St. Paddy's Day

March 17, 2008

A hard day. It has been 25 years today since Mary Sposito passed away. At the time it happened, I remember thinking

about how she was so vulnerable because she was "older",

perhaps couldn't fight as well, etc. She was exactly the same

age that day as I am today. It doesn't seem possible. I remember when Al died that someone said to me, like people always do when they struggle to make sense of a death, "Now he will be with his mother again." I don't know what I believe about all of that but if it is true, I do know there is no one, besides his kids, that he would rather spend his time with. RIP, Mary Sposito. Another one of those women who just had such a hard, hard life and, unfortunately, a very hard death also.

Last night Liz and I met Josh and Nolan and Josh's mom in the city for dinner. We ate at Shabu Shabu, at Josh's suggestion. For those of you who don't know, Shabu Shabu is a Japanese fondue restaurant. Well, shabu is Japanese fondu and the name of this Japanese fondue restaurant is Shabu Shabu. Josh taught us a lot about the process and it turned out to be a very enjoyable evening for all of us. The food is basically boiled in broth and you do it at your own table, starting with a fondu pot of hot water. The server, much to Josh's chagrin, first put vegetables in the water and it became like a vegetable broth for us to "swish--swish" our beef and chicken through the Japanese word "shabu" translating to "swish" in English. After the meat was done, then we ate the vegetables that had been simmering all this time. It was all excellent and quite healthy, obviously. So, not to get too healthy, we did walk over to Tasti-Delite. Tasti Delite in itself is not too bad but two of us did have to order it in cones which probably added significant fat and calories to the evening. More than anything else, we enjoyed the company. We met Josh almost two years ago when he spent a week in our home, looking for a job, looking for place to stay. It developed into a great friendship and we were thrilled to meet him mom.

The sweater is coming along. It doesn't seem like much but it was a few days of knitting and it has started to look like it may be a sweater some day with the back starting to take shape.

It is very slow going as every stitch has to be looked at, every row. There are two different patterns going on at the same time and one is 26 rows long and one is 16 rows long so I have to really have two separate counters going at the same time. There is so much cabling on it that I hope the mistakes will just get absorbed and only the knitter will know where they are. Someone was looking at it a couple of weeks ago and said that she would never find this relaxing knitting and I had never thought about it that way before. But I do realize that I can only watch mindless TV while I am doing it or the TV has to be off.

Books. Because I didn't have enough I had to order some more on line. There at the bottom is the new Martha Stewart cookie cook book. I keep thinking I want to make a batch of cookies every week and eat a few and freeze the rest. This book has 250 recipes in it. Sounds like a good way to start. Oh, but wait. Let me grow the vanilla beans first and buy the pastry bags to make the Oreos, and the things to roll the Italian cookies on and the Springerle molds, etc, etc, etc. As Liz would say, "Good luck with that, Mom."

I guess someone out there was worried that I didn't have enough books so somehow I got an extra copy of one in the mail today.

I just started reading this one. It is by Richard M. Cohen and it is his story of living with multiple sclerosis. He has a second book, which is the one I was most interested in but decided it was prudent to read the first one first (thanks to Liz and Margaret). The second one is about five people who live with chronic illness. I saw a lot of chronic illness when I was working and I was always amazed how people coped with it when it was an everyday companion. But first books first.

I just finished reading this one. I happened to see it when I

was at Border's last week, had never heard of it before and

thought I would just take a stab at it. I usually don't buy books that I don't know the author's work or someone has not recommended it to me. It was actually a pretty good book, some parts very predictable, but overall enjoyable. Definitely chick lit.

310 songs in my iTouch. I know it is chump change compared to a lot of people's but I am enjoying the heck out of listening to the music and the podcasts also.