. What countries did you visit?
China

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
Nothing specific comes to mind.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
September 20, the day Lacie was born.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I think it would have to be the deepening relationship with the Compassion kids.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Whatever it was I did that caused Peggy to end our 13 year friendship.

10. What was the best thing you bought?
Hopefully the new cell phones, which we bought three days ago. I expect to eventually fall in love with it. It is right up there with my Kindle, which I fought buying for years, but am so glad I finally lost the battle.

11. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Hands down, Walt and Ned, building the puppet stage for Bri.

12. Whose behavior made you appalled and disgusted?
Anybody involved with the sex scandal at Penn State; and the Catholic Church in Boston which would rather deny assistance to hundreds of orphans than to run the risk of anybody gay fostering or adopting one and giving the child a home.

13. What song will always remind you of 2011?
Well, it's not a new song, but "In the Arms of the Angel" has been so consistently on TV as advertisement for the SPCA. I notice it every time because it's what Marta and Paul's widow sang at his memorial service.

14. What do you wish you’d done more of?
I would like to have seen more movies in the theater

15. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Going to funerals.

16. Did you fall in love in 2011?
Yes. With Lacie.

17. What was your favorite new TV program?
A tossup between Grimm and Once Upon a Time. Try them if you haven't seen them!

18. What was the best book you read?
I don't think I have "a" favorite of the 41 that I read, but I discovered David Baldacci this year and his "Absolute Power," the first I read, was great. In non-fiction, I would have to name "The Mind's Eye" by Oliver Sacks.

19. What one thing would have made your year measurably more satisfying?
NOT losing my friendship with Peggy.

20. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
The same as 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003....etc.

21. What kept you sane?
Blogging

22. Who did you miss?
The same people I always miss -- Paul and David

23. Who was the best new person you met?
Sharon Filmer, a woman from England whom we met on our trip to China. We became Facebook friends after the trip.

(with our waitress, Cherry)

24. Tell us a valuable lesson you learned in 2011?
Absolutely nothing lasts forever.

25. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
I've heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don't know if I believe that's true
But I know I'm who I am today
Because I knew you
(from "For Good" from "Wicked")

2011 by the Numbers

2012-01-01T02:02:00.000-08:00

At the end of last year, I did a wrap-up of how many "things" I recorded in the year. I decided to do it again for 2011.

Last year's entry was prompted by my reading three books while on our trip to Santa Barbara for Christmas. It brought my total number of books read for 2010 to 40. It was 9 books more than I had read in 2009. I was determined to top that number this year. And I did. Barely. I read 41 books this year, but going by page count, I can't hold a candle to 2010, 15,811 pages last year and a piddling 14,071 this year.

As in 2010, crime dramas topped the list, but I read a greater variety of subjects this year, everything from the fascinating "The Mind's Eye" and "A Loving Approach to Dementia Care" to several first-person stories to dog-themed books, including an old friend ("His Dog" by Albert Payson Terhune) and the ubiquitous Michael Connelly, David Baldacci, and James Patterson fare.

My goal for 2012 is to top both 2010 and 2011 in number of books and pages read, though since I am currently reading a hefty Diane Gabaldon novel, the number of books itself may not rise very fast.

In 2010 we hosted 17 dogs. In 2011 we hosted none until Buddy arrived yesterday. With adopting Polly, I decided to take a break from fostering and I have to admit it has been a nice break. I couldn't pass up the chance to bottle feed another puppy and Buddy is a sweetheart, but I don't see this as opening the door to regular fostering again. Just too complicated with Polly.

We only saw 3 movies in 2010, but 6 in 2011, the latest of which being the newest Sherlock Holmes as our "family movie night" in Santa Barbara (the others were The Kings Speech, The Lincoln Lawyer, Water for Elephants, Midnight in Paris, and The Help). We generally have a family movie night when Jeri comes to town, and we saw two of these movies with Jeri.

In contrast, we saw 43 stage shows, compared with 58 the year before. The lower number reflects the number of shows I had someone else cover for me because we were out of town or because I was busy doing something else (or in at least one occasion, because two shows overlapped and I couldn't get to both). There were also fewer shows at the University this year.

I think we only took two plane trips together this year, the one to China (I'm not including the number (7) of flights we took inside China), and one to So. California to see tapings of Jeopardy and attend the Cal-USC game. We did not see a taping of Says You this year. Walt took a trip to Boston to spend a week with Jeri.

The game was the only sporting event we saw live. It has now been two years since our schedule has allowed us to join the Lamplighters tech crew at Giants games, though Walt saw a baseball game in Boston.

We lost 9 people we cared about this year. Some of them, like Walt's mother and Charlotte's mother, were not really a surprise, since both women were in their 90s, but it was no less painful. But also Walt's mother's cousin, Nora, in Ireland; my dear cousin Kathy; Ned's good friend Brendan; my mother's goodfriend Betty McGlashin (whom she had known since I was a baby); computer friends Laura Morefield and Judy Watt; and a local woman, Kat Fox, who had also been ill for many years. The number nearly reached 10 with the suicide attempt of someone this week, but fortunately death was averted.

And while there was no death involved, the unexplained loss of Peggy was as painful as a death...and more painful than some.

It has also been more than two year since we have seen Steve, which is a big change since we first met in 1999, and saw each other frequently.

The biggest change (other than no foster dogs this year) was in letters written this year. In 2010, I wrote:

There was a time when I wrote lots and lots of letters and was the post office's biggest customer. Now I write lots and lots of e-mails and couldn't even BEGIN to calculate how many I've written, but other than the letters I write to the Compassion kids (121 to the six combined), I wrote only FOUR regular letters this year.

Obviously that has changed significantly this year. I began The Pen Pal Project in March of this year and with few exceptions have written something every day for 247 days, though I haven't a clue how many letters I have written. Suffice to say that when I start a new project, I dive in headfirst and writing letters has been the project de l'annee. I have made such nice friends over the year and look forward to continuing this project in 2012.

I added 5 more children to my list of Compassion children, bringing the total number to 11. Three of these are correspondence children, but I love them just as much as the ones I sponsor financially. I lost 2, Pedro from Brasil and Victor from Bolivia, both of whom left the program.

Lotsa New Stuff

2011-12-31T00:55:00.000-08:00

We are ending 2011 with lots of new stuff. The first new thing would be Buddy, who arrived this afternoon.

This is the first foster I have taken in all year, but when I heard there was a 2-3 week old bottlefeeder, I couldn't say no. He is probably part pit bull and part Sharpei, with all those wrinkles on his face.

I don't have a clue what his story is because he was dropped off at the thrift shop by the woman who has been taking care of him this week and I didn't see her and the people in the shop had only just met him, but I've been feeding him a bottle, or trying to. He's not too great with it but has gotten in a few ounces this afternoon.

He's very sweet and very independent. And he has puppy breath. He walks with the waddle of a silverback gorilla and he is not interested in cuddling at all, except for the half hour he decided to curl up behind my neck, sucking on my hair.

(Well at least ONE of us was comfortable!)

Walt and I also went to the post office, after we returned the car we rented last week, and picked up the mail that was held. One thing about having become a letter writer, is when I get home from a vacation, I can't complain that I didn't receive any mail!!!

(This is AFTER the junk mail is removed!)

The final new things are our new cell phones! I was 3 years overdue for a new phone, but I liked my little flip phone with the doggy teeth marks on it so never went in to exchange it. However, there is no comeback from a trip through the washing machine and so I needed a new one. I wanted to find out how much our bill would go up if I bought a smart phone and used internet access. As it turns out there was an end of the year sale and an hour and many dollars later, we walked out with two smart phones, Verizon Androids and so we have been spending the afternoon trying to bond with them.

I was not in love at first, but as the evening has gone on and I have started to do things like...reading the manual, watching tutorials, and exploring more, I can feel those tinglings of fresh young love stirring. Of course, I have discovered free app downloads from Amazon and that may be the death of me!!!

But as we begin to enter a new year, there are old things to leave behind and new things to learn and that is a promising way to look at 2012.

Pockets

2011-12-30T00:02:00.000-08:00

I have had a cell phone for many years and I have never figured out what to do with it. I don't mean how to use it, I mean where to put it. Many people carry their cell phones around in their pockets, but since I wear mostly sweat pants, I have no pocket.

I am always on the wrong side of the phone. Mostly it stays in my purse, but I usually can't hear it, then, when it rings. Or if I take it out to be with me, I put it on my desk and then get distracted by doing something in the kitchen and still can't hear it. I rarely actually answer the phone. I usually get text messages or voice messages.

I have tried "holders." I got a cloth one that went on a string around my neck, but that just looked silly. A leather holder that clipped on my waist worked pretty well except that when I was sitting at my desk, it dug into my skin and I would take it off, leave it on the desk and either forget it there, or one of the dogs would sniff it out and chew up the leather.

I still haven't figured out the answer to my problem, but I do have a pair of fairly "good" pants that have pockets and I brought them with me to Santa Barbara, so I was able to carry my phone around in my pocket.

This was actually pretty silly since I communicate with very few people by cell phone and most of them were with me most of the time we were in Santa Barbara. But by god, if I got separated from them, I could have called them.

I was kind of happy with this whole pocket thing until late this morning when I took out the clothes I had washed to pack and bring home. I wondered what all that clanging was in the washer and then in the dryer and, sure enough, my cell phone had gone through a thorough cleaning and drying, as I had not remembered to take it out of the pocked I finally thought to put it in.

So I am, at the moment, without cell phone and will see what Verizon can do for me in the morning. I am about two or three or maybe even four years overdue for their free phone replacement. I was tempted, but my cell phone was special since (a) it was red and you don't see many red cell phones, and (b) it had been teethed on by a puppy (I don't remember which one) and I liked that distinctive quality about it.

But puppy teeth marks will now be no more...and I just hope that in my cleaning of my cell phone I also didn't erase all the information stored on it!

We came home today. We stopped at Tom's on the way out to say goodbye to him, Jeri and Bri. Jeri wanted a final picture taken of her and her niece.

Bri was also interested in my t-shirt, with the sneezing baby Panda, and asked me if I would promise to wear it next time I came. I told I would, if she would be sure her Dad showed her the sneezing Panda video on YouTube.

And then we turned our wheels out of Santa Barbara. I'm hoping some of you horticultural types can tell me what this plant is:

They are growing all over Santa Barbara. I am assuming it is some sort of relative to the century plant but it looks like a brontesaurus hiding in the bushes. They are quite impressive!

We Almost Saw the Giraffe

2011-12-29T00:02:00.000-08:00

Well, that's not really true. We did see the giraffes. But not much else.

Walt called Tom this morning to see what was going on. Laurel had gone back to work, Ned and Marta were headed back to Sacramento, and Lacie was going to be with the babysitter, so it was just Tom and Jeri with Bri and they suggested we go to the Santa Barbara zoo, which I have never visited (Walt has).

By the time we got ourselves up, showered and dressed and got to Tom's house, said goodbye to Ned & Marta, got Bri dressed and ready and got on the road, it was about 11 a.m.

Normally this wouldn't be a problem. The zoo doesn't open until 11 anyway. But the zoo is a 20-25 minute drive from Tom's house and we had plans to have lunch with our friends Dick and Gerry, who live near Tom, at 1 p.m.. That meant that under the best of conditions, we would have 30 minutes for the zoo (though Tom and Jeri could stay as long as they wanted, of course).

Walt dropped me off at the parking lot (which was full) and I walked to the ticket line (which was long) while he went to find a place to park. He arrived, with Tom, Jeri and Bri and we all stood in line and waited. And waited.

Finally we had tickets and entered. I mostly wanted to see the giraffes, which you can feed, for a price. They are apparently part of the grand finale, so in order to see them first, Tom set off in the opposite way to how you are supposed to go.

It's a lovely little zoo, with lots of grass and places for the kids to play. It sits overlooking the ocean. We walked up a hill...and walked and walked and walked. I finally told Tom it was a lovely park, but were there any animals there?

Shortly afterwards, we saw lions. Sort of. One female lying in the sun appearing not to breathe, until she finally took one deep breath. Near her was the paw of what they assured me was a male lion. All I saw was his paw.

But next to them was the giraffe enclosure, with one giraffe looking out to the ocean.

We saw the feeding platform and a long line of people waiting to feed the giraffes.

Obviously, there was no way we could get onto the platform and get to Dick and Gerry's in time, so we scratched that plan. We had a quick look at the one meerkat that was out...

...and then Walt and I had to to leave. He went ahead to get the car, I made my way down the hill, stopping for water and a pit stop, where I found the real zoo--five mothers, each with 3 small children, all trying to pee in the women's room. The lions, sleeping in the sun had it much better off!

We were only 10 minutes late getting to Dick and Gerry's and had a lovely lunch, catching up on news and Gerry's recent trip to Ireland. She was happy for an excuse to use her Christmas finery one more time.

We finished the day at the Tupelo Cafe in downtown Santa Barbara where we had such a fun evening with Joe, Alice Nan and Jeri. Food was reasonable, but this is a $15 crab cake.

(note the size in comparison to the lemon slice). Fortunately it was absolutely delicious and almost worth that much money!

Thursday Thirteen

2011-12-29T00:01:00.000-08:00

Reasons I’m stopping Thursday 13s
1. I’ve run out of things to count
2. The end of a year is a good time to end things.
3. I’ve enjoyed it, but it’s time to quit.
4. I have lots of not quite finished lists and can’t find things to finish them with
5. After 117 weeks, I can’t take the pressure any more.
6. I might do this again sometime, but not in the foreseeable future.
7. I’ve started repeating myself
8. I can’t keep track of what I’ve already written
9. It’s time for others to keep the idea going
10. There are things I’m tempted to list, but I don’t want to go public
11. ...and if I did another list, I might slip and do it anyway.
12. I think I’ve accomplished something here.
13. I can count on the fingers of one hand the comments I’ve had on these 117 entries.

Sandy Socks

2011-12-28T00:02:00.000-08:00

I may have figured out a great way to keep sand off your toes while walking on the beach.

If I had known the things we were going to do down here, I probably would have thought better about bringing only a pair of Birkinstocks and socks to wear with them. I have found they are not great for hiking in the woods, and they are not the footwear of choice while walking on the beach...unless you do it right.

We were invited to Tom and Laurel's this morning for pancakes. Tom had received some pancake molds for Christmas and wanted to try them out. They were characters from the movie Cars, and not easy to make, but Jeri gave it the ol' college try and actually got some recognizable pancakes out of the effort.

(Though most of us had round pancakes, which we decided were wheels.)

While waiting for pancakes to be ready, Bri showed me how the Advent Calendar from Jacquie Lawson worked.

To watch that little not-quite-4 year old manipulate a mouse and know what she was doing was pretty impressive...not to say intimidating!

When breakfast was over, the day's plan was to go to Goleta Beach. We took two cars and drove down to the spot most recognizable as the place where Tom and Joe hold their annual 4th of July beach BBQ. Bri decided she wanted to walk to "the pier," so we all set off across the sand in that direction. Walt was easy to find, since, pushing the double stroller, he left a trail that was easy to follow!

We had a wonderful time walking way out onto the pier to watch the fishermen and chase the seagulls.

Lacie slept most of the way.

On the way back to the playground where we had started, I gave up trying to keep my feet in the Birkinstocks so took them off, but kept my socks on, so I was walking in stocking feet on sand. By the time I had climbed the hill and walked across grass to get to the playground, the sand had come off my socks and when I put the Birkinstocks back on there was no sand on my feet, on my socks or on my sandals. Pretty good.

We spent some time at the playground and I got to do what all mothers love to do--take pictures of my children playing on the swings and slides.

We returned to Tom's, but just dropped things off and then gave them a couple of hours for naps and relaxing. We returned at 5 p.m., when Ned was barbequing some steaks he had cut from a HUGE chunk of tri-tip.

It was a delicious dinner, lots of good chatter, lots of laughs, and then saying goodbye to Ned and Marta, who leave first thing tomorrow morning to return home. We have one more full day here, and Jeri has two.

Butterfly Kisses

2011-12-27T01:00:00.001-08:00

Today we went for a walk in the woods.

We walked with Joe's daughter Jocelyn, her husband David, and little Charlee.

We were heading for the Elwood Butterfly Preserve, where monarch butterflies come every winter to mate. I had read about it in the local paper and had always wanted to be in one of those places where you were surrounded by monarch butterflies. Here it was right in the back yard, just about.

As we approached the eucalyptus grove where the swarms were, you could suddenly see what looked like big clumps of vegetation in the branches of the trees.

Then as you watched, you realized that these were not just "clumps," but clumps of butterflies.

And as the sun rose higher and began to warm the clumps, the butterflies became more active, flying all over the place, and the clumps were much easier to distinguish.

It was just magical. We sat there transfixed.

Ned took video.

And Bri, along with a group of children, helped a butterfly fly, because it had gotten too cold. When they blew on the wings, it flew off.

We sat there for a very long time just watching them fly about.

When we were finished, we walked to the top of the hill and out to the bluffs, which overlooked the ocean.

The weather was perfect and the scenery so beautiful. When we left the preserve, we went and had lunch with Ned, Marta, Jeri, Tom and Bri and then came home, whereupon I dove, once again, onto the couch and slept for about 2½ hrs, during which time Joe's granddaughter had joined the group. We quickly reheated leftovers from Christmas dinner and then met Ned, Marta and Jeri at the theatre, where we saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie.

One thing I can say--it sure isn't Basil Rathbone!

Ending the evening on a happy note. It was a lovely, beautiful day.

The Year of the Puppet

2011-12-26T06:12:00.000-08:00

I am writing this at 4 in the morning because I was so exhausted when we returned from Tom & Laurel's last night I dove into bed and was asleep within minutes. I'm not sure why I was so tired. Everyone else did all the work

Early in the morning, Ned and Marta had their own little Christmas and opened each others' gifts...they both got new slippers.

Around 1 p.m., Tom arrived with a truck so that the puppet stage could be moved to his house. This was his first look at the stage and he was suitably pleased.

(Now, it helps to know that the kids performed all their performing careers at the Veterans Memorial Theater in Davis. Walt's mother, who died this year, was called TuTu, the Hawaiian word for "Grandmother," by Brianna. Also, several years ago, the grand drape of the Veterans Memorial Theater was replaced. Ned brought the old one home and the curtains for this stage were cut from that curtain (also the black curtains that go on the sides and back were cut from the blacks that were replaced at the Vets. So this puppet theatre is just full of special meaning, which Bri will never fully appreciate, but we sure do!)

The stage was loaded on the truck and taken to Tom's house, where we waited until Brianna went down for her nap to move it in.

Jeri arrived in Los Angeles at noon and Alice Nan & Joe brought her back to Santa Barbara, where she finally got to meet her new niece.

Then there were tattoos to be applied.

Finally Bri went down for her nap and the stage was moved in. Walt and Ned put on the finishing touches.

Walt and Ned were fully prepared for a ho-hum reaction from Brianna to her new puppet stage, realizing how much she would like it over time, but that a stage might not be super-exciting to a not-quite-4 year old. It is necessary to view the video, which I will post when I get home next week, but Brianna's reaction on seeing the stage was more than anybody had dared hope. She loved it and puppets quickly became the focus of the entire day.

In the meantime, Tom was getting a turkey ready to go into the deep fryer (I'd never had fried turkey before--it was delicious!)

Dinner was a lot of fun.

And afterwards there was even See's candy to pass around.

Brianna opened her gifts first and there was, no surprise, a heavy emphasis on puppets, like this peacock puppet from Alice Nan.

It was generally agreed that while this old man golfer puppet from Uncle Norm may never be Brianna's favorite, it was definitely Ned's.

Through all the festivities, Lacie was adorable. 3 months is my very favorite baby age, and she did all those 3 month things I love, including snuggling and grinning.

And before she went to bed for the night, she showed that she, too, will soon be doing "Bri's trick" on Daddy's hand, though she appears a bit dubious right now.

It was a wonderful evening full of family, love, laughter and kids. Just the way Christmas should be.

For all the photos, check the file on Flickr.

Stop. Rest.

2011-12-25T00:28:00.000-08:00

In half an hour, I should be outside looking for the jolly fellow in the sleigh with the red headlight. Last time I checked, NORAD's Santa Watch had him over Salt Lake City.

But for now, with the dishwasher running, the pies baking, and the memory of a nice day, particularly the long dinner, dancing in my head, I am going to sit down and bat out a journal entry.

Still haven't seen the girls and the puppet theater is still in the garage, so can't show you that, but I will tomorrow. I tried a new (cheap) movie making software package to put together the video I took yesterday, but it did a horrendously crappy job. There is a video on YouTube because I couldn't figure out how to delete it, and it will be re-made when we get home, but if you really want to see it, you can check here. I can't believe how bad the quality of the print is.

It was a quiet day. I was NOT the first one up, and surprised (a) that I slept until 7:15, and (b) that Marta was already up and reading when I staggered out.

I lazed around most of the day, took a couple of cat naps, and did nothing much of interest. Ned and Marta went downtown to wander the streets of Santa Barbara, watching shoppers rush by with their treasures, Alice Nan went Christmas shopping and finally, around 5 or 6 p.m. I realized I had to get out to get stuff for pumpkin pies.

It is a good idea not to assume that Joe and Alice have anything I need for baking. Joe does most of the cooking and is an excellent cook, but he's not a baker. Plus they are both very health conscious so I'm never sure if they have things like sugar and white flour. Also, last year I assumed they had spices, but I couldn't find ginger or ground cinnamon, so I left out the ginger entirely and was having Jeri crush whole cinnamon sticks to put in the pie. It turns out they had tons of cinnamon, but they were using it to repel ants in the bathroom. I never thought to look in the bathroom for cinnamon!

So this year I came prepared with pie pans and a rolling pin (last year I used a bottle of wine) and bought flour, shortening, cloves, and ginger along with the pumpkin and evaporated milk.

Joe cooked a fabulous dinner of barbequed chicken breasts he had marinated with fresh rosemary from his herb garden, along with elephant garlic and lemon juice, served with broccoli with hollandaise sauce and white rice.

After dinner we sat around and talked and talked and talked. Then we went into the family room and talked and talked some more. We got to talking about old punch lines, one of which was "Why don't you write your mother?" and the other of which was "Ginzberg." But the punch lines have been around for so long, we can no longer remember all the details of the jokes themselves and I proved that you can find ANYTHING on the internet by finding both jokes in a book of Jewish humor in a matter of seconds.

"Write your mother"

"Ginzberg"
(you have to scroll down a page to find the comment where someone tells the joke)

Finally everyone (but me) settled down for a long winter's nap while I started the pies. I had forgotten that I borrowed Tom's cuisinart last year to make the crust. I refuse to buy pre-made crust, so I went back to the pre-electronics technique of cutting the shortening into the flour with two knives. The crusts actually turned out surprisingly well.

Next came the filling. Most of it went fine, though I had bought whole cloves instead of ground, but that was a spice that they had here, so crisis averted. I also am going to have to scrub the oven of the spills after the pies are done, but for better or worse, they are finished and baking.

I am looking forward to getting into my kerchief and settling down for my own long winter's nap, but I hear a clatter out on the lawn and think I should either investigate--or hide.

Where are those cookies...?

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night

And may God bless us every one.

Rest Stop

2011-12-24T00:02:00.000-08:00

The drive from Davis to Santa Barbara takes 8 hours, no matter which way you go. I prefer to drive down I-5, which is flat, boring, and I think Walt says is a bit longer--but you can drive faster. You drive to Sacramento, turn right, drive an hour through valley towns and share the road with big semis, which I hate, and then at a point, you turn left and drive straight on for hundreds of miles along the viaduct that takes Northern California water and delivers it to Southern California, past endless vineyards (which in years past were empty hills and flat grassy areas), past the feed lot for the Harris Ranch (there is no missing that little place, with thousands of cattle, doing what cattle do best, the smell of which can wake you from a sound sleep).

You reach Kettleman City, in the middle of nowhere ("city" is a misnomer--it is a collection of fast food joints), turn right, drive another hour over to Highway 101, then turn left at Paso Robles and drive to Alice Nan's house.

Walt prefers to go west on I-80, veer off onto 680, and drive down to San Jose, where he picks up 101. 101 has more of interest, but is more congested and the mental "bookmarks" that I have in my mind seem farther between. It's a perception thing.

Whichever way we go, there are rest stops along the way. On I-5, I know every bathroom between Davis and Kettleman City from the days when I was drinking even more water than I drink now and had to stop every 20 miles or so to make room for more. Fortunately there are official state-run rest stops, with nice vending machines, every 20 miles or so once you make the left turn.

I know where all the McDonalds' are if I'm feeling sleepy and have to gauge whether to buy my iced mocha now or wait for the next one....and can decide if I want a drive-thru burger or to push on to Pea Soup Andersons for a sit-down lunch of a bowl of their famous pea soup and a tour through the ubiquitous gift shops.

Along the road from Kettleman City to Paso Robles, where it hooks up with Hwy 101, I gauge how green the hills are, whether there are wildflowers or not (not at this time of year, of course) so I know where I should look for a place to stop, where the wildflowers are at their peak, and decide whether I want to stop at the James Dean memorial at the half way point to take pictures or not. The memorial is not far from where Dean was killed, but is so subtle, you almost have to know it's there to find it.

Walt drove yesterday, so we came down I-5 to 680 to 101, which means that we stop at one big mall area so Walt can use the facilities at McDonald's, then down through Salinas, where I always get a wistful pang as we pass "John St.," because it reminds me that we are going through Salinas yet again and I have wanted to visit the John Steinbeck museum since the 1980s and still have never done it.

But ahead is Gonzales, where the Burger Queen is. We usually hit the Burger Queen at lunch, but we left so late yesterday that it was 5 and getting dark by the time we saw the familiar water tower that marks the exit where the Burger Queen sits across the mighty McDonald's.

We both ordered mushroom burgers for dinner, which come wrapped as tightly as a baby in swaddling clothes, which is good because they are so full of burger and cheese and mushrooms and (for me) onions that if you try take them apart, they literally fall apart in your fingers.

There was a young girl, about 16, who was working there who was trying to be so friendly. She asked where we were from, and seemed surprised that we had come all the way from Sacramento to have lunch there--she didn't seem to have a good grasp about how far it was. Later she saw me reading on my Kindle and asked if that was my "reading machine" and then wanted to know what story was reading. When I tried to explain the book about the brain that I was reading, she looked like she couldn't believe I could be reading that for enjoyment.

Walt pointed out something I have noticed too. If you are listening to an audio book (we were listening to Michael Connelly's new book, "The Drop"), you tend to get disoriented, especially at night, because you aren't seeing your usual visual cues. I remember being surprised to see that we were in Greenfield, for example, which is about 10 miles from King City and I thought we had passed through King City about 20 minutes before.

So Walt nearly missed his usual stop for gas, but did manage to pull off in time. He started pumping gas and I went to the rest room. It was on of those stalls where the toilet paper is wound tightly inside an almost impenetrable steel container. I was able to get a couple of sheets of one-ply to tear off, but then even sticking my hand way up inside and trying to run around the outer edge of the TP could not find its "free edge," and so I had to make due with the paltry bit of paper in my hand, which was not up to the task and tore as soon as it reached my body.

Fortunately there was no such difficulty getting enough soap for the hand washing.

Walt then took his turn in the rest room, but since he had locked the car and since it was freezing outside, I waited in the little gas station minimart. There were two guys in there, the young man who ran the place, and an older Hispanic man. The two were arguing about marriage. The older man was telling the kid he should never get married and that he could get all the sex he wanted without the commitment to share half of all his stuff with a woman. The kid was arguing that marriage was "created by God" for us and that to have sex outside of marriage was a sin. I butted in with the fact that I had been married 46 years and they could ask me anything. The Hispanic guy told me I was a saint.

About this time Walt came out of the bathroom and we continued on our way.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, mile after mile of darkness while Harry Bosch went on about his investigations. We pulled up here earlier than expected and sent off a picture to Alice Nan (who was at a neighborhood party) to let her know we had arrived.

We had reached our last (and best) rest stop.

Thanks, Bill

2011-12-23T01:09:00.000-08:00

Bill Clinton was on The Today Show the other day, to recommend his favorite books in case someone was looking for a gift idea for Christmas. He talked about other books before he gave his own list of recommended reading and one that he mentioned was "The Mind's Eye," by Oliver Sacks (who also wrote "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat"). Apparently this was the book that Hillary's mother was reading at the time of her death and, according to his description, it talks about what happens if a human loses the use of one of the senses, and what happens to the others that take over.

This stuff fascinates me and I immediately ordered it for my Kindle, not having a clue how relevant it was going to be.

The first chapter talks about a woman who was a well known concert pianist who suddenly, overnight, could no longer read music. It was the first symptom of a condition he refers to as visual agnosia. As the condition progressed, she was not able to read words. She could see the letters, and she could even write, but she could not put letters into any coherent form that would allow her to read a word, even the words that she had just written. In its early stages, she would have periods where words could be read again, and then she would lose the ability once more.

It was a neurological condition which could not be cured and as her disease progressed, she was unable to recognize faces, shapes, and even was sometimes disoriented in her own house. She developed coping mechanisms, but doctors were never able to find a way to cure the problem.

I was particularly interested in this because about a year before he died, Paul became unable to read. I don't know how long before he admitted his problem it had started, but just like Lillian in Sacks' book, he could not look at words and make sense of them...and then suddenly he could read again, for a few minutes or, if he was lucky, a few hours before the condition returned. He could not write the scripts for his monologue shows, for example, but had to memorize these long monologues as he "wrote" in his head

I don't know if this would have led to the serious condition that Lillian faced but there was some small comfort in reading her story because it helped me understand what Paul had gone through, because I had never heard of such a condition before.

It also brought some (small) comfort that he is no longer here because Paul? Sick? Dealing with a condition like that which has no cure? Oh man would that have been horrible!

The second chapter deals with aphasia and what happens when people lose the ability to speak. This is another subject which has fascinated me for a long time. My mother talks almost every time I see her about her mother, who was aphasic for a time before she died. My mother doesn't know the name of the condition, or understand it, but she talks about how her mother would blabber nonsense sounds and expect my mother to understand and my mother, being the accommodating person that she is, would pretend to understand and answer her back, but eventually my grandmother would tire of trying to communicate and indicate that she wanted to go back to her room.

It has always fascinated me to wonder if there had been some other way of communicating with her. If her brain had lost its ability to speak, could she read? Could she sign? Could she understand my mother enough to nod and let her know that she could understand her words? Or had she not only lost the ability to speak, but language as well.

I am not through this chapter in the book, but I find particularly interesting the accounts of two men who lost their ability to speak, the first a guy who had a stroke at age 43, but who regained the ability and is now able to articulate what it was like at the time.

I was totally (globally) aphasic. I could understand vaguely what others said to me if it was spoken slowly and represented a very concrete form of action...I had lost completely the ability to talk, to read and to write. I even lost for the first two months the ability to use words internally, that isl, in my thinking...I had also lost the ability to dream. So, for a matter of eight to nine weeks, I lived in a total vacuum of self-produced concepts. I could deal only with the immediate present...The part of myself that was missing was [the] intellectual aspect--the sine qua non of my personality--those essential elements most important to being a unique individual.

Another man writes,

Inwardly, I felt the same as ever. This mental isolation which I mention, my sadness, my impediment and the appearance of stupidity which it gave rise to, led many to believe that my intellectual faculties were weakened. I used to discuss within myself my lifework and the studies I loved. Thinking caused me no difficulty whatever. My memory for facts, principles, dogmas, abstract ideas, was the same as when I enjoyed good health...I had to realize that the inner workings of the mind could dispense with words.

I have just barely begun to read this book, but already it is filling my head with thought and questions. I am particularly interested as I myself find that my brain is doing weird things and writing words I don't mean to write, sometimes parts of sentences that I never intended to write when I thought I was writing something else. It's more than just "typos," it is just some weird glitch that has been developing over the past year or so.

So I am particularly interested in finishing this book and seeing how much information I can get from it.

We are in Santa Barbara. We listened to Michael Connelly's new book, "The Drop," all the way down here in our rental car. Walt has decided he likes renting cars for trips like this because it's fun to drive different models of cars. I can tell you, this model Ford will NOT be on my wish list!

The iPod connects to a plug inside the glove compartment so you can run it through the radio speakers, but if you need to be charging your iPod while you are listening, you have to leave the glove compartment open, leaving NO place for your knees, because there is no little hole to run the cord through.

(try riding like THIS for 400 miles with a bum knee!)

Plus, the only place to charge the battery is next to the middle console and if you have the iPod plugged in, you can't close the door to the compartment.

I finally decided it had charged long enough and disconnected it from the power source and closed up the glove compartment with the iPod inside so I could stretch out my leg...and we made it all the way here without the battery dying.

But now we are here at the home of Walt's sister and her husband and it is "Christmas." At least the house looks beautiful

Little Christmas and Ikea

2011-12-22T00:02:00.000-08:00

January 6, the day recognized as the day the Wise Men came to visit the Holy Family. It marks the end of the Christmas season and many people call it "Little Christmas." It's also, I believe, the day the Eastern Orthodox Catholics celebrate Christmas (or so David's Ukranian godfather has been telling us for years).

However, today was my "little Christmas."

We are leaving tomorrow morning for Santa Barbara and will be gone a week (and Ashley with her 3 dogs will be moving in here, so all you would-be thieves, look ye elsewhere for your targets!). My mother won't travel any more and even if she were able to make the 400 mile trip to Santa Barbara there is no way she could tolerate staying there a whole week, so she will be having a quiet Christmas with her stepson.

So today was my Christmas with her.

I went down in the early morning and we had a nice visit before time for lunch. We went to a lovely place called Chalet Basque which is small and intimate with lots of greenery planted around the windows so you can't see the highway which is just a few feet from the front door.

I ordered a Croque Monsieur, which I had never had and wasn't sure what it was (a toasted ham and Swiss cheese sandwich with additional Swiss cheese melted on top) and it was tasty. My mother had a salad.

When we finished our lunch, my mother asked with a twinkle in her eye if we were going to get dessert. Truth to tell, I was stuffed, but who am I to turn down a chocolate mousse...

...and this one was perfect, very light and creamy. Of course I was still full by dinner time!

My mother was sleepy when we got back to the house and wanted a nap, so I left and decided to visit Ikea in Emeryville, since I hadn't been able to get to the store in Sacramento the other day. I was trying to find child-hand sized puppets, since all I could find in town were great puppets, but really made for an adult hand. Ned's sister-in-law told me that she thought Ikea carried what I was looking for.

I had been to Ikea in Emeryville once before and it had been a disaster. The place is huge and it is brightly colored and it is right along side the freeway, so I had no trouble knowing where it was. What I had trouble was finding the right street that would lead me there. It took half an hour going up and down and around and could always see it off in the distance but couldn't find the damn street that would actually go to the store. By the time I found, I had only half an hour to search for what I was looking for, and, this being my first time there, I didn't know that furniture was sold unassembled...and hadn't thought about how I was going to get an unassembled (or assembled, for that matter) bookcase into my little car.

That was my only previous experience with Ikea. Today I found it unerringly and had no time constraints, so I could explore. I was disappointed, though, because I didn't find any puppets, except finger puppets, but I figured those would do better than nothing, so I picked up a couple of packages and sent Walt a text message that read "finger puppets."

Then I continued to walk around and on some piece of furniture, I found one child-hand sized regular puppet. I texted Walt "Puppet!"

I figured where there was one there must be others and walked around looking until I came to a bin. I texted Walt "Puppets!!!"

I picked out a few puppets and returned the finger puppets and then went on. Around the next corner, I found this.

I texted "More puppets!" I also texted "I may move in here."

Around the next corner I was in the kitchen section and barely made it out with minimal purchases. I have made "learning about Ikea" on my list for things to do in 2011.

I finally went to the exit, picked up a couple of packages of Swedish meat balls and headed to the car. I was a happy camper, and I even got out of Emeryville ahead of rush hour traffic, which is somwhat of a miracle. All in all a very good, very positive day.

Thursday Thirteen

2011-12-22T00:01:00.000-08:00

My biggest loss this year was the loss of my friend Peggy, who stopped writing to me for reasons I will probably never know....email from mutual friends assure me that there is nothing physically wrong with her...but they don't know why she has cut me off either. We have been friends for about 13 years and I wrote to her every day. She knows me better than anybody else in my life. These are the things that I miss about Peggy...

1. The cheery “'allo!” with that wonderful Australian accent, on the telephone
2. hearing stories of the roos she fosters
3. having someone who knows me so well I can tell her anything
4. telling her everything
5. seeing photos she has taken
6. being her go-between for orders from the US
7. John Denver
8. Sharing stories of the elephant orphan she sponsors in Africa
9. Getting help with my computer, from 9000 miles away.
10. My subscription to the magazine Digital Photography
11. recording Celine Dion concerts for her
12. Remembering the Blue Angels
13. “For Good,” from Wicked

Time for Another Shelf

2011-12-21T23:50:00.000-08:00

Cookie baking has slowed down. I only made one batch today...couldn't get through the Christmas season without a bit of ginger, so I made some ginger snaps. I also filled up several small containers to give to people. I dropped one off at a neighbor's door (haven't heard from them), took some to my friend Joan and to "Jessica Moms Brown," who read I didn't know what I was going to do with all these cookies and kindly volunteered to take some off my hands! Two friends also stopped by and picked up cookies. Ned's sister-in-law picked up a big batch for her and her family and took a smaller package to her mother.

Finally, Ned stopped by and I sent him home with a container of cookies as well.

So this was a third cookie-centered day and when contemplating what to write tonight, I decided it was time to go back to the etagere shelves and write about another shelf. Believe it or not there is a bit of rhyme and/or reason to the placements of things on this shelf.

This is the left side:

The shelf starts off in Ireland. There is a tall candle in the back which Walt's mother brought back for us. It represents Ireland's millennium. In front of that is a brown cup with four handles. I remember Walt's sister brought it to us from Ireland many, many years ago. In front of that is a shamrock in a frame. I bought that in Castlebar on our first trip to Ireland when we stayed in the tiny town of Mayo Abby. Castlebar, with a population of about 13,000, was the "big city" nearby.

Then you see the pitcher and the white bowl. Those are both Beleek pottery. Walt's mother's cousin Nora, who died this year, gave them to me on one of our trips to stay with her. Both had broken pieces, I believe, and I glued them together again. They are so delicate.

There is a ceramic mushroom made from the mud from, I think, Alaska. I'm not 100% certain that it was Alaska, but I think it was, when we visited Mike and Char when they were living there. To the right of the mushroom is a statue of an otter, which my friend Phil gave to me in the days when we were speaking to each other. I like it because it was one of only a very few things he ever gave me...also because otters are cute!

Behind the otter is a big round ceramic bird. I'm not sure what kind of a bird it is, but it was given to me by a guy from Chili, as was the tiny green marble penguin in the front of the shelf.

I can't remember where I got the parrot on the tree, but have a feeling it came from Brasil.

The big black wooden statue in the back came from one of the kids--I think it was Paul, but I could be wrong. It's the Maltese Falcon.

The other half of the shelf is this:

I'm not 100% certain where some of these things came from. There is the Maltese Falcon again in front of which is an owl on a slab of polished rock, which came from Brasil. I love the little collection of birds in eggs, which also came from Brasil, I think (but I could be wrong). The grey bird behind those was from one of our Japanese girls and the big owl in the back came from Chili. The toucan also came from Chili, I think. These were all gifts from our foreign students, but we had so many from So. America it's difficult to keep track of which visitor brought which gift.

Next is the sea life collection. In front of the toucan is a beautiful glass whale that I bought on the Big Island in Hawaii. It was made from black sand. We had just been to South Point beach with Marta's mother and step-father and watched a mother and baby whale cavorting off shore and I wanted a statue to remember that event. In front of that is a tiny pelican which I bought in Australia after we had watched the feeding of a bunch of pelicans in Kilbarri Park.

There is a panda that I bought at the San Diego zoo after seeing Hua Mei, the young panda whom I had been watching on "panda cam" ever since she was born. Next to her is a whale netsuke box I bought on Friday Island in Puget Sound after my friend Diane and I had nearly drowned on a whale watching boat. The top part of the whale comes off and there is a teeny tiny statue of Jonah inside.

Next to the netsuke box is a wooden dolphin mother and baby which Peggy bought for me in the small town of Denham, after we had been to Monkey Mia to see the wild dolphins swim in to get their fishy treats.

Behind that is a touristy thing that I bought at Hillary's Marina outside of Perth. It is in the shape of Australia and is filled with flowers of Australia. I had actually bought it for a friend, but liked it so much I kept it for myself.

Behind that are a canned wombat and a canned kangaroo which Peggy sent me for Christmas, two years in a row.

And there you have it -- another etagere shelf revealed!

Monday Stealing

2011-12-20T00:28:00.000-08:00

OK. So I'm a day late. So sue me!

1. As a blogger, what do you draw inspirations from for your posts?
So many things, depending on what is going on with me and with the world around me. I am always inspired by the Compassion bloggers and I like to read blogs which are written well; those are both an inspiration and a humbling thing!

2. If you could swap blogs with another blogger for a post, who would you switch with and why?
Hmmm...interesting question. I think my friend Sian, who writes Notes from a Small Island because I would insist that our swaps include my traveling to Orkney and her coming here. That would be worth the swap right there!

3. If your blog had a theme song, what would it be? Why?
It already has a theme song, the Lawsuit song, "Funny," the first line of which is Funny the world in a world all alone. It took me about 5 minutes searching for a name for this journal and then the song leaped out at me and I've never looked back.

4. What is your writing process for a post?
I sit down. I write. Sometimes I struggle for a subject, but usually it's pretty easy, and when nothing percolates up, I do a meme!

5. Your blog requires a cute, new, mascot -- what would it be?
Well, a dog, of course. Maybe a cute little pit bull puppy, because they are big and soft and floppy, just like me.

6. Do you feel you express your "true self" on your blog?
Most of the time. What gets printed in this blog is definitely the true me, though there are editing bits that take place from time to time.

7. What is your biggest online pet-peeve?
Text shorthand. If u cn rd this u r better than I. I especially hate text shorthand in the blog of anybody over the age of 40. It then becomes an affectation.

8. If you could live in a fictional universe, where would you live? Why?
The only fictional universe that comes to mind is the one Diana Gabaldon created in her "Outlander" series. Of course I'd have to be in better shape, but traipsing around Scotland with Jamie Frasier has its appealing points.

9. You're having a bad day, you're upset, you're angry, or you're sad -- what is your go-to comfort?
I eat, of course. I also eat when I'm upbeat and happy. And I eat when I'm bored. Food is a one-stop emotional crutch for me!

10. What is your favorite inspirational quote?
"We need to have people who mean something to us, people to whom we can turn knowing that being with them is coming home." I have that hanging on my wall for decades.

11. If they were to make a movie based on your life, who would play you, your leading lady/man, your best friend, and your rival?
Rosie O'Donnell would be me. After that I'd leave it up to the director. I have NO imagination for filling in these roles! Discussion question: Who do YOU think should play those roles? Leave a comment!

12. Do you think the world is going to end in 2012?
It depends on who is nominated by the Republican party.

13. If you could change anything about yourself, what would it be?
I would rather have a life-long love of exercise and vegetables. (Which is really weird because my father was an exercise NUT, but we never, ever did anything as a family which was physically healthy and my whole childhood was spent eating the richest, most fat-filled foods, and desserts, though my mother loved gardening and loves fresh vegetables.)

14. What is your favorite season and why?
Fall, because the trees are beautiful and the weather ahead is cold and rainy. I also love spring, but what comes next is hot and I am not a big fan of hot weather.

15. You've been bitten by a vampire. Would you fight it with all your undead being or would you embrace it for all it is worth?
Oh probably embrace it. Too much trouble to fight.

16. Have you personally met any of your blogger friends?
Yes, several (though most of them were internet friends who started blogs after we met.)

17. What does your favorite pair of underwear look like?
Like any other pair of underwear (why do we call it a "pair" when you only put on one piece of clothing?) I'm a big fan of the dreaded granny panty. Going "wild and crazy" is ordering some pastel colors.

18. Have you ever drunk something right from the container in the refrigerator knowing other people will have to drink out of the same container later?
Yes...but it never occurred to me that other people would drink out of the same container later.

19. What is your favorite word and explain why?
Well, I'm embarrassed to say that the only word that has come to mind is the F word, which I say, sotto voce, to myself too many times in a day. Nothing else works quite as well.

20. 2011 is soon coming to a close, is there anything you'd like to do different on your blog in the year 2012?
Celebrate the re-election of Barack Obama.
I also think of redesigning Funny the World every year, but never come up with a different design that I like

Bake-a-Thon

2011-12-19T00:02:00.000-08:00

It's been awhile since I did a bake-a-thon. I always baked cookies during the holidays when the kids were living at home and when I worked and when we entertained. Always had something on hand to serve if someone dropped around, or to take to the office, or for the kids and their friends to munch on, and then give to family members if we visited.

Each year since I retired and the kids grew up, I felt guilty. I should be baking cookies. Doesn't everybody bake Christmas cookies?

So I decided that I would have a bake-a-thon this year.

I went out and bought 2 kinds of nuts, salted and unsalted butter, more peanut butter, cream cheese, chocolate chips, flower, sugar to replace what I spilled on the floor, jam for thumbprint cookies, etc., etc. etc.

I was going to bake all day yesterday, but got wrapped up in cleaning my office (really!) and watching a Criminal Minds marathon and never got around to starting until after dinner. I made a full batch of chocolate chip cookies, which I was too full to even sneak tastes of. Walt was my quality control person.

I was going to cook more, but decided to wait until morning.

In the morning I started out with actual Martha Stewart shortbread. I did all the stuff that I usually shortcut. Started with room-temperature ingredients, beat the (unsalted) butter for 5 minutes so it would be light, actually let it cool to room temperature before cutting.

Then I made peanut butter cookies with the criss crosses.

Then I did the sparkly ones, with the raspberry filling. When I was doing these, somehow I turned off the oven, so baking time got to be kind of weird, but they came out tasting OK.

About this time I was beginning to doubt my sanity. I now had dozens and dozens of cookies and wanted to make more, but who was I baking them for? No job to take them to, no people dropping in, no parties to go to. I knew I wanted to leave some for Ashley when she is here while we are in Santa Barbara, and I wanted to take some to my mother, who eats very few sweets, so I won't take many.

I made an offhand comment on Facebook about all these cookies and immediately got lots of local takers...now I'm wondering if I'll have enough.

That's a good thing to have to wonder.

I Will Survive

2011-12-18T00:02:00.000-08:00

This comes courtesy of Kwizgiver

1. What in the 2011 has proved to you that you are a survivor?
There are too many years that have proved that I'm a survivor--1986, the year Gilbert died; 1996, the year David died; 1999, the year Paul died. This year we lost 9 people we know, some better than others. The most painful was the death of my cousin Kathy, compounded by the realization that the woman I thought was one of my best friends (Peggy) had ended our friendship without even letting me know why.

Despite it, I am surviving. Because what choice do we have but to survive? And besides, there are high points too...like a granddaughter to get to know!

2. Have you ever stayed online for a very long time waiting for someone?
Yes. In the days when I did chatting on line, 12 years ago or so, I would wait for Peggy to come on line and, before that, for my friend Ron, with whom I used to chat frequently.

3. Are REALLY ready for the holidays?
I suppose so. It helps that we have no entertaining to do and all I have to is buy, wrap and transport gifts and make some cookies to take along. And I'll make pumpkin pies when we are down there. But compared to the days when I went to midnight Mass, came home to wrap presents and fill stockings, sleep a couple of hours, host a Christmas breakfast (with home made fancy breads) and then cook and serve a sit-down dinner for 24, and clean up afterwards, this is a piece o'cake!

4. Did you have an imaginary friend as a kid?
My imaginary friend was the weirdest I've ever heard of. It was when we were doing a writing exercise anthropomorphizing an inanimate object in school--probably around 4th grade. I happened to be using the grammar school bathroom one day and noticed that the metal toilet paper holder looked like it had a face, so it became my friend. I called it "no-ey" because "nobody knew about it." When things got overwhelming, I would go into the bathroom and pour my heart out to no-ey. That sounds pretty pathetic now!!

5. What niche network do you watch the most?
I'm not sure what a "niche network is." But aside from the major networks, I watch a lot of USA programs.

6. Have you ever seen the ocean?
Many. I grew up in San Francisco, so I've seen four of the world's "great oceans"--the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Southern, and the Indian (haven't seen the Arctic). I've also seen the Baltic and the Mediterranean seas, and probably others that I can't remember.

7. Have you ever been hospitalized?
Six times. Five for births and once, at age 4, to have my tonsils removed.

8. What do you think of the US Republican candidates for president?
Don't get me started. There's not a single one of them that doesn't make me start looking at countries I have visited and wondering if I might be able to move if one of them is elected.

9. Could you imagine life without a computer?
Sure. I lived most of my life without a computer. And I can go without it if I absolutely have to, but I would prefer not to.

My mother called today to ask if I could do some shopping for her. We tried in town, but everything was really too expensive, so we went out to Target. While there I decided to check the fat lady section to see if there were any bright, cheery Christmas shirts, sweaters or sweatshirts that I could buy so I could wear something other than my Santa sweatshirt (if you look at the slide show I made yesterday, you can't tell from any of my pictures what year it is because I'm wearing the same shirt every Christmas!)

Well, I got to the fat lady section of this enormous, gargantuan sized store. The fat lady section takes up less room than the section devoted to gifts for your pet. Lemme tell you, I thought I had walked into the "mourning section" of the store. There wasn't a single thing there that didn't look like something I'd wear to a funeral. Apparently Target thinks fat ladies only wear dark purple, grey, black, and navy blue. There were a couple of red things and even those looked somber.

Not only that, but everything seemed to sag, to be hung on the hangers crooked. There was nobody shopping there and I'm not surprised. There wasn't one thing I saw that wasn't just downright UGLY, not even remotely festive.

Maybe fat people are supposed to hide until the new year. Hey--doesn't that fat guy in the reindeer-pulled sleigh have a bright cheery outfit to wear? Target? Are you listening????

It looks like it's the Santa sweatshirt for me again this year. At least it fits and is comfy.