My dirty little basement secret...

When we returned from England last winter we had less than six weeks to figure out our transition from analog to digital television. Long story short we upgraded two of the six televisions to HD--yes, in fact we do use six, ok? High-def baseball, football, Mad Men, Young and the Restless, Today Show's Matt Lauer and Law and Order. Fantastic, couldn't be better. The analog converter boxes for the old TVs have kept them working in the digital age...except for one.

The laundry room TV. An old black and white TV from my childhood, nearing its 35ish birthday. It's so old in fact that it doesn't possess the nubbin on which to attach a converter box to receive a digital signal. It still turns on despite its ancient body....but comparable to Hugh Hefner or George Hamilton "ought to be home praying for a happy death," as my dear old Uncle Jim used to say. I should have landfilled it with the others but I couldn't bear to part with this tangible piece of my childhood. My sister and I watched many an episode of Brady Bunch and Flintstones on this old friend.

It's hiding behind all the crap that hangs around by my washer and dryer. Up until the socialist takeover by the death panel advocate digital special interest groups, I would watch this TV by literally turning the dial to my favorite soaps as I folded or did laundry. I should have known by the cancellation of Guiding Light after 70 years that my laundry room was organized around a fragile house of cards called my nostalgia. The TV has sat idle since the move to digital and my laundry's been backing up.

Yet a true believer doesn't forget there are miracles around us every day. And so the other day feeling alone and lost in the laundry room, I flipped on the set on for a lark. Even the snowy noise was better than being alone, I thought. And lo and behold, two channels came through. Praise. Two channels with a similar theme. Hallelujah. Jesus refuses to be bound by the digital age! Turns out Ecclesiastes is a fine book of the Bible to fold laundry by.

I'm actually a long time connoisseur of televangelists dating back to the seventies with Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart. My favorite crooks...er...preachers of all time, though, are the triumvirate of evil, Richard Roberts, Benny Hinn and my old Louisiana buddy, Robert Tilton. My whole family enjoyed Tilton as he often segued into tongues while preaching and begging for money. "The Lord shall sayeth, hobbibity bibbity that you shall walk...dibbidity doo bezahzah.....with your credit card to the phone..zimminy shizzah..."

Benny Hinn sported an elaborate comb-over that renders Donald Trump's coiffure an amateur effort. Benny's TV trademark was whacking people vigorously on the forehead to drive disease and pain out of their bodies. Bodyguards stood at the ready to catch the fallen and presumably cured as they melted to the floor with Benny's "coulda had a V-8" anointing.




Richard Roberts, the son of Oral Roberts, was probably the most mainstream of the three as he and his beautiful wife Lindsay (often pregnant) serenely preached from a chat-show-style set with a vibe so similar to Regis and Kathie Lee that it couldn't have been accidental. Richard also had his moments of speaking in tongues but not with the same enthusiasm or jazz-like scat that characterized Tilton's ministry. I've studied them all.

Of course all of them calculatingly and ruthlessly preying upon the lonely, the elderly and the infirm, taking money for prayer concerns which they then spent on lavish treats for themselves off-camera. All televangelists, some of whom I started watching on this very RCA Solid State set (The Bakkers' PTL Club was often the only thing on UHF back in high school on a day home sick on the sofa) are eventually exposed for their duplicitousness and all the aforementioned are in arrears to the tax man and in some cases, the law man.

And yet, the march of the televangelist apparently soldiers on broadcasting their shows on analog to those lonely few without converter boxes or cable or satellite--shut-ins like myself. A captive audience, lonely for a connection in a big world and willing to pay for it. I look forward to laundry folding again and reacquainting myself with the new crop of charlatans.



I just checked...boring old Pat Robertson. I'm looking for new blood. The hail is falling, Armageddon approaches.

I like this guy and all...

Tradition dictates in the year 2009 that I celebrate my nearest and dearest's birthdays with a few pictures and a visceral, loving post. My most public of relationships with the most private of feelings. Hmmm, I could go on and on about him and that would surely go the way of nauseating. But here's the bottom line distilled down from many to two main points:

He's the baby daddy and my biggest blog fan.

From Woman of a certain age

Literally, we have followed one another to the ends of the earth and that's been going on for about 25 years.

We feel an addiction to one another much like Whitney and Bobby do (let's not kid ourselves that that relationship is over) but the connection is and always has been over the spoken word. My dad has frequently commented through the years that he is baffled by our verbal shorthand...he claims he doesn't understand a thing we say to one another because it's all quick references and smart alecky remarks and banter.

And we do talk a lot. A minimum of three times a day on the phone unless there's a tee time bolloxing up my access. Little check-ins, to-do items, funny stories we won't remember later in the day, irritations, updates, guess what famous person dieds and you won't believe its--work day or not, we get a little twitchy if we don't have our chat time.

So not much to say here (since we've already talked once today) except...

There's nobody luckier in love than me. Happy Birthday Jibber. Call me.

Madison's Willy Street Fair will make it alright

"I'm not going to kick the can further down the road." President Obama about health care reform.







I love the phrase. I'm not living it in the slightest in my personal life but I still love it. My situation is more of a where'd I leave stuff ooh look at the butterfly forgetting to turn off the car ignition before getting out of the car kind of can-kicking. Not dealing well with even the most mundane list of tasks. Couldn't even blog until today because everytime I set keystroke to screen, it sounded complainy and fuzzy.

So far I still know how to get home...but I am keeping a close eye on myself and whether I put the keys in the fridge or not.



It seems when my kids go back to school, my September attention deficit disorder flares up. Schedules are full again, my mind is racing in neutral.

...sylla baked cookies...I should bake cookies....where are my keys?....what did I do with that bill I paid, it was supposed to go in the mail it's already late....back to school night....orthodontist....work....where are my keys?...mom's birthday is next week....what am I going to get Chip for his birthday....we're out of milk....what am I reading for book club?.....should we go to the wedding?....which car am I taking?....snacks for school lunches..I want a betta fish.....mammogram....Walgreens.....Whitney on Oprah.



Fabulous summer weather for the first three weeks of school, making going to work and sending kids off in the morning feel like we're in a wormhole.




The Willy Street Fair! That'll right my sails. A little afternoon Klezmer music and people watching whilst drinking Fat Tire beer along with the inspired purchase of a metal rooster planter on my favorite side of Madison. I can feel myself re-centering and re-entering. First things first, I bought myself a betta fish.

Summer's end...again

It's looming. I have a pit in my stomach and I don't want to talk about it. Even good students dread the start of school and I was never an exception...up through graduate school. My kids are the same and I love them for it--we wallow together at the end of every August. Chip sympathizes but without true appreciation and respect for the dread. The beginning of the calendar year is September no matter what the Romans have led us to believe. A week ago, I still had the fantasy going that autumn and school and early sunsets were a long way off. I feel so sad for all the little children this week.



A trip to Two Harbors, MN on the northshore of Lake Superior with girlfriends. Such a fun time and although there were fall- like temperatures up there and a few red leaves on the ground already, it was still summer. What a difference a week makes.





Agates are the biggest treasure to be found on the northshore of Lake Superior and my friends and I were obsessed in our search for them. Milky and translucent, jammed layers of creams and reds--symbolic stone testaments of long-standing friendship. Eons of laughs, history, private joys and sorrows, marriages, deaths, children, illness compressed into a tight wad of unbreakable matter.





All the stones I found are in my garage now. Today I brought them out to show a friend and let them pass through my fingers over and over....pretending I'm on the beach again and it's summer and I'm younger and my kids are younger and life is moving at a snail's pace.

Nothing funny about school starting. It's even hard to blog. Just want to curl up and be in a funk.

Lookie lookie loo

I'm casting my hook a little further and further out into the depths each week and feeling a little desperate (in my mind) as I search for employment. It's never been hard to find a job as a nurse and maybe it still isn't if you aren't picky and you specialize in aging boomers. But over the years I have become a specialist in sick kids and a specialist in not working nights, weekends or holidays. Sigh. sigh. I know in six months I'll just kick myself for wasting my days in August worrying about finding work. I just know it. But I'm a worrier and an obsessive and so this little loop I'm currently spinning in will just have to burn itself out.



Today, I spent the afternoon with my rellies. Distant and dead, but nonetheless a joy to look at and talk to and move about the wall. I want you to believe I'm an interior design artist as you admire my artful attention to placement and detail. But it's a big lie. The frames are mostly from Walgreens and the placement is haphazard, although there are some loose groupings by family. This guy is this guy's dad, and this guy is my dad's dad, etc. But the stark contrasts of black and white matting is a complete and utter mistake on my part. As I stood in the matting section of the store today, I convinced myself that all the photographs at home were matted in black. I even put back all the cream colored matting that I initially took off the shelves. I got home, never looked at my staircase, framed the most recent crop, walked over to the wall and realized all the mats were cream colored.

The idea isn't even mine as I stole it from a woman in our birthing class who had us all over for a reunion once all the babies were born. I looked around the room and thought to myself, "I'll never see these people again. I'm stealing her photo staircase idea as soon as I get out of here." I find that many of my decorating ideas are mistakes, stolen and/or a result of sloth and convenience.



It helps to have beautiful parents with which to start such a staircase. There are abbreviations in pediatrics to communicate quickly to colleagues what they are about to come upon in an examination room. FLK is one of my favorites. And it's applicable in my case: BP + BP = FLK. Funny Lookin Kid. I'm not sad or in need of reassurance. I've had my cute days and I like myself generally. But these two...they're just annoyingly attractive.



Absolutely feel free to steal this idea. DIY.

I get by with a little help from my friends

Trucking it home in one day from the east coast with music and friends. I couldn't have done it without my best pals, Ally and Livvie. I may be the platoon leader but they are the grunts who put their necks on the line and win the war under my leadership. Plugging in and tuning out, working time efficiently at their appointed rest stops and eating whatever I throw in the back of the car. Most importantly, they actively engage with me in radio channel surfing through big metropolitan areas where the tunes are plentiful and the car karaoke possibilities are unlimited. We do a little of their music (Taylor, Miley, Jordan, Kelly, Akon, Mraz etc.) and then we do a little of mine. I'm a hip mama but I still can't get through "Blame it on the A-a-a-a-alcohol" and "Birthday Sex" to which they reply, "AW, MOM!, C'MON." I flick it briskly to whatever Clear Channel has cooking for the oldsters. I watch in the rearview mirror as their faces wrinkle like there's a bad smell in the car while I croon the banal songbook of Peter Cetera..."Like a knight in shining armor, from a long time ago...". Really any song with a saxophone is bad news for them. And I am a fantastic singer within the generous acoustics of a Dodge Caravan.



I reward them with some Miley's The Climb or some Taylor's Romeo and Juliet. We make the generational see-saw work for us. In the end, my long time boyfriends rode up alongside me on their emotional Harleys in all their glorious denim and fringe and voluminous hair blowin' in the wind.... John Mellencamp, Jim Croce, Steven Tyler, Jimmy Buffett, Dan Fogelberg (ok, he was on a Vespa) and Robert Plant were amongst those that helped me bring her home from Chicago to Madison when I was in desperate need of inspiration and pillows for my head and my tush. I am grateful to rock and roll for its restorative juice.



Our visit to The Philadelphia Zoo on Tuesday, while excruciatingly hot, was another wonderful reminder of my multigenerational connection to the city. My dad would tell me stories of how he went there as a child and my mom used to go with her boyfriend the veterinarian and feed cigarette butts to the hippos (how is that a good story to tell your kids?). My own experiences at the zoo were of running around with my friend Karen Porter whose mom took kids to every fun thing in the city every week and I was one of the gang. Most of my cultural experiences were obtained via a grant from the Porter Foundation. And then in the nineties, my own children visited the naked mole rats weekly.




The big cats have a new habitat as do the primates. The elephants are gone as their enclosure was antiquated. I was touched at this 150 year old zoo's attempts to keep current and conservationist in what has become a hostile society for zoos. I figure 150 years ago, zoos were some of the most forethinking organizations related to any sort of conservation as scary as that may seem today. Ally hates zoos but I pointed out that circuses still exist and their treatment of animals is far more suspect than any zoo. She rolled her eyes and I realized I had gone too far. Why can't I just nod and listen?




A statue behind the old cat houses is the site of one of our favorite pictures of Ally and Liv together and so we tried to recreate it this visit only to find the mounted statue is either removed or buried behind all the new facades. I asked at the gate about its whereabouts and the man said, "You are the second person today to ask about a statue." He went on to tell me that there was a man who wanted the location of a statue where he himself had been photographed alongside his grandfather and that day wanted to take a picture of himself and his grandson. If you're going to run a zoo for 150 years, you had better realize that the only continuity for many of us oldtimers might be the statues.

What are you lookin' at?

Aunt Michele and that's with one L

As I drove into Ocean City over the Longport Bridge, the guy in the toll booth took my money and said simply, "How ya been?" Nobody in WI says "How ya been?". Nice as the day is long the people in Wisconsin, but rarely familiar. Everybody here behaves somewhat familiarly and they're sort of bored about it as if you always come over the Longport Bridge that same time everyday. I likey.


I've always felt awkward about the use of the monikers aunt and uncle for non-related adults. Like if they're not related and you call them uncle, it will cause them to touch you in ways that make you feel uncomfortable and you won't tell anybody. Ok, everybody has their irrational fears...Chip thought the babies would be switched in the nursery and we would go home with the wrong one. No explanations, no apologies. It also seemed confusing to call everybody aunt and uncle and a little disrespectful to the few and the proud, so I kept the list for our kids exclusive to the Webster's Dictionary definitions.....except for one. Aunt Michele. She's my roommate from college and one of the inner circle of about seven women unrelated to me that I'd consider giving a kidney.



We are common-law marrieds, soul mates, inextricably-intertwined (you can google this phrase, it's legal) for 28 years. Possibly bordering on Kay and Flo, those Dick-Clark-loving autistic twins on the Discovery Health Channel. I could tell you stories, only they would bore you because you experienced all the same things with your own Aunt Michele back in the day. But the reality is most people lose touch with their aunt micheles and that's a damn shame. Nothing like an old friend to keep you honest and give you a place on earth to be your authentic authentic self. Not the poetic one Dr. Phil talks about but the warty, farty one that worries about creepers molesting kids that were forced to call non-related adults, "uncle". Aunt Michele accepts my quirks with an "Alrighty then." and moves on. I hide nothing from her and that's likely a byproduct of peeing with the door open for three years. Hey, we were always busy so when one of us was sitting for the moment, it was the ideal time to check in.

Can you get back in touch with your own Aunt Michele? Sure you can. Facebook has made this person accessible to you again. My Aunt Michele isn't on Facebook so it's a gamble, but maybe one worth exploring.

Evil therapist noted these long standing relationships as an unusual (I heard strange) priority in one's present life. Well, it may be rare but when I see our kids together, I know my priorities are in order and evil therapist is wrong. The past seven years we've been busy raising our families and we don't talk everyday anymore, but her cell phone number is burned in my brain and I know she's out there to catch me if I fall as she's done thousands of times before.



Classic Philly heat today. Mid 90s and high high humidity. Even the weather is welcoming me back.