Leap Year Day

February 29, 2008

In the English speaking world, it is a tradition that women may propose marriage only on leap year day. (Incidentally, years that are not leap years are called "common" years.) It has been suggested that the tradition was initiated by Saint Patrick or St. Brigid in the 5th century but the tradition did not really start before the 19th century so that is doubtful. There is a law on the books from 1288 that Queen Margaret of Scotland (who was then five?) required that a fine be paid if the man refused a proposal of marriage from a woman and it spelled out what the fines were including money, gowns, a kiss. Since this made the men feel very vulnerable the tradition was changed to being activated only on Leap Year Day.

"Steel Magnolias" opens tonight, a production by the City

Island Theater Group. A play with strong women roles

and I think Liz has probably found another excellent role

for herself. I hear that she disappears and Annelle takes

over which says a lot about Liz's talent. My role? Cutting out 448 tickets.




As far as the eye can see----


Monday was a beautiful day at Arlington Cemetery. It is such a sad but moving place. I started out at the National Museum of Women in the Military and found myself not wanting to leave. Sorry-I am not sure if that is the correct title of the women's memorial but you get the idea. They have a number of videos there and the one I was most fascinated by was the one done by the nurses from Viet Nam.

As I was leaving the JFK gravesite I noticed this small cross behind the memorial. Curious, I went back and checked it out. The gravesite of RFK. What a surprise. No markings, no nothing. Just sitting there below Lee Mansion. It has been that long since I was at Arlington.

The gardeners' forum that I agreed to be a moderator for went live this week. It has fun to be in this from the beginning with some input and watching it develop. If you are interested, check it out. You can get to it from Doug Green's garden website.

Progress on the "life sweater" is coming along. I started working on the back of it this week. So now the crewneck is done and the shoulders from the neckline to the tops of the arms. I have picked up stitches along the shoulder saddles and the collarline and am starting to knit down the back. I am incorporating three patterns with different numbers of rows into each line. It really is a pattern that has to be watched every single stitch. What is a "life sweater"? Just my own term for a sweater that I think it is going to take me my whole life to knit. Sorry it isn't anything more interesting than that, no great knitters' secret code.

I finished the book for our book chat. It ended up

not being as horrendous as it seemed to me in the

beginning. And Liz brought home a Janet Evanovich

book for me to read-a "between the numbers" book,

all the same crazy characters but not one of the more popular number series she writes. It is about a one or

two day read so I am almost finished with it.

I have come screaming into the 21st century with a new iTouch. i Touch, iPhone, iPod, MP3 players, what do I know? Well, now I know a little more. One thing I know for sure is that it sure is nice to just tap this screen and read my email. No more waiting for the computer to come on. I am anxious to learn how to transfer pictures and music to it and hopefully will get to all of that this week. Nick was kind enough to transfer my mail, calendar, etc. to it and get it up and

running. Thanks, Nick.

Another leap forward-a Christmas present. Talk about a a toy. There is also a definite learning curve with this Vac 'n Seal. Two bagels last week ended up about 1 inch thick. I have to learn what you vacuum, what you seal and what you get to vacuum and seal.

I'm learning so much this week. Vera Wang actually has a cut flower collection.

Break a leg, Liz!

And last, but not least, Sylvia in her own personal Vera Wang bridal veil.

Catching Up

February 22, 2008

Thanks for the invite, Nick and Janet. I wouldn't miss it for the world.

I finished "Love in the Time of Cholera". What an excellent book. The story

itself is intriguing and additionally he is an excellent, excellent author. I love how he uses words. There are so many words in the book that I have never

even seen before but he uses them so that the reader definitely knows what the word means.

Having finished "Cholera" I could now start "Water for Elephants." It was my turn to select a book for the book chat. Normally I would choose a book that I had already read but this time I threw caution to the wind. Not too sure that was such a good idea. It is pretty rough and lewd but I am sure that the circus world is a pretty rough and lewd world.



Happy, happy first birthday, Meghan and Elizabeth. Hope you enjoy your new sweaters.

The life sweater is coming along also. Actually quite a bit more than this is done but I haven't taken a picture lately. Both of the shoulder "saddles" are finished. The saddles extend from the bottom of the crew neck colloar to the top of the arm. With both saddles done it now gets more complicated as I have to pick up stitches along the sides of the saddles and then start the front and back of the sweater.

Today I was able to spit out a tissue box "cozy" that the City Island Theater Group will use as a

prop for their production of "Steel Magnolias" which opens next Friday night.

I have also made a few more squares for the afghan

that I am making out of odds and ends of yarn. If I used all of the odds and ends that are in this house, this pile would be to the ceiling. What is it about yarn anyway? I think it grows at night, when no one is looking. There always just seems to be more and more in this house.

Yesterday was my birthday. I found myself wearing cranky pants as it got closer and closer. Normally I don't think much about age, it is just a number, blah, blah, blah. But I guess when it is right in your face it is a little more daunting. But as the day progressed and I talked to people I was in an excellent mood by the time I went out to dinner with Nick and Liz. It was just such a nice night and it was all about being with them. So much fun. We introduced Nick to the casino in Yonkers and it was pretty funny to watch him win. A good time was had by all. Thanks, Liz, for the beautiful flowers.

I have so many pictures of these flowers because the color is so deep and beautiful. A wonderful contrast to outdoors today where everything seems to be shades of black and white.

Ugh!

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Ugh! There have been three rip-outs since the last picture but I think it is going better now. This is one of those patterns where you have to really look at almost every stitch. There are 32 rows to the pattern and this is about 29 of them so I am almost ready to do the second repeat. I do this for the length of the shoulder from the crewneck collar to the top of the arm. It's fun but ripping out is pretty exasperating.

I watched "Breakfast at Tiffany's" last night. I had never seen it

and it was actually a pretty good movie. I loved Audrey Hepburn in it and was pleasantly surprised that she was, in my opinion, such a good actress. Somehow she always seemed like a twit to me. It is like she had a couple of lives as she recreated herself and became a spokesperson for UN Children's committees and did an incredible amount of charity work later in her life.

Most of the time old movies seem just that to me-old movies. The story line and outcome are pretty predictable after watching the first five minutes or so and they didn't vary much from movie to movie. This was true to form. Very predictable but AH definitely made it light and fun. The innocence in them is laughable. George Pepard's character was a man who was being "kept" by an older woman. There was a lot of daahlings and air kisses and that was pretty much it. Nothing very scandalous and then he ended the relationship. Didn't seem like there was much to end.

Last week I had watched "Bringing Up Baby" with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn. Although she was absolutely delightful in it, he seemed pretty foolish but that was the character. It seems that the male/female relationships were often portrayed as quite frivulous and silly.

Lee Miller. There was an article about her recently in Newseek magazine that caught my eye. She was a model in the late 20s, early 30s. She was another woman who recreated herself and moved behind the camera becoming a photographer herself. She traveled the world, had a number of marriages and many love affairs. She became a war correspondent (photographer) during World War II and actually rode in with the U.S. Army into Germany, photographing the corpses and ovens in Buchenwald and Dachau.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has opened an exhibition of 140 of her photographs. It is on my "to do"list.

Bye bye

Friday, February 15, 2008

It is so sad to watch your car get dragged away. You know everything that is wrong with it and you have a nice new car but it is still so sad. And it looks so damn good being towed away.

Happy Valentines Day

February 14, 2008

There I said it. Happy VD. For all of you out there who are not cynical, jaded or weary of commercial holidays, hope you do enjoy this one.

Good thing I don' t have a job. I have less and less time for one. That actually isn't true but I feel like my dance card is filling up with lots of "things". What's nice about it is that they are all "things" that I am choosing to do.

There is quite a head game that goes on when a person starts to think about retiring. For some it is the last big event, the major life change to look forward to besides dying. Sounds pretty blunt but it is right out there. You understand that you will most likely be immediately replaced in your position and very soon forgotten. That is a little depressing but it simply is the way this whole life thing works. We are all temporary and will all move on at some point. That makes the time here so much more meaningful and it definitely enables you to separate the important things from the things that just don't really matter. Then the idea that you are no longer "contributing" comes into play. True, you are no longer contributing to what was your job but there are so many ways to contribute. So many ways. And if that is a need that you have, you just go out there and find a way to fill that need.

The upside of retirement is that your life is definitely your own. I have been fortunate to have an excellent career and an excellent retirement plan. More important than all of that is the fact that I am healthy. That is paramount. It is a lot of maintainence and paying attention but if you start these habits when you are young you are so far ahead of the game. When I was young smoking was very cool. No one every heard anything about cancer and smoking. Heart disease and smoking. Nothing. And lots of red meat. Fast food started to become popular when I was a teenager and was overwhelming during my 20s and 30s. Finally, we woke up and put the brakes on and realized, this is not all good. Fortunately, for my kids' generation, it is a choice. They know so much more than we did and now it is a matter of choice for them.

I don't know what has triggered all this but I think it is because I am finding myself starting a couple new things that promise to be kind of fun.

Almost by accident I have become a forum moderator for a reader's forum on a gardeners' website. I have followed this website for years and Doug Greene has added this forum to his site. Right now he is breaking in the moderators and it will be a couple of weeks before the forum goes live but he is doing a lot of work on it now and he is involving us in some of the decisions. Our job is really to make sure it stays fun, no one is abusive, commercial products, etc. don't sneak in. His job is to answer the questions.

I also have told the City Island Theater Group that I would be very interested in being on two of their committees. One is the by-laws committee. They are in dire need of a makeover as became abundantly clear with some challenging events over the past few months. I think we will all learn quite a bit from it as there are actually state laws that govern volunteer groups like this and what they are allowed to do or not do legally. I have also offered to be a part of a "reading committee" whose purpose is to read plays and recommend them to the board (or not) for production.

It will be spring soon and the garden will be calling. April 4 or something like that is Opening Day at Yankee Stadium.The sweater had to be ripped partially out last night, back to the collar. Wish I would have taken a picture of it for you so you could see the mistake but I didn't. The books are piling up again. The photography class is going great. The Orchid Show is opening at the Botanical Gardens in a week.

The best news of all? I am actually going to have a cleaning person come every other week starting next Tuesday morning. I hate to clean. Have been doing it for far too many years. Just want someone to wash the floors, dust, clean the bathrooms. That's all. Maria is as cute as a button so let's hope this works well. It is a birthday gift to myself.

So, life is good. It is nice to have time to make choices and enjoy what I want to do.

Our Tax Dollars at Work

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Please! Can't we just play baseball? Tomorrow is Catchers and

Pitchers Day or Pitchers and Catchers Day or whatever it is,

the beginning of the 2008 baseball season.

Today I watched the Congressional hearings on steroids

in baseball when they were questioning Roger Clemens and his

former trainer, Brian McNamee. I came away with several strong feelings as I am sure anyone did who had the opportunity and the stomach to watch them.

#1. What the hell is my tax money being spent on this for? It is pretty outrageous to think of all the money that the government has put into this issue and I am not sure why. It is a government oversight committee and its purpose is to oversee government finance and management. How, by any stretch of the imagination, is this appropriate? They did have the

good sense to all agree that this committee would not meet again on this issue and a few of the members individually voiced their strong opposition to sitting for this session.

#2. Our House of Representatives is a somewhat scary group of people. I know that we are led to believe that the Senate is the "higher" house and this is more the common house but it is still scary. It was very obvious that most of the speakers today came in with a very clear bias one way or another when questioning these two individuals. Carolyn Maloney (I am not sure this is spelled correctly but isn't this the woman from Long Island who became a representative after her husband was shot and killed on the LIRR?) Some of them seem too old, not sharp enough to be in Congress. They mumbled, could not hear, and were clearly star struck at times. Shouldn't I expect more than this? It is scary to know that these are the people who making some pretty important decisions about our country.

#3. Brian McNamee and Roger Clemens and his wife are the lowest on the food chain. Brian is there because of his nasty history but actually gets to stand one rung about Mr. Clemens and spouse because he freely admits that he has been lying frequently to cover his butt. Mr. Clemens remains arrogant and defiant and I, for one, will never believe anything different about him no matter how this all turns out.

Please, gentlemen and ladies, back to baseball and back to you being my government.

Congratulations to Uno! He was the best. No human or canine was more excited about winning than he was last night. It is always fun to watch Westminster and see all the perfect dogs, all poofed and puffed. But it is easy to see through it all and see what is indeed man's best friend under all the fluff.

Speaking of which, after looking and reading and looking and reading some more, it is pretty clear that Ms. Sylvia is a mix between a whippett and a black lab. I am not why sure why it makes me so happy to know what she is but it does. Everything about her matches all of the identifying characteristics of a whippett.

The knitting is coming along. Still haven't sewn the last seam on the last sweater for the twins but I am going to surprise myself one of these days and just do it. I have been working on my "life" sweater. The collar is done and I have started to make the panel that runs from the collar down to the wrist on the top of the sleeve. It all sounds very confusing but is pretty simple once you catch on. The cables don't look symmetrical but I think they maybe aren't supposed to but I will do another repeat before I decide that. I looked at the pattern about ten times and that is how the pattern calls for it.

If you really look at it you can see the collar folds in, the facing being the inside part. Some of those stitches look stretched or crooked but in real life they aren't.

A belated happy birthday to Mike and also to Sylvia who was four on Monday.

A Winter Blast

Monday February 11, 2008

You know it's cold when you wake up and this is what greets you when you open the front door. I guess Mother Nature just had to remind NY that it is February. No snow. I know, I know. It is still tropical compared to places in Michigan but it still is pretty bitter when you go out there. A perfect day to stay inside and knit.

Speaking of which- Yesterday I spent the better part

of the day trying to figure out the pattern to knit my "life" sweater. It is a beautiful Aran sweater, lots of cables, etc. This is the Alpac yarn I bought in Michigan when I was there two weeks ago. It isn't the usual pattern as you have to do lots of math to figure it out but in the end it is supposed to fit perfectly. It is done in one piece which is a feat in itself. This is the facing of the crew neck. Facing is basically a lining which makes it lay nicer or stand up nicer. If nothing else, the yarn is beautiful.

I have been wondering for days why women wear jewelry. I guess I don't have enough to think about but I just keep thinking about it. Was it really to make us "more attractive" to the male of the species? (If so, it seems to me that this should be working both ways.) Or was it because the male of the species were so overcome with love for us that they showered us with jewels to show us their devotion? Then what else could we do with them but wear them? Very perplexing question, indeed. What do you think?

Catch-up

Friday, February 8, 2008

Six more days until Pitchers and Catchers Day. It seems like Roger Clemens is digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole. But then, who keeps bloody syringes and vials and needles around for seven years? This is all weird. There has to be Roger's DNA and HGH or steroids in the same syringe, needle or vial. Even then it could be argued that when McNamee was injecting him with Lidocaine (so Roger says), he may have transferred that blood over to the syringes, needles, other bottles. However this turns out, Roger's career is over. This black cloud will never go away.

Late breaking news--McNamee testified today to Congress that he injected Roger's wife with HGH as she was preparing for a spread in Sports Illustrated five years ago. How much better can all of this get?

And Pedro? What was he thinking? I try to understand what other cultures do but sometimes it is just too violent. Pedro says he was at the cock fight as a guest and not as a participant. Do guests really throw the roosters or hens or whatever into the ring? This will take a little swift PR to make right again also.

Radomski gets five years probation? What is that about? He was the major seller of steroids and HGH to some of MLB and he gets five years probation? I guess he sang a lot to the feds so that is counting for something.

These guys are as crazy as Britney sometimes.

I just want to go to Yankee stadium with my kids, have a hot dog, a beer and watch a game. Is that so much to ask? I am even willing to pay a ridiculous amount of money to do that. Can't all this other junk go away?

Aha. Here is a great idea. Susan was visiting her sister in New Orleans for Mardi Gras.

And this is what my sister was looking at for Mardi Gras or the next day.

And this is what my brother Bob was looking at in Orlando the same day. I don't really think that is him in the middle of the pool though.

Since I last wrote I finished reading John

Grisham's "The Innocent Man". Although

I used to enjoy his writing I haven't read it

in awhile. This was his first non-fiction book

so I thought I would give it a try. It wasn't.

It was about a wrongfully convicted

man sent to prison and almost to the

electric chair for a crime which DNA proved

he did not commit. He had been on Death

Row for about 11 years and had a serious

mental deterioration. It was all quite

pathetic and would have gained more of my

sympathy if, in fact, the man was adecent human being to start with. Although not guilty of the hideous murder

of the young woman, he was nevertheless

pretty much a low life psychopath who

probably did need to be locked somewhere

that someone else could manage his

behavior. The book just seemed to point

out the worst in everyone-the police in

Ada OK, the corrections officers, the DA,

the judges, on and on and on. All pretty

depressing to read. And then JG's note at

end saying that OK is not unique in

this area, that all of these "missteps"

of justice are very common.

I am now reading "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel

Garcia Marquez. I didn't realize at first that it was an Oprah pick as I usually steer clear of them. But I had heard so much about this book that I bought it. It is actually an excellent book so far and he is an excellent, excellent author.

Is there anything more that can be said about the Giants? Not being an avid football fan, I turned the Super Bowl on for the first five minutes, half time and the last ten minutes. If you didn't get excited watching the last ten minutes of this game, you are dead.

And last but not least- While I was in Michigan I went with Karen to a yarn shop in Caro. (I think it was 6 degrees that afternoon.) The shop had nothing but wonderful yarn. No dollar a pound worsted there. I found a pattern for a beautiful cable sweater-knit from the neck down on round needles, leaving absolutely no seams to sew. And then the knitting guru in the store directed me towards some alpaca yard. It is probably the most extravagant that I have ever been buying yarn but it is beautiful. It feels like it is a life project.

Yesterday afternoon I cleaned out all my yarn, needles and patterns. Pretty pathetic. There is an entire cedar chest full of yarn and now an underbed container seems to have found its way under my bed and filled itself with yarn. I would make every single pattern given the time. I really have to start making neonatal blankets, booties, hats, nursing home afghans again and use up some of this yarn. But, of course.