Believe in Vegan

I have one new reader since I last wrote a post so it seems like I should write to celebrate her.  And I will get back to her in a minute.

I have added a new follow link here on the main page to a very good vegan blog. This blog is written by my former college roommate and longtime friend, Cele. We don't see each other much but as anybody knows, college friends get a free pass, free range, free lunch and free access to come in and out of our lives as suits them or us.  There are no rules except once they're in, they're never out even if they want out.  Like the mafia.  

I post the picture above of my vegan daughter who has sought baking inspiration from Cele's blog. My husband and I have been the beneficiaries of this inspiration. Since living at home again for a few months, she feels it's only fair to contribute to the household with a "weekly breakfast bread." Who am I to argue with this logic? This week's delight has fresh berries and lots of oats and isn't too sweet so can be enjoyed with or without butter and with or without heating. Over the past few months, I have been surprised just how easy it is to adapt many favorite recipes to vegan, substituting nut milks, applesauce and oils for dairy and eggy ingredients we assume baked goods must have. The food tastes different for sure but it never tastes worse and sometimes it tastes better. It almost always tastes like fruit or vegetables and of the earth and I mean that in a good way; in a way that meat never does.

My new reader and funny as hell friend has said say she would disown her kids if they stopped eating meat. Big talk. The universal truth is that our kids begin exercising the muscles of dissension from our parenting pretty early in life, especially if they smell any vested interest by a parent. My daughter reluctantly ate meat as a little kid and as she took charge of feeding herself, she was done with it completely (save the occasional fall off the bacon wagon). This dietary coup was not negotiated with us as parents and we were the ones who had to adapt if we wanted her to sit down to dinner with us. Her blood thirsty sister wasn't too impressed and it was annoying as a busy parent trying to feed one vegetarian in a meat eating household I'm not gonna lie. But these past few months, I'm listening hard to my young adult about what I don't know about living beyond recycling. If not elimination, why not try reduction of eating meat and dairy to improve the environment? As a result of her knowledge and cooking alongside her, I buy meat and milk less frequently these days and try new ways of preparing dishes without animal products. It does actually give me a feeling of some small control over helping fix a big problem and since I love control, it's a win-win for me and the planet.

Notes from a powerful little woman up and coming in the world

So to my new reader and friend, thanks for inspiring me to write again in my blog and I would suggest an easier way to go in the coming years may be celebrating your children's fierce and personal ideals. Otherwise these notes are gonna escalate.

The "scrap" is key to an enduring scrapbook

David Cassidy has died and along with him, a tiny piece of my gristled heart. When I was a little girl, I purchased with my own money an 8x10 black and white glossy poster of DC that hung in my bedroom for longer than was probably cool.  Over my childhood, the childish bedroom art came down and the rock and roll record album posters went up.  David stood tall in the shadow of that 4x3 foot Frampton Comes Alive poster.  What I'm about to write feels true so I'll slip into memoir mode for just one second to say that my best friend Sherri (I'm smelling her armpit above because that's just solidly funny in a photo booth) made fun of David Cassidy still hanging on my wall. She had older brothers with scary blacklight posters of Ozzie and Alice Cooper and I want to say a panther, so I'm positive she would have shared her opinion about my little 8x10 dreamboat.  I cared what she thought about a lot of things, but I don't feel like she instigated his eventual removal.  A girl's bedroom is her sanctum at the end of the day, and while friends might tease you about your David Cassidy poster, those friends go home at night and....David stays.

I suspect that David actually finally came off the wall around 1977 when he married a Miss Kay Lenz.  First marriage for both.  They looked happy, she was a starlet television actress with gorgeous long chestnut hair and a lot of teeth.  We would have been friends.  I looked at her mermaid dress and her strappy shoes and then I took a good hard look in the mirror (#MeAt14 above) acknowledging that the ship of our romance had sunk. I released my crush on David, being a good girlfriend to Kay, and to be a really good sport about it I cut out the newspaper clipping and put it in my scrapbook.  I will BE the bigger person about this, David.

I went looking for my scrapbook last night when I heard he died, because I was pretty sure he was in there, and he was.  My scrapbook is a chronological mishmash of stuff assembled on the whim of me as high school senior, maybe in summer with some time on my hands to create a portentous masterpiece of my life thus far.  Invitations to bar mitzvahs and sweet sixteens are included, and the scrapbook ends with senior year graduation cards and corsages.  Four critical years of basically, parties.

I never got into the scrapbooking craze of the early 2000s, which was an industry quickly decimated by the smart phone, thank you Jesus.  The execution of these scrapbooks was about precision and tools and themes and perfection.  It was about creating a utopic version of the current state of your family, omitting the fact or scarier yet including the fact pictorially that your toilet training kid pooped in the neighbor's front yard. So precious!  Family stories were told through beaming faces in national parks and words of inspiration and calligraphy and borders and thought bubbles.  To me, it was horrendous.  And worth saying, many moms who had the toughest time managing their hellions had the most perfect scrapbooks.  "Let me just insert you right here inside this bordered page with a smile on your face and GLUE YOU DOWN."

"Scrap" is the key element in scrapbooking.  Scrapbooks should be ragtag, right?  A collection of paper and pressable relics; torn ticket stubs obviously for the BEST concert you ever went to by a band you can't remember, invitations, clippings from the newspaper of cute athlete boys who are "just friends." My scrapbook of the late 1970s, ungainly and dorky like myself, is surprisingly holding up fine without lamination or moisture control. Again, like myself.  I can't recall the meaning of many of the handwritten references or even some of the events for which I had tickets.  However, two best friends from childhood who have died in the past five years are represented through their cards and letters by beautiful accident, just like David Cassidy's wedding announcement. A lot of junk surrounding a few really precious scraps.  As I flip the pages of my scrapbook I feel my thirtysomething parents, I feel the dread and excitement of school,  I feel the music I loved and I feel the friendships I knew.  I feel myself.  It's a dandy time capsule for emotions and sensations without specificity that would otherwise be lost to me.  RIP David, Sandra and Karen.  I would never forget you, but I am so happy to still feel you.

I hope Bobby Sherman is still kickin'.

Focus and light

When our laptop died a few years back, I switched over to my smart phone for pretty much everything.  I take pictures and troll Facebook and google everything and stay in constant touch with throngs of people and keep my calendar. Like you do.  But the underbelly of this decision for me was that communication and correspondence with everyone has grown abbreviated and truncated.  Efficient maybe, but lacking.  Indeed with the immediacy of texting, transactional communication is a breeze.  So helpful with quick questions, flight times and numbers, check ins, and don't even get me started on my love for Bitmoji.  But I'm actually terrible at this efficient style of communication even when the subject is transactional. I wander wildly off course and it becomes defeating for everyone when I send fifty texts to the other person's one:

Ally: What are the last four of Dad's SS#   Need for work form

Me: X-X-X-X.  How are you?  

Me: Today was a hard day, I really missed Nana for some reason, I wonder why? 

Me: How is your weather? How is Billy? 

Me: Have you seen Hidden Figures? So good!

Ally: Um im at work ttyl

I am pretty sure that the Do Not Disturb function on iPhones was invented by guys and gals to block chatty moms.

The one thing that is really impossible to do from a smart phone is write a paragraph. And sometimes I have a paragraph I really need to get out.  The smart world is good for a tweet, a text, a meme, a petition, a list, and anonymity around true motive and being drawn in to a deeper conversation.  It is so easy to disappear into the ether if the conversation gets complicated, yes I'm talking to you. I guess I'm also tired of the uncertainty of being understood in 140 characters, of being pushed around by a PUSH notification existence and a growing unsocial media. Now I'm not a FB quitter, no sir.  I will never be the person who is left behind on the most current American cultural reference and if you suggest something like that, well you can..."Cassshh me ousside, how 'bout dat?"  But in a somewhat regressive move,  I bought another laptop.  I am moving my own conversation back to a more appropriate platform for getting out all my feelings and probing for deeper understanding and communion with my fellow person. I think the occasional blog comment is more life affirming than a hundred likes on Facebook and imagine all the space in everyone's text feeds with me gone! You're welcome, Ally and Liv. 

As for my photography, the iPhone camera technology has sadly kicked my camera's ass to the curb.  Filters and editing compliment my slacker ways.  I have a bit of artistry in me when it comes to seeing the shot, but meh, not so interested in learning how to technically make the shot.  Let's leave that to the geniuses at Apple shall we?  My real camera sits in a bag and I'm not even sure where.  I had my problems with focus and light with my traditional camera, never made better because of my resistance to RTFMD*.  The word manual implies labor which immediately makes me sleepy.  It is a marital issue as much as anything and Chip finally agreed that I bring several other strengths to the marriage so we just let this one go.  

I will try to find my new muse in the Inland Northwest and to find the funny.  The Midwest was so dang easy for material that I'm not sure I can top it but I'll try. 

*read the fucking manual, darling

May 2016

I turned 53 this month.  Time to start eating my vegetables.

I turned 53. Too late to start eating my vegetables? Trying some vegetarian recipes in advance of Ally's return.  Vegetarian crab cakes, sweet pea hummus

So long summer

My explanation for moving has crystallized into an oratory about family priorities and freedom from restrictive vacation policy. I'm boring myself to death and probably everyone else.  Although as I tell women of a certain age my story of freedom, they look at me like Debra Winger in An Officer and a Gentleman, being carried off the factory floor by an officer dressed in white.  I don't think too many people leave my health system willingly before retirement.  And even those nurses that retire seem apologetic about it. Like they are letting down the team.  Organizational culture is strong where I work, and it used to be an organization where people worked for their whole careers.  I'm not sure now that the unions are gone that employees will still feel that same security or allegiance in the future.

Summer is done, fall is a welcome change as always.  The garden is brown, the mums are for sale, the geese are flying, and the local produce, apples.

The technology is all different

Firing up a blog after four years is like getting R2D2 up and running.  Chip has started his drive westward HO with his mini covered wagon, and coincidentally I saw the friend this week who inspired this blog.  Time to go looking for Obi Wan.  So much has happened in five years that I'm unsure of this rickety e journal's relevance in 2015. But I know enough that it's less lonely on a journey if I can bring a few people along. Travel, transition, redefinition, relevance and now post-fifty melodrama.  I have some stuff to say, if only to decrease the amount of spam this site receives when it's dormant.  And that brings me to a thousand stories since 2011.

Halloween

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

 

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

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.

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.