A Rainy Day

Monday, January 25, 2010

11 more months until Christmas.....

It is raining so hard out. The cable has been off and on probably 15 times. I really am not complaining as I am thinking about California and what a nightmare that is. And Haiti. We have just so messed with our environment. We didn't know 50 years ago what we were doing. I watched a Season 2 episode of "Mad Men" recently where they went on a picnic and afterwards just stood up and shook out the blanket, leaving all the garbage on the ground where it fell. Watching "12 Angry Men" today I was struck by one of the men just balling up a sheet of paper and tossing it out the window. I often think about when I was first a nursing supervisor and would walk onto the oncology unit and the nurses would be mising their own chemo. No ventilator hoods, no nothing. They would draw it up in a syringe and push the plunger in to expel the air and inevitably some of whatever was in the syringe would spray a microscopic amount into the air. But still...like I said, we didn't know what we were doing.

The knitting needles have been flying. The blue is a blanket that was knitted for BBB. I don't think I have had to rip back so much knitting on any project I have every worked on before in my life. But it did turn out lovely and reports are that mom doesn't really use it with the baby as it is "too pretty" and the whole thing about not putting blankets on babies. There was a skein of the blue yarn left so I knit some fingerless gloves for Liz but the yarn is so soft that it stretched quite a bit and I had to remake the gloves, cutting out an entire cable. Still pretty stretchy and soft but certainly OK to use sitting around doing nothing.

I am actually now knitting a tunic kind of thing for myself. A tunic with a hood on the back. OK. I guess where else would a hood be? I like the yarn. I like working with the yarn. I like the pattern. This is probably the first time I have ever actually used the exact yarn that the pattern called for. Should end up being perfect, right? We will see.

Knitting.....reading. Did finish "The Good Husband of Zebra Drive" from the Alex McCall Smith series"No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency." I enjoy the read immensely. It is simple, the story is simple. The look into the culture of Botswana is delightful. It was a short TV series a couple of years ago and it was probably the only time I have seen a TV show being true to a book that I have read/seen. I think there are two more books in the series currently but I haven't bought any books for a while. Well, not very many. I am not any further into "The Pentagon's New Map" but it is still on the coffee table waiting for that absolutely boring day that I will pick it up again. My current read is "South of Broad" by Pat Conroy. It is a fascinating look into life in Charleston for a couple of generations, the very deep south and the rigid, old money and culture that existed in those beautiful homes. Pat Conroy wrote "Prince of Tides" which I didn't read. His writing is kind of wordy, the story is interesting but the visualization of that life style is quite excellent.

Knitting ....reading.....movies. Today I watched another of Liz's DVDs...."12 Angry Men". Such an excellent movie. I have seen it as a play in community theater once but did find the movie quite riveting.

Ah, retirement!

Lists

Saturday, January 16, 2009

One of the side effects of travel anywhere is coming back with renewed enthusiasm for my everyday life with this past trip being no exception. After putting 1777 miles on the car, ending up in a snow bank in a cemetary for two hours, being stopped in traffic on I8O West in PA and traveling 55 miles in 40 hours, and driving 150 miles through the mountains in a snowstorm, I arrived home pretty tired this time. I learned a lot about patience. In any one of the situations it took about three minutes to realize that I could do nothing about it so I just needed to chill and go with the flow. It happened that I had my iPhone with me, OnStar working, food, books, knitting, heat, XM radio...all of which helped to pass the time.

So I get home and it really took a few days to get rested and unpack, get the laundry done. I still have newspapers to read and TV shows in the DVR to watch. I had told Liz to leave all the Christmas stuff up as this is the year that I am cleaning through it and throwing out anything that doesn't mean anything to us. This year's additions to the Christmas tree are "Hounds on the Sound" magnet and am looking for something that says "World Series 2009" to add to the ornaments. The last of the tree ornaments and the tree will be down today and Christmas will be cleaned out. MLK Day is the new Three Kings Day, right?

Now....the overwhelming thought is to get my life into some kind of order. I need to really crank up my lists of things to do. I need to get everything straightened financially. I need to get my photographs into smugmug.com and get them tagged. I needed to read more books, watch more movies. I need to get my email and computer cleaned out. This is the year I need to buy a new computer, new luggage, and a macro lens for my camera. For what? A macro lens? To take yet more pictures, of course, that need to be put into smugmug and tagged. I need to really work at going through this house room by room and throw out stuff, take pictures of anything valuable for insurance reasons and so that the kids will understand what some of this stuff is some day.

I need to......I need to......I need to......I need to... wait......I am retired. I need to take a nap.

It's Genetic

December 27, 2009

Liz has DVDs like I have books. She has a Netflix account and I am on it. Every time I order something from Netflix she tells me, "I have that DVD." Iit is time to start watching Liz's DVDs.

They are actually in alphabetical order on the shelves. Here is how the weekend went...

ET Boxed set. Didn't watch it as I have seen it and didn't really want to see it again.

8 MILE. Didn't watch it. No interest in watching Eminem.

THE 10TH KINGDOM. Didn't watch it. Looks terribly boring.

12 ANGRY MEN. Saw the play. Skipped over this but am thinking I want to watch it now.

12 MONKEYS. Watched this (had to take it out of the wrapper). It really was not good at all but I am definitely not a fan of Bruce Willis, never have been.

40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN. Watched it. (Had to take it out of the wrapper.) Actually pretty funny.

ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING, ADVENTURES of BUCKEROO BONZOI, AIRHEADS, ALADDIN..jumped right over these.

Alfred Hitchcock. She has two DVDs. The first one had three episodes on it, each one 90 minutes long. Longest 90 minutes of my life. Turns out these were from when he was very young. 1930 silent black and white movie. Dreadful. The one I watched was called "The Manxman". Three to four minutes of people talking, laughing, crying, talking, talking, talking. Then the subtitle says something like, "But I want to." The other two went unwatched.

The second DVD was actually four episodes from TV--The Case of Mr. Pelham, The Banquo Chair, and Lamb to the Salughter. There was a fourth one that for some reason I didn't watch. Will do that in the next couple of days. "Lamb to the Slaughter". Wife hits her husband in the back of his head with a frozen leg of lamb. Puts it in the oven and feeds the police who are at the house investigating the murder, thus getting rid of the evidence. It was really pretty good. The others were OK.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND-skipped this one.

ALL ABOUT EVE-such a classic. Marilyn Monroe has a very small bit part. She looks about 18, amazing. It was good although predictable. I am not sure what all the fuss about Bette Davis is about although she is a good actress.

I also watched JULIE AND JULIA this weekend as well as SEVEN POUNDS. Both of them were really pretty good. I am definitely a fan of Meryl Streep and also saw IT'S COMPLICATED in a movie theater this weekend.

I feel pretty movie-ed out.

Siblings

December 24, 3009

I have saved this for a long time, always struck by the last paragraph. A lot of it is pretty dramatic but that last paragraph seemed to stick.

I am glad that Karen is feeling better. Now I can hit her.

Siblings-A Sense of Connection

Anna Quindlen

I don't understand how people learn to live in the world if they haven't had siblings. Everything I learned about negotiation, territoriality, coexistence, dislike, inbred differences and love despite knowledge I learned from my four younger siblings: Bob, Mike, Kevin and Theresa.

In some essential way, they were my universe, even more than my parents. For while we costume ourselves for our mothers and fathers, pretend to be what they want or strike a pose as that which they most abhor, we let down our guard for our siblings day after day, year after year, without thinking about it much. We share with them real life.

"They're all you'll have some day," my mother used to say when we would bicker, fight or strike one another, as we did with some frequency. I always thought there was something pathetic about the way she'd say that, as though our siblings would be the sad leftovers on the plate of life, scraps of fat, puddles of congealed gravy.

But as I say to my own three children now-and I do, I do, almost despite myself-I realize that she meant something quite different. And I remember what I felt deep in my bones when I was pregnant with my third child, that she was an extraordinarily lucky person, not because she would have my husband and me as parents but because we had had the foresight to provide her with these two brothers, who, in the natural order of things, would still be part of her life after we were gone.

How difficult it is to fathom, to describe, to deconstruct all this, the common place bonds of blood. There is a sense of connection as powerful as a rope-those chains around the ankles that convicts wear when they're shuttled to and from prison. Lifelong, irreversible, accidental connection is like that. They are me. I am them. I say that now, knowing that some of us have almost nothing to say to one another that doesn't start with the word "remember". I say that knowing that sometimes we have been estranged, angry, uncaring.

"Flesh of my flesh," they say sometimes in the marriage ceremony, but it's just not true. It is not even true of our children who are part us, part someone dear to us, loved by us but not made of what we are made of. But our brothers and sisters: Well, it is all the same clay. That is why we can hit them. That is why we can hate them. That is why we can never really lose them or we have lost our history, our past, a part of ourselves that we cannot do without.

Going to try to keep this going.....

Monday, December 21, 2009

Books! Books! Books! I have an addictive relationship with books. I think my "to read" pile (s) is down to about 59 now. It is a very provocative time of year with all of the "Top 10 of 2009" and "Top 100 of 2009" coming out. I am practicing great restraint at the moment, being quite responsible about the lists and simply saving them.

I made sort of a resolution about a month ago that I would only buy one book after I have read five from the pile. It is feeling pretty harsh at the moment. To be more precise, at the moment I am feeling that if I want to buy books, I don't know a really good reason not to. Except that I have 59 that I "had to have" and haven't read yet. But it isn't like I am going out and beating up old ladies or robbing convenience stores to get the money to buy books. Sticking to my resolution, I would have to read 125 books to buy the ones on the "Top" lists. Ha! I'm an amateur. I only have 59!

I have a sponsor in my Book Buyers Anonymous group, a group of two. Actually, she is my good friend and neighbor and she understands this addiction very well. In fact, she gave me a Barnes & Noble gift card for Hanukkah and, double in fact, as I write this she is out shopping at the aforementioned Barnes & Noble. So I think I am flying solo at the moment. Actually, if all truth be told, she is shopping with the gift card that I happened to also get for her for Hanukkah.

Reading the weekly New York Times Book Review section is painful. But they don't even have to be new books. Yard sales are another temptation. Everyone is selling books at yard sales. I have a public library two blocks from my house that I never go to. Usually when I want a book, I don't want to go on a waiting list for it. And I definitely can't put it on my pile and expect to return it in two weeks. There is an aspect to all of this that I fortunately am not afflicted with. One of my friends' elderly aunt would only read new books as "you never know but someone might have been reading it in their bathroom." She's right. You just never know.

Oh, actually there is one missing in the pictures. Actually there are three missing from the pictures. I am breaking my usual resolve and reading two at a time.

That's right, Nick. Nick gave this to me about two years ago to read and I am just starting it. I am actually finding it interesting although, like I said, I am just starting it. It is basically about how the Pentagon was in no way prepared to deal with or look at a world after the Cold War. All of a sudden the Cold War was over and now what? It is about how our country had to learn a new way to deal with the rest of the word. As it was written in 2004 it is somewhat dated but still interesting....so far. As a reader of pretty much only fiction, it is impressive to me that it is holding my interest. On top of it all, I think I have a friend who is involved in just what this analyst is writing about.

I read Stieg Larsson's first book....."The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and really enjoyed it. Then when I read that he had written three books, this one being the second of the three, submitted them to his publisher and then, at the age of 32 commited suicide, I was intrigued enough to want to read the last two books. So this is the second book I am reading at the time.

"Under the Dome" is in Liz's room but it is stuck in my mind. My friend (sponsor) read it and couldn't put it down. I became disinterested in Stephen King a long time ago when it seemed he just got too weird but I am definitely interested in this. The dust jacket is intriguing in itself, no writing whatsoever on the back or the inside flaps. No synopsis of the story, nothing. Blank.

I don't understand people who don't read.

October/Yankees and the Magic Bean

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

The end of September. The summer has passed so quickly as does all time any more. Is it the same for everyone.....a part of our culture now? Fast moving, rapidly changing? Or is it part of getting older and the sense you are on a speeding train? Whatever it is, it feels like October today. Time to take out the air conditioners, close up the windows, change to the winter bedding, reverse the ceiling fans, change out the summer clothes for winter clothes......and it won't be long before we put away baseball for another season. But hopefully we still have some exciting times ahead of us in Yankee Stadium. We will be at the last regular home game tonight and here's hoping that we will see most of the regulars playing. We're just waiting on the Tigers now so the Yankees can decide on the playoff schedule.

Tthree months ago Janet brought me her bean plant that needed some help, probably more light. The vines were all wound around a stick and needed more space to grow. There had been a few blossoms on it. I put it in full sun and unwound the vines as carefully as I could but lost most of them as they were so fragile. The few that were left were wrapped around a trellis behind the plant and the plant was well tended to for the rest of the summer but I watched it struggle and finally fade too far to come back. Finally I gave up and pulled it all out of the dirt only to find one bean....one very big bean....hidden in the vines. I left it on the porch to dry out and then opened the pod and there were five magic seeds. Let's see what next year brings.

Technology

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

This has been so very frustrating. I am trying my best to link this blog to my FaceBook page. I want to write the blog here, publish it and have it appear on my wall. Apparently it is appearing on the walls of the three people who are following me but it is not appearing on mine. I want it to just look like an entry when it is posted on FB.

It is that very frustrating feeling that you know that it is a matter of one little click, just one, a nanosecond, so close you can feel it but you simply can't find it. My computer savy niece and I spent an hour on the phone today trying to find that needle in the haystack with no luck.

A few days ago I was able to link FB to Twitter but now I have to remember to put my status in the Twitter box and send it.

How much information is too much information? How many places is too many to put our latest thoughts, ideas, rants? Does anyone really care? What is this all about anyway?