One more week

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Can't wait. Am so excited. It is going to be nice. I keep looking at the weather and I'm not sure why because there is nothing I can do about it. Sort of like death and taxes. The end of last week they were predicting thunderstorms for five days in a row the weekend of the wedding. Then all of a sudden-like a miracle-there wasn't a drop of rain in sight all the way out as far as they were predicting. Then this morning "possibility of thunderstorms-20%" popped up for Saturday only. Like I said, I don't know why I keep looking at it.

Yesterday Liz and I went to Madison Square Park after meeting up with the wedding party for a "rehearsal dinner". Madison Square Park is where the old Madison Square Garden used to me, so Nick informed me yesterday. Anyway, they were holding the New York City Barbecue Fest there this weekend. Nick and Janet had gone last year, had a great time and a lot of people expressed an interest in going this year so there we were.

The papers Friday were predicting 1,000,000 people and I expect that those expectations were met. It was street to street people and then some. Amazing how many people can fit into an area. There were tables and tables and tents and tents of food-all barbecue fare. I had my first pulled pork sandwich ever and it was delicious. Also had some good ribs and some great coleslaw. There was a beer tent, a dessert area.

The down side of it was that it was something like 97 degrees in the shade and the humidity was very, very high. I heard the "real feel" was 104 degrees. I do believe it. Again, something no one could do anything about anyway.

It was nice to see the guys whom I haven't seen in a while and it was very nice to meet Janet's bridesmaids. We are all going to be looking a little different the next time we see each other. Hopefully the buckets of sweat won't be pouring off of us.

Let's see---how do you spell STRESS? All you have to do is look at Nick's face.

More flowers that won't be blooming for the wedding. Probably what Nick is stressed about.

Flowers That Won't Be Blooming For The Wedding

Sunday, June 1, 2008

These are the flowers in my yard that are really beautiful at the moment but will be only memories in two weeks. But Umi will still be here----

The House

Sunday, June 1, 2008

It has been a long time but it seems like there is a lot going on.

First and foremost, the wedding. Everything seems to flow from that. I am getting more and more excited as the time gets nearer and nearer. Two more weeks and it will be a done deal. I am equally excited that so many people from my family are coming for it. It is going to be fun.

Uncle Nick is leaving on Wednesday (this Wednesday) and taking a week to get here with a few stops along the way. Mary and Dave and John and Dianne are leaving next Thursday as are Karen and Charlie. People are flying, driving. It is all going to be fun and some will be around for a few days, a week, anything in between.

I don't remember being this excited about my own wedding although I probably was. I actually hardly remember anything about my own wedding. Most of the scenes that come to mind are from pictures in the wedding album. That was 40 years ago. A whole different life.

The house. After about seven years, all of the major updates, cleaning up, etc. are done except for the basement and that won't be for a couple of years. I looked up the papers the other day and the lot itself is drawn out and measured on a survey in 1902. Reville St. was known as Queen's Place then but the lot was defined. There is a certificate of occupancy for John and Katherine Loughman issued in 1930. They built the house and that is whom we bought it from in 1977. We moved in in 1978, 30 years ago, also a whole different life.

Because we had no money in 1977, after we had stolen, begged and borrowed to get the $49,000 mortgage, we did almost no work in updating it except we did have the electrician come in and completely rewire it before we even moved in. Every single room in the house had one electrical outlet and one ceiling light. That was it. Even the kitchen.

The walls were covered with the original wallpaper with no sizing. In 1983 Al's mother passed away and there was some money available to us then so we had all of the walls torn down everywhere in the house, insulation installed (there was none except for a few newspapers!) and the news walls were painted an offwhite to go with the offwhite carpet that we laid throughout the entire house except for the kids' rooms where we had color.

In 1985 we redid the kitchen and added a front porch but that was it for a long time.

In 1998 Al withdrew pension and as our divorce decree said that I would get half of it and he realized he would not be able to spend what he did have, he started giving that money to me and I used it to redo the house. New roof, windows, concerete, paint outside were all done before Al passed away and I was happy that he could see what was being done and appreciate it.

Eventually I had every room inside repainted, new curtains, carpet, going from off white in every room to robin's egg blue, lavender, sunshine, lemon, grass, avocado, adobe, etc.

It is amazing to look at all that has been done and realize to do this right, it won't be many years before the rooms should be repainted again. What?

So the house is ready. I guess it is ready for the wedding as well as the rest of my life.

Blanket & Books & Ms. Sylvia

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

The baby blanket is coming along nicely. I'm doing the cross-stitching now and it is starting to look cute. I need to get back to the life sweater. It just sits there nagging me to do some more work on it. I keep finding more patterns that I want to try. That and the yarn. Overwhelming.

I finished reading "Strong in the Broken Places" by Richard Cohen. I had read his first book which was about his experience with multiple sclerosis and colon cancer. This one is about five people who have chronic disease, two of whom have terminal chronic diseases. When I was working I was always interested in patients and their families who lived their entire lives with chronic diseases. This is an excellent book for any caregiver, actually for everyone. It helps you recognize that these are people and you have to look past the disease.

I think this is the second book of this series, the books that the TV show "Bones" is based on. I love Bones.

Sylvia is a pretty skiddish dog. She is friendly, nonaggressive, cute as a button but is easily scared. She has a very hard time with the planes that fly over our house and as City Island is in the flight pattern to LaGuardia Airport that is a pretty frequent occurance. Sometimes they come as often as every two minutes. As the weather gets warmer and the windows are opened more, Ms. S. is often found with her head under the couch. Sometimes when the planes are coming in one after another her anxiety becomes so pathetic and she is trembling and trying to find a place to hide. When I took her to the vet for her regular check-up we discussed it and decided to put her on a very low dose of Prozac hoping the anti-anxiety effect would help her. She had been on it for ten days Sunday. Monday morning about 4A she had an "incident". I woke up to her crying and moving all over the bed, something definitely wrong. She either flipped or fell off the bed, I don't know which. By then I got the light on and realzied that she couldn't stand. She simply couldn't get up and she kept trying and falling and trying and falling. You could tell that she was so scared. After about five minutes, she was back to normal. Off to the vet in the morning and we decided the first logical thing to do was to discontinue the Prozac so we'll see what happens. We are thinking that she probably had a focal seizure brought on by the Prozac lowering her seizure threshold. She has been fine ever since. Now we will have to figure out how to handle the planes when it is warm enough to open the windows again.

Flowers and other "stuff"

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

The flowers are bursting open one after another leaving none to be open when everyone is here for the wedding. This is the first of the azaleas and as they get the sun as it comes over the house they open in order from front to back. Eventually they will all be open and then start fading in the same order. Everyone on the other side of the street has had theirs open for about a week now.

I think there are nine bushes so there is still a little ways to go.

This is across the street from my house and they have looked like this for about a week now. Sun all day long.

Then I have the mutant hostas. Last summer I bought a couple new hostas as a couple of the ones I have had for a long time died for some reason. I decided to get different ones and eventually have a lot of different kinds. So I bought three of the same kind (but different from what I had) and put two next to each other and the third one about three feet away from those two. I think I have some kind of mutant hosta. I put the little pot of petunias in front of both of them so you could see the difference in size. What is that about? It feels like "Little Shop of Horrors" and I am wondering what the end of the summer will bring.

In the meantime the columbine are open and looking beautiful. I think these are the ones that Karen gave to me that just didn't seem to come up for a couple of years and now are looking wonderful. I don't remember buying any so I don't know where else they would come from. It doesn't matter as they are really pretty.

For all of you who have never understood why we have never locked our door, you don't have to worry any more. After 20 years of living in the big bad Bronx and not locking my front door because the lock wouldn't work, I have brand spanking new locks and keys. Now we have to remember to bring our keys with us when we go out.

Gas. What else are we all talking about? I drove to Virginia a week ago. Regular gas at the Sunoco station around the corner from my house was $3.93/gallon. It seems like I was just choking because it had gone over $3/gallon. On the Jersey Turpike all the way down it was $3.43/gallon and in VA it was $3.63/gallon. Lots of very long lines on the turnpike at the gas stations. A couple of weeks ago I was thinking ---when it costs over $50 to fill my tank I'm going to----what? Stop driving? I doubt it.

Gas prices. Another choke is going to the grocery store. Then you pick up and read the papers about Myanmar and China. It is a crazy, crazy world we are living in.

Dreary Sunday

Sunday, May 4, 1008

A very rainy, dreary day in the Bronx. It looks like
May showers for about 10 days now. Bummer.



I finished reading this book this morning and have to say I really liked it. Although fiction, like I said before, it is probably pretty close to what goes on in politics. You get lost in all the manipulating and maneuvering of the delegates. No where in the entire book do you get any sense that any of the delegates are truly dedicated to nominating the candidate that won the vote in their state. A little disheartening for sure. But the end was a surprise to me. A good read.


From Richard North Patterson to Alexander McCall Smith. A change of pace for sure. AMS's books are fun. He has a way with words, making the unfamiliar quite familiar as he develops the characters and describes the area and customs in this part of Africa.
I have read all of the previous books of this series (Number One Ladies Detective Agency) and look forward to this one.

Catch-up

May 1, 2008

Happy May Day! Happy Spring! There is no doubt it is spring even if it doesn't feel much like it. So many trees in bloom and the daffodils are already fading. The pansies went into the ground last week. Well, half of them did. I am hoping that as the coreopsis grows between the pansies and the sun, the life of the pansies will be longer.

It seems like blogging and keeping up to date on forums is a winter time activity. I have started working in the yard a couple of days a week, sneaking it in between the rainy days. Every day I say things like -I need to catch up on the blogging, I need to go look at the forum. I don't know where the time goes. I used to really think all those old crazy people were exaggerating when they said things like that.

There are lots of flower pictures in this blog but I just can't resist. Tis the season! This is one of the two pink lavender bushes I put in this year. I have never have had much luck with lavender but I will keep trying.

Ms. Sylvia has had a hard start to the spring and summer season. She is a kind of high strung dog to start with but when I open the windows when the weather is nice, she has a very hard time. We live in the flight path to LaGuardia airport and sometimes the planes fly over very frequently and sometimes very low. We are pretty used to it and don't even notice it until Ms. Sylvia is plastered to my leg or my lap, trembling like a leaf. It usually goes on for a couple of hours and is really sad to watch. It is the same thing during thunderstorms but that is very common in dogs and since thunderstorms are pretty time limited there is little to do about it. But the planes start at about 6A some days and are pretty intense for a couple of hours in the morning and then pick up again for about four hours in the afternoon/evening. Every day of the week. I talked to the vet about it this week and we are going to try her on a very low dose of Prozac for the summer. Yep, Prozac. We'll see how that goes. The idea is to take the edge off enough that although she hears them, they don't bother her and hopefully she will get used to that idea and we can just take her off the Prozac for good in the fall.

Nick and Janet's wedding plans seem to be moving right along. They are very organized and on top of it all. I am actually pretty excited about all of this because a lot family is coming for that week. It is going to be a nice wedding and I think a fun week for the people who are around. Nick is currently in Las Vegas for three nights with his six groomsmen for his bachelor party.

Dahlias. Probably my all time favorite flower. I have bought four this year and will probably get a couple more. Too bad they can't just stay in the ground and come back year after year. Every fall the tubers need to come out and be left to dry over the winter and be replanted. Most of the time I lose the tubers and have to buy new ones but sometimes one or two of them will survive.

The Yankees are rolling over and playing close to dead at the moment. They lost two games to the Tigers this week at the Stadium. We were there the first night and it was probably the coldest night I have ever been in the Stadium. It was a good time but it is always more fun when we win. I talked to a couple in front of us who were there with Zak, their seven month old son. Although it always seems like a crazy thing to bring kids, especially little, little kids, to a baseball game, he was as cute as he could be, playful, just watching everything going on around him or sleeping. Never a peep out of him. I assumed he was with his grandparents in their Michigan sweatshirts and Tiger baseball caps. Talk about Michigan (they're from Grand Rapids but live in Jersey now) was the conversation opener and I said something about how cute their grandson is. Like I'm not old enough to know never to say something that stupid. The father (who definitely is at least five years older than I am) looked shocked and introduced me to his wife. She was 45 if she was a year. Anyway, the baby was gorgeous.

Speaking of which, babies and all, I have made some progress on the baby blanket. Dave sent me the sonogram the other day. Ji is in the beginning of her second trimester and they are getting used to the idea now. It is amazing to see the guys slowly getting married and now starting a family although this is only the first baby in the group. So much fun. For those of you who can't tell, that is a baby chick. The life sweater has taken a serious back seat to this.

Have been reading "The Race" by Richard North Patterson. It is fiction and really a pretty good book. I am quite fascinated at how much an author can write as "fiction" without apparently crossing the line. It is about a presidential campaign. The main character in the story was a pilot in the Gulf War, crashed his plane and was held by the enemy and tortured. The only thing missing is that they are not calling him John McCain. There are two other men running from his party at this point. One an extremely conservative religious zealot. But the main character happens to be divorced and is now involved with a black movie actress. He has all the issues of the current campaign personalities in the book. It is pretty interesting, although fiction, and very scary how some of the things are done. I think what is scary is that most of it is probably true, how the process still works.

It was my hope that a lot of my flowers would be in bloom when everyone was here for the wedding. But it won't be the lilacs that are about half open now nor the lilies of the valley which will be open and gone before too long. But the yard does smell intoxicating at the moment between the two of them. The weather forecast is for about seven days of rain so I am guessing today is the last day to enjoy them in the yard.

Yesterday would have been this lady's 92nd birthday. A year later it is hard to believe how much I still miss her.