Woman of a certain age

Love letters

2011-11-14T15:25:00.000-06:00

I guess I feel a burning need to discuss my Anglophilia, post a very fun trip to London this past week. Sure, I don't know any other languages so maybe it's just laziness on my part. Or could it be heritage? My grandfather's family immigrated from England (by way of Ireland of course, but that used to be a family secret) at the turn of the twentieth century and when I was a kid my relatives still embraced an awful lot of Irish and English culture within the family. Although 70 years later it was mostly expressed in the form of insanity but also in our family food preparation, dress, commonly used words and phrases and grudges held.

bikes and phone boxes still around in 2011

Andrew Sullivan, slightly more popular blogger than I, posted this weekend about what he misses most about England. It got me thinking about what is special for me. It's certainly not the people, or the weather, or even the food that keeps me coming back. One doesn't always feel the love when it comes to these dimensions of English life. But I relish crazy little things, like the idea of a shadow government functioning in fantasy alongside the real government. I love that in an otherwise expensive economy for consumers, candy and tabloids are and have always been an incredible bargain. I love all British comedy and most British TV, music and newspapers. I love that department stores are alive and well. I love that pubs are full in the afternoons of people drinking beer and that people smoke cigarettes (granted outside now) without looking furtive or ashamed. I love that the whole country has shared identity through the BBC and the monarchy and the Church of England. I love that women's fashion is always slightly slutty and that breast cleavage is freely shown and rarely mentioned.

my favorite department store

delicious meal at The Ivy after the theater,
where the star of our play came in minutes after us and sat just two tables away

I love that you can say "fuck" on television but never "bloody". I love, and I will loosely quote Andrew Sullivan who said it most aptly, "[the lack] of religious extremism in public discourse." I love the year round greenness of grass and the care of a garden rather than a lawn. I love the tradition of arranging small Christmas parties at restaurants with friends and colleagues and the very dear aspect of those parties which is hand delivering Christmas cards to one another given out at the table like valentines. I love the progressive nature of art appreciation in London within the same society that has a great misunderstanding still of what causes illness and what cures it. This fact was never so clear to me as when Olivia's foot was runover at school by a car and while waiting for the ambulance, the school secretary made her a cup of tea.

a perfect view of parliament

So there's my love letter about my homeland. As for my love letter about my husband, I simply state in the most British way possible, "Well done you." I feel lucky and always slightly suspicious of being undeserving of all the love and good stuff in life that feels heaped upon me, like Mardi Gras beads on a baby. But I'm mixing my geographic metaphors.

I am terrible at selfies

Halloween

2011-10-31T22:34:00.000-05:00

Homemade soup, butternut squash, Halloween, caramel apples, crunchy leaves, golden sunlight. It's fall and it's lovely. And tonight, a first! I broke my streak of 20 plus years of having way too much candy on Halloween. I actually ran out of every single last piece of candy in the joint with over 200 pieces walking away with Packers and Yankees and ghouls and witches and princesses and ninjas. Tiny tigers and pumpkins, round and clueless as they were cute, plunging pudgy hands into the candy bowl for candy I'm sure they would never eat. I'm not even sure they knew it was candy, it was just colorful. There's nothing more triumphant than running out of a reputable amount of candy. It kind of puffs you up. Ran out of candy, what can you do? I'm awesome. Really what I forget is that we don't have any candy coming in anymore on Halloween, just going out. No bags to raid for those last few kids that show up to the party late. I rooted through the pantry shelves and came up with single serving potato chips and Cliff bars. But in the end it was too tragic, so after about three kids I turned out the lights.

The Chicken and Mrs. Bachmann

Our street has evolved as the new drive-in street for kids across the way. It's an easy access street, close by, wide and car-friendly. Parents can hover at or crawl along the curb while the kids do a few houses at a time before hitting a curmudgeon's house. Then they get a whoop or a whistle from the car and all go hopping back in the car in search of more lighted houses. When I was young, it was mere feet between neighbors, but the little legs here have to go quite a bit further between houses for a hard won snack size candy bar. The kids come in big groups, all ages and sizes, some with costumes and some without, it really doesn't matter because most are wearing coats. There might be several moms or dads or just older siblings leading the way. Some families collect candy for the baby in the stroller, a favorite tradition of ours from our days in West Philly. The kids are fearful of stepping into the foyer presumably because they've been told never to go into stranger's houses (good rule), so I have to step outside to give the candy and get a look at their costumes. They say Trick or Treat and thank you without prompting. Some of them go off script and tell me how nice my house is which I find touching. They feel like neighbors but I don't know where they live and I wish I knew them better. Ally told me to stop giving two and three pieces at a time, admonishing me that I would run out. "I heard you out there sneaking them extra pieces, Mom. No wonder you ran out." I know, I can't help myself.

ironically the mime is stuck outside the glass door

Halloween is a special night for me, from growing up in the trick or treating capital of the world, Narberth, PA to starting a Halloween tradition in West Philly that continues today and now to Madison where I'm mostly the nice older lady who is a soft touch. Ah, whatever. It's one night and no need for limits. As my neighbor posted on Facebook tonight, and I paraphrase, "if I ever get tired of cute little princesses and pumpkins ringing my doorbell, commence with the beatings."
http://ucreview.com/eve-of-all-hollows-celebrated-in-spruce-hill-p3031-1.htm

Six weeks. I know I know.

2011-10-14T00:36:00.001-05:00

Sometimes it takes six weeks to think of something to write about something that doesn't begin with "those darn kids of mine..." That's all I'm saying. They are mind suckers. Only I didn't say sucker.

This week I'm feeling my dinosaur bones creak but I'm loving it because finally it has been revealed to me where my knowledge of the past is relevant! In the event of a power outage.

early morning fog over the Wisconsin Capitol

As part of our clinic's emergency preparedness, we have been walking through the steps we would need to take in the event of a cut in the power to our computers. Everything is automated in our little corner of the health care world, from parking to registration to filling prescriptions at Walgreens. The paper chart is gone, the consultation forms are gone, the prescription pads are gone--all information is stored in one giant program on the computer for the entire organization. And for most people, they can't remember working any another way. Coming from the school district where paper is still very much alive, this change to the paperless health care setting was probably the biggest shock to me, and it still is.

I run with what we call in nursing, the pumps and pearls crowd. Most of them are younger than me by about a decade. It keeps my wardrobe hip but in my brain I quietly identify with the ladies who wear Christmas sweaters and Sketchers. I run in a fast circle of power pals in business attire, attending meetings to discuss and strategize about things that nurses in patient care couldn't begin to care about and don't need to because I'm there. I do believe, I do believe, I do believe. It's been a learning curve over the first year to see the value in what I do. Policy, standards, regulatory, organizational, evidence based practice, quality improvement, meaningful use--buzzy buzz words that mostly make sense to me now. But I also clean clinic rooms between patients, I hold kids during procedures, I talk to parents pissed off because they've waited two hours to see the doctor and I help lost people find their way. I'm the rarest of pumps and pearls--I'm also a mensch. They've embraced me. It's been a year. Hurray, I'm through it.

Kansas butterfly

So, back to "downtime". I can't even go into the details of an absurd conversation about coming up with a plan for running clinic during a full power outage. We can run as long as 90 minutes behind schedule when we're working with full power. Really, we're going to try to see patients with no power? I'm thinking we just tell everybody to go home. (and that right there is why I'm not in charge) I was willing, however, to entertain the possibility of how we would run clinic without the use of computers. The sheer notion of developing a work flow involving pen and paper or gasp, talking face to face is always perplexing for everyone in the group EXCEPT this woman of a certain age who during the dry run sat blithly in a chair and chirped, "...Heaven forbid we might have to use paper or talk to one another!" The group ignored the sarcasm and communicated with weary glances that this woman should sit quietly and keep thoughts of the good old days to herself while the real grown ups talked. Fine, whatever.

Late autumn Kansas sunflower

Them: "So, how will radiology know that patients are sitting out here in the waiting room?"
Me: "Somebody could walk back there and actually talk to the radiology tech."
Them: "Shut up Julie."
Them: "Anyway, and how will the lab know that the family has checked in?"
Me: "The lab person could walk down the hallway and talk to the front desk staff or vice versa?"
Them: "No, that won't work."

I'm just trying to keep it real.

One stick at a time

2011-08-28T21:04:00.001-05:00

The words haven't been coming to me this summer. Frustratingly, I've started lots of posts never to finish them.

Daytime firepit...who knew you could enjoy that? My dad's a rulebreaker.

Our new lake house is a pleasant distraction from my distraction. The house faces west so the sun is a long time coming over the trees to the dock, but it makes for a pretty morning with the creep of the light over the rooftop cutting through the trees, casting the brightest light and deepest shadows in the yard. Superimposed fern silhouettes layer one over another in a feathery pattern of every possible shade of green. It's peaceful and natural. But then when that gets boring, just follow me five miles up the road for cocktail hour and a cooked meal in Minocqua.

The paths begin to take shape

Olivia's gone to college and she's thriving according to local reports. I'm more than surviving and less than thriving with her departure. It's just weird. But as I've told my friends, all the registration stuff for high school came in the mail and none of it had Olivia's name on it so I knew she had to go. You don't have to be independent but you can't stay here.

My dad and I headed north last weekend for a look at our house and it took him all of ten minutes before his knees were in the dirt. A huge woodpile/mudpile had been plowed/bobcatted against a little grove of trees to clear the way for digging up the old septic tank. A giant mess of tangled cut wood, plants and dirt that had been burrowed and co-opted by chipmunks who clucked and scampered and scolded whenever anybody came near. So much literal dead wood, I couldn't face it! Chip tried to tackle it a few weeks ago and I made him stop. It seemed insurmountable. But piece by piece, my dad, who doesn't heed me like Chip does, began to root through the pile pieces one by one for the most burnable to least burnable wood and stacked it painstakingly.

"Dad, stop. It's too much."

"Why should I stop? I love working like this."

"How can you love it? It's overwhelming. I don't even know where to begin out here in the yard, there's so much debris."

"Jul, you just move it one stick at a time until it's done."

One stick at a time. Big tasks have been scary lately. I don't know if it's been the unsettling nature of sending a kid to college, going back to work, or just getting older. But my dad's simple words freed me for the weekend, by simply telling me to start the task.

The heat was on.

2011-07-22T07:59:00.002-05:00

Blistering heat. It's finally moving east but the past week has been like a long plane ride for me. Trapped and airless days and nights strung together, stuck either inside work or inside the house. I felt and behaved like a caged wild beast.

I pushed myself to go to the Concert on the Square this week despite the hysteria that it would be so hot people would die trying. And what a good decision it was. The Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, incidentally conducted by our darling friend and neighbor Andrew Sewell, performs Wednesday evenings on the grounds of the Capitol (that's with an O, teachers) all summer. It's free and a blanket and a bottle is the standard minimum-full on picnic dinners are common. It's a wine swillin' crowd generally. What's stopping anybody from attending is a mystery to me. This week, Andrew had recruited Revival, an ABBA tribute band, for the orchestra to accompany. The band used the rotunda as their back stage and "took the stage" in a grand fashion on the Capitol steps to the sounds of a whoop whoop whoop of a chopper, as if they had somehow just landed downtown from Sweden just for us! Hilariously cheesy but in the final analysis they brought some musical chops. Showmanship if nothing else with gold capes and entreaties for getting the crowd on its feet, which they accomplished and was no small feat given the temperature.

Back in the day, when I was at the mercy of the disc jockey on WFIL FM radio, I was not a fan of ABBA, despite enduring the song Fernando incessantly. The soaring melodies and the Swinglish lyrics made no sense to me as a kid, but then again, I hadn't yet traveled beyond Ohio and I loved the band, Kiss. I'm not here to judge.

My friend Martha, with whom I braved the temperatures only to be rewarded with a cup of homemade gazpacho for my trouble, is a cellist and a lifelong musician/biology nerd by her description. When I told her I didn't go for ABBA as a kid because I was pretty hard core rock, she replied, "For me, ABBA was hard core." That was funny and of course, a little sad. But the thing is, I did eventually grow up and began to see the merits of pop in my life. And I'm not giving Mamma Mia any credit for this because I think that show, despite it's popularity with women, is lame-O!

Nearly 100 degrees. Shout out to Chip Hunter for throwing out our blanket and
babysitting it until mid afternoon when the temperature was more like 120 degrees.

The ABBA allure has got to be about its retro-ness and also generational shareability. As a middle-ager, you hear an ABBA song and for good or bad, you remember a moment or an event or even a vibe from the past. I don't even think you have to like the music to experience the nostalgia. And the crazy thing is, at the height of their stardom in the seventies, the band was probably the least popular in the United States than anywhere in the world. I guess that's the thing about retro is that it's more popular in its resurrection than it ever was in its hey day.

Martha and I watched over the course of the evening as pockets of people began standing up to dance or sway, young and old folks, moms and daughters, girlfriends, little kids, and even a few guys. We were swept up in the good feeling of the crowd and the music made the heat almost a non-issue. My kid and her friends knew all the words to the songs and they were eventually up dancing, although not until moving to a secure location away from me and Martha and our attempts to mimic all of the choreography of the background singers. Arm movements are easy to do from a beach chair but it does sometimes cause you to spill your wine, so it's important to take care.

New generation ABBA fans

Reunion 2011

2011-07-09T16:31:00.000-05:00

Northwoods sky

My first official weekend at our cabin. Alone with the dog. Everybody else is busy as usual so Minnie and I ventured north to welcome a new bed being delivered and start surveying the work ahead. I'm surprised because I think there is more work outside than in. Paths are overgrown both front and back and I'm reminded of Burnt Offerings, the movie (and book) about a family that buys a rundown old house with a crazy lady in the attic and the mom becomes obsessed with the house to the point of maybe murdering her family, I think? I can't quite remember the whole story but I do remember that as the house got fixed up, she got crazier and eventually the family runs away and leaves her to be the new old lady in the attic. Hmmmmm.

The past week has been full of 2 year old. The former preemie who battled uphill for much of her first year is now a skinny, wily, fast grabbing (no kidding, knives!), bilingual, sassyfrass beauty. And the gift and blessing is that...she knows me. I can tell by the way she looks at me that I'm a notch above random stranger. We have a connection and it's love, baby. Her parents are wonderful but they are like blurry shapes that satellite around our love affair. That's the cold hard truth and I can write freely since my blog doesn't penetrate the Great Firewall of China.

Genius marketing that set us apart and above the Lutz Family Reunion

An amazing journey to Kansas for a 66 person-strong Hunter Family Reunion. Amazing in that our family (and that means America) is beginning to reflect the colors of our world. Chinese, African-American, Filipino, Latino in-laws and descendants blending in with each subsequent generation. The Hunters are turning beautifully brown.

Aunt Judy and Aunt Ann get the shirts divided up by family

second cousins

um....what a production this was. you can see the level of cooperation on their faces

A quilt of all the t-shirts over the years

Grabbing a signal at The Vine in Minocqua with a glass of syrah beside me while Misty Mountain Hop plays overhead. I must remember this in February.

Jello at my age

2011-06-28T09:37:00.001-05:00

A woman of a certain age acknowledges she has occasions for flights of fancy but when she has jello shots two weekends in a row, it makes her reflective.

My tailgating buddy

The first week out of school has gone by so after going into liquid state, the girls have re-materialized into solid form and are into the swing of their summer rituals: babysitting, diving, running, piano playing, malling, lunching, TV watching. Jobs you ask? Well....Chip and I have them.

The cats are having the summer I used to have as a kid. Out at 9am, home at 9pm. Dirty and up to no good, holding back their stories because I would worry.

Darling girls at Jimmy Buffett, beautiful and chill

My first summer working in 10 years so far? Difficult. Teachers, stay-at-home moms and part-time professionals make up my social circle so while they’re working hard for their kids this summer back and forth to camps, the pool, family vacations, they are “off” in my mind. I wake up each morning wishing I could just sit in my garden and drink coffee for a few hours then head to the pool or take a bike ride or a paddle or even just clean out a closet. But then I remember how much that work pays. I want to say that it makes me savor the weekends and that I make the most of that time, but really it just makes me greedy and anxious for more. I’m still adjusting, is the politically correct answer and the one people close to me want to hear because they love me. I’m crabby and unsettled, is the reality.

Glow bracelets really complete an outfit

Outdoor lunch with a friend, Jimmy Buffett, Trivia Night at the pool, gardening, family reunion, glass of wine on the patio…our grown-up summer rituals have also begun. Despite the feeling that there's never quite enough time on the weekends, all possibilities are entertained and planning is rich with verdant and abundant blooms like my garden. Not until my ferns start to get crispy and I begin to look at weeds and think, “meh…” will I feel that wistful slide of summer on the down slope. I hope at that point I can look back and feel like I found that balance, enjoying both summer and working simultaneously. Jimmy Buffett works all summer, I tell myself.

The sun sets behind a sea of happy drunks--the steep grade of the hill at Alpine Valley
is a cruel joke on all these people after dark. Many of those above us on the hill were below us later in the evening,
not of their own accord.

A new perspective

2011-06-14T23:42:00.004-05:00

And the new view is not just out my window. Although that's changed, too. This lovely shot is the view from the porch of my new lake house. Ok, ours. That feels very weird to say aloud, even in print. And so we get to watch a new chapter in our family's life write itself from this vantage point, perhaps even quite literally if I can get Internet there. Liv and Ally are only mildly impressed and somewhat baffled. I don't think they see the relevance of a lakehouse to their lives right now and that's probably appropriate from the perspective of a teenager. It's just a place with a lot of attention-seeking dragonflies and sketchy cell phone service.

front and center which is how we see her

Olivia's high school graduation was executed with Wisconsin precision. On time start, the reading of each individual's name graduating -- 480 plus students-- in addition to hosting five speakers all in under 90 minutes. Mussolini must have consulted here at one point in history as I've never been to a school, arts or public event that hasn't run on time or finished within 10 minutes of its scheduled completion. Compared to Philadelphia time, where start times are merely suggestions for the under part of an over/under bet, Madison time is laughably accurate.

Catching up with Aunt Pol

And the million dollar question? How does it all feel? It feels like it's time. It was nice for our crazy families (ok, just mine is crazy and it may be a small betrayal to write that...and yet I write it anyway) to see each other again. It came together before the ceremony in a day's long arrival of family like stars on the red carpet one after the other building to a crescendo of an Italian feast at a local restaurant.

I hear they all had fun

The scene from my kitchen window on many sunny summer days

Absolutely no idea if Olivia is the brown haired one or the blond haired one.

It resumed after the ceremony as a wonderful thank-you gathering for family and the neighbors who helped me bring this here child to adulthood with sanitys intact. Each friend in her own way has had a hand in making this kid feel safe and secure in this world. She calls them collectively the "aunties" and many live in our backyard. The phrase "it takes a village..." may be trite from overuse but it's not without absolute meaning. Because if you can raise a kid by yourself for 18 years, you deserve some sort of recognition or some sort of a job from the United Nations or the Pope or maybe Desmond Tutu.

dinner at Bella Vita, new locally owned restaurant that shows some local love

Almost as good as a hug from JJ Hardy...but not quite

Advice taken with some skepticism

a video assembled by some girls in Liv's class. truly artful. liv at around 1:50 secs.

Management 101

2011-06-01T22:39:00.002-05:00

I spoke up in a meeting today, a big monthly sort of deal with women all doing my job plus a director or two. I try to contribute, to be visible, because the truth is if I didn't show up they wouldn't even miss me. Just a little pediatric fish in a big pond of sickest of sick adult care practitioners. I'm alone in my sunny disposition and pediatric friendly colors. They rarely smile except when I alone try out some material on them and they think big thoughts about wound healing, urinary infections and heart disease. Some scary bitches I tell you, although you'd probably want them taking care of you if you were sick.

Later, a woman introduced herself to me because she was "interested to hear my comments" at the meeting. Uh oh. Is that a good thing or an "I want to remember your name so I can avoid committee work with you."

My comment was in reference to a journal article about nurses needing to break through professional silence to protect patient safety. Never having been silent my whole life, it was hard to relate. But the conversation turned to communication and I reflected that as tricky as it can be for women to manage other women, ironically in the female dominated nursing field we end up spending most of our professional lives deftly managing everybody from patients to doctors without ever having any formal management education or training. A lot of nurses are just winging it so maybe as advanced practice nurses we should advocate better for management education for our staff groups.

Speaking of women ineffectively managing women, there are 7 days of school left and somebody needs to finish 10th grade before her mother a) checks into Betty Ford or b) sells her to the carnival folk in the deserted defunct Italian restaurant parking lot behind the mall or c) both.

As for the graduating senior, she's unusually sassy as hay'll. I literally waved a pencil under both their noses tonight and used the words "I'm your mother and I want respect." It was so absurd, I think it worked. Thinking that demanding respect will be my new thing.

Thing 1

Thing 2

My first. There's only one.

2011-05-19T00:09:00.003-05:00

That's the face of butterbeer

Liv’s prom pictures made me realize we are reaching milestones almost daily around here. The lasts of a lot of things…band concerts, forensics banquets, booster shots. As I consider all these lasts, I can’t help going back to that skinny yet improbably hard-to-carry toddler who never held on to us so much as used us as perches from which to view and delight in the world around her. Who she’s become and will yet become is largely who we always thought she was. Kids are puzzles in the box, the pieces are all a jumble. The keen observer can start to see the whole for those little pieces pretty quickly. And over time in our case, the edge pieces have all been found and framed a wonderful 18 year old that has emerged her senior year. I think back to some of my favorite Olivia moments and the puzzle pieces that have fallen into place.

my traveling buddy

As a toddler, with the precision and silence of the Stealth Bomber, she crawled from the kitchen while my back was turned, scaling a chair to reach the top of the dining room table where she teeteringly must have turned around to sit cross legged so she could carefully open a box of jelly beans that I assumed had been stashed above her view. The puzzle pieces here still remain. She has an amazing memory and she still loves candy.

As a kid of 5 or 6 she once crept downstairs on a weekend morning and opened the back door triggering the whoop whoop of the burglar alarm. She scaled the baby gate off the back porch, walked down the side alley of our city block in nightgown and barefeet to the front of the house to get the newspaper. The house alarm blared and Chip and I went to the open back door with the cricket bat poised to brain someone, only to catch the tail end of that spritely little return walk back down the alley, Liv smiling to herself with newspaper in hand. And to this day, she cannot really start her morning without reading the newspaper.

On our trip to Harry Potter world, she was decidedly disappointed in her geriatric mom’s inability to ride the rides fanatically and repeatedly with her--oh, yeah, that's why we made you a sister! It was clear to me on our trip that NASA doesn’t know about this diamond in the rough living in Wisconsin, who could take space and time exploration to a whole new level with her love of physical sensation. Her preschool teacher said it first. She has always and still does love sensation of most kinds; fast, spinning, sweet, salty, sour, upside down.

And she's a talker. She’s been babbling since she was about two weeks old, on trains and planes, in the tub, pointing and squawking from her stroller, following us around the house to chat sports or reflections of her day. Despite having to tell her to zip it occasionally, whether it’s a trip to Harry Potter world or a trip to the grocery store, she’s a low maintenance, sweet, positive, flexible companion at home or on the road, especially if there's a snack in it for her. I can’t really imagine what it will be like around here without her daily presence. But I’m feeling great so far, steeped in my denial.

she went on, I did not. I could not.

Classic tourists...full of chicken fingers, soda and nachos.

I see many friends on Facebook are also facing their own firstborns leaving home this summer. Like the Decorah eaglets, they all seem big enough, they all technically look ready to fly, but it’s such a long drop down from the nest. Scary stuff. Their lives are starting “for reals” and in a way we as parents are appropriately being nudged unwillingly to bystander status. What can we do? I can't make her do anything. I think the police could arrest me for that now. And I resent those grownups who think they get to call the shots because they pay the bills--nuh uh, it's her time now. My parents were so good about letting me live my life that I want to honor them by doing the same for Liv, as much as it pains me to let her make the decisions now. If it keeps her out of living in my basement at age 26, well, the pain will have been worth it.

I am not weepy but I am sad and afraid to let go…let go of the baby, the toddler, the little kid we took to Disney, even that teenager I took to Harry Potter world just a month ago. And at the same time I can’t wait for her to have her chance at living her life without having me pawing at her daily like a lioness keeping her cub close. And I look forward to watching the rest of this puzzle come together. The edges were ours to put together but the middle is for her to fill in with the picture she imagines that is her life and her passions and her future. I'm going to miss you fiercely, kid, but I love you enough to not make it all about me this one time.

The hook

2011-04-26T21:37:00.000-05:00

I bet you thought I would blog about Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. And I will, but this post occurred to me at 30,000 feet and so I'm going with it first. Might be good, might be oxygen deprived drivel. I visited my friend's parents this past week in Florida and my friend's mom is a regular reader of my blog. I do have a small but devoted following of about 20, mostly friends and family. I'm OK with the fact that my blog never caught fire like The Huffington Post. Really what would I do with 315 million dollars anyway?

She said, "You're a fantastic writer and you have a book already written. Memoirs are in!" And yet I still don't see it. Maybe someday, but right now I prefer belly aching about the relevance of my blog in my post-apocalyptic "I have to get up and go to work again?" state of mind. I'm hanging on by my fingernails to keep my life orderly and calm, which is how I like it these days. Sunday nights not having done my homework yet...ugh, that lifestyle, while seemingly embraced by me at every stage of my life, has actually never made me happy. I just can't go back to the seven foot high pile of laundry, the chore laden weekends and hot dogs twice a week for dinner as was customary of my family life coupled with a full time job ten years ago. It was de rigueur when I was younger, skinnier and cuter but middle aged women who don't have their lives together is just tragic. Must.maintain.order.

Qualifications for writing a memoir surely include some formal training somewhere. I'll admit to higher education, good fundies from expert teachers, good instincts and a good sense of humor...those are scant credentials I've got to hang my writing hat on--ending a sentence with a preposition aside. And unlike Sedaris, Burroughs, Wells, McCourt, I don't have the hook of an amazingly colorful past. Sure I've got the alcoholics, the slightly checked out parents (benignly so), the seventies, the youthful indiscretions and the European travel stories. I also have a firm grip on reality and the dynamic duo of my funniness, self loathing and sloth. I know myself and I'm willing to talk truthfully about it. That point alone seems valuable enough to keep blogging if only to help a friend take the pressure off of herself on a hard day. But reading blogs is a fading ritual for Internet readers, like waiting for holds at the library (really people? have you heard of the Kindle?) and actually blogs were a dying bird even as I took mine up. Twitter is where it's at. It's been fun and interesting being a part of a social media fad on the Internet and in the end maybe one of my grand kids will write a book report about her granny the blogger back in "aught 7". Who knows if any of it will even be here in ten years and what will replace it?

So what would be the hook of my memoir if I wrote one? As I sat on the beach this past week and my brain was re energized by Vitamin D, my muse finally came to me! Because as I try to juggle work, kids growing up and going to college and the maintenance of my house and what little of my sanity remains, the one thing I am sure of is that I love to tell a story and edit it for the reader's pleasure but I simply cannot f*cking do this while my family peppers me on the quarter hour with inane questions like, "Did you wash my sliding shorts?"

This post is about a child so dear that it's going to take a little while to craft

It also occurred to me that nobody ever comes looking for me while I'm doing the wash. My respite. My haven. My salvation. I've blogged numerous times about it before. The laundry is my muse. Life as I know it from the subterranean recesses of my house--the underworld, Atlantis. It is all finally coming together in an arc so mundane that it might make Erma Bombeck seem funny.

Pushing through the pain

2011-04-03T21:42:00.004-05:00

1981...not really sure what's going on here

2011...we don't lie together on the floor anymore, intentionally.

Although I only spent a year with them in high school this group of people has become more gracious and welcoming with each passing reunion. But the one thing I can’t recreate with most of them is a history, because we have none. I haven’t met their parents or their siblings, we never played together once upon a time in pre-school, we weren’t ever best friends in the 4th grade. Those friends are in Philadelphia for me. The three friends I made my senior year in New Orleans, well, we've never lost touch. There’s lots of history but no need to catch up as we chat weekly at minimum. So this weekend was a bit like being a spouse at my own reunion. I watched as my classmates reconnected and delighted in their entwined childhoods and it was charming and beautiful to see. And like a spouse, man, whatever! It was a party. The company was great, the food was great, the surroundings were lush...from a 44th floor view over the Mississippi to dancing the night away at a mansion in the Garden District. It was all good.

two of the three dearest friends I'll ever have no matter how old I get

My gals and I dubbed the weekend Push Through the Pain 2011 for its late nights and early mornings (because, of course, we're women of a certain age) and doing it over and over again for four days straight. Monday morning, I had to leave. My life depended on it.

Debris with grits at Mothers...that's exactly what you need after a night out on the town.
It soaks up everything.

gittin' our mudbug on

Brennans' Eggs Shannon. Trout and creamed spinach with a hint of nutmeg. Now that's brunch

Positively N'Awlins.

oysters on the grill, as you do in new orleans

room with a view

hurricanes at 1am

beignets and coffee at 3am

The reunion continues on Facebook this week as we reminisce about our reminiscences. Those who couldn’t attend post desperate entreaties to “tag” people because nobody’s recognizable in the pictures. Life has been good to most of us and we look durn good, but maybe not enough like our 18 year old selves to be easily identified in a still photo. In person it came slowly, but with animation we would break into smiles as the 18 year olds in us emerged and passed over our faces fleetingly. A kiss on the cheek, a gentle embrace, kind words. Smart, cultured, warm and genteel people. I am looking forward to the 35th already, but first I've got to see about getting rid of this pesky liver.

Mollie requests the waiter not set her hair on fire

He obliges...voila, bananas foster

Stolen minutes

2011-03-20T21:37:00.000-05:00

James Taylor was singing on the television as we were cleaning up from dinner tonight.. ahh, there's a way to get ladies to support public television. Where do I send the check? Ladies like me, raised up on JT's sentimental crooning, songs sung with girlfriends with arms slung around each other's shoulders and usually a few beers under our belts. Then, ten years later singing those same songs quietly in the dark to my dozing babies because the lyrics came automatically in my own foggy brain. I was weepy tonight and I grabbed Ally as if to dip her, instead cradling her head and shoulders and we stood swaying as I rocked her and sang Sweet Baby James along with the TV.

"Do you remember me singing this song to you?" Nope. But she let me hold that portion of her that I can still fit in my arms and she didn't pull away. I grabbed Olivia as she walked out of the bathroom still fixing her hair and I squeezed them both very hard one in each arm, kissing their foreheads and telling them how much I loved them. A little weird but they're used to the odd grab and kiss so not sure it registered how badly I needed to hold them at that moment.

I blogged in September about Ally and her friends doing a benefit walk for cancer in honor of their friend battling leukemia. That friend lost her fight this weekend. Her mom blogged during the last nine months and reflected this weekend that this arduous walk with leukemia took the same amount of time it took to bring M. into the world--a crushing and ironic connection of the dots that felt for me suddenly like I was walking on the floor of a cruel fun house--how does a parent stay upright through all of it? Her posts were written with raw and sublime honesty so that we could be witness to the purity of her love, the agony of her fear and in the very end those final moments as her daughter slipped peacefully away. As for M, I mostly knew her through the funny stories I heard from Ally and Chip and then lately from her own mother's words. M. was fierce and funny, honest and original, a tomboy and a princess. She was the quintessential daughter, sugar and salt and fire.

I find retreat these days in being as thoroughly present in my own happy life as I can be in as many minutes of the day as I can remember to be. It's not easy to always be grateful and present, but it's sort of like yoga in that it can't ever be bad for me to try. Much of the good stuff in my life is within my control, the rest is simply luck. What I can control, I can strive to honor. I can hug my kids and my husband willy nilly and enjoy every minute with them when I'm not yelling at them. I can express my love whenever I feel it and that may get weird for the occasional stranger who treats me right. I can take the odd minute each day to enjoy a moment of sun on my face, stroke a baby's cheek in a hallway at work, listen to the birds as I sip my morning coffee and smell the flowers soon to come. It's a small offering of karma to the universe in the name of a girl who unjustly lost the luxury of spending her own stolen minutes.

So much stuff going on

2011-03-14T22:22:00.000-05:00

The early March scene in Madison is upon us, when winter is not really over but we're all kind of getting a bit done with cold weather activities and therefore, the cold weather. The snow is old and crunchy. My XC skis lean with a detached mood against the side of the garage, without much appeal to me or me to them I think. The temperatures will keep popping up into the high thirties from now on and so the occasional flurries or freshening snow here and there won't do much except turn what's left of the snow into a dirty ice pack that will melt and freeze into a composite similar to the surface of Neptune. So much for the snow.

Minnie didn't know whether to bark at it or pee on it. She did neither in the end.

Cheese or pepperoni?

The past three years I have played host to hundreds of hungry teenagers at the home forensics tournament at the high school. Rounding up enough parent donations of fruit and drinks to augment two pieces of pizza and charge 5 bucks without the kids complaining of the value. It was my calling these three years as it turns out. And so once again, I spent an exhausting day off (precious this year) waiting on children who are old enough to wait on themselves. I'm done volunteering for this event as my senior is outta there and my sophomore doesn't see a future in the spoken word. So much for forensics.

The first year I was freaked out by hundreds of kids talking to the walls. This year I barely noticed them.

We've welcomed back our Wisconsin 14 but our state is angry and divided, the many now without collective bargaining, a fundamental human right btwubs, against the few on a raging power grab against the middle class to further line pockets that don't even sit in Sconnie pants. I don't know how all them rich guys can even fit all their money in their pockets with so much fleece in there.

Social media can be both instructive and informative but also repetitive, reactionary, inaccurate and at times in need of spellcheck. Capitol, Capital, capital. C'mon folks. You're teachers for God's sake! Facebook has become a sea of armchair postulation as activism. I'm bored of it as my kids used to say. So much for politics.

It is fun attending the protests and seeing friends even in a crowd of 85,000.
Tony Shalhoub and I exchanged two thumbs up but obviously with my
thumbs up, I couldn't take his picture. We had a moment though.

My 30th high school reunion in New Orleans is teed up for ten days from now. They're not the kids I cut my teeth with but they are the ones with whom I stepped out into the world back in 1981. I'm perhaps a little thicker around the middle than I'd like to be and well, not sure there's anything to be done about that before next Thursday. But two of my three buddies are headed back with me and that will be just fine to sip a few drinks on the porch of the Columns Hotel as the streetcars vzzzzzz by and their metallic smell mixes with the sweet olive and the night blooming jasmine and whatever other brilliant things might be blooming . So much for caring about being thin.

Thanks Cath and Nat for kicking me in the ass to get this written. It needed saying and I couldn't find the words.

A capital post indeed, or is that capitol?

2011-03-03T23:33:00.004-06:00

I just can't seem to concoct an interesting post about how the ice in the driveway keeps freezing and melting, freezing and melting so I'll have to turn to the topic of my state recently being sold to the Koch Brothers.

We're all a little freaked out, angry, confused, divided and unsure about the future. Not exactly fertile ground for a feel-good blog that generally tries to make thoughtful but lighthearted observations about life in Sconnie Nation. Here I sit.

I got my first hostile comment from a crabby anonymous after my last post, so that was a very exciting new twist after four years of blogging. I started to consider my response to the comment and then contemplated briefly that while my blog is not a plutocracy like Wisconsin, it is a monarchy and I'm the queen... so I just deleted it.

My kids have returned to school with a renewed energy after boredom had set in with their time off protesting and sleeping at the Capitol and watching reruns of Jersey Shore. Teachers and kids in catch-up mode is a good thing in the winter doldrums of February and early March. There's energy in the air and it's unsettling but at least it's something to feel. Usually, we're deep in our frozen cups by now just hunkering in hopes for spring.

Cookies for the Oscar party sent by beloved NYC uncles to offset the drama in our own lives

Governor Walker is not honorable. He's got an agenda set by some very rich and connected guys who don't even live in Wisconsin to dismantle the Democratic base by vilifying those in public service, while the bankers and the hedge funders and the wall street guys all roam free. It's entirely laughable each night as we are greeted by new pieces of mail from non-profits, quality of life programs and public service anythings as they sound their death knells by postcard and letter. Bike Federation, PBS, Planned Parenthood, farmers markets, kitties, bunnies...basically anything a hippie might like. Many teachers are on facebook hourly with updates about Walker's dishonorable tactics and I think it helps to keep morale up. But I wish more of these teachers would spell Capitol correctly and/or refer to the capital of our state. Bad grammar, even ironically, does not help the cause.

It really shouldn't be a surprise that I immediately tucked into Colin Firth

Work is weird. Represented and non-represented workers sitting side by side in team rooms, carefully moving their chairs around the elephant in the room. I was a union member in the school district who paid my dues but didn't pay much attention and that characterizes probably too many people in unions. I feel like maybe there's been some overreaching over the past decade, holding out for raises in pay and benefits even during difficult economic choices. I hear mumblings even from those sympathetic to unions that it's time for them to stop being so grabby. But the misplaced vitriol on twitter and in the editorial sections of the paper aimed at teachers, of all people, is crazy. Public sector unions didn't get us into this global financial mess--that's just smoke covering the real fire. I want to say to these private sector cry babies in the editorial pages, who have had opportunities and will again to make bonuses and set their own hours and move up the corporate ladder or fire at will, you are free and encouraged to go back to school and become a teacher or a nurse or a cop if the private sector isn't treating you right. And earn a whopping 65K after twenty years on the job and drive a Ford Fiesta.

In homage to my friend Karen, we played Oscar bingo and of course she was with me so I won

Tonight the Capitol is empty for the first time in almost three weeks. But the protesters are outside camping for the night and intend to return to the rotunda in the morning. The fight continues and we are all weary and worried about poor ol' 83 year old Fred Risser.

Collectively we stand

2011-02-17T21:35:00.001-06:00

Not much going on here this week, just good old democracy in action.

Whatever the outcome of the governor's harsh and sneakily swift attempt to bust up Wisconsin's unions, this week has been a living, breathing history lesson. I'm "the man" now so it's been off to work for me every morning. But as the sun came up Wednesday and I headed out, I whispered in their sleepy ears that watching bad TV all day would be a poor tribute to their teachers and to freedom. But they were on it long before I said anything, via Facebook and Twitter. Students at both high schools had amassed virtually on Tuesday night to plan their march to the Capitol. They arranged rides, assembled at appointed locations, made clever signs and marched peacefully with teachers, friends and strangers to the Capitol to participate in a sit-in, chanting "Kill the Bill!" Gyros and ice cream and a bit of State Street shopping also turned out to be part of the plan as the unusually warm weather this week has created a festival atmosphere. Lost mittens and frozen fingers have not been a part of the peaceful demonstrations.

War paint still visible

After two days of protests, their feet are tired and their minds are truly engaged in the world outside the walls of their high school. They've been watching the news from Cairo. Even with the distractions of Bieber fever and impending spring training, the power to the people part of democracy has penetrated the teen consciousness. And Governor Walker doesn't seem like a very democratic guy to them or me this week.

At minimum, they come away knowing the name of Wisconsin's governor and about their right to freely assemble and that's definitely more than I knew about the government when I was their age.

we were just kids

2011-02-13T19:18:00.001-06:00

My bedside table reading is Patty Smith's biography, Just Kids, about her life with Robert Mapplethorpe. Almost frighteningly exposed in the world, she and Mapplethorpe stumbled through late teenage life together in NYC in the early seventies without food, money or places to sleep, but with an abiding dependence on one another in the feral vulnerability and intimacy of stray kittens. The book is surprisingly detailed given the many years that have passed, maybe because it describes a time in life when we all are still made of clay--malleable, changeable, able to fold all sorts of things in to ourselves--and the experiences of that time remain vivid because they are actually part of us. And as artists, Smith's and Mapplethorpe's influences on one another were profound and tangible. I reflect deeply on this as I now face walking in this world without my childhood friend, Karen, who passed away unexpectedly last week.

Travel (never together, as it turned out) was so much a part of our lives and reminscences, so I imagined myself this past week standing alone on a train platform holding a suitcase full of comically poor decisions and thousands of random memories, inside jokes and stories over countless days and years spent together. What am I supposed to do with this suitcase now? It's too heavy to carry by myself. I'm surprised how vulnerable I feel. There was obviously more dependence for me than I realized and I think she was in touch with that fact more than I was. She was an authority about me. She knew me long before my internal Captain Picard issued the order for shields up. She was the friend that sat with me the night before my wedding and asked the bold best-friend question, "...are you sure?" (I was), she was the friend who didn't pooh-pooh my insecurities and without judgment or drama told me to get over myself lots of times, she was the friend who held my parents accountable for their crap because she was there, too. In summary, she was one of those friends who probably cared more about me than I care to care about myself.

I was the jester over our life together and I loved the sport of undoing her against her will. I would pepper her like a pitching machine on its highest setting, throwing jokey balls relentlessly until she succumbed to my comedic strong arm. She would tell me to stop and try to get us back on track with whatever we were doing, or discussing, but I was relentless because it was simply fun to make her dissolve into laughter. We spent thousands of hours alone together for good or bad of the universe. We ate our weights in raw cookie dough and tore up the Franklin Institute more than any two kids in Philadelphia. As young adults we crossed paths lots and as middle-agers settled a thousand miles away from each other, we fell into the regular calls and occasional visits of adulthood. There was certainly no danger of losing touch and it was comforting just knowing she was out there. And if there is tangible proof of her artistry in my life, it is the tapestry of friends she crafted thirty years ago, one that I still carry with me today.

What is so powerful about childhood friendship? I have no other explanation than it has got to be love. Clearly Facebook appreciates that power and has built an empire upon it. Is it imprinting when the brain and the heart are uncluttered? Or is it the access to a powerful filter, which gets gummed up as we age, that bypasses all the insecurity and duty and "shoulds" and bullshit that constitute too many relationships in adulthood and instead sifts and sorts for the very essence of real connection with another person? Kids zero in efficiently, looking past failings and imperfections and even logic if it feels right. I think some childhood friendships, romances even, are matches-made-in-heaven that get broken by mere physical distance or a perception that diverging paths means having to say goodbye. Karen and I obviously chose to reject the conventional drifting our separate ways, but we've reached a fork in the road abruptly and I wasn't prepared. I miss her terribly. I'll be standing here awhile trying to figure out which way to go without her.

Agreements

2011-02-01T22:03:00.000-06:00

otto's

Well, it's a blizzard. Might as well blog it out. So far I'm the only one still scheduled to leave the house tomorrow. Madison schools and unbelievably the University are already closed.

different agreements are brokered at otto's...usually involving cosmos

So I've been doing a little emotional growth lately, what the hell, it's winter. A group of roughly ten of us have met weekly for a month working together through the principles outlined in an almost too obvious self-help book called The Four Agreements. I was dubious at first. Really, I paid ten bucks and ventured out into the frigid night to discuss "doing my best"? But the book has taken on a load of meaning for me both personally and professionally under the unassuming guidance of a man who felt the the four agreements held so many answers for him he wanted to share it and learn from others. At first glance it seems simple enough to follow the four agreements: be impeccable with your word, don't take things personally, don't make assumptions and do your best. The concepts are simple, but after a lot of thought and discussion in our group it feels to me that putting them into consistent practice takes time and thoughtful endeavor.

night falls on our neighborhood as the wind picks up tonight

I've been working on not taking things personally for a few years now. My failing estrogen has made it a pretty dangerous slide into a carefree attitude about what others think of me, so I would say middle age has nudged this agreement into practice pretty seamlessly. Being impeccable with my word, however, that's going to take some work. I still do a lot of talking before thinking and as Sipowicz would reflect, I still get myself jammed up on occasion. This agreement unfortunately bears monitoring along with that of not making assumptions...I do so enjoy judging others borne out of assumptions about motives and general characters flaws. It will take real spiritual digging on my part to put this agreement into action.

my locust tree stands firmly at the ready

Finally, to do my best but not more than my best. That means not feeling guilty for pushing back my chair for a long chin-wag with my office mate, reading People instead of my book before bed and swinging through McDonalds drive-thru to pick up dinner for the fam every once in awhile. That's my best and it's better than good.

Northwoods dream

2011-01-23T23:36:00.004-06:00

You can't beat home for a good vista

We hopped into the car at 5am Saturday and drove north in darkness for three hours toward Minocqua, WI. We were greeted by our realtor, a great gal with high hair and a big heart at the gas station at the corner of 51 and K. She jumped out of her car with open arms and an embrace at our first meeting…familiar and friendly in contrast to Madison’s smiling cool and careful. She brought her husband to help read the GPS and shovel us in to the six properties we arranged to see. Turns out my peeps are up nort'. What’s the Norwegian word for “mensch”?

How I wished this could have been a lager at lunch

Helmet table by the trail map. Drain one or two and it's off to the next bar en route. Sure, feels totally safe.

Our search for a lake house has begun. I’ve wrestled with location, location, location for a couple of years and come to the conclusion that a house in the middle of East Jabip, cheap and peaceful as it might be, is not where I want to spend my weekends and summer vacations. Packing groceries and toilet paper for a trip to the lake house is not relaxing. It’s camping. And so the busy and developed Northwoods town of Minocqua will serve as anchor for our search. I’ve let the lake house move into the place in my heart long reserved for my Jersey shore house--no longer a practical goal. Too far and too beastly a drive. I’m over it. Snooki, Pauly D and the gang in Seaside Heights will have to fill any remaining void.

Snowmobilers in January : Boaters in ___________

Winter sports are about as popular as summer sports in northern Wisconsin. The Thirsty Whale had a full and happy bar full of snowmobilers and had it not been for the helmet table and jumpsuits it would have been hard to distinguish the patrons from those on a summer Saturday. We ate lunch, a Wisconsin po’boy made with fried perch, overlooking Lake Minocqua as snowmobiles zoomed by at top speeds.

As one would suspect, I now want a snowmobile.

I asked the realtor if these were rentals, to which she gently explained as one might to a child
that no, these were actually driven to and parked at the restaurant. Newbie miscalculation.

In continuous prep for my northwoods recreational life, I'm working on my cross-country skiing. Today I set out for one rigorous loop of the golf course, Pleasant View, which is aptly named. There are some pleasant views atop hills that are a bit tough to get on top of in golf shoes, let alone skis. My XC skiing is improving especially on the downhills which have kicked my ass until now. All credit goes to my friends Amy and Ann for impressing upon me the need to lean forward on the fronts of my feet and also for acknowledging that free boot heels feel like skiing on spaghetti noodles. Only one topple today while standing still, as is customary of my style. I’ve just got to keep moving.

for our comrade abroad...

2011-01-15T23:42:00.000-06:00

Steve suggested an inappropriate prop--we grabbed the Roundy's brandy.

We missed you.

Stop me before I volunteer again

2011-01-13T22:52:00.003-06:00

The second week of every month I pay service to my local community. How I got sucked back into my community I cannot say. I think about my pillow and pajamas too much as it is for a grown woman, let alone someone with evening community obligations. While my move to Wisconsin was traumatic, I clung to one hopeful thought. My witness relocation would return me to the community anonymity of my youth...no town watch...or community board...or neighborhood block party/parade...or Little Osage front porch martini party planner. Actually that last one I hated to give up. Not to blow my own horn but as a working mom with two kids, and someone who commuted to work on her bike, I was a freakin' machine.

That was then. I was younger. Eight years later, I've made my peace with PTO and Girl Scouts and my volunteerism has been limited to one biggie about every other year and a firm commitment to imperfection that only comes with age. And yet these days, even one evening meeting a month feels too much. This week I had two. Thankfully tempering this, the girls are now driving themselves quite seamlessly to and from wherever they need to go. This workflow has left Chip and me with wine glasses in hand, baffled by our new freedom.

A sister's reference to the other about her driver's test and not having to take it 38 times.

My first board meeting this week, we shared our 2011 resolutions as an icebreaker to the new year. I didn't have one to share but a woman at the table reported that hers was to more fully explore her femininity. The men at the table, well, they met that resolution with alert silence. We women, however, rejoined with "We'll have what she's having."

My second meeting was less empowering as a woman (how could it not be really?) but I've since learned how to place a community event in the local paper and agreed to help reorganize and update the church library, a job for which I'm completely unqualified although that has not stopped me before.

I do have my first resolution of the new year, a product of commuting again...to become more fluent in the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen's song catalog. A resolution as random as my volunteerism. I really like it.

Still working on resolutions

2011-01-03T22:09:00.006-06:00

Resolution-less yet, it's a happy new year so far. Although sadly one of my first memories of 2011 will be sitting with my daughters (good thing) as they watched Bridalplasty on E! (a very very bad thing). It's one of the few things they enjoy together and actually speak cordially to one another about so I keep my mouth shut and enjoy the ceasefire.

Nana at the helm of this kitchen ship for the last two weeks departed today.
What do we do now? How will the laundry get done or the pets get fed?

It's been a great two weeks with my mom who Chip has artfully dubbed "Mistress of the Semi-sequitur". Conversations can go on quite normally until suddenly taking a different direction without warning. She doesn't quite answer our questions anymore but rather she answers those questions either she wishes we'd asked or a question that followed some conversation she initiated in her head. It's subtle enough to make you think you're the crazy one. I'm onto her.

Which one first?

Enjoying the companionship of Bruce the cat and a smoke at 16 degrees. The cats and the dog
have enjoyed two weeks of full indulgence both in being let in and out at will and extra loving care.
They will be looking for her the next few days wondering where their angel on earth went.

We enjoyed a Christmas feast of turducken with friends and a New Year's Eve with the New York Philharmonic on PBS. Laughs, peace, rest, food, drink, family. A true holiday.

Release the turducken!

The weather was sub-freezing except when it went to 46 for two days and every last bit of snow on the lakes melted creating a Zamboni effect that has created Facebook salutations and salivations for pick-up hockey games by grown men who I know have day jobs. Sidewalks and driveways are clear of any ice and that's absolutely unheard of at this time of year, so walking the dog yesterday in my sneakers without fear of going down on patches of ice just seemed weird and wrong. Global warming is scary.

a moment of lavender penetrates the fog at sunset. no manipulation of this photo.
Man, it was Purple Haze!!!

The clinics have been quiet the last few weeks with many staff members on vacation but today I was met with a surprising and distinctly different tone as everybody returned. As is always the case, one is only the "new guy" until a newer guy shows up. A few recently hired staff members started work today and suddenly I am thrust into the ranks of the regulars. Warm greetings in the hallway, a decidedly lowered wall of indifference toward me. Well, hello 2011.

Merry Christmas

2010-12-24T18:34:00.001-06:00

A little Christmas corner at my desk

The culture around Christmas in pediatrics is sticky and sad at times. Nobody wants a kid to be sick anytime, let alone around the holidays, and that's the sad bit. And most kids getting care over the holidays are very sick. The sticky part is making hospitals and clinics places that are festive yet functional, warm yet professional, happy while acknowledging of the dead seriousness that families are facing.

One of my first Christmases as a nurse I was promoted for desperate staffing purposes then demoted immediately after. One isn’t ready to be the charge nurse until the more senior nurses don’t want to work a holiday. Understandably, only the sickest of kids are hospitalized over the holidays and the care is more complicated and potentially fraught with disaster, and managed by the least experienced nurses. But we all know how nurses roll. We rise to the task as one would expect. I've been lucky to work in places that strongly supported nursing and with some very good karma my working Christmases have been busy and complicated but never dangerous. That was the Christmas when I put my big girl pants on in caring for a dying boy.

Since then I think mostly about his parents on Christmas eve and the privilege it was to share their family's very intimate experience. I wasn’t his regular caregiver prior to the holiday and after Christmas, although I was added to his team of nurses, I was benched in favor of his regular nurses. He died a week or so after Christmas. I sobbed at his funeral along with his friends and family because I was too green to know how unhelpful that was to his parents. One of those “didn’t know what I didn’t know” things before I became a parent myself.

My few days off this year are nothing compared to my school nurse winter breaks that went on forever, but that didn't always feel great. Leaving for a two week holiday as a school nurse, I knew that many of my kids were not going to enjoy the holidays like my own children would. Their parents would still need to work and often their family chaos didn't observe Christmas, so they would likely be left alone a lot or farmed out to last minute child care or even end up being the child care for younger siblings for the full two weeks. Gifts and celebrations are typically sparse in the lives of kids who find comfort in their school health offices with regularity. It's a needy bunch. It seemed harsh to be there so fully for them five days a week and then disappear for two weeks…let alone the summer. Nursing's a culture and just a few days off feels right.

Watching for Santa over the horizon

So the weight of the season for some falls a little heavier on me since I've become a parent, but at the same time an easy ability to enjoy the little things comes without having to work at it. All Americans would do well to step back and think about sick kids over the holidays as bad as that may sound. It would make the lines at the mall seem tolerable and everybody would drive a little less like bats out of hell in the parking lot.

Cheer cheer cheer....I'm full of it

2010-12-13T20:55:00.001-06:00

the only men "man" enough to hang with the cookie crowd and help with the math...3 women bring 3 dozen,
1 woman brings 4 dozen, 1 woman brings 5 dozen and 19 women bring 6 dozen. What is the maximum that everyone can take on the first pass so everybody gets at least one of each cookie?
Just shoot me.

I'm Christmasing myself silly the past few days. Two parties this weekend, one for Chip's students and one for the ladies for the annual neighborhood cookie exchange. Mulled wine and Mexican food thoughtfully prepared by local awesome restaurant go surprisingly well together.

Family strategizing before the exchange

The snow came this weekend and because it was preceded by a little sleet that made all the trees sticky, our neighborhood was quickly transformed into a treacherous winter wonderland.

Chip's students built us a snowman on their way out. A+ for each of them I say!

Then there's my annual obsession with A Christmas Carol. I am impressed with just how many versions there are on TV this year and as I write I'm watching George C. Scott do Patton do Ebenezer Scrooge. A few days ago it was Albert Finney as Scrooge and Alec Guinness as Marley in a musical version. Completely obscure versions indeed. I'm impressed with just how sick Tiny Tim looks in the George C. Scott version tonight.

And two daughters have two birthdays in the past few weeks and so we're now the parents of an adult...

and a sweet 16.

It's always holiday madness for us at this time of year and I suppose we'd have it no other way.

Christmas in NYC

2010-12-06T22:03:00.001-06:00

Flatiron Building

"It will be like this until after New Year's."

The resigned and weary words of my longtime city dwelling friend as we gazed out the window of our restaurant at a stalled 9th Avenue at midnight Saturday. A constant state of Black Friday frenzy from Thanksgiving until January 2nd. Times Square, theaters, restaurants, department stores--all literally clogged with people to the point of them oozing out and more dramatically at times being birthed from doorways onto the sidewalks. Hundreds of people inside squeezing around awkwardly placed Christmas display tables that literally prevent and trap shoppers from actually shopping. There is a point of saturation not observed during Christmas time when the displays feel more like barricades rather than lovely things to look at.

Sex and the City view

Stylish wreaths becoming a world class city

But for two days we were ready for anything the crowds could dish out because we have been shopping together for nearly 30 years and well, we've got sharp elbows. Ally and I flew in for a quick weekend to our respective hosts, the uncles for her, the ladies for me. Such a seamless trip that I worked most of the day Friday and she went to school and yet both of us were dining and in my case wining by 9:30pm in Manhattan. All thanks to a direct flight from Madison to LaGuardia that is beyond simple in this day of body scanners and yellow alerts. Must not be a terrorist preferred route.

me and the birthday girl

Coffee together, our collective favorite part of the day together when we can laze over our cups and catch up on our news in our PJ's. The marathon shopping day began at 10am and ended at 6pm, six miles or 16,000 steps according to the pedometer of the middle aged. Rockefeller Center, Saks, The Strand, Fishs Eddy, ABC, Union Square Christmas Market, Mario Batali's Eataly (too crowded to eat but not to smell, touch and see). Pooped out finally at a CVS near Union Square.

Rockefeller Center.
The tree's behind us but you'll have to take my word for it.

They have always been my personal shoppers going all the way back to Uptown Square and Filene's Basement--the real one. And it's only the rarest of friends that can pick a fragrance for you and I would trust any of them to do that. Whatever makes them able to do that also gives them the ability to combine Lillet and gin in a perfect martini and dates, dolmades and cheese into a delicious appetizer plate. I need a recipe to work it, but that's just not their style. They are all artists and my best friends and no wordsmithing can describe my love for them.

My manager, stylist and agent in deep negotiations about
what direction my fragrance needs to move

Blood orange martinis, Sprite and a Bourbon Bloody Mary at the Vynyl Diner
in Hells Kitchen. Great place for a bite to eat after the theater. The blood
theme relates to our show, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.

But so as not to end on a treacly note, I've got to just make a plea to the regular New Yorkers who have felt it necessary to dip their fingers far too deep into the Dippity Doo cosmetic surgery jar. For Jesus sake, how much collagen can a face take? The thing of it is there's a growing army of women and men with faces altered into cartoonish and ghoulish scowls as if that's the new normal for people of a little older certain age than me, wearing clothes off the rack and shopping for lettuce. It is not a look, people! And I can't help thinking it's just more of the same from a generation and a half that refuses to let go of their youth. Maybe at your granddaughter's wedding you are the rocking-est granny in the photo but once you go to animate that look of plastic puffiness punctuated by padded cheekbones and misshapen lips it's all a bit grotesque. When regular folks shopping at Duane Reade resemble Joan Rivers, we've got problems as a society.

Tdot and Dimmer's big day

2010-11-25T13:34:00.002-06:00

He calls himself the Dimmer. Or did we name him that? I can’t remember, it’s been so long. The most tragically hip friend in our Rolodex has finally taken time out of his busy life amassing every pop culture tidbit in North America to take a beautiful bride, and she who would have him until death do you part, we salute you.

The Honourable Mr. and Mrs. Dimmer

Greig's 91 year old mom and her 94 year old sister who traveled for the wedding from Victoria!
They both outpaced us all the entire evening.

These friends all met at Oxford 25 years ago, the smarty pants lot of them.

Deb and Phil flanking the groom got married 18 years ago
Chip and I almost 23
Greig apparently more finicky than the rest of us

I knew them as genius freaks of nature. I was Chip's American girlfriend with a 6 month work visa who had marched across the Atlantic to keep an eye on her boyfriend and live her townie life to their gownie existence. We shared drinks and laughs and parties at Christmas among other foggy memories. Globally, the U.S. was engaged in battles with Libya, the American dollar was strong, Princess Di was having babies, Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, Feed the World was a hit song, strangely we played squash, we read The Herald Tribune and we ate the occasional full English at the St. Giles cafe to sop up a night on the town.

The groom serenades his bride to "I Want it That Way" by the Backstreet Boys as is customary in Canada.

I can't claim anything special about my old friends versus other people's old friends save mine are dear to me and they are indeed mine. What is it about these friends from my college years? I can't shake them and I don't want to. Old friends are in their own china cabinet of memories, to be taken out and admired and put back with care for later. Old friends are forever young in my mind's eye and they remind me of what I like about myself. Our days were saturated with each other, and we moved through events and choices and shaped one another to be the people who we would ultimately become. That imprinting makes it hard to lose one another even in periods of relationship laziness or long gaps between seeing each other. Face time is not required.

If only we get together for the very important occasions as our lives go whizzing by, then I am contented and happy with that. I hope they are, too.

Purse hanger. Priceless.

Congratulations Greig and Sarah. If not before, we'll see you at Olivia's wedding. Or Chip's second!

Greig yelling for security

Toronto weekend with body scan please

2010-11-23T00:41:00.002-06:00

We secreted out of the country this weekend for a wedding in Toronto, leaving our kids alone as one does. I didn't exactly spread this information around in the week leading up to our departure because I had a little bit of worry and guilt boarding a plane with my passport while my kids were still asleep in their beds. But they are good and responsible kids who didn't really get out of their pajamas all weekend. Instead of moping or getting up to no good, they used their benign lockdown to get a lot of homework done, the DVR cleaned out, their rooms picked up and to invent a grilled turkey and provolone sandwich that was apparently delicious. Olivia being one week from her 18th birthday, we felt confident that our 36 hour trip was a ticketable offense at best.

That's a relief piece of art hanging on the side of the building giving the illusion of
fabric and paint at the same time. Just wonderful.

Or should I say offence?

Toronto is a city in Canada. And that's all I got. I had lunch, dinner and breakfast there, plus some nachos when our return flight was cancelled and rescheduled three hours later. We were there for one purpose only, a free meal with open bar.

But it's the getting there that makes it interesting. For a more hilarious account of the new TSA fondling sequence and a more sobering take on the reasoning behind it, read the two links below.

First the funny:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/10/for-the-first-time-the-tsa-meets-resistance/65390/
Then, the not so funny:
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/11/whose-getting-rich-selling-those-see.html

Chip and I opted out of the body splatter or scatter, rather, just to see what it was like to go through the heightened pat down. I'm in health care and he's a researcher. We could easily take a pat down. Do your worst, TSA. And actually I had my mammogram last week so I thought maybe it would be wise to wait at least a few weeks to irradiate myself again. I simply asked to go through the metal detector and did so without anybody touching me. Clearly I don't look like a terrorist. But Chip and his wild eyebrows...when he requested to go through the metal detector, the guy yelled "MALE OPT OUT!" If you read the link above you will understand when I tell you that the TSA guy moved in like a doctor and did meet resistance on my husband. The picture below is confusing in that it appears Chip was enjoying the opt out.

He really is a people person.

In all seriousness, he would not opt out again. I'll let him weigh in in the comments section about anything I've got inaccurate or incomplete. His reaction was mixed and I'll put words in his mouth, "wow that was thorough and yet the sad thing is it's still not effective enough because I could have hidden something in my ass and they aren't willing to look there." He would never actually say that because he's a classy guy, but he said as much to his unclassy wife who paraphrased it for him. He described his experience as no "patting" whatsoever since the guy's hands never left his body. I believe his words were, "It was more of a caress."

Part 2, the wedding! I need another day to cull the herd of pictures. A cute flowergirl to start.

flower girl and ringbearer

Dream

2010-11-16T21:21:00.000-06:00

The Mister is home. Life is returning to normal. He's still getting up at 4am and while I should want that to get better for him, really for me, it's nice that the coffee is always ready when I get up....so yeah.

Kansas sunset

Now I know there's a lot of hard evidence out there that says hearing about other people's dreams is dead boring. And yet, I shall tell you my dream anyway.

Nappers in Central Park

I found myself in a very pleasant, somewhat vintage decored and sunny hotel room, upgraded to a suite because the hotel was all out of regular rooms. A lot of space, a really big bed with throw pillows for just me (poor Chip, he's been gone so long I forgot to bring him to my dream hotel) and as I looked around I saw what I thought to be a sitting room around a corner. Sweet! And so I took a peek around the corner and was surprised to see instead a dining area with a fully set dining room table. And to the right of the table was a fully stocked bar with a staff bartender and several waitstaff standing with arms folded behind their backs, ready to serve me whatever I desired. Ooh, the ultimate female fantasy...a customer service oriented dream!

It should have tipped me off that I was dreaming because I wasn't particularly freaked out that there were five people in my hotel room that I didn't know about. I asked why they were all there and one of the guys explained that whenever somebody took this particular hotel room, the staff for the room was called in to work.

Ally's bed where she dreams of being Mrs. Bieber

Typical. My psyche had to ruin it of course. I felt guilty that they all had to come to work on account of just me, and that woke me up I suppose. Holiday Inn, by the way, called me Saturday night and listened to the airing of my grievances about Weekend at Husky Lodge. Coincidence? I think not. On that front I will not relinquish ground. They still owe me one hairless, freaked out showdog-less weekend!

Getting by

2010-11-08T23:46:00.002-06:00

I'm on week three of parenting alone. I'm not losing my mind but rather have gone into a one woman zone defense against life to take care of essentials only, and I'm losing the game late in the second half. Chip is finally back for good on Friday. That seems so far away right now I'm not even able to look forward to it yet.

Of course, as I do, I set the bar high for absolutely no reason. I'm still cooking dinner even though I said I wouldn't. I didn't board the dog at the kennel even though I said I would. The dryer broke of course because that's how the world works, so I'm hanging the laundry yet again. I went to PetSmart, Walgreens and Bed Bath and Beyond on Sunday in a succession of errands that need no explanation if you're an American. I put away the Halloween decorations and got the garden bedded for winter because it was warm on Sunday and we all know that it might have been the last time...for the snows can come at any time once the clocks fall back. And I'm doing my 40 hours at work which was not something I thought I would be doing three months ago when this trip went into the calendar.

But it's all auto pilot and not a lot of joy goes with it. It's just all the stuff that has to get done because I'm the only one to do it. More pioneer woman than super woman.

Well, okay I'm being dramatic...but I think my facial expression is the same.

I'm lonely for Chip but it might be his fetch and run I'm really longing for; ungrateful, selfish wife that I am. Although, I will say these girls of mine are good to me and minimally pulling their share of the load without much complaint, as well as being very fine company. There are bright flashes of independence that shoot from beneath their eyelids when they lift them with a wink, like the aliens in Cocoon. But they don't want to show the bright light to me too much because it just leads to more chores.

My camera is full of pictures that need downloading. I haven't even bought my book club book for November. The yarn basket sits full and untouched. Pictures to be mailed, holiday planning, niece hat to be knit, Vanity Fair with Cher on the cover to be read. It's that kind of stuff, the fun and frivolous stuff, the creative and artful side of me that isn't getting her due. And life without the frivolous and the creative is not very merry, but rather quite perfunctory and colorless.

I'll be back soon.

Senior Day

2010-10-30T22:13:00.002-05:00

Is it ethical for a hotel chain to take your reservation online without letting you know that your hotel will also be hosting 5,000 huskies on the same weekend?

Liv and I set off for Lawrence, KS a few days ago for Senior Day and due to my stubborness about avoiding highways that are orange in the road atlas despite their being more direct, we arrived late to our hotel. Forebodingly too late. Something felt immediately amiss in the parking lot as we got out of the car. Lots of movements in the shadows. A person walking a dog...ok, pretty normal. But then another and another and as our eyes adjusted to the dark, we realized the entire parking lot was full of people walking dogs. And all the same dog! It was one of those experiences where you actually kind of take a little step back from yourself and ask yourself in a quick 10 second review of whether you're in danger or not, "am I seeing what I think I'm seeing? I have no frame of reference for what I'm seeing. do we need to run?"

No offense but they all looked the same to me. Owners and dogs.
Oh, yes I just went there.

"Your room is 433 and we apologize for the hair and the noise." Say what now?

The Siberian Husky Judges Education Seminar and Breed Study in conjunction with the National Specialty competition was being hosted by our hotel. A hundred dogs or more IN the hotel, IN the beds! We apologize for your being unable to breathe due to your allergies and asthma might be a better standard wish for hotel guests.

I've been to a lot of hotels in my life. A lot. I love not camping. So, I generally enjoy a new hotel experience...like sports teams staying in the hotel or prom being held in the ballroom or weddings and other human activities occurring during my stay. Even the occasional yorkie or pomeranian in its own stroller makes my day during a hotel stay.

This gathering, however, was a freak show to end all freak shows. Packs of dogs in the elevators, the corridors, the lobby, out of crates and lying on beds in rooms as seen from parted window shades. Apparently showdogs have more important work to do than learn to go through doors with their masters or approach strangers only if invited or most audaciously not to jump up on kids holding an interesting Diet Pepsi and minding their own business. Not even a yank of the leash but a rather bored and half-hearted "Don't do that, Snowy." Are you f'ing kidding me? Your dog just jumped on my kid! On Earth, we don't generally like it when dogs do that.

Around every corner, every elevator bank, every door, every column lurked yet another husky dog if not two, leashed to an aging, fussy woman, possibly in a motorized wheelchair, frocked in a denim prairie dress with an airbrushed head of a husky on its pinafore, barely in control of her disastrous wardrobe choices yet alone her massive dog(s).

It was a little depressing watching these confused, skittish and high-strung animals bred to pull sleds and work in teams misbehave for their scary pageant mothers who treated them more like naughty toddlers than animals. If you know me even a little you know corporate Holiday Inn is going to here about it all...how could they not? I'm getting a free weekend somehow or this blog is going to turn into the Michael Moore of blogs bent on bringing down a giant in the hotel industry and the AKC.

Olivia's favorite comeback line sits squarely over her head

Little Liv and Little Jay

Husky dogs aside, we had a great Senior Day at KU and I did try hard not to cry during the little motivational movie they show to prospective students and their parents but again I was unsuccessful and got a little headache from stifling the tears. That makes three for three. These movies are genius marketing tools to lure in parents more than the kids. I swear I don't want to go back in time, but I did really enjoy the rituals and traditions of college life. How could a person sit stoically as "rock, chalk, rock, chalk" is being chanted in unison by thousands of students? I'm not a robot, man!

Jefferson's in Lawrence, KS. I may be eating more fried dill pickles here in the future.

Oh, and the pregnant mom touring KU with her daughter was not weird at all. It did, however, require college level logic and math just to think about how it was even possible and what she might have been thinking.

Pie and Music

2010-10-26T22:05:00.000-05:00

The last of the forced family fun apple picking apples. The kids say good riddance
to the apples and apple picking in general but they do love to eat pie.

Autumn in Wisconsin. Apple pies, homecoming dances, crispy sounding walks, pumpkins on every doorstep, swirling orange and yellow dirt devils in breezes that cut a little deeper through my jacket every day in the slide toward winter. A gaggle of middle aged women talking Badger and Packer football on a sunny Friday and I'm strangely amongst them. This last bit could not have been predicted with a thousand crystal balls.

Homecoming dresses were short this year...too short if you ask me....but nobody asked me.

My family is scattering like the leaves this weekend as Chip and Ally depart for England (him to work, her to play for a few days and fly back alone) and Liv and I traveling to KU for one final campus tour. The college aps are going in one by one with a click click click of the return key. I can't believe it's come to this already--how did we get here?

Proud mama at band concert

Even band concerts are coming to an end for us. Eight years of a study in adolescence set to Sousa. I can hardly remember a time when we didn't trudge out into the cold, dark night three to six times a year, weather be damned, to mark their progress as musicians and eat a cookie. And as much as I’ve groaned going to each and every concert, last night I found myself distracted by the very idea that after this year we won't be sitting dutifully in this auditorium anymore. And yet the band will play on without us. Surrounded by really good friends and my husband, a hundred kids and a hundred parents many of whom I know, suddenly I got a little afraid and a little lonely.

The madness and running around of parenting feels like it will never ever end, and then it does. For all my complaining, I wasn't quite prepared for the feelings I had last night. And the complaining all these years has mostly been about feeling pulled in many directions at once instead of being able to enjoy one thing at a time.

With me it's always the going that's hard, not the being there. But it's time to stop the whining and find some joy in the going before it's too late. Starting with the winter band concert. I'll be there with a full and joyous heart, much like the Grinch on Christmas Day.

The pictures tell a different story

2010-10-16T21:31:00.001-05:00

There is a vital distinction between adult hospitals and children's hospitals. Adult hospitals are icky and scary. I limit my trips to the main hospital for emergency purposes only. And by that I do not mean actual emergencies where I would likely get in the way. My emergencies are logistical...like my ID not working properly last week or my issued office key being on a Schneider-esque key ring that barely fit in my purse let alone my pocket.

Here are some friends at the Wisconsin-Ohio St. game

Traveling around with this giant key ring has been like walking around all day every day with the key to the gas station bathroom. I'd go so far as to say it was a keyman's keyring in scope and practice, incongruously carrying one sad and lonely key. And it's hard to feel like you're really making a difference in children's lives with a giant key ring bearing only one key. A call to plant engineering led me to the hospital key shop....thus entering a realm we call, "The Twilight Zone."

"Key Shop, this is Kevin."
"Hey good morning! How are ya? *silence* Yeah, so anyway, I'm a new nurse over here in the children's clinics and the office key I was issued is on a giant key ring that I can't seem to remove."
"Well what's the number on the key?"
"Huh? Um....24"
"A 24? Why do you have a 24 key?"
"Well, it's what they gave me and it opens my office door."
"You shouldn't have a 24 key. Are you with housekeeping?"
"Um. No."
"We're going to need you to turn that key in and get a new one."

Here are Chip and his friends at the Wisconsin-Ohio St. game

I wish the conversation had gone even that smoothly, but the above is just a condensation for flavor of the very circular discussion that went on longer than I care to remember. I came to the conclusion, however, that I had in my possession a master key. So off to the key shop to handle this breach in national security and more practically, bad key ring etiquette.

The key shop is not only in the bowels of the hospital but I'd go so far as to say it's in the rectum. Traveled to only by an elevator requiring keyed entry that goes to the shallow mantle of the earth's crust. Luckily, lots of guys in blue shirts with their names sewn on patches on their pockets use the elevator and take great care to escort and protect a princess along her journey from the dragons or pirates or who knows really what lurks below. And I don't think they get to see a whole lot of women during the day in this particular part of the hospital. I got more than a few second looks of a curious nature, not so common or comfortable for a woman of a certain age. I do believe if there had been a puddle along the way, one of the nice men would have thrown a drop cloth over it for me to cross. However, sexual assault also briefly crossed my mind.

Yesterday I went to see Donna Shalala speak at the Union Theater next to the Red Gym. Donna is also at the game probably sitting with Barry Alvarez. I'm home blogging. Am I making good choices?

NO no, just kidding. After a journey akin to several weeks of a good Prince Valiant storyline I reached the key shop, ironically secured by a keyless numbered entry pad on the door. Argus Filch looked up from his workbench.

"Hi. I called earlier to have my key replaced. Are you Kevin?"
"No."
"Okay, well, I'm turning this key in because it's stuck on this ridiculously large key ring."
"Okay."
"I think Kevin was supposed to make me a new key."
"Hmm....I don't see it."
*pregnant pause*
"Okay...well, I'm going to need to take the key back then because it's my only key."
"Okay, here you go."
*pregnant pause*
"So, I'm stuck with this giant key ring, huh?"
"Oh, you don't want the key ring?"
"No."
SMASH SMASH SMASH. Three mallet hits and the key ring broke apart. He wordlessly returned the key to my hand.

"Well thanks, that was easy. I guess I could have just run over it with my car. Ha ha ha"
*third and final pregnant pause*
"Yeah, so is it okay for me to keep this key? Kevin seemed to have a problem with it having a 24 on it."
"Does it work ok?"
"uhhh, yes."
"Then you should take it because you're going to need it to get in your office."

Alrighty then. What doors await!

Some people like that.

2010-10-12T22:32:00.004-05:00

A whirlwind girls' weekend in New York for self-indulgent and debauched purposes turns into an educational and emotional history lesson linking me to my ancestors. I hate when that happens.

The weather was picture perfect--9/11 perfect upon my morbid reflection-- as our ferry set sail for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We naively intended to see it all in half a day. A most absurd miscalculation. Darryl the tour guide, fond of leaning way into our faces repeating words emphatically like Henny Youngman and snapping them like rubber bands with his sing-song New Yawk accent, knew better. He ditched us at the Statue of Liberty with directions back to the subway and a Yankee cap full of funny memories.

A room with a view

Ellis Island restored today

"This building once housed an aquarium. An a---quari----um....WITH FISH."
"It's a chandelier. SOME PEOPLE LIKE THAT."
"Woolworth was photographed surrounded by bags of nickels and dimes....FIVES AND DIMES."

Ellis Island was an unprecedented marvel of people moving, processing 12 million people from 1892 to 1954 and turning away only 2% of those people for basically only communicable disease, criminality and of course, being craze-uh. The origin of the open door policy it seems, but for every 98 people who made it through, two did not. Grandmothers, fathers and even children returned to their countries of origin while their families remained. It's very emotional reading and hearing the very personal and heart wrenching stories, looking at little shoes, personal effects and letters, bits of scrawl on preserved walls where those who couldn't stay left their only and final mark in America.

The Great Hall

As I walked the Great Hall on Ellis Island I could feel relief of reaching land after days or weeks at sea. I get queasy in my kayak. I could feel fear of not knowing English and bewildered by benevolent barking government officers. I could feel excitement and I could feel pain as a loved one was taken out of line for further scrutiny. A child, a parent, a grandparent separated from their families, potentially forever. These people were my family and they were your family, too, and they were brave and strong and resilient and in many cases so desperate to escape persecution and poverty at home that they made this unthinkable leap of faith...or maybe for them it was just a leap. Live free or die. Freedom from persecution and abject poverty was a dream made reality and its profound effect stayed with them. Sixty years later, as these Americans recounted their families' journeys so long ago, they were as emotional as if it were yesterday and they still couldn't find the words to describe the feeling of being free for the first time.

Little Miss America

In a political and social climate of suspicion and intolerance for immigration and a paranoia even toward those that would come here and pay taxes and do the jobs we ourselves refuse to do, I know what I know which is that the 12 million people who streamed here from 1892 to 1954, aided and assisted and nursed to health in many cases by our own government, are the real founding fathers of my modern American life. Thanks to my Uncle Barney and his brothers among others.

Ok, we had some fun, too.

Katz's Deli

The birthday girl celebrates pastrami

When worlds collide....

in a wonderful way....

Fun in Chinatown

Thanks Mayor Bloomberg for the cafe tables in Times Square to sit and have my morning coffee

Walking the Highline with my brothers-in-law, getting all Gehry up in here

Central Park

John Lennon's birthday vigil and tribute band, Central Park

All in a day in NYC

I'm Scotty on the new Starship Enterprise

2010-09-30T22:10:00.001-05:00

UW Hospital and Clinics

UW Hospital is assembled not unlike the pillars of the Giants Causeway, with an elevator bay in each pillar. But to get to the J wing, well, you're going to need to take the H or the K elevators because while there is a J pillar, there is no J elevator. I will get to the bottom of that madness eventually as it's fooled me more than once and now I'm just pissed, but it's my world for now.

In a nutshell, the job is great. My reflections have everything to do with being a newbie. Everybody is very nice and understanding because everybody remembers being new on a job and in the history of mankind nobody ever enjoyed it. People help me on elevators, in corridors, in the clinics, in the cafeteria. They couldn't be nicer really. It's a thing in hospitals. Ministering to lost souls. And it's a fact somewhere I'm sure that hospitals are built only to be quickly and constantly retrofitted for the rest of their existence for the explosion of people and services that follow. I have never entered or exited work the same way twice and that is not by choice. I'm surprised every day that I pop out of the complex facing a different direction.

Due to the rapid regeneration of brain tissue, I have twice passed out with tongue lolling and what I want to believe was gentle snoring well before 10 p.m. most evenings this week. Chip and I are mere ships passing in the morning over the paper and a cup of coffee. I even had an evening meeting this week. We're that family now. The girls are bearing up well and really it's about time anyway that they learn where the spoons and forks are.

My walk has been crazy long until yesterday when I discovered a crucial hypotenuse along my long lonely journey. Today I believe I actually looked like I knew where I was going.

Home sweet home

Screwing with my blog settings

2010-09-24T22:39:00.000-05:00

In my attempts to make the text more readable, well, let's just say I got carried away and pushed a lot of buttons. I quite like the calm color and the bigger font for our 48ish year old eyes. But don't be a hater. Feedback is welcome and if I don't get any I'll assume it's ok.

Dithering yet

2010-09-23T22:34:00.002-05:00

Blogging and a full time job…hmmm, how’s that gonna work? Typically I've enjoyed sitting alone at home once everyone has left for the day, laptop in my lap, writing in peace to fiddle and tweak and finesse over a cup of coffee until I get a post just how I want it. Writing’s been my knitting since knitting got boring. And this speaks very much to my knitting when I say that you'd rather read my blog than wear my scarves.

My avatar with Don Draper. Where I wish I worked.

But there's no peace yet. Home after 5 there’s already at least one kid home, hoards of pets in need of nourishment and release, phone messages to be answered, neighbors to greet, dinner to be made all before evening commitments commence. I’ll get it all together eventually but not this week. I’m chasing my Ann Taylored tail.

Everything that is routine about a person going to work is a succession of hurdles for the new guy. Opening my calendar on Outlook and finding my parking spot are thought provoking enough for now. My commute's code is yet undecipherable…I’m either 15 minutes early or 30 minutes early. Every literal step I take is with some hesitancy. Am I going the right way? Where am I going? Who is behind the next door? Typical newbie overload.

I unloaded from my car on my first day like I was about to move up the mountain from base camp. Three bags thrown akimbo over both shoulders as I teetered and tiptoed through an unpaved parking marsh called Lot 130 by the University and Lot Bangladesh by me, fumbling for my phone, my keys and my ID badge as I lunged and stumbled onto the parking shuttle to the withering glances of other riders. Did they harken back to their first days on the job? Hard to say since they had all been snoozing until a wild woman fell onto their bus.

Every day it gets a little easier. I wear my sneakers now to cross the marsh to the shuttle and I’m down to two bags. Today I was simply on time. I’m finding more economical paths through the medical matrix to the office where I squat while someone's on vacation, still not even a chair to call my own. And still packing my lunch and eating at my desk because there’s nothing worse than standing in the salad bar line without a friend.

“Aw, Mom, you ate alone again today? In your car? Not in the bathroom I hope?”
“Yes, Ally, I ate in the bathroom… in the stall, sobbing on the toilet.”

Nothing more tragic for a teenager than to picture her mom, or anyone for that matter, eating alone. I don’t feel lonely at all eating my lunch at my desk. There are hundreds of people around me for the first time in a while and I'm content to be quite anonymous for now. Nobody even knows to look for me yet. The discomfort and the uncertainty of being new are shortlived, this I do remember from each job I've had. It just feels long.

My family took me out to live it up large at Sprechers for my first dinner as a working girl.

I had a history teacher in high school, a quirky guy overly obsessed with Japan named Mr. Fisher who when we complained about being hot in the classroom told a story of suffering such unbelievable cold as a soldier in the military that he vowed never to complain about the heat again. I am Mr. Fisher. No complaints.

The housewives in the neighborhood miss me, I think.

Some friend I am

2010-09-15T17:55:00.002-05:00

And so I've returned to the world of work outside the home. That world where you have to respond to the time clock of others. The world where you wear an ID badge. The world where you can't wear a modified version of your pajamas for the first six hours of your day.

Hospitals are perhaps the most complicated and entangled bureaucracies of all bureaucracies...but maybe I'm naive. School districts and universities probably give hospitals a run for their money but I think accidental death always being a possible outcome at hospitals makes for slightly higher stakes than say, flunking. As health care employees, we are charged with efficiently processing large amounts of very personal and private information while managing and serving a customer group that is mostly anxious, in pain and facing life and death decisions. It's a service industry with layers of standards, protocols, procedures, updates, changes, improvements, responses to government and regulating bodies that drop in without notice... and in the end, patient survival, healing and as a cherry on the pie, satisfaction lead the charge of every day. Anybody who crunches numbers in health care can attest to the importance of customer satisfaction as an overall major maker or breaker of hospitals. It isn't acceptable anymore to just be competent at care. Cost overruns do not sit well with CEOs but neither do patient complaints. The result of trying to make sense of how all the jigsaw pieces fit together amounts to a very long and arduous employee orientation.

I really could benefit from some proper therapy

How does this all affect me initially? Not well, I'll tell you. While the school district was its own madness, it didn't feel nearly as badass as the hospital did to me this week. Maybe I'm just a bit rusty being with my own kind again and I'm taking it all too seriously while at the same time grinding the gears of my mind that aren't as greased as they used to be. I came home agitated and in such a fog the first day and promptly spanked two dear neighbors who dared to cross my path to be kind to me. I didn't exactly yell, GET AWAY FROM ME but I pretty much communicated as much. I was o-ver-loaded by rules and regs.

You brought me dinner without permission? I might have to kill you.

Now most normal people would greet a neighbor delivering a fully cooked Tex-Mex surprise dinner with a "Gee, what a fantastic place this is to live and I really value you as my friend." But I'm not normal people...or am I? I greeted her at the door instead with humorless surprise, wearing a look that probably said "great, one more g.d. thing" Eyes like saucers at that point, I muttered a feeble thanks and took the bag ungraciously. The nerve of her really, right? How dare she take care of me without expressed permission? She called the next day and all I could say after my apology was,

"Did I look murderous? Because I felt like I could have killed anyone to satisfy my blood thirst at that moment in time. Could you see it in my eyes? Who knew that a 90 minute benefits presentation could put me so close to the edge."

She's a good friend, thankfully, and said she could see the blood vessels breaking in the whites of my eyes and ran out the door for her life, confirming my suspicion that I had the look of a postal worker whose route had been changed. This is a problem you see, surprising thankless hyper-controlling people. They can become rageful.

What'd I ever do to have a friend like her?

Thank God I build up a lot of goodwill with friends like her in-between freak outs, thereby allowing for some slippage occasionally.

A working stiff once more

2010-09-07T13:07:00.000-05:00

The wind is gusting today near 50 mph, apropos of my own thoughts swirling around my head.

I'm rejoining the ranks of the working stiffs after 18 long months that felt like 18 years and that is big news for those who know me personally. Even after four days, I wake up each morning forgetting I now have a job. I will spare the details because it's a new position at the UW hospital and I myself don't really know what's involved yet beyond being in a support position in advanced nursing practice for the pediatric clinics and that the position is non-patient care (otherwise known as the "pumps and pearls" track). Taking a step away from patient care is maybe a risky thing at this point in my career but Chip assures me after listening to me for the last three years that maybe giving kids and their parents a break from Nurse Ratched is a kind turn for mankind. I do love kids. really. I do. It's the parents that give me the agita.

There's not even a chair with my name on it yet let alone an office as this is a new nursing position, so beyond my urinalysis drug test this afternoon (no poppyseed bagels this weekend...but what about the metabolites of the contact high from the Jimmy Buffet concert in July?) and a mountain of paperwork to complete, I'm still a little bit hazy about my own position. More on this as I embark on the journey. All I know for sure is, honey, Chip gave me a clothing allowance.

WIAA sports prohibited running so the girls were delighted to gossip and walk

The Labor Day weekend was spent like most Labor Day weekends of the past with one exception. A benefit called Suzy's Walk to assist and honor children with cancer and their families, something we all wish didn't need to exist. Suzy Favor Hamilton, formerly Suzy Favor the Olympic runner, hosted the event and really could not have been nicer. As we registered, she greeted our family warming with a smiley "Thanks for coming!" to which Ally gave the international teen facial expression "Who's the wacko?" She was pleasantly surprised to learn that the smiley lady in the tiara was in fact, the host of the walk. She's a good doobie, that Suzy, and we were happy to throw a little coin her way.

We walked for the parents of three families in our world whose kids have walked through the fire of leukemia treatment over the past five years and Ally and her friends walked for their softball buddy. Madi.

We played golf on Sunday to avoid a block party. There, I admit it. I can't live under the weight of my lies any longer. I didn't want to make a covered dish and I didn't want to face the old bitch who hates my cats. There. I said it. Don't judge.

We played 18 holes with a cart, my new favorite golf accessory. We played with one other guy who had intimate knowledge of the course and helped Chip, aka Skip, unlock many secrets of this course that Chip/Skip had yet to discover. Meanwhile I hacked away like Elmer Fudd off the tee with my now much despised old fashioned tiny- headed woods but putted very well, even draining a 25-foot putt for par on a par 5 hole. What an incredibly stupid stupid game.

And so Labor Day for me this year meant the end of a labor free era. I'm happy for the time off that I've had on this job search but very ready to get back to the frantic pace and balance of work and family paired together. Lately I had felt myself slipping down that slope of helicopter parenting....and I was weakening by the day. No more waiting at the kitchen counter for the children to come home. No more me, wine in hand, and the dog looking at each other at 6pm wondering where everyone is. No more Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, Dr. Drew or Dr. Oprah.
Organization, procedure, routine....the NEW REGIME.
Oh, who am I kidding?

Democracy makes me weepy

2010-09-01T15:39:00.006-05:00

While Madison starts school again and at-risk kids are finally back in a safe environment for the next nine months, organizations that care for these same children 24/7/365 (something schools wish they could promise but can't really provide) are fighting for their lives. I'm a daytime person and I prefer to hunker down at home at night with a brandy and a cigar, but on Monday I got the distinct feeling that I am missing out on some vital nightlife going on in my community. I saw just how many people are beginning their most important work at 5pm after the regular work day is done and civic duties begin, those who compassionately care for and advocate for the most severely affected people in our country especially in this economy; the poor, the ill, the very old and the very young.

I sit on the board of our local community center and this week as part of my duties I attended a five hour funding meeting of the Community Services Committee, a commission appointed by the mayor of Madison to dole out 4 million dollars in discretionary monies...mysterious to me beyond that. City funds have been slashed for 2010/11, creating an ominous B-list of organizations and/or their services on the chopping block. I was instructed in advance to wear my nametag and look bigger than I am, like trying to scare off a bear. The more people representing the organization, the better represented we were in the minds of those people two feet away who might take away as much as $11,000 of our center's budget. That's somebody's job at the center. The committee's task is ridiculously hard and the organizations, even as they begged and pleaded for their money to be restored, acknowledged the difficult task on behalf of the committee and their unenviable position. Somebody will eventually go home unhappy and there's no organization more deserving than another. A Sophie's choice at this point in the game. Each organization is part of a web that stretches across the city to catch the vulnerable at multiple points in the life cycle and is only as strong as the ones around it. Problem is, everybody's on Jello legs.

I liken the dread of the past few days leading up to the first day of school, for my own kids anyway, as being the equivalent of kneeling before the chopping block with your neck exposed below the guillotine blade while the guy who cuts the rope stands idly by talking to his buddy. Cut the rope already. The blade dropped painlessly in most instances today as joyful and excited kids all over the city returned to school. However, the blade is still dangling over the futures of several community organizations all over Madison as the Monday meeting went on so long with the public comments that another meeting had to be scheduled for tonight to actually decide on the cuts.

To give you a taste of it because it really was a unique experience despite my nagging backache still, imagine a large board room at a public utility with a central table and chairs all around the perimeter and just a few rows of chairs at the back, bursting at the seams with crying babies, kids, executive directors in suits, parents and nervous staff members. Empty chairs sat at the head of the table where each organization's representatives sat one after another making very personal cases for restoring the funds to their organizations. The room was filled with the absolutely beautiful kids of this city that I know as a school nurse may come from the most at-risk families in the most at-risk neighborhoods...the families and communities of first generation immigrants, non-native English speakers, Latinos, African-Americans, Hmong, single-parent households, tenants, victims of trauma and injustice, the mentally ill, the uneducated and the disabled. There were no punches pulled. African-American parents and organizers talked honestly about African-American boys being at grave risk and disadvantage without access to strong male role models, educational support and over-archingly, hope. Therapists and social workers talked passionately about the effects of trauma and mental illness on families without intervention. Without the programs and organizations that make families and kids of color and/or poverty a priority...Boys and Girls Clubs, Urban League, Rainbow Project, Community Centers, Centro Hispano, job training programs, women's advocacy groups....we all suffer and we all pay. First person accounts over and over of being "saved" by these programs. Impassioned pleas using words like sanctuary.

Tea Party mentality is a luxury for only the fair skinned who encounter few barriers to equality, education and jobs. The operating budgets of the organizations represented at the meeting are tethered shoestrings and even that is more than some working taxpayers seem willing to pay citing big government as the problem. Whatever, right? However true, refusing to hike taxes in the end trickles down only to hurt those at the bottom as everyone above still takes their full cuts. I'm not making that up. That's human nature. Most of us have been the last person to get a bag of candy or a joint being passed around a group. Last gets the crappiest candy or the slimiest roach depending on what's your pleasure. Kids and families will fall without their community organizations, that is a fact. Saddled up, mounted, rode hard and dismounted my soap box in just one paragraph.

I was so impressed with the poise of the kids who courageously spoke to the grown-ups in charge. A group of Hmong parents and children stepped to the fore, one of the children playing an indigenous musical instrument for the room as evidence of the work of their cultural center. A committee member asked a child of this cultural organization his opinion about whether holding onto such strong minority identification is not divisive within a community and delays immersion into American culture. An adult's explanation later said quite the opposite happens, that by identifying with one's heritage and culture and learning to love oneself the individual can immerse more fully into American life. But the child more succinctly and practically stated, "Well, no because these programs go on during the school year and we do our homework there." Duh. Bravo, dude.

It is, in the end, still Madison Eutopian society and as one would expect, the committee was kind, encouraging and literally applauding of parents and children for their eloquence and bravery in speaking to the large forum. All the while, the committee adjusted the agenda to accommodate parents with kids both in the room and at home so they could get the little ones or themselves home. I'm proud of my city's genuine care and concern for its families but in the end that care and concern doesn't translate into dollars approved by its citizenry for schools and non-profits. I pay enough in taxes is always the rally cry from the white folks. Really? Do you? I pay willingly and I would pay more if needed. A mere $80,000 adjustment in the city budget might fix everything--doesn't seem like much in a city budget and one community center director tells the commission to go the city council and find the money and restore everyone's budgets. Easier said than done? I don't know the answer.

The mayor and the city council go to meetings like this all the time, hence their beleagured expressions. My back pain so far has been a daily reminder of the anguish some people in my city face today. A good kind of pain that maintains character and compassion for others.

Hell on Earth is the pain of a child

2010-08-26T14:30:00.000-05:00

Our dentist as he pointed to the x-ray: "You paid $7,000 in orthodontia, you simply have to get these out of there before they wreck all the good work done."

On Monday, an important milestone was reached by our oldest. You see, we run in only the very well-heeled social circles of American society where state health plans reign and orthodontia is the order of the day. And with that lifestyle of champagne dreams and caviar wishes, Olivia endured our culture's coming of age ritual that might be akin to the certain ritual of other cultures, namely, female circumcision; the forcible wrenching of her "what'd we ever do?" yet-to-have-erupted wisdom teeth, but in only the very best of oral surgery offices that money can buy!

The lady at the front desk: "Nothing to eat after midnight and DO NOT FORGET your medical and dental insurance cards with you to the appointment." (her real message being, it would be better to forget Olivia rather than forget the insurance cards.)

Initially it seemed funny showing up to the cattle call of the "8:45am arrivals for a 9:00am start" families, the children silent, unfed and unwashed for their perp walk to registration. Parents were apprehensive while the kids all wore the same facial expression, almost a mask that said, "I got this" but so thinly veiling their dread and hunger. And all in similar suburban uniform...loose fitting t-shirts, running shorts with girls in flip flops and boys in sneakers. In the waiting room, we Moms sat with our sewing or our books because we know the drill. Awkwardly, the Dads mostly came unprepared for their 90 minutes, either playing with their phones or glancing at Sports Illustrated for ten minutes before staring blankly at the walls, arms folded across their bellies before finally, yes you know it...dozing. Typical.

"Olivia Hunter?" The governor had not called in a reprieve. We walked hesitantly to and through the doorway down the long corridor to a stark dental office. Meet and greet with the surgeon, plan discussed, questions answered, kiss on the forehead, squeeze of the hand and I was sent packing, passing three assistants in the hallway masked, gloved and gowned. She was probably asleep before I even sat back down in my chair in the waiting room.

All the kids were gone when I returned, secreted through more than one door by numerous ladies in blue. My one attempt at gallows humor, God love me I cannot help myself. I said to the woman across from me, "Well, that was like walking the plank..." She stared through me without acknowledgment of my comment like they often do in Wisconsin and put her head down with a vacant smile. I am constantly left hanging when it comes to the spirit of humanity here in the Midwest so nothing new there. Finally, two dads who knew each other struck up a conversation much to their own relief and mine and the silence was broken.

the plant was more engaging than the woman across from me

I had time to reflect...the guy snoring next to me distracting me from my book...on the utter privilege of parenthood that affords so many gifts but has steep prices that must be paid, like subjecting one's kid to something incredibly painful even in doing the right thing. The worrying never fucking ends, people. It's all what I call, "The BIG Lie". Getting them to their 18th birthdays, buying them laptops and trundling them off to college so that we can resume some sort of carefree pre-kid existence? What kind of a joke is that? I'm a lunatic now, thank you very much. There's no going back to my former state of mental health, if ever there was any. Parents of soldiers, firefighters and police know about the big lie. That they can move forward with their own lives not curled up in the fetal position, knowing their kids are in danger every day, that's real heroism. I guess ultimately I'm made of the same stuff but sitting in this waiting room Monday knowing the brief but intense pain my kid would endure over the next few days made me queasy. They'll come back alive alright but it will be us doing the triage and mending and nursing afterward. No Walter Reed for the post-extraction pain patients. Just mom and the sofa.

Three days later, her pain is still never lower than a 5 out of 10, she cries when it gets to 7, she's hungry for real food and fatigued by pain. I have accidentally overdosed her with Tylenol this morning hence we may need a new and different clinic later this week for a replacement liver.

The Jersey I know and love

2010-08-20T22:16:00.007-05:00

the reader and the thinker

I found myself searching for the right words to explain "my" Jersey shore to a friend who’s never been. What makes it special? Because I can smell funnel cake on the wind and hear the blood curdling screams of children being flung about sketchy amusement park rides from my beach chair? Because being physically trashed by dangerous waves is awesome? Because I like to walk and eat from a gigantic tub of caramel corn as an appetizer to my dinner? Because I like to whoop my kids' behinds at miniature golf? Because I love low flying planes that drag giant banners advertising lobster dinners and five dollar “Pink Grenades” at the bars in Wildwood? How do I love thee?

the boardwalk at night full of teens and adults....just not together

I’ve been going to Ocean City, NJ since I was a kid. My friends and I would swim by day and swarm the boardwalk at night looking for good old fashioned boy-girl fun. During the day we played miniature golf and rode bikes and body surfed. At night, we put on our lip gloss and sweatshirts, preened for the Jersey boys and ate pizza. Later as high schoolers, we smuggled in beer and drank til our eyes flew at half mast meandering through the streets looking for kids we knew and parties we weren't necessarily invited to. Nothing too messy, just standard fare in the late 1970s. Why high schoolers picked a dry town to party in I've never really understood.

annual cut throat mini golf game where Liv always gets a hole in one but never wins

I am an Ocean City legacy. My dad went there as a kid and my aunt and uncle own a house there now. My own kids have vacationed in Ocean City since they were born spending at least a week there almost every summer. I love tradition and never feel like I have enough of it going in my family to my satisfaction. Norm on Cheers lived a perfect life in my eyes and that's always made Chip grow a bit quiet. He and the girls generally like to try new places and new things on vacations rather than the same old same old whereas if I had my way we’d have long ago bought a summer house (with magical money that is part of all fantasies) and vacationed the same week in the same place our whole lives. I married the wrong guy and had the wrong kids again—typical.

Another August tradition, the annual Ocean City Baby Parade. It may have rained but that didn't dampen the spirits of the Queen Infanta and her ladies in waiting (I kid you not) or the babies who remained baffled for their 101st year on the boardwalk.

There is one more key element to the Ocean City experience for us. Her name is Aunt Polly and she irons her money… before slipping it in your pocket. She runs a teenage fantasy camp first for me as a young adult and now for my kids each summer which this year began with a hug and a fifty dollar bill. She waits on us breakfast, lunch and dinner and stocks all our favorite treats. She does our laundry daily. We watch loads of Law and Order and Seinfeld reruns after as many lazy days as we can get baking and swimming at the beach. She takes us to Atlantic City where we park the girls in a cafe and throw a few quarters in the slots before hitting the buffet, her treat. All in all, it’s over the top pampering. It's an adolescent spa with full and I mean FULL cable on three TVs, no bedtimes and unrestricted and wanton snacking.

10pm: “Have a snack.”

10:15pm: "Did you have a snack? Why not?"

11pm: “Do you want some candy? How about a piece of pie? Well, have another one.”

Midnight: “Are you sure you don’t want a snack before bed?”

Philly hoagie jersey style...a hot italian...like I like my men

It’s absurd and perfect. We ate ourselves silly... from funnel cake to Mack and Manco pizza to Kohr Bros. soft serve, Shrivers strawberry laces and Primo's hoagies. A feast of sugar laden delectables and fried and fatty turbocarbs eaten mostly on the run. Nobody sits long at the shore when eating. The seagulls will get your food.

We rode the rides at Playland and this year I couldn’t have asked for a better gift from the girls than when they said, “C’mon Mom. You have to go on the rollercoaster. It’s our tradition.”

A harvest of emotions

2010-08-10T22:07:00.002-05:00

I've had trouble getting to my blog. Our last week has been spent with family in eastern Washington, truly one of the most beautiful and lunar looking places in August as the wheat comes time to harvest. There's been a little focus issue around honing my craft with this little face popping up behind ottomans and end tables for five days. She's way more fun than turning a phrase.

She's an enchantress whose favorite game is tricking fawning aunts and uncles to walk across the room for a special something she dangles in her hand only to pull it back at the last moment with a giggle and a pointed look at everyone in the room that signals that it is time to applaud. And by God, you had better clap.

It's an anniversary of sorts. I started this blog two years ago just a month before my darling father-in-law, Larry Hunter, passed away. A blog made specifically for the likes of him in fact, somebody who would check regularly on our progress on sabbatical. He loved photos and he liked lots of details about family, especially his granddaughters. After he died I couldn't even write about it, glossing over it in one of my early entries as "the past few weeks haven't been the easiest" or something like that. It was unbearable to think about for longer than a minute at a time, let alone sit still and try to blog about it.

I was blinded by my own grief and frantic and cranky about my inability to fix the situation for my husband. I'm basically terrible when he's terrible - when his dry sockets were giving him trouble I told him to "snap out of it". It's a bad life partner trait as it turns out and we're currently making arrangements to accommodate it and protect his safety. He'll be one of the few that actually begs to go to a nursing home in lieu of staying home alone with me when he's ill.

This weekend we were fortunate to be so very propped up by our extended family who made the journey with us both physically and emotionally to lay our beloved father and grandfather to rest in peace in a place that I won't mention for fear of internet-lurking park rangers but was a special place for him as outdoorsman and fly fisherman.

They steadied us with their presence and quite literally smoothed the rough road before us. As for my husband and brothers-in-law, their strength and patience and dignity through the loss of their dad has guided all of us to safe passage as we press beyond our own grief. Before scattering the ashes, Chip's brother Mike paid the three spouses the highest compliment we could ever hear saying that he saw his dad not only in the grandkids but in us as well. Gracious and inspired words of comfort from the youngest child.

Grandpa's bell on the 13th hole of the U of I golf course to signal players behind a blind turn that it's ok to hit. The woman on the right apparently won a box of golfballs for her longest putt at the 2nd Annual Larry Hunter Memorial Golf Tournament.

Rufous hummingbirds en masse in celebration of Larry's return

As wife of the oldest brother, I am translated from Mandarin, Big Mama

The REAL Mama and the baby that is the joy and rebirth and new life of our family

Not exactly an august post in August

2010-08-01T14:27:00.002-05:00

Camp suitcase vomits its contents

Ally returned yesterday from her first year as a camp counselor. I've put a positive spin on the putrid laundering that follows each camp week which is that going through the suitcase provides insight into the murky details shared....a burned candle, grass, mud, dead spiders, unused stamped envelopes, a picture. Sanctioned snooping and there was nothing interesting or incriminating...really a little disappointing.

As I drove her and her friend home from what was described as a really great week, I was struck by how ridiculously negative their conversation was. I guess keeping a cork in that social bottle for six days resulted in a profound amount of pressure that needed release.

"She acted like she didn't remember me from last year. She asked me what my name was, can you believe it? And in my head I was like, 'Shut up Bethany. Last year you wanted to be me."

Like adults going for a job promotion, they had been on their best behavior trying to impress the big counselors and the camp staff grown ups with their positive attitudes and helpful natures to better their chances of being chosen again as counselors next year. That's a long week of holding in every negative thought about other kids, and there are a lot of those thoughts right now. Negativity rules. So for 90 minutes in the car they poured their hearts out to one another about their frustrations over the course of the week, laughing uproariously and being incredulous at every social faux pas committed by other kids as I drove in silence listening to their debriefing. That's what Angelina Jolie told me to do...stop talking and listen. What, isn't Vanity Fair where everybody gets their parenting advice? Constantly reminding myself to shut up and drive rather than interject and share is frankly an exhausting way for me to live.

Case studies suggest that adolescent peer groups are also characterized by exclusivity, impermeability, and hostility toward nonmembers (Cusick, 1973).

http://www.du.edu/psychology/relationshipcenter/publications/pdfs/Agedifferencesinadolescents.pdf

Being a grown-up girl in my own family, I think we may need to work out the complex social dynamics of society in preparation for navigating the bountiful yet treacherous waters of adult social life. Women are cruise directors. We facilitate and encourage passengers to interact and play well with one another while trying to ensure everyone's safety. We remember the birthdays, the anniversaries, the get well notes and the teacher thank you gifts. But do we have to get down in the mud first as teenagers in order to function as the social caretakers we become as adults? Coach Chip and I have talked a lot about this as once upon a time he watched his happy little team of girl buddies devolve into a group made of individual diva princesses delivered to softball tournaments in their own white-stallion-drawn minivans manned by beleagured mother footmen. The social fabric was tattered for one very long summer as the games began. Impermeability, exclusivity and hostility, you aren't kidding. A means to an end? Arguably, perhaps.

Refusing to disturb the "class", she will not enter

Finally she understands

A 50th surprise birthday party held in a public space for a friend whose adult siblings and friend co-conspirators planned and executed a surprise so massive she literally wouldn't enter the room, mistakenly believing she would be interrupting an adult education class. She actually was so non-compliant she went missing in the building for a few minutes. But she was finally and reluctantly dragged into the room to realize we were not a Zumba class but a room full of friends and family there to celebrate her birthday. I don't think I'll live long enough to sufficiently exhaust the possibilities of teasing around it.

The night ended with a pool drive-by to catch more than I intended of the achingly (literally, people were getting up in pain and doing stretches against the nets) long-winded summer swim season banquet. My pals below, youngest siblings each in housefuls of swimmers, sum up my take on the speeches but the slideshow finale of a hundred plus kids that populate my world made it truly worth the seven hours of thank yous.

Just because there's a microphone doesn't mean everybody has to use it, they seemed to say with their eyes

July turns to August

2010-07-26T02:57:00.000-05:00

Happens every year. Summer feels like it's slipping away so fast and I feel I've yet to relish it. Are my expectations too high? For sure. Having a glass of sauvignon blanc or a cup of coffee in the sunshine and doing my gardening should more than satisfy. But I'm greedy and I just want those moments every day and more often than regular living supports. Groceries still need getting, dentists need seeing, hair needs cutting, meetings still meet. I think I put too much pressure on July and it tells me every year, "...Look lady, I take my pound of flesh just like February but I do it at 85 degrees with the sun shining. Get over it and go take a bike ride." And I did today and it was glorious. But back to my complaining.

The garden has taken on its late summer variegated greens and purples and started to brown a little bit at the edges, like my mood. It's still lush but the bugs are finally taking their toll and in a few weeks, I'll run out of steam and give up the good fight. There is a season, turn turn turn. By late August, I'll be pricing the potted mums. I'm a weather ingrate is what I am.

Mission daughter has returned while camp daughter has departed. The girls used to both go to camp the same week but that led to me roaming the house running my hands across the furniture and staring forlornly out the window. One gone at a time is better.

On a positive note I'll say that a perk of long, warm evenings that don't drive us under our comforters at 7pm is that we have whittled down our summer TV to-do list in record time. Seasons 1, 2 and 3 of The Wire finito. Oh Stringer, you gorgeous thug.... I'll miss you.

The most damning evidence of my summer fugue state may be that not only did Chip and I don identical t-shirts and green khaki shorts today, unknowingly until running into each other late morning, neither one of us bothered to change. Yep, went about our day together in matching outfits and actually kind of forgot about it. Not weird or sad at all.

What a morning

2010-07-18T12:11:00.000-05:00

Saturday mornings have always been full of promise for me and today was no exception. Liv was setting off on her mission trip to a Sioux reservation in South Dakota, Ally and Chip were playing in a softball tournament and I was looking forward to a night of music in a local park. A beautiful and perfect summer day, muggy and buggy and blindingly sunny. The kind of day I try to sock in my memory for February when I'm in need of a warm thought.

Senior citizen blankets plus mine

As a recreational crier I had the privilege of getting in some tears early as this admirable group of kids and their dedicated chaperones posed for photos before the youth pastor had us circle for a quick prayer for safe travels and thanking US for sharing our kids (he's taking my kid for a week and he's thanking me? ) before hollering "Hug and kiss and load 'em up!" A tear jerking moment for me inspirational enough to consider volunteering my time on future missions. But it passed...as it does. Philanthropic use of my free time dedicated to the civic, moral and emotional development of young people? That boat sailed a long time ago and I found myself waving from the marina bar.

Little darlings

Later when I had lunch with the softball gang and bore witness to my kid's do-gooder posse, especially marveling at the adults who sign up to do these trips with forty teenagers, one of the softball dads replied cavalierly "Well, those types of kids aren't like these kids." I peered down the table at our sassy superstars wondering where avid sports dad was going.

"Most kids like the ones that play sports can be too aggressive and unruly and that isn't the kind of kid that goes on mission trips." The implication being that kids who go on mission trips are easier to travel with than the yahoos at our lunch table. It was a generalized statement about pretty diverse bunches of kids both in the church youth group and on the softball diamond. But simplicity aside, is it accurate in any way? Although kids try on lots of hats in adolescence, my experience is that despite the hat they have a deeper, inherent sense of their own universal personal truths (hate bugs, homesickness, hate parents) and know the limits of what they can ask of themselves. And so do kids who know they can't possibly be well behaved riding in a hot van for seventeen hours across Minnesota and South Dakota generally avoid signing up for such things? I'm sure the youth minister could tell a story or two of some mission trip antics by the most saintly of children, but overall softball dad's theory might not be totally off.

Regardless of how well behaved and inspired the group of kids is on the mission trip I'm sure the chaperones will be the first ones disembarking from the vans in a week with their hands in the air like they just don't care. It's an unbelievably generous emotional commitment and a lot of psychic wear and tear to keep even good kids from offending Native Americans and wandering off into the plains of South Dakota to chase prairie dogs.

Meanwhile left to my own devices, friends and I attended Madison Opera in the Park. Despite the icky old people on the adjacent blanket seriously groping each other through their clothes and the tenor's voice blowing out on more than one note, there is nothing bad that can be said about drinking wine and listening to music outdoors on a blanket. But we prayed hard for the darkness to come, cloaking the oldsters' foot rubbing. back massaging and thigh entwining from our bleeding eyes. Seriously gross and no amount of mind bleach can erase the horror when I close my eyes.

Kayaking Lake Superior-musings part 2

2010-07-14T23:20:00.000-05:00

A continuation of my lengthy mind ramblings of yesterday. I can't do pithy.

I revisit this one picture to say first that this couple was beautiful and in love and really nice people and to elaborate that Joan told this currently living in different states couple that if they wanted to have kids, that not being anything they shared with us, it was time for them relationship-wise to "get going and knit this thing up." You can get away with that kind of honesty at a certain age and we're there. And she's right.

As women of a certain age we sit squarely in the middle of all that's going on in the lives of the people around us. Now maybe you don't agree, which is OK, but maybe you should come sit by me. Sandwiched still between our parents, our kids and their friends and our own friends, we have our fingers in every relationship pie. "Argh! Everybody out! I'm sick of you!" No? Just me? It's just that I realized this weekend that it's delightful being with young people now that I'm not young. I'm at the point where I'm looking forward to Opera in the Park. Middle age is good. License to chat up almost anybody, prod for personal information without seeming weird or seeming weird but still eliciting desired information, speak our minds, apologize blithely after speaking our minds too much, live without embarrassment and hopefully become more secure, more empowered and more forgiving with who we are than our younger selves were. We'll need all the strength we can muster going into the next decade I figure, so I'm enjoying the social power pole position while I have it. According to my mom, women at her age become invisible...and that's just not going to work for me.

And although my kids would be grossed out to know that I even looked, I must say we enjoyed the company of a couple adorable young men on this trip--in that sun kissed, REI, summer hipster, majoring in English and want to move to Costa Rica to paddle and teach after graduation sort of way--the kind of boys I never ran across in my youth or if I did I was too stupid to look. Mellow, fun, adorable, athletic and fit, chatty, facilitative, caring, nice to kids, nice to old folks, gentle and respectful of nature. But I'm no cougar. I like Coach Chip and his gray hair. But I can certainly appreciate beauty and look on behalf of daughters and their friends. Dutiful parent that I am, I'm a giver. I tried to sell both college aged guides to Olivia over the phone---she was flatly uninterested. "I don't like those kinds of guys, Mom."
Well, if she had any sense she would.... if only for one lovely summer.

Maybe it was the paddling. Even our old kayak guide, maybe our age, was a friendly, gentle and ruggedly blonde Paul Bunyan who loaded the kayaks on the top of the trailer barefoot and one-armed, as effortlessly as sticking empty shoeboxes in the top of a closet. Kinda turned a middle aged broad on and it wasn't just me. Hey, we take it where we can get it. A teacher by trade now a tutor at will, he's an explorer who works as needed to bankroll his paddling for days at a time around the Apostle Islands. He had a personality that warmed up with the day and a corny sense of humor that came out as the trip progressed and the group showed no signs of insurrection or idiocy, something that guides on Lake Superior don't appreciate when trying to keep people safe from their own ignorance on the lake. The wind can come up and swamp your kayak before you know it.

And it's always good times to listen to the Libertarian views of someone who lives off the grid for most of the year. "Don't get me started on health care," he said. He once lived in Madison back in the eighties but after a failed community organizing effort to prevent Monona Terrace from being built on Lake Monona I think he quite rightly saw the writing on the wall for the future of Madison's lakes--the big small city had become a small big city and with that came a lessening commitment to the city's natural water resources and a growing commitment to development. So he packed his canoe in finality and very literally paddled north to Lake Superior by river and lake to start a new chapter in his life. An inspirational story, to live with quiet conviction, seeking simplicity and personal freedom.

Unfortunately, I still have to run to Target for tiny teenage sports bras and hair accessories. My freedom will have to wait.

Kayaking Lake Superior--musings part 1

2010-07-13T18:49:00.002-05:00

I'm a briny matron and I love the Atlantic Ocean but it's a two day drive involving the mind numbing Ohio Turnpike which if that doesn't kill you from sheer boredom, the deadly twisting terrain of the Pennsylvania Turnpike will. The Great Lakes have become an important part of my summers when a trip east isn't in the offing. With their shoreless horizons, cold, clear waters and lighthoused coastal towns and even islands to sail to, I've become a fan.

I've yet to brave interior lake culture yet for fear of man-eating muskies and blood sucking lake worms that hide in silty small bodies of water...in my mind. Maybe next year. And lake swimming is definitely a love the one you're with situation for me still because given equal distance I'd pick the ocean everytime. Even the Greatest of lakes are, and there's no other way to put this, lakey. That fact is never more evident than on a hot, windless day when unidentifiable flotsam surfaces to the top of the water and the strangest of bugs descend on the beach to feast upon humans.

But most days the wind and the waves and the sand are there to keep my suspension of disbelief generally intact. In fact, the first year we went to Grand Haven, MI, forgetting where I was, I ordered shrimp at dinner. It was good... but it was not local.

A few friends and I headed north to Lake Superior to kayak the sea caves along Wisconsin's Bayfield Peninsula near the Apostle Islands. It's a sleepy region too far north to be a weekend destination for Madison or God forbid, Chicago, with a rich Ojibway history that once boasted a busy fur trade from the late 1600s through to the late 1800s before tourism came to the fore and the fur trade disappeared. Good thing because I really don't look good in fur, however I do look good in gift shops. The French were the first white settlers and who established the fur trade probably with a lot of Ojibway local knowledge of running water routes through Canada. The Ojibway and the white settlers, French, English and then American fur traders plus both Catholic and Protestant missions, coexisted peacefully even marrying and having children together quite legitimately according to the museum. After touring the American West a few years ago, I found this information somewhat heartening, although I'm sure someone still found a way to subtly or otherwise cheat them out of land and money.

Lots of people go to the Lakeshore and Apostle Islands to camp and hike and enjoy nature's bounty. I go to kayak a few hours under closely supervised conditions, shop, get a little drunk at dinner and sleep in cottages with beds and screened windows. Roughing it for me is going to Tom's Burned Down Cafe, an iconic tavern that burned to the ground maybe more than once and consequently was never rebuilt to more than an outdoor shanty with a tarp roof and ramshackle furnishings and amenities that make it look more like a giant party raft adrift in the lake rather than a business.

Handpainted signs with fortune cookie sayings hang everywhere, maybe not quite as haphazardly as they want you to believe but still giving the feeling that the Coral Reefer Band decorated the place. It's a lower than low-key place where the bartenders are definitely a little drunk and the brimming money in the tip jars quivers everytime there's a gust of wind through the tarp. The tip jars might be more full than the till. It's a daytripper, lost weekend, party boat clientele and many a tipsy, shoeless bar hopper runs for each evening ferry back to Bayfield after spending maybe a lost day on the island. Once you sit down at Tom's, you really never want to leave...and that's not just me. It's partly inexplicable and partly not worth explaining because the description is lost in translation to the mainland. The myspace page makes an admirable stab at it.

Tom’s Burned Down, Blown Down, Grudge Mongered, Train Wrecked, Froze Out, Insurance Challenged, Foreclosed, Zoning Challenged, Highway Encroached, Bankrupted, Financially Examined, Shut Down, Banned in LaPointe, Third World, Trucked In, Up next to the Wormhole, Beyond Thunderdome, Death Row, Duct Taped, Water World, Tree Fort, Pirate House, Pan Handled, Lost & Found, Noise Rattled, Noise Ordained, Ferry Grudged, Tent Shredded, Anti – “MADELINE ISLAND FERRY LAND”, Phoenix CAFE’ of Love...

Ann and Joan grilled this couple about their relationship

Which brings me to musings part 2 but I'll save that for tomorrow.

Enjoying my liberty

2010-07-06T01:21:00.001-05:00

I feel a lot of pressure around holiday weekends to HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND. Oh the stress of it. But after a month of visitors I simply wanted just a regular weekend. No optimizing and juggling, no car trips, no extraordinary measures involving crowds or exertion, no rippin' and runnin'. Just a little music and beer with friends and their delightful kids (meaning they didn't bother me) on Friday,

a little golf on Saturday,

Chip pondering his next shot. Me not pondering my shot and screwing around with my phone.

....and a relaxed movie at home sent from Blockbuster this week by way of Chip's hot tub time machine. He is the only one who ever fiddles with the Blockbuster queue online so we get an occasional movie from the past that he feels he missed along life's journey.

"Why did you order this? This movie is from ten years ago."

"I always wanted to see it. Instead of criticizing my choices, why don't one of you three learn how to use the queue and order what you like?"

(three women in unison) "Boo! Your movie choices are terrible! Pick better ones that we'll like."

That's the general gist of it anyway. But The Big Lebowski is indeed a movie worth seeing even 12 years after its release.

Olivia is adamant that celebrating the Fourth of July is out of order on any day but the actual Fourth. And I can see how she came to hold this philosophy. Madison has a strange tradition of scheduling fireworks and other Fourth of July activities on every day BUT the Fourth. Take for instance the most bafflingly scheduled massive Rhythm and Booms Festival, an all day family event that hosted 200,000 people this year and that culminates in a pretty kickass fireworks display at dark. Usually held the Friday before the Fourth, which is sometimes as early as June 28th, this year it was held on Saturday, July 3rd. Okay.....

Happy to be celebrating ON the actual Fourth of July

On Sunday, the REAL Fourth of July, we finally succumbed to the pressure of HAVING A GREAT WEEKEND and attended our neighborhood parade and carnival, ate grilled animals and watched the bombs bursting in air.

That tragically hip banana seated Schwinn in a sea of Trek

The annual running of the water balloon gauntlet where even the children are bloodthirsty.

My friend sent me this picture below from her phone to include me in a moment that so perfectly captured a child's delight for a sparkling night sky. Maybe one of the first displays these guys will remember as grown ups.

While fireworks aren't such a fresh experience for me anymore, I always look to the crowd for my inspiration. Seen through the eyes of kids on blankets with their bare toes dangling over and grasping at the cool grass or through the eyes of older adults who've seen maybe seventy or eighty Fourth of July fireworks now in their reflective lawn chair reposes, windbreakers zipped to the neck in the 85 degrees, hands in laps and ankles folded beneath their chairs in quiet anticipation. The show starts without warning and the blue-black sky is suddenly asplash with brilliant color for only seconds at a time; an ephemeral palette of sulfur greens and purples and coral pinks in traditional umbrella bursts, occasional large and lazy gold weeping willows that twinkle gently before burning out and bright white curly whirlygigs that fizz up, up, up and out. The pace is predictable but the sequence never is. A new color, a new shape. What's next? And it all goes wild and woolly in the finale because that's the way we like it and as the last pop pops, it's suddenly quiet for a second before everyone begins clapping for miles. The applause floats up into space to travel infinitely, a gesture of gratitude and reflection for simple beauty, freedom, family and tradition that quite literally knows no bounds.

Ensueno

2010-06-29T23:57:00.006-05:00

This past weekend was a surefire blogpost fiesta or so I thought, with a Jimmy Buffett concert AND a Justin Bieber concert on deck and it all being very exciting and fun but turning out in the end to not be very bloggable. After all, what can be said about a Jimmy Buffett concert except that once you've been to one you know the scene. And don't get me wrong, it's fun everytime...the parrots, the margaritas, the Coronas with lime, the guacamole in the tailgate, the drunks....but what to write? The same holds true for taking a load of kids to see whatever pop culture icon du jour currently occupying their fantasies, whether Twilight or Bieber related. But it's an uninteresting post no matter how many times I walk around it. "Hey, my kid loves Justin Bieber and I drove her to Milwaukee so she could scream at his face for three hours with her friends. " I'm just not feeling it.

Designated driver....awesome. No really, that was my last one before the show even started. At 13 bucks a beer, it wasn't hard to stop.

But the mundane is where the action is in my blog. My trip to the laundromat, babies. A universal experience to which most can relate, or should anyway. Prince Charles and Candy Spelling, maybe not, but regular folks, yes. Like the post office, it's really a place everyone should go periodically to appreciate just how much time and energy chores take without those luxuries many of us take for granted. I blogged often about this in England where there were no dryers, a situation that subsequently drove me mad and rendered me somewhat obsessed with laundry. And so I return to my roots.

The sad truth is that once a year the cats or the dog throw up on something that's too big to put in our own washer spurring my annual and very personal laundry Hajj with affected comforter plus a few more, since I'm going anyway, that are in need of freshening.

I was there to wash three comforters but most of the Sunday patrons were there for their weekly or in some cases monthly family laundry days. A mother and her adult daughter were running an operation with quiet efficiency involving three triple load washers and multiple dryers while also directing those waiting as to which washers would be available next. A pair of sisters arrived just minutes after me with their month's laundry only to watch me use the last triple load washer for my one item and well, I didn't blame them for their polite stink eye. A mom and her teenage son of 14 or 15 folded an unimaginable amount of clothing before pushing the cart out to their car to unload pile after pile of clean clothes into their trunk. On the surface it didn't appear that the kids had a choice about being there nor did they seem too perturbed about it either, checking their phones periodically and looking resigned without looking pissed off. I'm going to guess that for many harder working families than us, helping one's parents is part of the drill. It never occurred to me to ask a kid of mine to take two hours out of her day to help me with the laundry. And why not? I tend to shelter them too much from that sort of work, but really to whose benefit? Then again at age 4 when asked to clean her room, Allison crawled military style on her elbows while dragging her inert lower body crying "I CAN'T! MY LEGS ARE BROKE." So maybe I just gave up a long time ago.

The sweet smell of hot, clean clothes that may be a little sickening to some is olfactory music to me. Laundromats are inherently clean places despite the dryer sheets blowing across the floor like tumbleweeds or the 16 oz. orange and purple abandoned soft drinks on the perimeter's ledges atop the strewn Sunday circulars left behind by those who did their laundry much earlier than me. Like Tiffany's was to Holly Golightly, laundromats are to me. They are places to think and to sit quietly in the uncomfortable plastic chairs or even nap on a sunny day in one's car with the windows down and the radio on like the guy next to me in the parking lot. It's too noisy to talk so mostly no one does. The dull roar of dryers and washers creates a sound barrier around each person moving silently among the others, going about the very personal business of clean clothes. Everybody doing things just a little bit differently. Dryer sheets or liquid fabric softeners, Tide or Gain, Scented or Non, Ensueno or Snuggle. Folded. Crammed into black plastic trash bags. Separate colors in different washers or all together in one big washer. Delicate colored bras and silky underthings brazenly hung over the cross bar tops of the rolling baskets. I just like to nestle into my own thoughts, people watching and daydreaming in the deafening din. A few odd and creepy guys came in of course, as they usually do, but also a mom and her two little kids with an insane mountain of wet, mildewed laundry that had been blessedly soaking up rain water in their basement, saving them thousands of dollars of damage, while they were away on vacation. A story behind every basket. Did not ask the creepy guys their stories.

Goodnight Justin and old B.B. King, from Milwaukee's Summerfest

And at the end, the cat vomit was well clear in time for Paw Paw's visit and I myself now serendipitously have a clean and fresh bed from top to bottom. I'm sleeping well this week.

The final shots

2010-06-22T18:13:00.005-05:00

The doctor's office was filled with teenagers today. Everybody was getting a buff and polish now that school is out. High school kids with few exceptions are usually too busy to "be" sick. Of course they all still get sick but depending on what the weekend holds, well, it just may not be convenient to indulge in a sick day. This is not to say they don't whine and complain every minute of every day about one thing or another, body and soul. But they push through fevers, they rarely throw up, they take their medicines efficiently in pill form and they mostly rely on each other's folk remedies for a legion of adolescent ills...stomach aches, headaches, cramps, acne, whatever. Most complaints are triaged by texting a friend and treated with isolation in one's room or a little TLC by mom at the kitchen counter.

Today was my last trip to the pediatrician with Liv unless invited and fat chance of that, as she turns 18 this year. Since she is soon legal to fight in a foreign war or enjoy a pint of lager in England, conventional thinking is that she and Dr. K can and should handle routine health stuff without me from now on. I've been feeling like an interloper the past few years anyway so officially getting the boot feels fine. Who likes going to the doctor anyway? I'll be fine...I'll just sit in the waiting room and read my book...whimper, sniff.

When I look back and think about how often we were in doctor's offices during our first decade of parenting, it seems like I did little else; rashes, ear infection after ear infection, coughs, viruses, immunizations, big head circumferences, shaking legs, deer ticks....and on and on and on it went for years. There were times when I wondered was it something I was doing wrong. But it was just a phase, a quite normal phase of childhood and I wish I had been sure of that at the time as it would have saved me a lot of lost hours of sleep. And whatever brought us all to our knees weekly back in the nineties seems to have left all of us with hale and hearty constitutions now. This fact was made pretty clear today when Liv told the doctor she liked her new hairstyle to which the doctor cocked her head and looked perplexed, as she had cut her hair last November.

I was kicked out of the exam room in short course after the airing of the annual motherly concerns. Dr. K and Olivia exchanged looks with one another and I felt politely and sympathetically tolerated. My concerns would merely be a launching point for the real conversation they would have once I stepped out. So be it. I was sent to the waiting room feeling a bit superfluous while moms of toddlers ran around chasing their hellions. Yeah, I can be done with this.

Five years ago, thoughts in the distance of my kids growing up made me feel sad. And now that we're here I must remind myself that it is yet just another phase on the long road of parenting. I refuse to let myself get wound up about it. Just like everything else, we'll all settle into the new normal for a little while before it changes yet again.... and again and again. Just keep riding the parent rollercoaster, I tell myself, taking time to let go of the bar and wave my hands in the air a little bit during the straightaways.

Childhood immunizations, a seemingly endless pile of jabs it seemed would never end back in 1992, are finally complete. She's ready to handle the big bad world. Without stickers.

Last days in Alabama...heading north

2010-06-18T23:58:00.003-05:00

Cinnamon, Lighthouse Bakery backyard cat

Southern lightning. Not a drop of rain.

Bird Sanctuary....more like Bug Sanctuary

We just kept trying to throw money at anything that would move while visiting the island so we broke the cardinal rule of Hunter family vacations, avoid any learning, and went to the Dauphin Island Sea Lab and Estuarium, a worthy expense that might help the island overall. Unfortunately, by the time the woman tallied the senior discount and the student discount we had only dropped a scrawny Alexander Hamilton which we thought was kind of pitiful. Gift shop, there we went.

The estuarium's exhibit explains the interdependence between the four key habitats of coastal Alabama (their words not mine), which I read as fresh and salt water, barrier island and coast and how all of that works together to make this region rich in natural resources that crank many economic wheels. I couldn't help mentally moving around the furniture in this small museum to accommodate the new exhibit opening in 2011, The Gigantic Oil Spill and How it Forever Wrecked our Island in 2010. Ironically, Dauphin Island was originally called Massacre Island by the French colonists who found huge piles of human bones on a few spots on the island. These spots were later determined to be burial mounds made by Indians who had originally settled on the island. Massacre Island indeed. This time it's the oyster beds.

Critters in and out of the Dauphin Island Estuarium

And so we bid farewell to Tante Amy and Uncle Dave over a still fabulous seafood meal of hot garlic crab claws, fried alligator and shrimp salads. The truck spraying for mosquitos flicked on its insidious fogger as we kissed and hugged outside the restaurant. I told Olivia to quick hop in the van and protect her ovaries from whatever the hell was coming off that truck. The rest of us past our childbearing years continued our goodbyes in the fog.

A visit to Auburn on our way north. Our last college visit before applications. It's been a fun year going on campus tours with her as she so enjoys imagining herself at each place we see. I'm reassured that college doesn't seem to have changed much except for the price... and how much you couldn't pay me to do it again. I'll let Olivia blog it.

Yesterday, my Nana, my mom, and I all went to Auburn University so I could tour another college. Nana graciously rode the bus with Mom and me (named "Tiger Transit", after Auburn's mascot) from the Jule Art Center to the Quad Center, where our tour started, but opted out of coming on the tour with us. Wise choice, considering the 90-plus degree heat commonplace in the South in June.

Toomer's Drugstore for a limeade, their specialty. Fresh limes squoze to order

Auburn was AWESOME. Definitely my type of school. Our tour guide was very friendly, and from the way she described everyone else, including professors, I infer that everyone else is as nice as the day is long. Also, according to my Uncle Dave, Auburn students know how to party and have fun! The tour guide backed up this claim by describing one specific tradition: after any win in any sport, students head to a place called Toomer's Corner and toilet-paper a tree (which I assume every parent wants their child to learn at college). Despite my being a little Northern girl, I believe I will have a fantastic time learning and playing here.

In all seriousness, the roof on which we stood was as hot as the sun.

The town is the college, so there are Tiger paws and pictures of Aubie the Tiger in every kind of downtown business, from bookshops to bars. Lots of school pride--love it!

After our tour and a refreshing limeade at Toomer's drug store, it was unfortunately time to head home. I bid a fond farewell to the South and hope that I can come back for more limeade and Tiger pride.
War Eagle!

Chip's text, "Have we lost her to Dixie?" I think so. If you can love it at 99F, I think you really love it.

How many hurricanes has this old live oak seen I wonder?

Today, just one stop on our journey north.

I like to picture Jesus as a figure skater. He wears like a white outfit, and He does interpretive ice dances of my life's journey.

Love that dirty water

2010-06-16T08:41:00.005-05:00

I came to an “aha” moment a few months ago as I was doing something mundane at the kitchen sink that if anybody asked me what my greatest luxury is, I would say unfettered access to clean and potable water. That festival in India where 80 million people show up to the Ganges and bathe…well, that is not for me. Go ahead and say it Olivia and Allison, “Mom, you’re racist.”

And so I faced my fears a few days ago, had my own Ganges moment, when my brother-in-law and sister took us motoring in their sailboat upriver away from the tainted Gulf water to the brackish shores of the Fowl River, a spring-fed recreational river that does flow out to Mobile Bay. My brother-in-law insists its one of cleanest rivers in Mobile for its lack of pumped raw sewage. Great. Cold comfort.

A number of anonymous souls over the years dedicated to the fun of all mankind have maintained sturdy knotted ropes tied to a tree for boaters to use along the shoreline. There are 2 x 4s nailed to a tree and two boards not unlike water skis nailed to a branch extending out over the water. It’s a quick scramble up the trunk and then a quite literal walking of the plank to the bow’s edge. A friend, or an uncle in our case, hands you the rope and coaxes you to resist your very rational fear of what you are about to do and then you swing out into the river and let go.

I neither scramble nor resist rational fear easily. As we motored out in the 106F midday heat index with no breeze, all I could think about was the state of the water and what had I gotten myself into. But it turns out when heat stroke is upon me, I will jump into any water no matter how questionable. Olivia, always the thrill seeker in our family, climbed the tree despite the hundreds of little crabs moving up and down the trunk like spiders. She declared her fear quite clearly and she jumped. Once the kid had shown us how it's done, we adults all gave it a try and it was indeed fun, once. And despite the thorough sinus wash by the sketchy river water, I lived to see another day.

Dauphin Island is the Jersey shore for people from as far north as Birmingham, even for beach weekends and holidays through these ungodly hot summer months. The outdoor swimming pools are naturally heated to a very unrefreshing 90 degrees and the view from the beach is that of working oil rigs just off shore, still pumping away despite the current disaster. It’s a scrappy little island unapologetic for its ramshackle tourist services and coarse vista. Swimming and boating in full view of oil rigs is an acquired taste.

It’s so absurdly hot during the day that the beaches are empty much of the time the sun is up and fill with people at dusk. The Cullens of Twilight would be at home here.

But at last I am able to walk on the beach without burning my feet. There’s a faint breeze and it’s carrying the smell of oil tonight. I can only post photos of the very normal and very not normal of the Gulf Coast during these fragile days in its history.

I found this to be questionable parenting but my brother in law said, "it's probably ok."

A dolphin grabbing dinner just 50 feet from where we stood on the beach, rigs in the background

The Gulf Coast

2010-06-14T09:02:00.001-05:00

Two days of anticipation as to what we would find here on the Gulf Coast so it seems only right that I start with the destination and work backwards on the trip.

June in Dauphin Island, Alabama. Could not be sweatier. We arrived around 5pm just as five or six Jeep loads of clean up crews were leaving the beaches for the day. A sobering first sight.

The usual car/beach vacation scenario of unloading and running to the beach was not quite our inclination when we arrived. Air conditioning is gooooood. Eventually we all followed the smoker out to the porch and after a gin and tonic I started to think it wasn't really too bad outside. Silly gin.

I was anxious to see the beach and chased down the first Alabaman who looked my way. She’s a native of Birmingham but has been coming to Dauphin Island for many years, having adult children that played here as kids. She and her husband have owned a condo on the east side of Dauphin Island since 1995, hosting kids and grandkids to beach vacations and boating trips around the island where she says they lure dolphins routinely to “show out” behind the boat, standing on their tails and nickering for the bait fish that the kids fling from the back of their boat.

Last week in Birmingham, she told her husband, “I just have to go see it.” He said, “Why? It will just make you sad.” She said, “Well, then it will make me sad but I have to go.” They’ve been here since Monday and she speculates that because of the wind currently blowing out of the southwest this eastern beach along the Gulf has been spared the gross oil blobs washing ashore. Not so lucky on the western part of this island where there is oil in abundance washing ashore, devastating the economy here yet again just as it was coming back from Katrina and Rita. She tells me, “I’ve cried and I’ve prayed and I keep praying.” Further along the Gulf coast to the east, Florida is getting the worst of it the past few days. Bon Secour, Gulf Shores, Perdido Key swamped with oil. My brother-in-law tells me that many tourist businesses' bills are coming due about now and with no customers they are in fear of losing everything. I'm glad I'm here to spend some money because what else can I do but wring my hands.

The skimmer is right there, literally situated off of our beach according to how the water currents are flowing so as to optimize its catch of oil in the water. But the truth is, the fish are swimming to Texas, BP isn’t returning phone calls and my new friend from Birmingham has oil on the bottoms of her water shoes. “The oil is out there even though you can’t see it. This is the most I’ve had on my shoes all week. You should rinse your feet.” And I do. As we talked, a mullet jumped high out of the water. She found that encouraging. I wondered if he was jumping not because that’s what mullets do but because he was starving for oxygen in this water choked with oil and dispersants. It’s too much to think about. As my friend wrote recently, so succinct and perfect, “Poor Gulf.”

No tar balls here. yet.

We traveled Highway 45 for almost the entire day, from Tennessee nearly to Mobile. It’s a dandy road with a 65 mph speed limit but no trucks due to its limited local access and no brake zones. A hidden gem of a road with just the right amount of towns to keep it interesting.

Traveling with a smoker provides an alternative look at travel compared to our family’s usual “iron butt” strategy of driving. My mom will tell you she can go as long as it takes between cigarettes but I’m telling you she can go about 90 minutes before the Life Saver unwrapping, Goldfish cracker eating, ice chewing and finger tapping makes me want to push her ever so gently out the car window. And since smokers love their cold drinks, I am won over by the gas station fountain drink guzzler with loads of ice. Sipping Dr. Pepper on a southern highway was befitting of the journey...if only Lynyrd Skynyrd had been on the radio. However, as a newbie to the 64 oz. slow sip society, my pacing was off and I was in a little bit of a pickle mid afternoon.

I announced to Mom and Olivia that what we needed was some good karma following a perplexing search for food in downtown Meridian, MS. Apparently they don't eat food there. So seeing a sign for fresh peaches, I swung a hard left across the highway south of Meridian in need of food and a reststop. Fontaine's Peaches Farmstand not only had a restroom for customers (whodathunk), but also the most chin-dripping peachiest peaches I've had in a long time. I bought fifteen peaches more out of gratitude for their being plumbed than anything.

Sturm und Drang

2010-06-12T22:47:00.003-05:00

I think this storm was a microburst or a downburst or maybe just a terrible thunderstorm but mind you, it had rotation. I'm a midwest girl now and I know when clouds are swirling. Whatever it was, we were driving in it. It snapped trees, brought 18-wheelers to a crawl and grounded every motorcyclist beneath underpasses across a wide north/south swath of southern Illinois this morning. I called Chip at home after our near death experience to have him check the radar for details. His voice was dulled by disinterest....competing thoughts of World Cup coverage interfered with my drama queen moment.

Him. "Yeah, that looks pink."
Me. "What does pink mean?"
Him. "It is somewhere between severe and extreme."
Me. "No shit."

I'll spare the details since going into it properly would require me to do a lot of wild gesticulating in your face with bug eyes but, in a word, it was badness. Wiping out three generations of women in one car was not my plan today. Rotating clouds over my car, well, it turns out I did not and still do not have a plan for that. I had a quick fantasy of myself lying on top of my mother and my daughter in a ditch along I-39. I scanned for a funnel around me but then instinct said run. And so we did.

We're on the road to Alabama for some family time with my sister and brother-in-law and to do one more college visit. It's not a bad journey with Nana at my side. She points out little forests and cloud shapes and rock formations and likes to listen to the radio like I do. Livvy is happy to just ride the drive. She watches movies and has occasional outbursts of laughter that are fun for those of us up front who only have the road to watch.

No trip south is complete without a side trip to Metropolis, IL to see Superman. Turns out today was the Superman Festival but at 95 degrees, funnel cake and carnival games had no appeal. We grabbed our sweet teas, a few snapshots and hit it for Jackson, TN, our destination for today.

Why is Metropolis' Big John bigger than Superman? John carries groceries. Superman can stop a train with his body. I don't know what to think. The scale is off.

Wonder Woman coming out of the information booth. Really? Doesn't she have super powers?

A more rural drive takes us through the last of southern Illinois, then far western Kentucky and Tennessee and reveals some corporate farming of corn and soy and two big industries, churches and mega high schools. Crosses and football stadiums are thick on the ground. Tomorrow we hit the Alabama Gulf Coast.

My 600 mile 22 oz Bud Light.

The beast within.

2010-06-09T18:00:00.000-05:00

So many reflections about a day that started like any other but quickly dissolved into an axe wielding frenzy.

I don't think it's a part of ourselves we ever really talk about with one another but I've been to your houses and I know you move large pieces of furniture by yourself just like I do so I don't think it's just me. Instinctively and impulsively and at times randomly, we decide we must move something right now. Sometimes I've thought about it beforehand but haven't been so moved yet to do it and sometimes it's a new thought completely. But when the will and the way cogs mesh on any given day, there's little that can be done to redirect me until I get it done. I’m rarely if ever put off by tasks that seem too heavy or too big or too improbable to pull off. Last week it was rolling a giant leather chair up the basement steps. Today, it was tree removal.

This morning, like many mornings this spring, I was greeted (for the last time as it turns out) by a smug, weedy tree sticking out tall and green through one of our evergreens. The cheek of it! It had nurtured itself unnoticed beneath the evergreen branches like a fragment of Voldemort, surreptitiously developing a proper trunk and branches and stuck out through the middle of the evergreen like a bratty kid’s tongue. The nyah nyah mockery of me had finally taken its toll. Its life would end today.

A little history that pains me to reveal is that these kinds of weed trees were all over West Philly and I loved them because they were green. They filled in the cracks of the concrete and the crumbling buildings and vacant lots and covered the graffiti nicely. I told myself they were trees anyway. But in a pedigree landscape, they look like the mutts that they are. Today was finally a day of action.

I wandered off the porch and down the hill in my pajamas like a sleepwalker. My mom looked worried, as she usually does when I get that look on my face.

Mom. “Where are you going?”

I didn’t quite answer. I walked straight into the evergreen to face my enemy. It was not to be a clipper mission I came to find. I came up the hill and headed for the garage.

Mom. “Where are you going now?”

Me. “To get the axe.”

Mom. “WHAAAAT? Oh, Lord…..you’re going to hurt yourself”

Bruce congratulating me on my tree felling

A few years ago, Chip’s stepdad gave him an axe for Christmas. Naturally I was suspicious. There’s a lot of evidence on Dateline NBC that suburbs cause men to kill their wives. I’ve been lucky so far but I sleep with one eye open at all times.

Still clad in pajamas and untrussed, as it were, I set out to the side of the hill with my axe, my clippers and my phone. My mom’s a panicker so I was pretty sure if I hacked my leg off at the shin it was going to be on me to call fire/rescue.

It wasn't exactly Braveheart but by the time I was done, my hair and face were painted with sap. I hacked and grunted and cursed and hacked and rested and hacked some more. Not sexy. Finally with a few twists I heard the satisfying rip/crackle of the last bits of cellulose busting free from the stump. I’m pretty sure I called the tree a motherf*cker in my triumph which I think only my mom heard but can't be sure. What I am quite sure of is that I looked half insane and can't imagine anyone would have come out of their house to confront me on my language while I stood half nekkid before them with an axe in my hands.

My jack in the pulpit watched. I love him and will never take an axe to him.

Reflections on axe wielding.

Throwing an axe while standing on a slippery hill contraindicated. Nobody in human history should do that again.
I have a new appreciation for trees because they are some sonsabitches strong when they want to be.
I have a new appreciation for hurricanes and tornadoes that snap trees.
Chopping something down with an axe is harder than you’d think and I have a new respect for people who chop firewood, let alone people who are loggers.
Chopping something down with an axe is extremely satisfying and makes you feel like a beast. And in fact that was my text to Chip, "I AM A BEAST." But he gets these texts a lot so he didn't even call home.

It's all over but the shouting

2010-06-07T21:20:00.001-05:00

Softball banquet. Check. Turned in the uniforms. Check. Lockers cleaned out. Check. Instruments returned. Check. And absolutely nobody on Facebook in the computer room. Check.

JV Softball, not a winning season but a team come together in the end

Yep, finals week has begun. Nobody but Chip and me and the pets in the family room watching the Brewers, the girls deeply embedded in their rooms. Maybe studying, maybe not. Not my gig anymore.

Junior Prom 2010

Another school year coming to a close, another summer begins. I cheer on behalf of most but not all kids this time of year because having worked as a school nurse I know that for some kids of poverty or those with trouble in their families, summer is a time of worry, instability and boredom...lacking in structure or any kind of summer fun that many of us take for granted: swimming, vacations, barbecues, time to dream, rest, plenty of food. School is a safe haven for more kids than my heart can ache for. Not so much a problem for these sassy pants below, my favorite picture ever of the waning days of the school year.

Today I shopped for a personal calendar and although the 2011 calendars are not out in the stores yet, the academic calendars continue to suit my needs fine. January Schmanuary. My sun continues to rise and set by the Madison Public School District calendar for a few more years.

Good job again, my girls. You don't read often but in case you read today, I'm proud of you and love you more than I can ever put into words. Looking forward to a fun summer with you.