Girl From Texas

Bookclub(s)

2012-01-21T16:53:00.003-06:00

For the past thirty years, I've been involved in several (mostly female member) book clubs. Sure, its a cliche, and we don't spend all our time talking about books, so the title of the gathering may be a misleading misnomer. Essentially, it's a regularly recurring semi-ritualistic female social gathering, which may or may not include references to books, but definitely includes delicious food, wine, gossip, chit-chat, and camaraderie. Previous generations have called these sort of gatherings knitting or sewing circles, Bible study groups, bridge/canasta/mah jong/bunco parties, feminist consciousness raising and bra burning groups, or the Joy Luck Club. Once, looking around the gathering of friends at my table (we rotate who hosts), I realized that what brought all of us together, how we knew each other, stems from the fact that we are all the mothers of sons. It's not just that we are trying to improve our minds in this setting, it's really that we are devoid of female companionship. The books part is just an excuse. In recent years, I have belonged to a "serious" book club, and a "social" one. I have to say - and my entire career involves all aspects of literature: reading, writing about it, teaching it, so you know I love it - I enjoy the "social" club more.

Secret Desires

2012-01-17T18:17:00.007-06:00

Many people have congratulated me on finishing my graduate classes and returning to my "normal" life...whatever that is. What am I doing, plan to do, you ask? What am I looking forward to the most? Shhh!!!! Don't tell anyone.....I just missed the past year and a half of my favorite tv shows. While not a tv junkie (hubster, you know who you are- that man has a big screen in every room of the house, so he can wander about and never miss a moment), I do follow the occasional series. Favor police crime type shows, Masterpiece Theater, dramas, comedies. It is so restful to come home from work, have a glass of wine, eat dinner, and read or watch tv snuggling with my dogs. Sure beats being in class till late, and then having to read/study/write papers till late.
*
Here are a few shows worth watching:
Masterpiece Theater "Downton Abbey" - This show has gotten a lot of buzz lately, and it is well worth catching. It debuted last year and, due to considerable media praise and audience acclaim, was granted a second season, currently under way, with a third being filmed as we speak. The story of a wealthy aristocratic family and their servants during the tumultuous WWI era in a Britain country estate, many will compare it to the iconic "Upstairs, Downstairs" but the characters of "Downton Abbey" are less lovable, more scheming, and the aristocratic Crawley family seems less moribund than the Bellamys ever were. This show dwells on themes similar to Upstairs Downstairs: societal events that contribute to the breakdown of British class relations during the WWI era. Female characters, especially the mother (Elizabeth McGovern), the mother of the heir apparent (Penelope Wilton), and the dowager mother (the inimitable Maggie Smith) play more vibrant roles as the try to out maneuver each other in various power plays, and the males are often the befuddled agents in their little games. Could be said to be the "Pride and Prejudice" of the Edwardian era, as romance and finding a suitable spouse are major themes for the three daughters and the various household staff .
*
"The Good Wife" - I have to admit the trailer for this show left me cold and I only watched the first episode out of curiosity. After that, I was hooked. This is a high end, law firm soap opera, with well drawn compelling characters that leave you pulling for them. Every episode ends in a cliff- hanger that leaves me panting for more. The plot really isn't about the "good wives" we are used to seeing in the political realm, standing by their (scurrilous, rapscallion) men - the titular character is far more nuanced than that. Alicia Florrick (Juliana Margulies) is left to pick up the pieces of her life after her politician husband is sent to jail for something or other- she has to go back to work, take care of the kids, and keep her scheming mother-in-law from snooping through her drawers. As she moves back into the work force, she regains her sense of identity and redevelops her confidence. This leads to her eventual questioning of the meaning of her life and whether she truly loves her husband, (or what he has become) after all. Romance and intrigue are daily events at the law firm where she works, amid a cast of well-drawn characters who are good, evil, and a conflicted mixture of both. I absolutely love Kalinda Sharmos(played by Archi Panjabi), the law firm's hip bi Indian investigator, and Cary Agos (Matt Czuchry) as the sometimes good, sometimes evil, always scheming junior partner rival to Alicia at the firm. Whenever I get in a bind at work, I ask myself : "What would Alicia do?"
*
"Blue Bloods" -This old style police procedural drama follows four generations of a New York Irish cop family as they struggle with issues of morality, both on the job and off. Once a week they all gather around the family dining table to discuss it all over the Sunday meal together. Charming in its antiquated notions, it reaffirms the myths we tell ourselves about what is good in American culture. Tom Sellick heads the cast as the gruff yet lovable patriarch. It's like the Waltons, complete with grandpa offering humorous advice from his days on the force, only instead of worrying about whether Jim-Bob won the spelling bee on Walton's Mountain, we worry if cop son Danny (Donnie Wahlberg) will get shot chasing heroin addicts through dark alleys.
*
"Big Bang Theory"- This is my absolutely favorite comedy of the past few years. The basic premise is that a bunch of nerdy super smart young scientists, just living their daily lives, provide good material for humor, especially when love interests/young ladies are thrown in to the mix. I am married to a scientist and spent my childhood around guys just like these, and maybe that's why I find these characters so lovable. Being a bit of a nerd myself, of course, enables me to get all the jokes about Star trek, Star Wars, old science fiction books and movies, ComicCon, and other intellectual pastimes.
*
"How I Met Your Mother" - Remember "Friends"? This show is the next generation version, following the dating foibles of a group of (originally playing 20-somethings, now they are well in to their 30's)young professionals making it in the Big Apple and finding love along the way. Cute premise has a frame story wherein the dad is telling his kids "how I met your mother", but just as in any long convoluted story, there are many digressions along the way. Neil Patrick Harris has finally escaped his Doogie Houser shadow and now I can only imagine him as Barney- wait for it ! Stinson. All star cast: Josh Radnor, Colbie Smulders, Alyson Hannigan (escaping her Buffy the Vampire slayer persona) and one of my all time faves, Jason Segal. (I still think "Forgetting Sarah Marshall " was a brilliant role for him,allowing him to showcase some of his many talents.)
*
"Psych" - Fake psychic /con man Shawn and his best buddy Gus work as consultants for the local Santa Barbara police, never do things by the book, and are always on the make with the ladies. Along the way, they get into some Lucy and Ethel kind of scrapes and toss off humorous one-liners. James Roday reminds me of a guy I used to date, and maybe that is why I find him so appealing. Corbin Bernsen gets a redemptive, creative role as Shawn's old style ex-hippie now straight man cop dad.
*
"Burn Notice" - Many of these shows on USA started, I think, as mid-season replacements during the writer's strike a few years back. Whatever their genesis, they each off a unique mix of drama and humor, an exotic setting sunny setting (perfect for winter snow and cold bound audiences dreaming of a warm locale), and a premise that is completely different, even fringe , from traditional tv shows of recent years. (Anyone tired of "Survivor" or "Big Brother House" yet? Someone, please vote reality shows "off the island" ! ) Burn Notice is no exception. Michael Weston ( Jeffrey Donovan) is a "burned" former US spy, dropped suddenly in Miami with only a few wacky friends and eccentric family members to help him figure out why, all while he operates as a "problem solver" to various desperate locals who need someone outside the law to scare away criminal syndicates, fetch their child from kidnappers, prove their innocence from crimes they did not commit, or take back the bodega from local drug lords. Many of these shows offer break out roles to older actors trying to escape an identity from iconic roles/series of their past and this show is no exception. Sharon Gless stars as Michael's typical Miami little old lady mom (stuck in the 60's, chain smoking, gold lame wearing, puffy white haired with giant plastic earrings and matching purse) - and I want to be just like her ! Watching old reruns of "Cagney & Lacey", I can't even imagine these two characters come from the same actor. What a great opportunity to create a role so different and refreshingly funny.
*
"Royal Pains" - Mark Feuerstein plays the serious character, Dr Hank Lawson, while Paulo Constanzo plays his nutty eccentric conning "business partner" brother, Even R Lawson. Never mind that one is Jewish and one is Italian, they are brothers- accept it ! Basic premise is : the doctor gets fired from his NYC hospital job for not treating a wealthy hospital donor client before an indigent kid, and ends up free-lancing as a house doctor to rich people in the Hampton's. (What is that, some kind of hell? You get what you deserve? ) However, what makes this series charming is the ever-changing cast of eccentric rich patients, each with their own story to tell ( it ain't easy being rich!), framed by the ongoing foibles of nutty brother Evan, whom Hank has to constantly get out of trouble. Another very Lucy and Ethel type of comedy. Add a couple of strong female characters to fall in love with, and off you go.
*
"Law and Order: SVU" -I have long enjoyed the mystery/CSI/ crime/police procedural genre, and shows with richly drawn characters draw me in, week after week, year after year. Of all these types of shows, this one is my favorite, mostly bc I love the characters Stabler, Benson, Cragen, Munch, and Finn. I love the main characters' back stories that seep in around the edges of each episode's main plot involving sexually related crimes in NYC : Stablers' on-again, off-again relationship with his wife, and his unrealized love affair with Olivia, his struggles with his faith, each character's family, fears, and foibles. I will be sorry to see Christopher Meloni depart the series, but I understand actors need variety in their careers. This long-standing role may feel confining to him, but I gotta say, I've seen him in other movies, and never liked him as much as I do here.
*
"The Mentalist" - "This show, like "House" (which I used watch, until I got tired of the main character's crankiness, the constant arguing among the staff, and the fact that every episode was starting to become exactly the same: at 20 minutes after the hour, you knew some one's brain was going to explode, and at 5 min till the end, House figures out it was the very first disease he considered, only to have over-looked something key in his diagnosis), has a formula that is often annoying. However, once again, charming characters draw me in: I enjoy the back story of the hidden love affair between Rigsby and Van Pelt, the banter between Lisbon and Jane, and Cho's absolute tough guy persona as he tosses away in a completely dry manner these hysterical one-liners (mimic-ing old episodes of "Dragnet".) Simon Baker is an interesting, appealing actor- the character he played in "The Devil Wears Prada" reminded me of my old college archaeology prof.
*
"Person of Interest" - The pilot of this show annoyed me, for some reason, and I missed the first few episodes. Hubster was watching it - he thought this was a sci fi show, as it has a giant computer like "Big Brother" that watches everything we do - and I caught a few episodes with him, and it started to grow on me. Mostly because I think Jim Caviezel is another interesting actor.....his character in this show is a former special opps kind of guy, also burned, who goes around helping people involved in crimes....hmmmmm, I'm noticing a trend here, are you ? Anyways, watching his gentle manner, I can't help but think of Jesus......... :o) ( joke)

Rice Gals, Class of '83 Mini-Reunion

2012-01-14T18:18:00.005-06:00

Brief gathering at New Year's of some old college girlfriends; it was fun to see them again even if our time together was all too short. Hard to believe we've known each other for over 30 years. Husbands, jobs, houses, fashions may come and go, but girlfriends are forever!

"The Great College Adventure" - Pt I

2012-01-14T10:16:00.009-06:00

I've been so busy the past year and a half, I haven't written anything about the most absorbing aspect of all our lives : Son Number One's "The Great College Adventure". Last year, son #1 was a senior in high school. As a family, we experienced what seems typical for many parents of seniors I know these days: the parental nagging to get college applications done on time, the parental nagging for him to keep his grades up, the parental nagging for him to go to class, turn in his homework/papers/projects, go to bed, eat, bathe, take vitamins, clean his room, stop torturing his brother, come in by curfew, stop spending money he doesn't have, do his laundry, do his chores, bathe, shave, cut his hair, don't wreck the car, don't get a MIP, etc etc etc.
*
Son #1 fought us every step of the way, with his typical approach: passivity. ( Now, Son #2, entirely different. Wait till that story gets rolling....it's a pip.) He put off everything till the last minute. Refused to apply to any college except his #1 choice. (We secretly applied to a few back-ups for him , just in case.) He managed to get his electronic application in with one minute to spare before the midnight deadline, then we all panicked thinking the registrar had not sent the transcript in, on time. (She did.) All of this was exacerbated by the fact that hubster has ADHD and travels all the time, and I was in grad school and this all went down during finals week for me. I simply could not pay attention to the details or help him write /proofread his essays (as I know many moms have). It was a classic example of what not to do.
*
Son #1 didn't get into his first choice college- he got wait-listed. He needed to be in the top 8 % of his graduating class to make that cut , and his class rank was 8.2 %. (He did get into some of the back-ups we applied to, and was offered serious money in scholarships to attend them, but refused to go.) So we sat him down and figured out the plan...... his first choice college offered him this option: attend one of our satellite campuses for a year, make a B average, and then you can come on over, no need to re-apply. After much discussion, we nudged him into choosing what we thought was the best satellite campus for him, and off he went.
*
I remember when I went off to college: I loaded up the trunk of my 1971 Duster with a case of Heineken (a gift from an admirer), about 50 pairs of expensive high-heeled shoes, my record collection, and a stack of frilly dresses in lollipop colors. Drove off into the sunset sans parents - they were embroiled in a nasty divorce, and it was truly better to leave them behind, trust me- with only my best gf in attendance. She stayed during orientation week and we went to all the parties together, then she flew home and took herself off to her college (probably with her parents, who were fairly normal. I was jealous.) My home life was so wretched that I didn't go back at Thanksgiving, but stayed away, in the cold dorms (they turned the heat off at holidays), and ate dinner at a kindly professor's house along with the other misfits who were orphans or from Malaysia and could not afford to fly back for only 4 days. I liked it that way.
*
When we all came home at Christmas, there were the usual parties, with everyone posturing about how much they had changed, how sophisticated we had all become. My friends who had gone Ivy League showed up in monstrous black coats that went down to their ankles, wearing old Ray Bans, like Tom Cruise in "Risky Business". Ex high-school bf who had gone to Duke got into a snit with ex high school bf who had gone to Brown, and the drama was all very exciting. (Who knew they were both gay, but just hadn't figured it out yet?) We all acted as cool as we knew how, secretly hiding the fact that our first semester grades probably weren't that great. I had a job, worked as many hours as possible, and saved up all my money to buy realistic clothes for college- jeans, walking shoes, an umbrella bc it rained all the time - I never wore any of the high heeled shoes or lollipop colored dresses once I got there. They just took up pointless space in the tiny dorm room closet.
*
Son #1 went off to college and promptly wrecked his car. I don't think he'd been there a week. Fortunately, he was not seriously hurt. Oh well, now my dear, you get to learn what it is like to be carless. (We are refusing to replace the car.) His life is complicated by the fact that he has a serious gf in the next town over, about an hour away. Bummer. Now gf drives all the time to see him, and is starting to resent it (the time, the gas money.) He's about to learn some real life lessons here, such as : you can't just take , in a relationship. you have to give, too. Get a job. Don't trash, ignore, or take for granted the stuff/people you have, take care of them.
*
On a positive note, son #1 seems happy in his college experiences. His dorm is a 4 bedroom style apt, and he gets along with his roommates just fine. (No terrible roommate problems that come from sharing a tiny room with a total stranger.) The cafeteria he eats at looks like Luby's and has an "all you care to eat 24/7" policy, unlike my college dining hall that served mystery meat and only 7 portions for 8 young ladies ( cheaping out, on the theory that "someone is always on a diet".) Son #1 has joined an intramural football league and seems to be making friends. He came home at Thanksgiving and seemed normal. He come home after finals in December and looked tired and thin but ok. His grades were better than mine or hubster's that first semester of college, but not good enough to get him where he wants to go. He's going to have to work really hard this spring semester, or else come up with "plan B" for his life - whatever that is going to be.
*
Am I stressing about all this? I don't know if it's the fact that I am too old, too tired, heavily medicated, or just an expert at zen meditation, but I seem to be reacting to all this with a "que sera, sera" sort of attitude. I do feel as if a weight has been lifted, as if I am no longer responsible for Son #1's life any more. Like I am watching all this, through a window, or on tv. During several of my little pep talks with him through these travails, I have maintained that the path of my life has forked, and he is now headed down the path of his own life. He will reap the benefits and hardships of his own actions and choices, good or bad. I am here to offer advice, a sounding board, money if I can spare it, now and then, unconditional love always, but it is his life to live. Carpe Diem!

*****
What does Son #1 think about all this ? You can read his blog:
http://strecklife.blogspot.com/

New Year's Resolutions

2012-01-12T17:50:00.004-06:00

Do you make resolutions each New Year? Do you resolve to exercise more, eat better, lose weight, save money, get fit, change your life? I don't choose these sorts of things. Instead, I make resolutions to improve my life in this way: I resolve to take care of my health, live life more fully, spend more time with my loved ones, travel, read, do, eat, drink, try new things and have more fun. Taking care of my mother through her recent strokes and dementia has made me realize, if I follow in her footsteps, I may not have too many good years left. I 'd better enjoy life while I can.

Another Texas Icon Bites the Dust

2012-01-11T17:03:00.004-06:00

I was watching tv late this afternoon when a news flash broke in to my reverie: "We interrupt your show to bring you breaking news: If you can't beat them, buy them ! DPS, the parent company that owns Snapple and the Dr Pepper brand sodas, has bought the Dublin Dr Pepper bottling plant and laid off 14 workers." Now that might sound like no big deal to the average viewer, but around these parts, them's fightin' words.
*
Growing up in north Texas, I only drank Dr Pepper flavored sodas (when I drank soda at all.). When I was a teeny child, in the 1960's, Dr Pepper was far more prevalent than cola or other types of soft drinks in this area. Neighbor Charlie Norwood's dad had an old-timey soda dispenser in his garage, and all the little kids in the neighborhood would come over with our dimes on Saturday afternoons and buy a Dr Pepper. Cha-clink! the machine would say and then burp out a tiny frosted bottle of tasty goodness. You had to open the dispenser's refrigerator door, and pull the bottle from a vertical holder inside the machine. When we would visit my grandmother on Sunday afternoons in her small east Texas town of Sulphur Springs, she would give my sister and me each a quarter, and we held hands carefully to cross the street to the little gas and grocery store located on the other side. It seemed so far away! This store had wooden floors and a dark crowded interior full of exciting items; it smelled like hot dusty wood and motor oil. We felt so grown up as we selected from penny candy, carefully counting how much we could afford, and then selected a soda from an ice-filled bin in front of the cash register. These were either Dr Peppers or Nehi Strawberry, Orange, or Grape flavored drinks - brown, red, purple, and orange bottles bobbing and floating in the icy water. I didn't actually taste a cola type beverage until I graduated from high school and went on a "grand tour" style European trip, where Dr Pepper was unheard of and only "Coca-Cola" was found - if at all.
*
There is much talk today about the obesity epidemic in America. I watch students walk down the halls of school, their pockets, backpacks and hands loaded with several sodas, candy, chips, and other processed snacks - all in the extra large size. I watch them eat these foods for snacks, for breakfast in the mornings, and for lunch at noon. I think the reason that sodas contribute to students' being overweight is the way that people drink them has changed since I was a kid. Back when these beverages were made with pure cane sugar, they were sweeter. Very sweet, in fact, and that was why they were smaller - you could only handle so much sugary sweetness at a time. People drank one soda a week, or on a special occasion. It was a treat, like dessert. Somewhere along the way, the makers of these sodas switched to corn syrup sweeteners, which are not as sweet, and people started drinking more. People began drinking these drinks to quench their thirst, the way people used to drink water, or iced tea or lemonade. Kids drink sodas now instead of milk with dinner. Fast food restaurants then began making their drink portions larger as a way to boost profits. Think about it: the size you drank 30 years ago, that was called "large" back then, is nowadays called "small". I still get confused whenever I go into a fast food restaurant as to what the different size cups are called. Mostly I just point to the size cup I want. The ones called "large" or "extra -large" sometimes contain a quart or more of drink, and kids drink several a day. They don't know any better, because that's what their parents do, and because these drinks aren't as sweet as they used to be, it doesn't over-satisfy that sweetness craving, the way the old sodas did.
*
Gourmets, foodies, nostalgia buffs and other loca-vores have been seeking out and savoring Mexican bottled Coca-Colas, or Dublin Dr Peppers still made in an old-fashioned bottling plant in the tiny town of Dublin, Texas for years now. Various internet sources also sell vintage soda pops in a variety of regional flavors. Most of these drinks are still made with pure cane sugar and their original formulations (remember the "New Coke" fiasco?) , and are thus much sweeter, more intense beverages than their corn syrup versions. These drinks taste like dessert, which is how they should be included in folks' diets- savored, in small amounts. When my children were little, I wanted them to experience those flavors, and would occasionally buy them one as a treat. We drank milk and later, iced tea, with meals, played a lot of sports, ate balanced diets with plenty of real non-processed foods (closely related in form to the original plant or animal it came from!), and neither of my kids is obese. I wanted to teach my sons to enjoy all things, in moderation. And that there really is nothing as delicious as a frosty cold cane sugar soda pop. Just don't drink 3 or 4 or 5 a day, every day. Savor them, as a tiny part of an overall healthy, balanced diet.
*
I don't know if DPS will stop making pure cane sugar Dr Peppers, but if they let this local food treasure become extinct, that will be a travesty.

Reading List -Classwork

2012-01-09T11:53:00.007-06:00

What have I read this past year that is interesting, or useful? Mostly professional, technical material for my graduate English classes. (Such as: Cross Talk in Comp Theory, The Norton Anthology of Literary Criticism, or various texts on the teaching of writing by George Hillocks.)Here is a brief recap of some of the titles that might be interesting for personal reading or suitable to teach at the secondary level:
*
Border Zones : Global Literature in the Modern Era
This class focused on half Mexican American authors, and half on Islamic authors of the near east. The basic premise was that where cultures collide, new ideas and viewpoints are formed.
The literature we read was diverse and interesting.
*
Mother Tongue, by Demetria Martinez. Easy to read and comprehend love story between two characters, one a Mexican American girl not particularly in touch with her cultural identity, the other a young man, a freedom fighter from El Salvador, on the run from the law, who seeks asylum and to raise awareness for his cause in the USA. The world where they intersect raises each to new levels of understanding. Suitable for high school reading lists, little violence or sex.
*
Zoot Suit and Other Plays, by Luis Valdez. Short play and other writings about Chicano identity in Los Angeles in the 1940's. This title is actually on the current AP IV "free response" reading list, so I included it as an option in my syllabus.
*
Borderlands/la Frontera: The New Mestiza, by Gloria Anzaldua. Seminal work in feminism, l/g/b/t literature, anthropology, sociology. The author analyzes Spanish and American history, religion, Mexican American culture, language, and identity from her unique perspective. Discusses validity of "Spanglish" as a form of expression. This book is a combination of poetry and prose. Challenging text for high school; more suitable to college level reading.
*
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, by Azar Nafisi. One of my book clubs read this title a few years back, and I got to hear Ms Nafisi speak through the Dallas Museum of Art "Arts and Letters Live" (author talks) series as well. The story of a female college prof in Iran during the Revolution of the 1980's, and how she subverts Islamic rules restricting women from intellectual pursuits by running her literature classes from her home once the new govt shuts down the university to female teachers and students. It is interesting how titles we take for granted in the west, such as The Great Gatsby, are beacons of freedom in cultures across the globe. Suitable for high school advanced readers.
*
Farthest Home is an Empire of Fire: A Tejuano Elegy, by John Santos
This creative work combines poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction as the author traces his family roots from south Texas back to Spain. Where he cannot find fact, he fills in with imagined encounters with ancestors that address personal identity and meaning in the modern world.
*
Season of Migration to the North, by Tayeb Salih
Written by a Tunisian author, this story follows the journey of a young man from a small rural village along the Nile, to London, and back home again. Along the way the main character must confront various versions of himself as others see him, and discover his own personal identity, woven from various cultures. Challenging text for high school readers, suitable for advanced or college level students.
*
The Selected Poetry of Yehudi Amichai. One of the best new discoveries ( for me) in recent years, I absolutely loved Israeli poet Amichai's work. I plan to teach some of his poems to my AP students; he is also on the reading list for secondary IB students. I suggested this book to my school librarian who was offended that the cover art depicts a naked man. I simply took a magic marker and drew swim trunks on him, so I could bring him to school. Amichai's themes involve love and war, personal identity and the modern world.
*
Contemporary Anglophone Drama
(drama of English speaking nations, mostly Britain and America) Curriculum development, state testing, and other educational trends have recently re-emphasized drama as a long- forgotten genre. Reading a play out loud in class is a fun activity, often pushed back till the end of the school year until there is no time left in class to give it the proper attention it deserves.
*
works of Caryl Churchill:Traps, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, Mad Forest, Thyestes, Top Girls, Ice Cream, Clouds. For some reason, I had difficulty getting "into" British playwright Churchill. She reminded me of Stoppard, only even more brittle, detached. Interesting themes: feminishm in the modern world, but just didn't resonate with me. Adult themes more suitable for college than high school.
*
works of Edward Albee: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is an AP Lit title, The Goat or Who is Sylvia contains adult themes and situations.
*
works of Tom Stoppard: Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead appears on the AP reading list, which is where I draw material for my classes, and makes a nice tie- in with Hamlet or Waiting for Godot. Stoppard is delightful to read simply for pleasure. I rec Arcadia and The Real Thing, as well. A master wordsmith, remember, Stoppard wrote the witty script for the film "Shakespeare in Love". My prof used to say, regarding both Shakespeare and Stoppard: "Verbal fluency equals sexual potency". Think about that for a bit, my friends.
*
works of August Wilson: The Pittsburgh Cycle. Wilson's ten play cycle with titles such as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Fences, Radio Golf, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Gem of the Ocean and others , explores evolving African American identity through a set of re-occurring characters in one fictional Pittsburgh neighborhood over a span of 100 years. Wilson has a play for each decade, and the characters, settings, and themes develop and overlap through time as members of his neighborhood struggle to overcome the legacy of slavery and form a new and functional cultural identity in the modern world. I wrote my paper in this class on Wilson, and have developed a new-found respect for his work. Twenty years ago, I taught Fences, but the students at that particular school (wealthy mostly white students at a private school) didn't "get" Wilson's themes. maybe I didn't, then, either. I plan to teach him again later this year, and will let you know how it goes with a more diverse student population.
*
works of Susan Lori Parks: I absolutely loved her plays, witty and critical and funny and brilliant commentaries on women, African-American identity, feminism, revisionist history, and modern society. The America Plays and other works, Topdog/Underdog, and Venus. A genius. Adult topics, language and themes.
*
works of Sarah Ruhl: The Room next Door( The Vibrator Play). Critical acclaim when it was on Broadway a few years back. Highly interesting but not suitable for kids.

What did Santa bring you for Christmas?

2012-01-09T10:57:00.005-06:00

"Santa" brought the usual gifts at our house this year- what did he bring to you? ....Electronics and clothing for hubster (poor man, he gets winter clothes for xmas and summer clothes for his bday and that's most of what he gets, wardrobe-wise, all year long.) He also gets " novelty " items related to various college personas and hobbies from back in the day which I cannot mention here, as this is a family blog. Kids got more video game crap, some clothes, gift cards for music downloads and clothing and video games. They also got tablets for downloading books for school and all other cool stuff you can do with them. Hubster got me jewelry (I long ago trained him to shop from a carefully edited pre-approved list that I supply him before any major gift-giving holiday). Really, nothing was unexpected, everything vetted long before the holiday - my sons researched and chose which tablet they wanted- and we like it just that way.
*
The wild-card in our holiday gift-giving each year is always my m-i-l, bless her heart. Not knowing what she will do, from year to year, always adds a little frisson of anticipation to our festive holiday mornings. Last year, she bought one 4-pack of "The Nature Channel" geography videos, and cut them up, giving each of us a different continent. They still had the plastic band that connected all four, attached. Hubster sometimes does well- clothing, books, and expensive tools or electronic things. Some years, the clothes are all the wrong size, or girl's clothing, or weird colors. It's a toss-up each year. One year she gave the boys 32 different G.I. Joes. One year she sent a giant bouncy horse that took hubster and me 10 hours to assemble, the night before, and we only just barely finished when the kids woke us up at 6 am. Joy! You have read about my interesting gifts from her over the years: the prune doll devil, the bag of hay, the Clear Out Your Clutter book. Well, m-i-law went to Germany again this year, to the Christmas markets to shop. Did she buy us more figurines, ( she seems determined that we will collect owls, Hummels, wood carvings- whether we want to, or not) cuckoo clocks, Christmas ornaments, knick-knacks, gimcracks, paddy-wacks? No. She bought us extremely expensive, hand-embroidered wool, velvet, and leather ,with hand-carved stag horn buttons, Tyrolean clothing. Suitable for wearing next time we stage a family production of The Sound of Music. In sizes that fit no one. Merry Christmas !

I'm Back !

2012-01-02T15:52:00.003-06:00

Finished taking all my grad classes- no, I didn't actually earn a degree this time around (already have several), it was just for a sort of certification kind of thing, an add-on to what I've already got. In case you were unaware, I've been working full time, raising teenagers, taking care of aging parents, and going to grad school for the past 18 months- yet somehow managed to make good grades, still cook dinner-do laundry-grocery shop-drive kids around to their lessons-change sheets, and not have my family (well, most of them) hate me. I did almost forget one son's birthday, but not too late to fix it.
*
Throughout all this, I received many positive compliments from my professors and peers on the nature and quality of my work, and feel invigorated with ideas to add to my teaching repertoire. I learned a lot and feel in touch with academia- at least for a little while. I'm also pooped and really glad I'm done. Going back to college at mid-life or later is not an easy task. It isn't the mental challenges- that part is easy- it's the physical. OK, so it's good for me to get out from behind my desk and trek across campus a little. But typing really long papers has exacerbated my carpel tunnel issues, and put me into physical therapy for neck, spine and shoulder problems. That I can do without. It's also kind of weird to be twice the age of your classmates, and often older than your prof. I had to resist my natural tendencies to be bossy and think I know best....at least resist speaking what I often thought : "Now, this would work so much better if you'd just......"

I'm looking forward to getting my life back: being able to read whatever I want, having free weekends to travel a little, catch up on some tv shows, movies, and cultural events that I missed out on or did not have time to enjoy during this period.

Salsa vs Pico de Gallo : What's the Difference?

2011-11-13T21:38:00.004-06:00

Salsa and pico de gallo are staples at my house and most local restaurants: many furriners aren't sure what is the difference. Pico, pictured top, is generally made up of fresh raw tomatoes, onions, jalepenos and cilantro chopped up into tiny chunks and served cold or room temp, sometimes marinated in lime juice. Spoon it onto a chip or stuff it into your burrito, it is not "Mexican coleslaw" (as we used to tell unsuspecting tourists). It is a raw veggie garnish you eat like dip. Oddly, pico is nearly the same (ingredients, flavor, mixture ratio) where ever you eat it in the southwest. You can also mix it with avocados and make great guacamole.
*
Salsa, pictured below, contains similar ingredients to pico de gallo, (often with the addition of garlic) yet is always in a more liquid, less solid state. It is like gazpacho but spicier and is never eaten as soup. It can be served cooked (often made of fire roasted ingredients) or raw. Each restaurant has a different flavor, a different style, and considerable time is spent arguing or comparing whose is best and why. Salsa not only varies from one restaurant to another, but from one culinary region to another. In New Mexico, it often comes in red or green (depending or whether made with red chile or green chile) or hatch- another kind of chile. ("You say c-h-i-l-e, I say c-h-i-l-i......tomato, to-mah-to"). In California, it often has beans or corn in it. You can dip chips in salsa, spoon it into any Mexican dish, like pico - only salsa will be a liquid flavor, while pico will be a solid vegetable component (like the lettuce and tomatoes on a taco.) You can make your own- numerous recipes float the web - or buy one that's in a jar. Arriba is my hands-down favorite, all-purpose, eat it every day, go-to brand. (Brother-in-law enrolled us in the "salsa of the month " club, and while a cute idea, most of the ones featured were too sweet, too weird- artichoke or peach additions- and just collect dust in the pantry.)

Arriba salsa
http://www.ribafoods.com/

Santa Fe School of Cooking - I've been here several times, taken classes ( tons of fun!) and love to buy their stuff

http://santafeschoolofcooking.com/On-line_Market/Salsas/index.html

Fa-la-la-la-NO!

2011-11-13T21:33:00.001-06:00

Was out running errands today and was bombarded with Christmas music.....note to retailers: if you start the holiday music (decorations, etc) before Thanksgiving, I will just leave your store and take my dollars elsewhere. And I did.

Looking Forward to the Holidays - NOT!

2011-11-10T10:59:00.012-06:00

There are many tales in the naked city...this is one of them. Folks have heard me talk about the often strained relationship between my mil and myself.... In the early years of my marriage to hubster, my mil went to several of the German Christmas markets (as she often does- in fact, she is preparing to go again this year) where she likes to buy charming hand-crafted German tree ornaments and other bric-abrac to give as Christmas gifts. The first time she did this, hubster got a little wood carving of a mountain man smoking a pipe. (Surely not an allusion to his hobbies in college...)The boys got soldiers or something. I was given a prune doll that was dressed as a devil. No lie : it had two horns on its head, a long, forked tongue, and a skinny tail with a triangle on the end.

This kind of gift-giving has been going on for years. One Christmas, mil gave me a tiny zip-locked bag of hay. (A friend of mine, who is Polish, says this is a reference to the manger or something.) And nothing else. Hubster and boys continued to accrue Hummels and wood-carvings, little statues and toys, doo-dads to put on the mantle place. Mil always askes to see these items when she comes to visit, so I haven't had the courage to throw them out or pack them away yet.

But the coup-de-grace ? Last year mil gave me, as my sole gift, a book (clearly a "free-bee" she got from renewing a magazine subscription) entitled Clear Out Your Clutter. Now who is it, just exactly, who gives me all the clutter?

Breakfast Tacos

2011-10-10T10:27:00.004-05:00

I love breakfast tacos. They are plentiful around these parts, a tasty and quick breakfast item, but if you live far away and can't get them where you live, you can make your own. Home-made ones can control fat, salt, etc much better than fast-food ones, anyways. Once a month or so, I scramble up a whole carton of eggs on a weekend morning, and then freeze the finished product in small amounts in tiny little zip-lock baggies, pull out and zap in the microwave, later, as needed. When you make breakfast tacos, you can add whatever veggies you wish- almost like huevos rancheros : peppers, onions, potatoes, mushrooms, tomatoes- you can customize to whatever you like.
*
Here is the order in which to do it : (it all cooks in about 5 min, so chop veggies, lay out all ingredients, and be ready to go, beforehand): It is best to start the veggies, first, saute-ing in a skillet with a drizzle of olive oil, esp if you want potatoes. I cube mine into pea-sized portions, but they still take longer. Once the veggies are wilted, add the eggs (I also add a drop of milk) and scramble up. You can add shredded cheese at this stage, or later, in the actual taco. Meanwhile, take a bag of tortillas (flour or corn), and heat up several on a griddle, the type you would use for making pancakes or grilled cheese sandwiches. ** This is key !** Tortillas sold in a bag in the grocery store are not completely cooked. It is intended for you to finish cooking them in this manner whatever you use them for (fajitas, etc.) Ever noticed that they are thick and cardboard tasting when you pull them out of the bag ? Now you know why ! When you heat them on a griddle, they become soft, warm, pliant and delicious. No need to lay down butter or anything, as you would do with grilled cheese. (They are made with lard and enough of it melts out to prevent from sticking.) Just lay down the tortilla, heat on medium till it is soft to the touch but before it turns brown.
*
Now , take the tortilla off the griddle and lay it on a plate. Spoon in some of the egg- veggie mixture. Add shredded cheese, meats if you wish, (sausage or bacon, chorisco if you feel authentic, but I make mine vegetarian. Cook meats separately. I fry up a package of bacon at one time, then refrigerate the cooked strips and add a tiny bit at a time to salads, sandwiches, breakfast tacos, etc.), a dollop of salsa, roll it up , and enjoy ! MMMMMmmmmmm. Really great with fresh hand-squeezed orange juice.
*
Check out one my fave blogs, on the same subject : "Homesick Texan"

Sunrise, Sunset

2011-10-06T18:13:00.002-05:00

Is this the job that I had dreamed of?
Is this the career that I once loved?
I don't remember growing bitter
Then why am I?

When do I get to prepare my lessons?
When do I get to grade?
Wasn't it yesterday
When I could plan?

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Students turn overnight to graduates
Blossoming even as we gaze

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One long day following another
Laden with happiness and tears

What words of wisdom can I give them?
How can I help them learn to write?
I have four preps, 200 students and six diff'rent classes
I cannot teach them right, so
Now they must learn from one another
Day by day

I used to share my love of reading
Just like any teacher would
Is there a pension in store for me?

Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears

If I'd Married a Rich Man

2011-10-05T18:35:00.005-05:00

Dear God, you made many, many poor people.
I realize, of course, that it's no shame to be poor.
But it's no great honor either!
So, what would have been so terrible if I'd married a small fortune?

If I'd married a rich man,
Ya da deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.
All day long I'd work out on my tight little biddy bum.
If I'd married a wealthy man.
I wouldn't have to work long hours.
Ya da deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.
Could have retired by now and studied pilates
If I'd married a wealthy man.

I'd have a big tall house with rooms by the dozen,
Right in the middle of the town.
A fine mini mansion with real wooden floors below.
A beautiful pool and a lovely new kitchen.
There would be one giant master suite with spa bathroom in the upstairs,
And one even larger in the down,
And one more in the guest house, just for show.

I'd fill my home with decor, art, food and exercise equipment
Just for my family's pleasure. I'd even clean and cook all day,
Bitching just as noisily as I can.
With each loud "cheep" "squawk" "honk" "quack"
Would land like a trumpet on the ear,
As if to say "Here lives the wife of a wealthy man."

If I'd married a rich man,
Ya da deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.
All day long I'd post things on my blog.
If I'd married a wealthy man.
I wouldn't have to work hard. I could grow a garden and drive around my kids.
Ya da deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.
If I'd married a biddy biddy rich,
Yidle-diddle-didle-didle man.

I see my body, my tummy, looking like a rich woman's tummy
With a proper tummy tuck.
Could even get a boob job that would give dear husband his heart's delight.
More dental work, some hair color, maybe even fake nails.
I see him putting on airs and strutting like a peacock.
Oy, what a happy mood he's in.
Bragging to his friends, day and night.

The most important thing is I could pay my kids' tuition!
They wouldn't have to ask me to work two jobs,
I could buy them a car and some books and a vacation.
"If you please, Dear mummy..."
"Got any money, dear mummy..."
I would never have to fear to see the bills!

And it won't make one bit of difference if I go to the store .
When you're rich, your don't have to worry about the credit cards!

If I were rich, I'd have the time that I lack
To sit in my study and read all the books that I want.
And maybe do some volunteer work , too.
And I'd discuss these books with my girlfriends, several hours every day.
That would be the sweetest thing of all.

If I'd married a rich man,
Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.
All day long I'd biddy biddy bum.
If I'd married a wealthy man.
I wouldn't have to work hard.
Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.

Lord who mad the lion and the lamb,
You decreed I should be what I am.
Would it spoil some vast eternal plan?
If I'd married a wealthy man.

A Gala Affair

2011-09-11T19:25:00.007-05:00

Hubster was recently nominated for " a major award" by the Tech Titans (leader in technology education) for his work at the Texas Governor's School at UNT. Sadly, he did not win-this time!- but just getting dressed up for an evening was a fun break from the norm. (I've long been a big fan of the evening wear folk at my local Nordstrom, who have a plus-size department that is not cheezy. Jewels by Swarovski. Found the perfect matching navy blue silk peau de soie evening sandals by Nina at Zappos. You can find anything there! )It was kind of like prom redux for us, fun getting all dressed up and having a night out. We hope he'll get nominated again sometime, maybe even win....Hubster sported a vintage bespoke lightweight wool worsted shawl collar tuxedo that once belonged to his grandfather, Congressman Frank Kowalski. I know grandpa would have been proud!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Kowalski
*
http://www.metroplextbc.org/index.php?src=gendocs&ref=Tech%20Titans&category=Events

Geography and Relativity in Texas

2011-09-08T18:24:00.007-05:00

My mother-in-law, who lives in Virginia, has been calling us frantically over all the coverage Texas wildfires have received in recent tv news shows. This is a dire situation, no doubt, and terrible for the folks whose homes, land, and lives are impacted. It is also hundreds of miles away from where my little family and I live, in a city in north central Texas. My mother-in-law, who has visited us many times, and knows just how big a place Texas is, forgets this when she sees the devastating destruction on the news each night.

Texas is 268,581 square miles. That would be over 173 times the size of Rhode Island. Texas is larger than the 13 smallest states combined. Inside of Texas, you could fit Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Vermont, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Maryland, West Virginia, South Carolina, Maine, Indiana, and still have room for a good chunk of Kentucky. It is roughly the size of France, and due to our unique "star" shape, some distances are considerably more.
*
I once lived in New York, and met someone there (in Westchester County) who said to me,"How can you claim Houston is a tropical jungle, when Arizona is a desert?" Well, Phoenix is over 1000 miles from Houston, with the entire state of New Mexico in-between, and there are several different climate and geographical zones between the two. Driving a conservative 70 mph, it's a 5 hour drive from Dallas to Austin or Houston, and a 6 hour drive from Dallas to San Antonio or Lubbock in the Panhandle. From Dallas to the Mexican border is 10 or more hours; to Little Rock Ark is 6 hours, to New Orleans is 9 hours.
*
That's a lot of geography......Just to review, look at the map above (these are my personal descriptions, and not guaranteed to be "scientific"):
*
Aqua Blue-Gulf Coast Prairies and Marshes
Area around Houston, dense jungle -like flora and fauna. Pine forests, oak trees, swamps, flowers year-round. Coastal areas. Rains most months of the year. Rarely freezes in the winter. Summers rarely hotter than low 90's due to 100% humidity. Slight breezes off the ocean. Hurricanes are a yearly feature. Spring starts in Feb and fall does not arrive till Nov.
*
Dark Lavender-Coastal Sand Plain
Hotter than Blue area. More palm trees but less overall vegetation, beach grass predominant, soil is more sandy and less stable. Never freezes in winter. Rainy-cool and dry-hot seasons.
*
Light green- South Texas Brush Plain
Dryer, because it's inland, than coastal areas, and hotter. Never freezes. Landscape is wild fields with tall grasses interspersed with large oak trees. Some deep creeks flow towards coast. This is "the valley", where most Texas winter produce is grown with the help of irrigation: citrus, vegetables, fruits.
*
Light Lavender-Edwards Plateau
Southern desert with mountains. Dry and sparse. Higher elevation freezes in winter. Scrub cactus, hot winds, low humidity. Cools off at night.
*
Pale Sky Blue-Trans Pecos
Similar to Edwards Plateau, but not as high in elevation or with as many mountains. Typical desert-like sands. Very hot and dry.
*
Yellow-Llano Uplift
The "hill country" area around Austin. Rolling hills, Mediterranean climate. Many water sources (springs, rivers, lakes, etc.) and limestone riddled-ground creates caves. Most Texas wineries, lavender, and gourmet crops are located here.
*
Turquoise and White- Oakwoods Prairie, Blacklands Prairie
Prairie means rolling grasslands (gentle low hills) interspersed with creeks and trees. Blacklands means the soil is black thick"gumbo"( heavy and hard to turn but not too clay filled). Blacklands has fewer trees, Oakwoods has more. Both areas have four distinct seasons; hard freezes in winter and hot humid summers. Crops tend to be grains,peaches or cotton. In recent years, gas has been found in the shale under the blacklands.
*
Light Turquoise-Piney Woods
Dense eastern type forest, pine trees predominate. Azaleas, magnolias- very similar to deep rural south. Highest rainfall in the state, many lakes, and some marsh/swamplands. Four distinct seasons with winter freezes, summers not as hot due to high vegetation. Oil found here under the ground.
*
Tan and Orange - Rolling Plains and High Plains
Higher elevation than prairie areas. Vast sweep of flat land areas with no trees or hills; grasses. Very few water sources. Farmed now mostly in grains. Severely cold winters, strong winds.

Earring Fetish 1

2011-09-08T18:23:00.010-05:00

I've collected southwestern art and jewelry all my life, ever since my family took vacations to the Four Corners area when I was a kid. Mom started me out young, buying tiny little turquoise and silver hand-made rings and bracelets for my ballerina jewelry box. I continued this tradition throughout my adult life, making annual pilgrimages to "the source"....until the internet made physical trips unnecessary. Hubster can't really complain because his mother also loves southwestern jewelry and shops far more enthusiastically than I ever could. I tend to favor earrings because they are affordable, cuff style bracelets because I use the computer a lot and I can't stand bangly-dangly things that tinkle when I type.

A girlfriend of mine recently blogged about " 30 Days, 30 Pairs of Earrings" and I am inspired to reach similar heights. Earrings are the perfect pick-me -up....a great pair makes you feel fabulous, and they are nearly always affordable. I confess to have .....many pairs.

Here are some of my favorite sources:

http://chacodog.com/
http://sunfacejewelry.com/
http://www.perrynulltrading.com/
http://silversun-sf.com/
http://www.silvertribe.com/Turquoise-Jewelry
http://www.twodogssouthwestgallery.com/index.asp
http://www.durangosilver.com/rings_28_ctg.htm
http://www.themudheadgallery.com/servlet/StoreFront

These are each reliable quality sources with authentic high quality jewelry, rugs, baskets, pottery, sand paintings, kachinas, and other art work. My family, friends and I have shopped at each repeatedly for years. Remember, you get what you pay for with hand crafted items: if prices are cheap, the item is, too. Expect to pay more for something that is worthwhile to own.

Texas Geography Quiz

2011-09-08T18:21:00.007-05:00

1)palm trees along the coast
Just to see if you are paying attention, here is a geography quiz....for the info you need to be successful, read blog posting "Texas Geography and Relativity". The photo above is most likely to be found in which region of the Lone Star State? a)Edwards Plateau b)Coastal Sand Plains c)High Plains d)Llano Uplift e)Piney Woods? All answers are at the bottom of this posting.
2)Guadalupe Mountains

3)Blanco Lavender Festival

4)Caddo Lake

5)Palo Duro Canyon

Yes, all these beautiful locales are in Texas ! Here are the answers: 1)b 2)a 3)d 4)e 5)c

Bali High - Oahu

2011-08-05T13:49:00.009-05:00

View from our hotel room at Turtle Bay, north shore, Oahu

Most people live on a lonely island,
Lost in the middle of a foggy sea.
Most people long for another island,
One where they know they will like to be.

Bali Ha'i may call you,
Any night, any day,
In your heart, you'll hear it call you:
"Come away...Come away."
(Rogers and Hammerstein, "Bali High", from their musical "South Pacific")

My sons sit on the same sofa that Russell Brand and Jason Segel sat on in the movie"Forgetting Sarah Marshall"

For the first time in 17 years, my little nuclear family took a vacation, just the four of us, without any in-laws or relatives of any kind. It was a celebration : of Son#1's high school graduation, of our life together - I was not so secretly hoping to implant some happy memories, just before everyone starts to move away. Avoiding the diaspora of kids going off to college - maybe I can bribe them to join up for future vacations, if this last one is so pleasant. And it was. It was.
*
Folk who know me know I love to spend the dreary winter months researching and planning summer vacation adventures. Travel is my middle name. It was extremely ironic to me that while I have journeyed from Edinburgh, Scotland to Luxor, Egypt; from Kingstown, Jamaica to Eilat, Israel on the Red Sea, I had to never been to Hawaii. I have listened to friends for years ramble on about how awesome it was, half tuned them out and yawned.....well, no more. I loved it ! Spent enough time researching the very specific things we wanted to do, places we wanted to go and type of vacation we wanted to have (for ex: I don't like crowds, and when traveling with teenage males, I long ago vowed never to share a room with them - ever - again. Suites a requirement of my "family togetherness"!) Manged to find the very places to stay and things to do that met all my idiosyncratic personal requirements (Did you know that I will only eat local food, refuse to eat fast food or in chain restaurants?)

Hubster and younger son get scuba certified in the hotel pool. Later they went scuba diving in a turtle sanctuary.

We started our trip staying on the north shore of Oahu- a pleasant place I found to be much less chaotic and bustling than the glamorous Waikiki, on the south side of the island. (We stayed there, later, to facilitate touring all the Honolulu sights such as Pearl Harbor.) Of course, summer is the "off" season here- the surfer crowds come in the winter, when the waves are large, to surf the Bonzai Pipeline. All our needs were met at the wonderful and recently revamped Turtle Bay Resort (as seen in the movies "Soul Surfer" and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall"). My husband and sons took surfing lessons and got to play with baby sized waves (what the locals call "ankle biters") while I lounged by the pool and drank fruity drinks with tiny umbrellas in them. It was the perfect respite from a busy year. The area we stayed in was lush, verdant, green and tropical. Daily high temps in the mid 80's - a good 20 degrees or more cooler than Texas back home. Charming little towns dotted the coast; we were amazed that no one seems to live in the interior of the island, and there were not as many people, in general, as we expected, anywhere.

3 amigos surf the north shore near the Bonzai Pipeline

We ate at some great local spots in and around Haleiwa: one, Ted's bakery, was the source for all the baked goods in the restaurants all over the island. Tried not only the typical meat + 2 sides Hawaiian plate lunch (did not think we would like the mac salad, but we loved it ! If anyone has a recipe, let me know!) but also an amazing chocolate + coconut cream pie. Yum !

Near Haleiwa

We fell in love with some of these little towns. I want to retire there...if I ever win the lottery, this is where I will go.

Your own special hopes,
Your own special dreams,
Bloom on the hillside
And shine in the streams.
If you try, you'll find me
Where the sky meets the sea.
"Here am I your special island
Come to me, Come to me."

Bali Ha'i,
Bali Ha'i,
Bali Ha'i!

Someday you'll see me floatin' in the sunshine,
My head stickin' out from a low fluin' cloud,
You'll hear me call you,
Singin' through the sunshine,
Sweet and clear as can be:
"Come to me, here am I, come to me."
If you try, you'll find me
Where the sky meets the sea.
"Here am I your special island
Come to me, Come to me."

Cheeseburger in Paradise - Maui

2011-08-05T13:46:00.008-05:00

Father and son rock the puka beads at Star Noodle, in Lahaina, Maui. More Asian fusion: Pho, Japanese, Thai

Tried to amend my carnivorous habits
Made it nearly seventy days
Losin' weight without speed, eatin' sunflower seeds
Drinkin' lots of carrot juice and soakin' up rays

But at night I'd had these wonderful dreams
Some kind of sensuous treat
Not zucchini, fettucini or Bulgar wheat
But a big warm bun and a huge hunk of meat

Cheeseburger in paradise (paradise)
Heaven on earth with an onion slice (paradise)
Not too particular not too precise (paradise)
I'm just a cheeseburger in paradise

Heard about the old time sailor men
They eat the same thing again and again
Warm beer and bread they said could raise the dead
Well it reminds me of the menu at a holiday inn

Times have changed for sailors these days
When I'm in port I get what I need
Not just Havanas or bananas or daiquiris
But that American creation on which I feed
Jimmy Buffet, "Cheeseburger in Paradise"

Yes, there is a chain restaurant on Maui called "Cheeseburger in Paradise". No we did not eat there.

Hubster in a peaceful moment in Maui

While the north shore was just the peaceful break I needed from earlier summer activities of going to grad school and thinking about work (I spent the whole time either on the beach or by the pool, tanning and sipping mai tai's), we decided to balance some of the calm with a little spice. Headed over to Maui for a hew days and stayed in Lahaina, the old whaling city on the western shore. Hot and dry, over developed with big hotels and lots of stores and restaurants, crammed full of tourists, it was like Disney world's version of "Hawaii-land". There was lots to see and do.

I get in touch with my spirituality at the Jodo Temple, Maui. There were so many things - it all looks so tiny, on a map, compared to Texas - but you can never see and do it all. Many folk recommended the Road to Hana, with its beautiful scenery and lush waterfalls, to us, and we just ran out of time. Next time....gotta have a reason to go back, right?

We went to a luau called Old Lahaina Luau (travel book said it was the best of them all), tried all the wonderful food, watched the dancers, listened to the Hawaiian "calypso" type band, saw the sun set over the ocean, the guys doing crafts, the pig come out of the pit- had a great time. Sure, it's a cliche, but if you don't do it at least once, you feel sort of ripped off, or like you are missing something. This was a great way to sample a lot of traditional dishes, great variety of pretty good food, and all you can drink booze (although somewhat watered down). It isn't cheap, however. I am not going to lie. But worth it- at least now and then.

Boys on top of Maui's volcano, Haleakala, classified as an "active" volcano. Over ten thousand feet from the sea, 27,000 ft from the ocean's floor. That valley in the background is the volcano's crater.

Hawaiian Dream Vacation

2011-08-05T13:42:00.006-05:00

Waikiki Beach, Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii

We concluded our trip with a stop in Waikiki, so we could conveniently tour all the nearby historical sites before we headed out. Stayed at the Embassy Suites Waikiki . I love that hotel chain, (a member of the Hilton chain, my stays let me collect points so I can visit other spots for free) it has true 2 room suites, (not just a large room with a sofa) and the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet is a life-saver when trying to fill up hungry teenagers. Can you imagine if we had to pay to feed them ? The cost saved from breakfast alone pays for the room. ( It's a great buffet: bacon, eggs, fresh fruit, cereal, waffles, omelets, etc. I eschew places that advertise breakfast, and all that you get is donuts.) It also has a "mangers reception " each night with all the free liquor you can drink...hubster and I have found this a godsend when traveling with a car full of kids. Cheers ! The drinks at this particular branch of the chain, Waikiki Embassy Suites, were particularly strong-er-good ! Highly recommend! As a result of my love for this chain, I am a frequent flier point collector of all things Hilton- but avoided the Hilton Village in Waikiki, on the rec of friends; too many screaming 2 year olds running about. Embassy Suites is typically families with older kids, teens, etc.

Above and below: Pearl Harbor. Rick told Tom he had to be somber, that this was a grave site. He tried......
Had some fabulous meals in Honolulu- One I cannot say enough about: The Side Street Inn (had to use the GPS on our rental car to find it, but worth it!). Our travel guide said it was "the place where local chefs go to eat" and truly, it was full of locals. Asian fusion bar food, to die for. Korean BBQ ribs that were like giant meat lollipops, I just wanted to (not in a sexual way) lick on them all night long. Stir fried rice (and I don't even like stir fried rice, ok ? I know it's just a way to camouflage last night's left over white rice) to die for. To die for! We gobbled it up like there was no tomorrow. It had bacon in it. Trust me. Plus a bunch of other stuff: teriyaki, sushi, pad thai, other things. If you are ever in town, find it ! you will not regret it!

Above: King Kamehameha's statue in Honolulu. Contrary to what the tv show "Hawaii 5-0" would try to convince you, this is not the Honolulu police department HQ. It is a government building. below: A giant tree (yes, all one tree) . I took lots of pix of all the beautiful tropical flowers, too- too many to post here.

Taco Soup

2011-08-05T13:40:00.006-05:00

"Taco Soup", as my kids refer to it, is really a sort of chili with veggies added. My children love it and request it frequently. It freezes well , so you can make up a big batch, eat some now, and save the rest, for later. The garnish of shredded cheese and crumbled tortilla chips is key. You can serve this flavorful soup with cornbread and a salad for a delicious family meal. If you don't have pinto beans, make it with black beans or similar beans. You can also adjust the spiciness level to suit your tastes.

Cook Time: 1 hour, 5 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour, 5 minutes

Yield: Serves 6 to 8

Ingredients:

2 pounds ground beef
1 tablespoon olive oil, if ground beef is very lean
1 large onion, chopped
1 can (15 ounces) pinto beans
1 can (11 to 15 ounces) whole kernel corn ,drained
1 can (14.5 ounces) stewed tomatoes - Mexican style if available
1 can (10 to 15 ounces) Rotel tomatoes (or tomatoes with green chile peppers)
1 pkg. (about 1 ounce) taco seasoning mix -(opt.)
2 1/2 cups water or more, to make soup broth

Preparation:

Brown ground beef and onions in a large pan with olive oil if needed; drain off fat. Add remaining ingredients and simmer for an hour or so. When ready, serve in big soup bowls, and have a skillet of hot cornbread to eat, too.

The Hell of Living With Teenagers

2011-07-08T17:53:00.003-05:00

I was going to write a piece on the particular hell of living with a house full of teenagers, in particular, teen-aged sons, but I found some blogs online that do a much better job than I ever could:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article3313443.ece

Ever watch the monkey house at the zoo? Notice that the female chimps sit around in groups, picking the nits off each other, (cooperative living) but the male chimps fling feces at each other? Ever notice that groups of large mammals -lions, elephants, gorillas- only allow one male in the group, but several females? That's because no one can stand more than one young male in your home at a time....groups of them definitely cause trouble. You can extrapolate from this what you wish, but having two teenage sons isn't just about what they do that's difficult to live with.....they bring their friends over each night, two or three or more at a time, and together they move through the kitchen like a plague of locusts- groceries bought to feed this family for a week disappear over night- and leave trash, dirty clothes, video games, cans of Axe and other detritus in their wake. Adolescence is what makes you eager for that little baby you once treasured to head off to college.

End of One Era - Start of a New One

2011-06-30T11:55:00.005-05:00

My firstborn son, Will, the one I thought I'd never have (years of infertility treatments and surgeries before I could even conceive him) graduated from high school this past June. It's a cliche that your children grow up before you know it and I have found it to be true. While particular moments drag on forever (especially those evenings when you come home tired from work, only to find you have to drive 3 different kids to 3 different sports or activities- and one of them isn't even your own child - somehow cook dinner, the dog threw up on your shoes, a major appliance breaks, your husband is out of town so there is no one to help, the phone keeps ringing from telemarketers(in spite of being on the "no call list"), one kid suddenly announces he needs to go to the store to buy something absolutely essential for school, while the other announces he has a major project due tomorrow that he hasn't even begun), the fun ones fly by all too fast. I miss those summer days when I all I did was take them to the pool, we came home and snuggled together over story time, took bubble baths, played with dinosaurs/trains/ cars at bedtime.
I complain about my sons a lot, but that is mostly just my schtick to keep from bragging. Both boys are blessedly healthy and smart and full of wonder, humor and unique activities/personality traits. Will has amazing talents in music, art (drawing and painting), and a deep natural athleticism in multiple sports. He is no slouch in reading and writing, either (his ELA AP test was his highest score). While he has always struggled with math, he is interested in and shown a talent in various sciences - his physics teacher came up to me this past year and said he was a "born engineer, and the work he did in class was not just 'math vomit' (nonsense)." Will is the gentle son, a bit of a dreamer, too shy to ever go into a store and ask a clerk about where to find something, extremely helpful around the house, a safe driver, calm of temperament, loving to all. I have often thought it was his multiple abilities that have kept him from finding a particular direction or career interest; he just can't seem to narrow his interests down to one area. Lately he spends all his free time writing and recording songs on his computer and posting them to the internet, but previous hobbies have included obsessively tossing a football, doodling/drawing/crafting/making things, ripping apart old toys and reconstructing them in amusing ways to make something new.
*
We struggled with him all last fall, trying to get him to apply to this college or that. Our efforts to get him to diversify, to hedge his bets by applying to multiple places were met with his clear, determined, unilateral focus on just one goal: In spite of all our encouragement, he was determined to go only to UT Austin and fought us every step of the way. UT requires a student be in the top 8% of his or her graduating class for admission these days. Will's class rank was 8.243. He didn't get in.

I have often worried that I spoil my children too much, have tried to shelter them from all the harsh realities I faced at way too young an age. Will, especially had a rocky start, as his biological father decided to file for divorce when I was 4 months pregnant with him, and I had to move back home for a short period while I went through that divorce and got back on my feet, financially. Life smoothed out for us both when hubster and I got married, and hubster has always loved Will as his own child. We don't use the word "step" anything: step-father, step-child, etc, in our family. Hubster took us both into the fold of his large, well-off family and we have treasured being a part of his extended clan. From the time he can remember, Will has lived a stable, well off, safe and nurturing life. Private schools, summers at the beach, world travel, music lessons - the whole nine yards. Sometimes I despair that I have over-protected him and made him soft. I worry that he is unprepared to meet life's difficulties.
*
Not getting in to his first choice college is the first real bump in the road Will has had to face. UT offered him something called the "CAP" program, which is like being on the waiting list. If he attends any UT satellite campus, and if he can pull a B average, he is automatically accepted and does not even have to re-apply to UT Austin, the main (and more prestigious) campus. We looked at all the satellite campuses and choose San Antonio for a myriad of reasons (Will feeling a need to get away from the uber conservative Baptist Republican north Texas milieu, he has severe allergies up here as well, and needed a different climate to see if they would not be as prevalent in a different place). So off he goes this fall to UT San Antonio, to see if he can get it together, make the grade, and get himself off to UT the year after that. We all know that is a pretty tall order, as one's freshman year is not always one's best, academically speaking. It will be the true test of his determination.
When he goes off to college, Will leaves behind him a younger brother he has, in typical fashion, spent most of his life complaining about and yet spends most of his hours of the day with: playing video games, listening to music, driving around town to movies and fast food restaurants, arguing with, throwing things at, wrasslin', sharing-er-stealing each others clothes, etc. The two of them have had the run of the entire upstairs of our large rambling house for years, as the master bedroom is downstairs and the grownups never go upstairs. At an early age, Will taught his little brother how to climb down the fire pole and shimmy back up with pockets crammed full of cookies. Not sure what little bro is going to do without big bro around. We made sure Will's computer has Skype, so we can all talk to each other when he's gone, but that just won't be the same.

I always say: adolescence exists so you, as a parent, won't miss that adorable little baby any more. Your child becomes so annoying that you are more than ready for them to leave. I have had enough of the turmoils of a house full of young men: the stink and messiness, the huge grocery bills, the noise, a line of battered cars parked out front. But I also know I will miss Will when he is gone. The house has already been eerily quiet this summer, as he spends more time out with friends than home. And I wouldn't have it any other way. I want him to grow up and be a normal, functioning adult, with a life of his own. I came from such a dysfunctional, emotionally destructive home that I left at 18 and vowed never to return. I didn't come back, not even for holidays, till I went through a divorce and had to, out of necessity. I hope Will feels differently about us. I hope he will walk that narrow line between being independent, yet coming back to visit some. I hope we will find a way to re-create our life patterns that will incorporate adult children and their friends into it.

Lazy Days of Summer

2011-06-30T11:44:00.005-05:00

This summer is shaping up quite differently from last summer. You may remember that last summer started out well and good - jaunty little trips to Santa Fe and the Outer Banks, no particular family problems, hardly a care in the world - then suddenly my mother wrecked her car, had numerous strokes, and I spent the rest of the summer caring for her while she melted down physically, mentally, and emotionally. Her strokes caused personality shifts in my normal, sweet loving mom which turned her into someone who blamed me for all her life's problems and declared that she had hated me my entire life. She has spent the year since demanding back everything she ever gave me (for example, an opal ring she gave me for my sixteenth birthday) and claiming that I am stealing from her right and left. It felt like when, in the old days of listening to record players, someone would try to lift the needle arm but miss, and ended up dragging the record needle across the record. One minute you are drifting along, listening to the melody...next: R-i-i-i-i-p! Violent scratching of the record and abruptly wakening you from your reverie.
*
In contrast, this summer, things have generally been much calmer. I have turned my mother's care over to my sister. Sure, my teenage sons are driving me crazy, my husband is mid-way through a home improvement project that seems will never end, and I still have plenty of work to do: I have been busy taking more graduate classes and planning for next fall, when my teaching load increases dramatically (due to state budgetary cutbacks, resulting in millions of lost dollars revenue for local schools, we have been undergoing a series of teacher lay-offs and cutbacks, which means that more students will be taught by fewer teachers next year. Those of us left standing are just grateful we have jobs.). In spite of these obstacles, this summer feels more peaceful. I've had lots of reading and paper writing but none of the emotional turmoil that lasts summer brought with it. Mixed in with the work I have managed yoga 3x a week, plenty of naps, reading for fun, movies, trips to the farmer's market, social activities, and a marvelous in-law free vacation (first time in 17 years!) to Hawaii. I really don't want this summer to ever end.

Honest Bob's Dating Services

2011-06-30T11:43:00.011-05:00

I often watch those ads for dating services that fill late night television airwaves, the ones that promise to "help you find your one abiding love based on 17 compatibility points from deep components of your true personality", and wonder..... if hubster and I were to go on those websites and fill out profiles.....would we be matched with each other? In spite of (what seems to outsiders) our near perpetual squabbling, we think we get along rather well - better with each passing year. I have friends who have tried those dating websites and their services, and nearly all have said the matches that turned up for them were horrible in a variety of ways: potential dates didn't use a recent photo, misrepresented their true natures, interests, level of education, age, socio-economic or educational background, desires or intentions, etc. So I thought to myself, if we had to honestly write descriptions of ourselves, this is how they would read.....
*
*
Kevin Spacey Look-a-like !

Charming debonair college professor who looked a little like Kevin Spacey (for one brief moment in my 30's) seeks beautiful educated self-confident woman who can tolerate my incessant talking, severe ADHD, toxic flatulence, crankiness, arrogance, low income stream, long work hours, interfering relatives, viscous bodily secretions, twice daily workouts and a house full of exercise equipment. From a military family, grandfather a U.S. Congressman, I am a world traveler who enjoys peculiar eating habits (no vegetables of any kind, only eat 3 diff meals in rotation, spends 25% of year on "death diet", refuses to eat out any cuisine other than Tex-Mex), long conversations about engineering technicalities, vacations with my mother and other family members, driving "classic" cars (vehicles older than 17 years, typically with at least one major quarter panel dented or secured with duct tape and baling wire), exciting hobbies such as beer brewing, sleeping only 3-4 hours a night (what that really means is I will prowl around the house, knocking things over, watching tv loudly, turning lights on and off, and keeping you awake !) I took 11 years to earn my PHD bc the life of a poor grad student was so much fun, and I will apply those lifelong values of not needing new clothes or furniture minus bong water stains to your future living room ! Call me !
*
*
Going, going, going....Gone with the Girl of Your Dreams !

Adorable girl of your dreams who briefly looked like Scarlett O'Hara only a few years back seeks sugar daddy who can spoil me just like Rhett spoiled Scarlett. Educated, world traveled, well- read DAR OES DRT DOC, guaranteed to provide beauty and intelligence to your gene pool. My father was a lawyer and an engineer, my mother was a southern belle (at least in her own mind.) Currently I've gained a little weight, had a few expensive health problems, and am a high maintenance (who thinks she's low maintenance) demanding cranky dysthymic over worked underpaid high school English teacher who "enjoys" reading books, grading papers, eating out, going to the movies, socializing, exotic travel, frequent gifts, days at the spa, shopping and a constant stream of home repair and redecorating. Just a wee bit of mental illness in my family background but your future children are sure to be "normal". Known for my vibrant sense of humor, I will constantly pop, like a pin stuck in a balloon, any delusions you may have about yourself with my scathing wit and adorable bon mots. Call me !

If You Are Reading This Today , It's Too Late For You

2011-05-21T13:21:00.003-05:00

The news has been full of buzz lately about the supposed end of the world, which is set to expire today. My only real thoughts on this topic are: if you are reading this now, it's too late for you ! You should have repented yesterday! Seriously, folk, we seem to have one of these end of the world dates every other year or so....wasn't the last one supposedly predicted by the Mayan calendar? Has anyone ever noticed that none of these dates are espoused by reliable sources? That these dire warnings come and go, and nothing ever happens? Yet I continue to be amazed by the caliber of folk around me who believe in them and prepare for them - just in case.
*
I happen, at the moment, to be teaching the novel Animal Farm, and there is plenty of commentary in this work on how the pigs manipulate the sheep and other animals via propaganda techniques. Spent a fair amount of time teaching students to be able to recognize and analyze propaganda in our daily lives, via consumer advertising and political ads. I suppose the efficacy of those strategies continues, even if the message behind Orwell's tome has changed.

Prom Season Thoughts

2011-05-15T11:52:00.005-05:00

Son No # 1 enters the final weeks of his senior year of high school with nary a care in the world. He long ago passed all state mandated tests, and recently seems to have no homework and barely even classes to attend, due to the many AP courses I forced him to sign up for this year (which apparently exempt him from any school work after the corresponding test for that class has been given- all in the recent past few weeks.) . In August, I was the devil for torturing him this way; in October he cried that the work load was "too much and he just couldn't do it" but now, it's all good. Fact is, he coasted through his senior year making B's without much effort or even attendance, and is positioned to traipse off to mega state university continuing on this path. As long as the parental money holds out.....
Now many parents I know would look at this scenario and slap each other on the back, congratulating themselves for a job well done. At least he isn't flunking out, dropping out, hasn't impregnated anyone (that we know of), doing drugs, facing jail time. Yet somehow Hubster and I can't wrap our minds around it; we look at each other and think, "what did we do wrong?" I know old age is turning us into curmudgeons and we seem to be suffering from a bad case of "things are not like they were back when we were young." You know what I mean. You've heard the stories at your own family gatherings. Grandpa or some other old coot will be reminiscing, full of anecdotes about how he got up at dawn to milk the cows and it was so cold the milk froze on the teats. Then he studied for school by the light of a candle, wrapped in a blanket. Had to eat fried dough because there was no money for food. Walked to school uphill - both ways. Started working at age 12 and hasn't stopped since. These conversations are guaranteed to make anyone of the younger generation roll their eyes and pray fervently that said old person will soon doze off into an afternoon nap; and then everyone else can commence grinding to the latest hip-hop music.
Hubster and I fear that our hard work and self- sacrifice have made things too easy for our children. They appear to us to be a spoiled, materialistic, superficial, entitled cadre of young people: everyone we know has spent the past 18 years buying them video games, expensive jeans, cars. The one up-man-ship that started among my peers in the Eighties (Who has the job with the highest status? Who bought the coolest BMW-er? The biggest engagement ring ? The coolest honeymoon/vacation destination? Sent their kids to the most expensive private school ? Whose kids got into the most prestigious Ivy League college? Who retired the soonest and lived off their investments ? Let's face it: my generation's shallowness has spawned the current generations' malaise.) Maybe because of the recession or maybe because of the relative affluence of their parents, aka baby boomers, but nobody I know under 20 seems to have a job, hate their parents, care about any political cause beyond where to eat the best sushi this weekend. No one seems to be filled with a burning desire to leave home just to get the hell away and find themselves. Am I idealizing the past ? Where is the angst ? The generational anger? No one seems to resent the older folk who made the world this mess....am I too much a child of the Sixties?
I realize this is a heavy trip to lay at the feet of a bunch of teens standing on the cusp of adulthood, barely ready to head out into that big bad world. I'm not sure most days that my son will be able to figure out how to register online for his classes next fall at mega size state university. A huge part of the fear I hold for his prospects is based on observations of nearly every kid I know, a year or two older, who went blithely off to college, flunked out, and moved right back home within a few months. So when I ask, "what did we do wrong", what I really think is: maybe we should have made it harder for them. Maybe growing up should have come with a few more challenges along the way, to toughen them up some, so that when life deals the inevitable stumbling blocks that we who are older know that it will , the youngsters will have a bit of experience picking themselves up, dusting themselves off, and starting all over again.
But don't let my curmudgeon-ness wear off on you. If you see him or his peers around, wish them a happy graduation and best wishes and all that. Let's hope I am wrong.

Wood Flooring Project Day #67

2011-05-15T11:48:00.003-05:00

OK, ok. I take it back. I take it all back. Thought hubster was going to get wood flooring project finished in a reasonable amount of time - a month ? six weeks ? But now we are heading into infinity here and I can't take it any more. The mess, the disorder, the fumes. I'm losing it. Shhh! I have called in help.....will let you know how that goes. Stay posted.

Never Sexier

2011-04-05T19:21:00.003-05:00

Sh! I'll let you in on a little secret...my husband is "Mr Fix- It". Wiring, plumbing, tiling, painting, building things, landscaping - there really isn't anything he can't (or won't) do. The good news is, he saves us tons of money; we rarely call in repairmen. The bad news is, he has ADHD and it takes him forever to finish things. Here's the "secret" part : I figure I can get about one major home improvement project a year out of him. (Little repairs that crop up along the way don't count...I'm talking installing wood floors, painting the entire house, re-sodding the entire lawn, tiling the hallway, kitchen remodel, replacing the fence, etc.) What I do is, research the project, calculate how long it should (reasonably) take to do, and start my home improvement project du jour with just the right amount of time left to do it, before hubster's birthday rolls around each year. Then when hubster starts planning his annual birthday fete, I simply say to him " We can't possibly entertain until ________(home improvement project) is finished ! What can I do to help ?" :o)

Hawaii ? Haw-are-ya

2011-04-05T19:05:00.005-05:00

I've traveled from San Diego to Rhode Island to Jamaica, Edinburough to Luxor, and most points in between in my life. Love the mountains and the beach, big cities as well as national parks. But I have never been to Hawaii. As a child, I once wrote an entire book titled "The Gosharootie Gang Go to Hawaii", complete with hand-drawn illustrations. Mom played a record of the music from "South Pacific" incessantly....My grandmother also spoke frequently about how she had always wanted to go to Hawaii - from rural Louisiana, she pronounced it "Ha-WAR-ya". It was a dream that was not to be fulfilled for her. After many years of spending our summers in the Outer Banks of NC, we decided to do something different this year. Honoring my grandmother's dream and fulfilling my own wanderlust, we plan to spend time this summer in Oahu and Maui. Hope to do all the touristy things (see a luau, visit Pearl Harbor, swim with dolphins, etc) as well as simply relax, lay on a beach, drink fruity beverages with tiny umbrellas in them. Feel free to send me suggestions of fun things to do - some neighbors of ours highly recommend touring pineapple plantations, volcanoes, taking surfing lessons, etc.

Burning the Midnight Oil

2011-04-05T18:54:00.002-05:00

Many have asked me what I'm up to these days, why I haven't posted to my blog. Simple fact is, I'm swamped...currently in graduate school, reading approx 2 novels a week and writing very long essays. That's in addition to my other two jobs (aka "work" and "home".) My days go something like this: I wake up early, drink a lot of coffee, drive to work, teach my classes, supervise my student teacher, talk to my students, grade papers, come home, drive my kids around some, run errands, cook dinner, read and or write papers, go late to bed, get up the next day, do it all over again. Mixed in with this daily routine I also deal with my sickly, aging, demented mother and all her issues, socialize once in awhile, visit the dentist 4 times for the same root canal, parent my teenagers' through this rocky road called adolescence, listen to hubster yak on about his work/family issues, try to convince my kids to clean their rooms, cuddle my dogs, help son #1 navigate his college applications, and...oh, you know. Same-o, same-o.

New York New York ! It's a Wonderful Town !

2010-12-22T11:08:00.004-06:00

Above: Elsie, Karen, Bill, Kevin. Who knew that summer of 1984 we'd see each other again, still be friends ?

I reached one of those milestone birthdays this fall - you know, the kind that end in "0", and I promised myself I'd do some special things in honor of it. At the exact moment of my birthday, I was too busy to mark the occasion - barely went out for dinner that night - but I promised myself that the year of living this birthday will be filled with special moments, experiences, adventures. Towards that end I took the first of what I hope are several trips this year : a little jaunt to NYC this winter, to see some old friends, take in a Broadway show.

Kevin and Karen at MOMA...the person who looks like Andy Warhol, behind us, is just serendipitous

I've been to NYC many times in my life - lived in the 'burbs even, for a brief period in the '90's - but this particular visit was made all the more special by the surprise visit of a dear friend whom I had not seen in over a decade. When he walked, unexpectedly, into the restaurant where we were eating, just as casually as if he lived around the corner (in fact, he lives quite far away), my jaw dropped to the floor with surprise and pleasure. That the rest of our merry band had secretly plotted this surprise was so touching, I became quite verklempt.

New York, New York --
A hell of a town,
The Bronx is up and the Battery's down.
The People ride in a hole in the ground.
New York, New York --
It's a hell of a town.

View from my hotel room

Start spreading the news, I’m leaving today
I want to be a part of it - New York, New York
These vagabond shoes are longing to stray
Right through the very heart of it - New York,
New York

I wanna wake up in a city, that doesn’t sleep
And find I’m king of the hill - top of the heap

These little town blues, are melting away

The Jolly Lama Visits North Texas

2010-12-21T21:26:00.005-06:00

One of the highlights of my year is the annual visit by "The Jolly Lama", Dudjam Dorjee, to my little town on the prairie in north Texas. Local folk interested in Buddhism, Tibet or the Lama himself gather on a mild autumn Saturday for a potluck vegetarian lunch beforehand - which ironically is always one of the best meals I have all year, as the participants go all out to make gourmet "foodie" dishes made from scratch - and then listen to the Lama talk for about an hour or so. His musings are always thoughtful and manage to be extremely practical bits of advice on how to live in the modern world. Perhaps realizing that his audience here is a mixture of sincere students of Buddhism, new age seekers, the curious, and the wannabes, the Lama offers ideas on how to integrate sense and sensibility and move through the world with calm intention.

This year the Lama spoke on the importance and value of meditation in our daily lives, and how to meditate. (He also plugged his new book, an autobiography titled Falling Off the Roof of the World, which I have not yet read.)It has been an especially rough year for me and I have, at times, felt overwhelmed handling all my many responsibilities. The Jolly Lama reminds me that if I am not healthy, I cannot take care of the ones I love, and so it is not selfish to take care of myself first. He stressed the importance of balance in one's life : proper diet, healthy exercise, meditation, and loving interaction with the people in our lives. A powerful message in a crazy world.

That Eclectic Texas "Look"- decor

2010-12-21T11:58:00.008-06:00

Resist the urge to think about cowboys, wagon wheel coffee tables, Indians, tee pees, large ugly iron and leather "western" furniture when you think "Texas" style decorating. My own personal style combines a bit of the southwest ( including native American arts and crafts) with a little French, Mexican, a little eclectic world travels, some modern things thrown into the mix for good measure. You can scale it up or down, depending on the scale of your abode. (My own home is a 60's suburban version of French Provencal, so weaving in the French makes sense, but has characteristically low 60's ceilings, so no huge hanging chandeliers for me.) Here are some great sources to help you get the "look"....above, Mexican Tiles
http://www.tierrayfuego.com/Ceramic_Tiles/index.htm
Just remember, a little goes a long way and these should be used like spices in a complex dish, with restraint.

Ballard Designs has been a long time favorite of mine. They seem to go through phases, for years it was sort of classically inspired (as in, Greece and Rome)catalog, then for a long time, recently, French with a more casual modern relaxed spirit. I snapped up a great French Provincial dining room set which, sadly, they no longer make. My other stalwart in this area, Pierre Deux, seems to be going out of business. Perhaps their pricier versions just couldn't sell in the prolonged economic downturn.
http://www.ballarddesigns.com/
I think they are based in Atlanta or somewhere in the South, so you get that southern flair in they way they mix colors and patterns.
A new favorite of mine is Viva Terra, a 'green' (as in , lots of reclaimed wood and recycled or fair trade made goods) slightly more upscale version of Pier One or World Market. I've been snapping up their stuff lately and the quality is great. Love their bold colors and patterns!
http://www.vivaterra.com/

Wisteria is another catalog that I seem to buy from every month. Based in Houston, I just can't get enough and wish they would expand their stores. However, if they did, that would probably spell an end to their many "one-of-a-kind" hand-made items. Similar mix : whimsical, multi-cultural, but with a softer palette.
http://www.wisteria.com/

For a bolder, truly Texan look, you have several options: The famous King Ranch ( as in, an actual historical family owned ranch that has been in business for over 150 years) now has a catalog of leather goods, clothes, and home furnishings.
http://www.krsaddleshop.com/Default.asp?
*
The Arrangement in Dallas has been around for awhile and will even ship your purchases ( my mother-in-law periodically comes to town, buys stuff she has sent back home to Virginia)
http://www.thearrangement.com/
*
Throw in some native American arts and crafts, especially rugs or pottery, and you are good to go: (Note: most of the Indians native to Texas were plains tribes, which meant they were nomadic, which means they didn't stay in one place long enough to develop an industry of their own goods. Mostly they were driven out and killed by white settlers, sorry to say. So most folk in the American southwest go with the Indians tribes who populate New Mexico and Arizona for that southwestern art look: Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, etc.) . Here are a few reliable sources our family shops from often:
*
http://www.themudheadgallery.com/servlet/the-**BASKETS**/Categories
http://www.perrynulltrading.com/rugs-and-weavings-1
http://www.southwestindian.com/cat/Ceramics-For-the-Home.cfm
*
Pendleton is a historic wool mill and blanket maker. They make many western themed products that are not to kitchy:
http://www.pendleton-usa.com/category/Home-Blankets/Native-American/1823/pc/1816.uts
*
Check back here if you are interested in this topic. When I find new stuff, I will post it here.

One of Those Wretched Birthdays

2010-12-21T11:52:00.009-06:00

With my sons at The Old Warsaw in Dallas

I experienced one of those wretched birthdays this fall - you know, the ones that end in "0". The ones that are so fraught with emotion that even if you try to make no big deal out of the milestone, then that in and of itself becomes your passive, ignoring response to the big event, which hovers, like a black hole in your conscience, swallowing emotion all the same like spaceships, just unseen. Many of my friends have courageously met this same milestone recently, so I am not alone. Some of them ignored the day or treated it like any other birthday, some of them took marvelous trips or bought themselves nice cars, jewelry, vacation homes, boats, big screen tvs, got tummy tucks or face lifts or whatever tchotchkies they wanted to mark the occasion. Hubster planned a huge blowout party - such is his style.
*
I truly wanted to do something special to mark the occasion; living for half a century ought to be a tremendous accomplishment no matter the projected lifespan. The actual calendar moment that marked my birthday, however, was simply not a convenient time to do anything special : I was torn between working full time with no time off, caring for an aging sick parent, and writing a paper for the graduate class I'm in this semester. Just no time to do anything at the moment the clock said "birthday". My husband took me out to a very nice dinner and bought me a nice piece of jewelry (which he always does). My friends in the neighborhood threw a small impromptu gathering for me. In addition to this, I made a promise to myself : to make my 50th year a magical one, full of adventures, change, and fun. I'm planning several trips , spread throughout the year. I'm putting more effort into seeing friends and supporting the arts - pet causes of mine. I also made a promise to myself to spend more time and money on personal health and upkeep, and have been going to yoga classes, getting my hair and nails done regularly (sounds petty and silly, I know, but I have long been the frumpy mom who gave her last dollar to her kids and never cared how crappy she looked in her overgrown frizzy haircut, outdated shoes or "mom" jeans.) I am researching and considering rather seriously the idea of trading in my practical mom car for something a little more fun and funky.
*
Caring for aging sick parents this past year has made me realize that we may not have as much fun time left as we thought. All the news stories about rising life expectancies do not address quality of life issues. Sure, my grandmother was aware, mobile and peppy until her mid 90's. Then my mom is in poor health, confused, paranoid, angry and depressed in her late 70's, and while her body may live another 20 years, her mobility, understanding, memory and joie de vivre are dead. So I feel it is imperative to enjoy the remaining good years, while developing a plan for the infirm ones. I'm taking a page from my mother-in-law, who through her 50's and 60's went to Europe once a year, drove a big ole Lincoln, wore fur coats, bought a beach house, and took painting classes as a hobby. Now getting a bit more rickety in her late 70's, she still paints and putters around with her dogs. Another friend plans to add gardening to that mix....it all sounds pretty good to me. But until then, I intend to fiddle while Rome burns.

For Whom the Bell Tolls by John Donne

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

World's Oldest Living Grad Student Lives to Tell the Tale

2010-12-20T10:24:00.007-06:00

One of my perennial schticks is that my version of "the seven year itch" involves (not only trading out an old worn-out useless husband for a newer model - ha ! ) but also going back to school for another degree, or changing jobs entirely. Over the course of the past 30 years I have earned a BA (in history and business majors, with minors in English and economics) and an MAT (in education with grad work in English and history). I have a complete English major spread out over undergrad and grad level courses. Along the way, I have also earned half a master's in special ed and started new master's degrees in anthropology, reading instruction, and library science. It's not that I don't know what I want to be when I grow up; it's that due to both husband #1 and husband #2's career changes I've had to move around the country quite a bit, a trailing spouse, reinventing myself along the way to find and keep a variety of jobs. Started out my career teaching prep school English, moved through the realms of special ed as I moved from state to state, for often the only job initially available in a school is with that most vulnerable population of students. Now my career cycle is complete - I am back teaching in the world of high school language arts.
*
My latest venture is different only in that it is generated by my own desires and not the career moves of another. I am truly the poster child for the concept that you can create the job you want, if you are patient and hard- working enough. Nearly every school I have taught at has offered me a promotion of one kind or another, but I have rested the pull into administration. I enjoy working with young people too much, and find that in most institutions the annoying problems are created by the adults, not the kids. I was initially hired at the current school where I work to run an in-house tutoring center for all core academic subjects ( math, science, social studies, language arts) . It wasn't particularly difficult to tutor 3 or more students, simultaneously, in geometry proofs, DNA replication, writing a research paper on symbolism in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter while drawing micro-economic graphs. After all, it' s only high school. But my first love, and indeed my first teaching career, involved that special blend of grammar, vocabulary, spelling, writing and literature and I found, as the years passed, that I missed it terribly. I missed talking with young people about books. I let my principal know that I was interested in moving back into my original field of teaching English. When a slot opened up - and this does not happen as often as one might think; there are many baby boomers out there who still fill the halls of academe with their idealistic views of social service, and who will guide us all for another 10-15 years - I grabbed the chance. I have since been moving, slowly, up the teaching hierarchy, from teaching remedial classes to regular on-grade level classes and into the pre AP or "honors" realm.
*
It is with this goal in mind that my latest venture begins. The current trend in secondary education is for high schools to offer an increasing array of "dual credit" course, ones which offer both high school and college level credits. Typically these courses are offered to high school juniors and seniors, and are accredited through a partnering local university. Students can knock out several college freshman level classes at a discounted cost, and transfer them when the go off to a four year college or university. To be qualified to teach these courses, one needs a master's degree and 18 hours graduate work in the field being taught. As I have a master's in education, and many college graduate courses in English, I only need to pick up a few extra classes to fit this criteria. This is the goal of my latest dip into the graduate school pond - to be qualified to teach dual credit courses.
*
While I have started many graduate programs and successfully completed many types of graduate classes, it has been over a decade since I last did so. I was filled with a sense of uncertainty as I enrolled this time. Found myself in a small seminar class with twelve other students, all in their mid-twenties. I was actually one year older than the professor. The good news is I was the only one in the class who "got" all his jokes, and I felt at times that he was speaking directly at me. The bad news is, emphasis has changed in the three decades since I last took an English course, from a purely literary analysis ( focusing on author's diction, style, symbolism, theme, etc) to a more socio-anthropological frame of analysis. As I have a strong background in this area, and had actually read (albeit a long time ago) many of the canonical authors referenced in the course, I was not totally lost. But I never did feel comfortable with this different style of interpreting works of literature and writing essay papers. It seemed too easy, to "pop" and not scholarly enough to me. I confess to wild pendulum swings of emotion as the semester progressed : from an almost uncontrollable desire to take over and organize the professor and lead class discussions (too many years in that role for me, it was hard to be less dominant, more supplicant; at times I had to literally bite my tongue) and pretty confindent of the things that I know about, forceful as always in my opinions. Yet terrified that I was archaic, out of touch, not up to date on current trends of lit crit theory. Spent untold hours researching basic paradigms so I would know what the heck those whipper snappers were talking about. I also, ironically, felt terrified to stand and deliver my two presentations, even though I stand and speak on topics I know about - should be the same, really - in my job, every day, before larger crowds of far more potentially hostile teenagers. The books we read were not particularly difficult, and in the end, I did ok - made an A in the class. I even made some new friends along the way.
*
It is different being a college student at middle age, however. I had to plan further out, not just to balance the competing demands of work, raising a family and managing my home, but caring for my aging demanding mother, as well. It was infuriating to me when this professor would change an assignment at the last minute, or be vague and non-committal about what we were to write on, then sending out an email at the last minute with instructions. Granted, most of the students in this class were full-time grad students, taking only a few other courses, without full time jobs. They had the luxury of working all day on a paper. I knew I did not have the energy to pull all nighters as I had in my youthful college days, and so sacrificed my weekends doing the work required. Because I am already fairly fluent in computers due to my job, that hurdle was non-existent for me. I managed to knock out a first rough draft of a 6,000 word 20 page essay in just under 7 hours. I credit my many years of blogging with increasing my typing speed and honing my ability to think and write. What has changed, however, is that one must be connected, both in person and via cyber technologies, to stay up to date on the ever-changing flow of information. Students routinely discuss professors, courses, what to take and what to do both online and in person - my college days were so long ago that we actually registered by simply writing on a slip of paper what classes we wanted to take, and putting them in a box with a slot in the top outside the registrar's office. Then showed up to class. One can now order one's textbooks from amazon at a discount, and not be subject to the inflated price tyranny of the local campus bookstore. So much of this is for the better.
*
I will be taking other classes throughout the spring and summer, and will keep you posted on new experiences as I navigate this process. It is not for the faint of heart, but I'm glad I did it. Monday nights this fall were exhilarating and exhausting, transcendent much like a really awesome yoga workout or religious experience.

King Lear revisted

2010-10-03T10:38:00.007-05:00

Act I - GFT has been a busy little bee lo these past few months, unable to post entries to her blog or do much of anything else fun. Things were rolling along last summer - I had just returned from one fun vacation and was about to embark on another, when suddenly and unexpectedly my world shifted a bit to one side : my mother, who is 76 and was starting to show a bit of mental confusion but still (seemingly) able to function independently, crashed her car late one Sunday night in mid- July and was taken to the hospital with a collapsed lung, broken ankle, and numerous bruises and possible head injury. Initially clear-minded, she gave my husband and myself specific instructions in the emergency room to go to her home, secure her valuables, clean up her mess, and take over the managing of her finances until further notice. She was loving and thankful for this help at that time, clear in what had happened in the accident and what she wanted me to do for her. Mom signed over power of attorney and other legal documents to me and was grateful for my help. I then embarked on what has become a nightmare of hard work and an emotional quagmire reminiscent of Shakespeare's famous play about aging, death, filial duty, insanity/dementia and emotional/psychological abuse.
*
I took son #1 with me (#2 was off at tennis camp) the next day as we went to mom's house while she stayed in the hospital, to determine just what the situation was. Always a non-enthusiast in the cleaning dept, my mother's home awaited us with the front door not only unlocked but ajar, and the interior was an ankle deep mess of clothes clean and soiled with cat urine, junk, garbage, important financial docs, newspapers, mail fliers, thousands upon thousands of stacked washed empty tv dinner trays, trash bags full of wine bottle corks, boxes and bags filled with pennies, empty bags, hundreds of shoe boxes, sacks from places she'd shopped, old bills for things she no longer needed or owned, etc. There were dirty dishes everywhere and dessicated food and cat poop laying scattered all over. It was clear that while mom had often seemed charmingly addled perhaps but basically functional when visiting my home, she had deteriorated into a confused hoarder in her own domicile. Son #1 and I spent the ensuing weeks cleaning up mom's mess, and trying to locate her important financial documents, get a clear picture of her financial situation, and in trying to pull from the chaos of her home the various "valuables" she periodically referred to - some of which I had never known her to own, some of which we were never able to find. I worked for weeks at a frantic 24/7 pace, talking to her insurance co about the accident, filing papers, canvassing local police dept impounds attempting to locate in which jurisdiction mom's accident had taken place and trying to find her car in an impound lot somewhere. I hired a maid service to clean 30 years of scunge off her bathroom walls, carpet cleaners to clean and deodorize the damage her cats had wrought to her floors. Sorted through a quagmire of paperwork to determine what my mom's financial situation was. Spent a very unpleasant day in 110 heat traipsing through the acres upon acres of the police impound lot, cleaning out the personal effects in my mother's ruined car before it was demolished. Went to the Container Store, bought bins and closet organizers and shoe racks and items to sort and clean and set up organization systems for bills, imp docs, photos, etc - a place for everything, and everything in its place. Enlisted neighbors to water her lawn, relatives to visit her in the hospital when I could not, and old friends to send her cards and flowers. Took care of her cats. As I worked through all this, I became filled with sadness at the meagerness of my mother's belongings, both personal and financial, and the bare bones shabby living conditions of her life. My parents had divorced when I was a teen; my mother worked as a legal secretary to put myself and my sister through college. Mom had sacrificed deeply to make that happen for us, and at the terminus of her life her personal assets were pitifully scant as a result. I knew she was going to need what little she had, to steer herself through the days that lay ahead.
*
While I was busy taking care of the mess of mom's life, she languished for weeks in the hospital. An allergic reaction to medications,or possibly her head injury, took her completely out of her mind and into a deep abyss of confusion and an almost animal-like state of consciousness. Nearly naked and with a broken ankle, she kept trying to "escape" from the hospital to "go home" and had to be forcibly restrained ( i.e. tied down by the nursing staff) to her hospital bed lest she injure herself further. She did not know who or where she was or why. Sometimes when I came to visit her she recognized me, sometimes she did not. Once she introduced me to the nursing staff as her mother. Gradually her body healed up and she was discharged to a rehab nursing home, which she stated she hated, kept trying to convince me to check her out of, and saw no purpose for though she could not walk. Weeks turned in to months and mom became slightly less confused, although the numerous cognitive tests the nursing home gave her, along with physical rehab, indicated that she had previously suffered a series of mini-strokes, had numerous cognitive deficits, and worst of all, was completely unaware of them and thought everyone, including me, was conspiring against her to keep her a prisoner against her will. She refused to contemplate any new living scenario, such as moving to be in the town I live in ( she lives an hour away), or moving to an assisted living facility of any stripe, or downsizing her home to a smaller less stressful space.
*
Act II - I've spent the past 20 years in therapy dealing with the issues of my dysfunctional childhood. It is no secret to those who know me that there is a lifetime of difficult, troubling situations that have come between my sister, my parents, and myself. It should come as no surprise then, that when mom felt frustrated and certain that I was conspiring with her doctors to keep her prisoner in the nursing home, and she was sure that we were all giving her false medications to boot, she called on my sister, who lives 2000 miles away and hadn't seen my mother in years or spoken to her in months, to come and get her out of this mess. My sister was advised not to check mom out by the nursing home staff, and was given a list of interventions by both me and the nursing home social worker that needed to be done in order for mom to live independently in her home (including, but not limited to : installing shower grab bars, setting up social services such a home nursing aide, meals on wheels, taking all mom's prescriptions to her local pharmacy, accident proofing her home, etc). None of this phased my sister, who flew into town, signed my mother out of the nursing home, took her home, stayed 5 days then left, and while there attempted to access her checking and financial accounts, and rifled through her bank deposit boxes and mom's personal effect before leaving.
*
Cut to several weeks later : Since that day my mother has told me that she plans to write me out of her will and turn over all her personal effects to my sister when she dies. Let me just state for the record that I have been a faithful steward of mom's assets during this crisis, both financial and personal, have taken nothing for myself, have kept immaculate records that will hold up in court should the need ever arise. I have also consulted a certified financial planner and an attorney for advice on the best way to help mom maximize what assets she does have, for her own benefit, as she is going to need them in the coming days/years. Mom seems to be mostly angry at the situation, at needing to be in a nursing home, or in needing the help of others, and blames me for this fact. She phones me on a daily basis, often several times a day (and calls my husband and children when I am busy and can't answer the phone) to demand that I drop everything (my full time job, my graduate school night classes, my family duties, my life) and drive to her home an hour away and take her to buy her groceries, help her around the house, run errands for her, fix this or that, and to accuse me of stealing anything that she can't find that very minute. If she then finds what she was looking for, days later, she does not bother to apologize for accusing me of having stolen it previously. All this comes at me through her garbled, aphasic stroke- induced speech that is filled with hateful invective, angry barbs and confused accusations that make no sense. Mom refuses to listen to reason, won't discuss her ability ( or lack thereof) to function independently, or her plans for the future. It is quite clear that she needs me to survive, and hates me for that fact. I feel terribly sorry for her but also anguish, sadness, and anger, for even through her demented condition it is clear that she does not like me and never has, no matter how hard I try to be the "good" daughter it is never enough, and that in the end, she will do as she pleases, to the point of destroying herself, and I am helpless to save her from that fate.
*
I have met with attorneys, social workers, and a variety of geriatric specialists, trying to find the best solution to this problem. Local attorneys have advised me that to get guardianship of her will likely cost $3-5,000 - money I just don't feel I can afford at this moment ( getting ready to send son #1 off to college, and about to write large checks to pay for that bill, I am actively saving all I can at the moment. To whom do I owe the greater responsibility?)My sister refuses to cooperate in this situation, and is likely to contest anything and everything I do, without offering to actually do anything herself. Social workers tend to advise I step up the parental supervision and services, which I could more readily do if mom moved to my county or town, but which are difficult if not impossible for me to manage with a full time job living in a different city an hour away. As a final result I have been told to contact Adult Protective Services when I feel she is "a danger to herself or others", although I am not sure exactly where the line drawn in the sand is on that issue.
*
Just the other day, mom called (and while ranting about the most recent item she can't find, just sure that I have stolen it), informed me that while my sister was visiting her those 5 days, mom's house flooded. Mom is a bit vague as to how or why - at one point she said " water was coming from all the sinks" (water main line breakage?) , but at a different point she said "the toilet flooded". Said she'd been living in a house filled with water for over a week and there was mold now growing on the carpets ( Difficult for me to assess, and she won't let me in the house now.) Apparently, according to mom, my sister's solution to this situation was to buy her a wet-dry vac and suck out the most visible water, then leave town- with never a phone call to the insurance co, a 24 hour flood/water damage restoration company, or anything to help remedy this situation. So I have now spent the past several days talking to all these folk, to get mom's home cleaned up. Husband and I popped in late one night - mom was sleeping, so we just let ourselves in the door to deliver a load of groceries - and saw that mom's house looked exactly as it had when I first entered it after her car accident - papers everywhere, a giant swirling mess of important documents, garbage, junk, photos, old clothing, boxes everywhere on the floors, tables, furniture stacked on top of itself. No wonder mom can't find anything she is looking for.......I nearly cried out in misery at the thought of all the work I had done to clean this morass, now wasted. The insurance man tells me that the flood, whatever the cause, was so massive that all the flooring, carpet tile and wood, will have to be torn out of mom's house and replaced. Mom of course refusing to move out even for this process, which will likely take weeks. And all the while, the angry phone calls continue, accusing me of everything hateful she can think of, and never a word of thanks for what I have done, and continue to do for her - only complaints at the inconvenience of it all. I find myself unwillingly assigned the role of Cordelia, in Shakespeare's "King Lear"....a role I would just as soon do without. I just spent the previous year dealing with my father's failing health and death and estate issues - entirely by myself. So I've been just a tad too busy to write these days.........I'll keep you posted when Act III begins. You know it's gonna be a good one.

Travels : Four Corners Area Pt I

2010-07-15T15:01:00.009-05:00

The Pantry, in Santa Fe
There are hundreds of wonderful restaurants in Santa Fe; it is truly one of those destination towns, like New Orleans or San Francisco, where you can go to simply to eat - and dining alone will provide all the entertainment you need. Roll outta one meal, walk it off, window shop, look at art galleries, see some sites, roll in to the next one. Everyone has their favorite spots in this town, and over the years I have tried many of them. This year, was wanting to get out of my rut, a bit , so approached my visit with open eyes and ears. Struck up a conversation at the Hagen -Das ice cream shop on the square (it is a long standing family joke, that every single day at 3 pm, no matter where she is or what she is doing, my mother says, "Now seems a pretty good time for some ice cream!" Imagine a little old lady, deep East Texas drawl.) with a woman who owns an upscale jewelry store on Canyon Road - she gave us two tickets for free comps at a tapas bar, La Boca, that was new in town. How fun ! Adventures happen everywhere, if you open your eyes.
*
In spite of my mother's complaint that we were eating "too much Mexican food", however (that's like saying, "too much Cajun/Creole food" in New Orleans ! Sacrilege ! Tired of what you are eating ? Then select a different dish! So many choices, so little time......), I seldom veer too far off the beaten path of southwestern cuisine in NM. Have eaten at the Indian restaurant in SF and it was mighty fine, but when I'm there, I'm rarely in the mood. Can get Indian at home !
*
Just to liven things up a bit, this year I decided to head the organic route, wherever possible. Started off our visit at the Farmers Market in Santa Fe, where I have often found not only wonderful produce but great arts and crafts, as well. Sampled local offerings there, bought ristras, gourds, baskets (still a few weeks too early to buy the famous Hatch green chiles, which arrive in late summer/early fall)......Picked up several local publications, and perused them for restaurant reviews. One thing led to another and.....
*
One of the new places I tried this year, as a result of reading a review in the local organic newspaper, was The Pantry on Cerillos. This mom-and-pop diner has been around forever, yet somehow I'd never eaten there. I tried blue corn chicken enchiladas, one of my all time fave dishes, and it was fabulous. Melt-in-your-mouth tasty; I'll definitely go back. Mom had tacos and liked them, too. This place turns up with positive reviews on a lot of web sites. Don't miss it - another great little inexpensive spot with fresh wonderful food, I'm adding it to my list of places to hit each time I'm in town. They serve local wines with dinner, which we sampled - much needed after a hard day of shopping . A plus ! Kid and family friendly, I hear they are good for breakfast, too .

The Plaza Cafe in Santa Fe
A completely unexpected surprise for me was eating breakfast at the Plaza Cafe on the square. I must have passed this spot 100's of times, and never paid it any attention at all (assuming anything on the square had to be too touristy and therefore, bad). The exterior is unassuming; I almost missed it. Inside, it's sort of retro 50's diner-ish. Mom and I bellied up to the counter and ordered pancakes, thinking they would be little doily sized things, al la IHOP, but no! Mine were blueberry, hers were apple. When they arrived, they were the size of platters and simply to die for ! Possibly the world's best pancakes.... I'm still dreaming about how to replicate in my own kitchen. Will definitely add this spot to my list of place to hit each time I'm in town.

Often, when I travel with hubster, we sample the local brewpubs - beer is his chief hobby (sampling, collecting and consuming, mostly, although he does make home brew, once in a while). It just so happened at one meal this trip where my mom and I were pooped and ready to rest up and eat, I looked around , and there was Second Street Brew Pub right in front of us. We popped in and enjoyed the shade in the pleasant shady dining patio, and fortified ourselves with huge club sandwiches that were pretty tasty. Oh, yes, the beer wasn't bad, either .

Demo chef at Santa Fe School of Cooking

One of the most fun things to do in Santa Fe is attend a cooking class at the Santa Fe School of Cooking. Part gourmet food/kitchen shop, part restaurant, part entertainment, if you are a casual or serious cook, you will get to see demonstrations, learn and practice many techniques for cooking southwestern food. A gf and I took a class here almost 20 years ago - that year I learned how to make enchiladas - from scratch. It included making and rolling my own tortillas.....it was a blast. This time, I enrolled my mom and me in a tacos class, but it covered such diverse things as: making red and green sauce, how to roast your own chiles, and several great recipes (including one for shrimp tacos which was to die for). We had a blast and I highly recommend it to anyone. Had thought about taking my surly teenage kids along for that one but chickened out at the last minute....should not have worried, there were several teens in the class, as well as a diverse assmt of geezers, gourmets, moms, and the usual hungry people this year.
*
Hotel options in Santa Fe are plentiful, offering everything from spas and the truly luxurious to cheap cheezy motels, and everything in-between. A long-time vacation spot for the wealthy and those who love the art scene or skiing, there is something for everyone. I tend to favor brands in the Hilton family, only b/c I collect points there, but there is probably a branch here of every chain in America.

View from Far View Lodge Cafe, Mesa Verde
By far the most unusual dining and hotel experience we had this year was when we spent the night at Mesa Verde National Park. I've been visiting this place since I was a kid - never stayed in the park itself (always worried that it was too difficult to get a reservation, I guess, maybe with a waiting list years long). Growing up, we always stayed in Durango or Cortez. This year, perhaps due to the economy, I found plenty of rooms inside the park readily available on expedia or travelocity websites, at a discount. The only difficult thing about it was the fact that we arrived late at night - SOMETHING I ADVISE YOU NEVER TO DO, AT ALL COSTS. The front gate was open but no one was there, and we just rolled in (no one to sell us an entrance ticket). I then had to drive 15 miles deep into the park on twisty, turning mountain roads with no lights, no signs, no guard rails, only praying and hoping this adventure wasn't going to end like "The Shining" , "Thelma and Louis" or a slasher movie. After what seemed like an eternity and probably was - I am terrified of heights and was driving about 1 mph, as the roads were all torn up and "under construction"- we finally found Far View Lodge. In the dark, it seemed like nothing special. Checked in, went to our room, collapsed. But oh, how the light of day changes things ......... we woke up just as the sun was rising, the next day. This hotel, turns out (couldn't tell night before, in the dark) is perched on a mountaintop in the park, with a view that spans the horizon. You can see canyons and ruins and into distant states. It is incredibly breathtaking; words alone don't do it justice. I was worried about getting some coffee as fast as possible (always my chief concern upon awakening), and discovered that inside the gift shops/ park buildings there are several restaurant choices, (some casual, some upscale) open to hotel residents hours before the park opens to the general public. Mom and I wandered over the the place that had a breakfast buffet and ate with scant few others, in front of giant windows that took in all the majesty of the sun coming up over the canyons. It was magnificent, a moment I will never forget.

Travels : Four Corners Area Pt II

2010-07-15T13:07:00.010-05:00

La Placita, Old Town Albuquerque
Half the fun of any road trip is sampling a wide variety of cuisines and restaurants. I confess to being a strange mixture of both high-brow and low-brow tastes, in most aspects (cinema, literature, fashion, hobbies, husbands*, and food !) and will happily dine at a 5 star restaurant or a roadside diner, enjoying each equally the same. Either end of the spectrum offers something unique and valuable that I want to experience. A trip to the Colorado - New Mexico region allows me to visit some old faves, and try some exciting new experiences as well. Sure, now and then one has to eat at a Denny's or a Waffle House, simply because nothing else is available. (It must be noted that I consider breakfast to be the only "safe" meal to eat at Denny's any or time any where, and as there are no Denny's at all along I-40 running through the entire state of Tennessee, and as hubster and I make that trek every summer, we endure what we know will be a long day of arguing as we cannot agree on where to eat, otherwise. Denny's is a "safe" choice in oh-so-many ways for us!) But it is a shame to waste a perfectly good road trip, with all the exciting food options that exist out there, on the familiar blandness of a chain restaurant.
*
Hubster's family has long argued over which restaurant in old town Albuquerque is THE restaurant where they always dine. Each time we go there, no one can never quite remember where it was that we ate last time we were there. Hubster's mom refers to a place she calls "El Ranchero", which she claims make the best chiles rellenos in all the world, yet there is actually no restaurant that has ever existed by that name (or similar) in that location. I know, I know, most in-the-know locals and well read tourists shun the Old Town area as tres passe, but I was traveling w my mom this summer, and she needed to hit some of the "old lady" spots she likes, too, so I indulged her. We found ourselves in Old Town, strolling around "power shopping" (you really have to see how fast and furious my mother does this, to believe it) one fine Saturday evening, and decided to stroll in to La Placita for dinner. This place hit the spot perfectly, serving us large sampler plates of the New Mexico cuisine we love so much, reasonably priced and perfectly rendered. My plate included chile rellenos as one of the items, and while this is not my fave dish, it was cooked and tasted just as it should be. I was pleased to note several Hispanic families with kids, and a young couple next to us who smooched the entire meal, who appeared to be locals, so I figured it couldn't be all that bad. It was a delightful meal, and about halfway through it, my mom sort of straightened up and said, "I have been here before ! A long time ago, when you girls were babies ! I remember it now!"
*
Another family fave in Albuquerque is the Frontier Cafe, across from the University of New Mexico. Hubster reminisces fondly about eating green chile stew and I, the burritos, from that wonderful hole-in-the-wall cafe. A special note of interest : the tables, chairs, signs, menus, dishes, and all accouterments are EXACTLY the same as my long time Houston fave, House of Pies. It's as though each diner bought their initial set-up from the same restaurant supply store, the same year. Truly amazing.
*
Plenty of hotel choices in ABQ, take your pick.

The Alley Cafe, Taos
It has long been a personal tradition of mine to hit Taos in time for lunch, or at least, cocktails, so I could sit on the balcony patio at Olgelvies Bar and Grill, on the plaza, and sip a margarita while enjoying the scenery (foreground: tourists, mid-ground: plaza, background: mountains). Never fazed me that the food was only so-so; the ambiance was worth it. I've been enjoying that place since the late 1970's. Sadly, it was closed this summer, so I had to find a new spot to dine in Taos. Conversation with a local shop-keeper (more power shopping w mom!) revealed that the economic downturn has hit Olgelvie's badly, they are trying to remodel, refinance, and keep it going, but it's all very up in the air at the moment. We manged to find a charming little spot called The Alley Cafe, literally in the alley behind the plaza, and ducked in out of a rain storm for green chile cheese burgers and margaritas, which were tres magnifique ! Fires burning in the fireplace were the prefect touch, as it was about 40 degrees and threatening sleet that day.
*
One of the many fun things to do in the Taos area is to visit the wineries just outside of town, which are located along a back road, aka "the road to Dixon". Beautiful mountain scenery and charming little boutique wineries dot this highway. Family fave is La Chiripada, but I've been told others are wonderful, too. While my mom and I often order cases from off the LC website, it is a lot more fun and educational to attend a tasting session, and sample a wide variety of their many award-winning vintages. We did so this trip, and had a lot of fun - and came away with another case of wine ! The vintner recommended a lunch spot for us, named like Razzy's or something like that, (so new it does not have a website yet for me to check spelling) but it was closed the day we were there, so we had to press on.
*
When staying in Toas looking for a romantic weekend, I've stayed at both of the very charming, historic, and luxurious old hotels : La Fonda, and Doc Martin's Historic Taos Inn. (I've been told there are great ski lodges in the area, which I'm sure have some mighty fine restaurants, but I tend to prefer to be in town, as I don't ski, and would rather shop, look at art, drink, eat, stroll about, etc. Bad knees......) The restaurants in each of these sentimental faves are lovely; never had a bad meal. It is a particularly pleasant thing to do in the fall or winter, and curl up by the fire.....
original photo of Bake's Lotta Burger....the current ones look about the same
While wending our way from Durango to Gallup (where the real shopping takes place; it must be noted that everything else is just a feeble warm up!), we often pass through Shiprock. Now, the road from Durango to Gallup, through Shiprock, is long, straight, flat, isolated and runs through the Navajo reservation for several hours/hundreds of miles (depending on how fast you drive !). I find the land beautiful, but many, not used to the serenity and undeveloped quality of the dessert southwest, might find it stark and lonely. It used to be that there was nothing, literally and figuratively NOTHING at all save sheep and hogans, the entire distance from Shiprock to Gallup. I did notice this year that someone has brightly built a gas station about halfway down this highway, around Teec Nos Pas. How many tourists, I wonder, ran out of gas on that road, over the years? Or get lost looking for the road to Chaco Canyon? Those in the know will fill up on food and gas, in Shiprock. Our family knows the area well, from the days when my brother-in-law worked at the hospital in Shiprock, and we visited him several times. Shiprock is not known for upscale cuisine, mostly just fast food choices, so this is when I eat at Blake's Lotta Burger, one of the few local fast food chains still extant. Yes, there are McD's and the other mainstays available, but why eat there when this one is so much better ? Cheese burgers are the thing to eat here, with green chile, and also pretty good shakes. (About halfway through this trip, my mom said to me, "Why is it that everything we are eating is Mexican food ?" When in Rome, ma, when in Rome.........)

Garcia's in Gallup
Gallup is a town that is strangely frozen in time : so much of its growth era was dominated by the magical "Route 66" that guided folk from Chicago to Los Angeles back in the earlier part of the 20th century. If you are searching for a modern upscale hotel or restaurant here, forget it. El Rancho claims to be "where the movie stars slept" back in the day, but I've been in there and it reminds me of Norma Desmond's nightmarish house in the movie "Sunset Boulevard." Too many dusty old stuffed animals leering at you, their glassy eyes, their yawning jaws.....you know they all come awake at night, when you are not looking, don't you ? Your best bet is one of the clean new mid-range chains near the highway; the main street through town, which is the actual "Route 66", is filled with quirky looking motel-courts from the 1920's through 1950's, which while nostalgic and cute, promise you lumpy beds, damp shag carpeting and funky smelling rooms with not enough scratchy small towels. There are 1000's of small diners in this town, each serving pretty much the same local fare. For such a seemingly small town in the middle of nowhere, the entire town can book up quickly (it is a regional hub, home to several major rodeos and Indian inter tribal conventions) so plan and book ahead if you go there. August is the busiest month - I'd skip August, unless compelling personal business took me there - although, August is know for great sales, when everything is half off.
*
I always say to people that Gallup is where I go to shop, seriously shop, and they seem unaware that it exists. Gallup is off the tourist beaten path, close to several reservations, and the prices for anything (I'm talking native American handicrafts here, of an upscale variety : jewelry, baskets, rugs, etc) worth having are roughly 1/3 that of prices for the same item in Santa Fe. If you collect items of this nature, you know what I'm talking about, and it is not "tourist grade" inexpensive (made in China) crap sold in some mega store on the highway next to a gas station. The quality and the prices make Gallup, only 2 hours west from ABQ, well worth the trip. There are also many places that sell what local hand-crafters use to make jewelry, so if you are "into" beading, it's like being a kid in a candy shop. I have more than once seen an individual stroll into a store, ask for the manger, and bring out a crumpled paper lunch sack full of incredible jewelry this individual person just made, themselves, to sell to the store, to sell to people like me.
*
There aren't any especially wonderful places to eat in Gallup, but this year, just by chance, we wandered in to a 1950's looking diner along the far west side of "the strip" named Garcia's, looking for breakfast, and it was wonderful. Car had been making an ominous sound the previous day, which was stressful, but that morning a helpful young man in a parking lot rolled under and looked at it (a loose plastic flap, that is all - had it checked at a dealership in Santa Fe, later, which confirmed and fixed it ) . We then ate at the spot nearby, and all my tension were quickly soothed by an incredible green chile omelet, great coffee, fresh squeezed o.j., home-made tortillas and fry bread. My mouth waters even now, thinking of it. All presided over by a charming and ebullient proprietor, Garcia himself, who visited with us and talked about how his food was actually good for you b/c it was all home-made, from scratch, no preservatives, no additives, no trans fats, etc. I was sold; he had me at the first bite, anyways!

*
First husband thought he was high-brow, but was actually low-brow : a self made man, his mom was a maid who cleaned houses, his dad a repairman. He had a huge chip on his shoulder about his background and went around trying to prove how snooty and posh his tastes were.....what mammy used to call "a mule in a horse harness". Second husband likes to pretend he is low-brow, but his actually high-brow : his dad and both his grandfathers were West Pointers, and one of his grandfather's was a US Congressman from Connecticut in the 1960's. He is so confident about his background that he's always slummin', trying to be cool and casual.....yet his family "summers" in exclusive east coast vacation spots, every year - just like the Kennedys do.

Summer Reads Pt II

2010-07-15T12:38:00.007-05:00

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. By now it seems that everyone in America has read this novel. It's been on the New York Times best-seller chart for untold weeks and received a lot of media buzz; book clubs all across the country have championed it. IMDB informs me that a movie version is in production.
*
The story of a generation of women living in Jackson, Mississippi during the nascent years of the Civil Rights movement, The Help employs a frame story structure that follows the adventures of an east coast educated, wealthy young white woman, Skeeter, who returns home from college adrift and purposeless in the early 1960's. Too smart to marry any of the local hicks, Skeeter is a member of the Junior League but feels out of place and disconnected with her southern (read "brainless, racist, superficial") society sisters. She attempts to find purpose in her life by secretly interviewing and writing down the stories of all the maids who work for her family and friends around town, focusing primarily on the tales of two main characters, Minnie and Aibeleen.
*
Along the way, Skeeter and the maids find themselves, each other, and purpose in their lives. They believe that the simple act of telling their stories will somehow change the racist world they live in, and perhaps they are right. Most people I have spoken to about this book have uniformly praised it......but I have to admit it drives me crazy. It is a noble enterprise to recount the experiences of the maids, to let their voices be heard, and to decry the hypocritical society women who employ the maids to raise their children without a care in the world yet simultaneously worry if that same maid could be trusted to use their toilets or while polishing the family silver. This criticism of southern society - both then and now- is valid. My problem with this book is the attitude that seeps through every page; a self-congratulatory vibe that fairly shouts, "Aren't I a good person for taking the opposing point of view and telling you what these women's lives were really like ? Look at me ! I'm a southerner who is not racist ! I understand the plight of these people ! " And that, in and of itself, is just as damning as being racist. It is a view of people and situations that reduces individuals to stereotypes and fosters a post-colonial imperialist missionary attitude. These poor people can't help themselves, they still need us white folk to do it for them! This book is patronizing and the characters remain stereotypes (the noble white woman, the funny irascible maid, the all-caring lovable mammy who suffers silently, the white trash tramp with the heart of gold). While an entertaining read and probably an eye-opener to the many southerners who will ponder it with some discomfort, The Help will never be a great literary work. The entire time I was reading this story, I couldn't help but think of Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird, a timeless classic that manages to explore similar themes (African Americans are people, too !) while creating characters that are sympathetic, archetypal and deeply drawn (Boo Radley, Tom Robinson, Mayella Ewell, Atticus Finch, Dill Harris, Scout, Jem, Calupurnia), not stereotypical.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman. Of all the books I read this summer, this is the one I have recommended most to others. This story blends fantasy, noir style mystery, mythology and classic road trip motifs into a captivating tale of a modern day quest for the self. Shadow is released from prison, takes up with a strange fellow who may be the god Loki in disguise, and the two travel across the continent rounding up other displaced former old world deities (often depicted in humorous ways : Egyptian gods turn up as morticians) all the while preparing for some grand epic clash of the Titans sort of battle that is going to take place at the "Rock House" of east coast fame (from barn roof signs all over the mid-Atlantic area: " See Rock House ! Only 45 miles ! ) The enemy ? "New Gods" that have supplanted the old ones: gods of credit cards, money, tv, movies, and the internet (personified as an obnoxious rapper kid in a limo). Highly entertaining while offering valid social criticism, I could not put this book down, and neither will you. Great for lovers of fantasy, mythology, the American scene. Will make you think of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" - in a good way.

The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance by Elna Baker.The title of this book captivated me, and Elna Baker is a humorous raconteur - her yarn about working at FAO Schwartz one Christmas season, selling a baby doll a named "Nubbins" causes me to break out in laughter even just thinking about it. I am surrounded by many Mormons where I live, and confess I know little about their faith (other than a quick tour through wikipedia) or what they think about the world and themselves. This coming of age story, which recounts a wholesome young woman's attempts to make it in the Big Apple, finding love and herself along the way while maintaining her personal values, provides a sympathetic eye-opening view to Mormonism at its most mainstream interpretation. (Granted, this is a a liberal version of this faith, or the author would not find herself living in New York doing the things she does.) Read it for humor, or for understanding this often unknown faith/culture just a wee bit better. Now that I think about it, each of the books I read this summer explore the concept of moving past prejudice and into getting to know individuals in a more open manner. Social criticism in a variety of highly entertaining formats.
Inside of a Dog by Alexandra Horowitz. The title perhaps riffs on one of Groucho Marx's old jokes: Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. So we have a book about man's best friend that is, in itself, man's best friend (a book about man's best friend.) In this work, the author applies the same observational anthropological skills that many have used to study primates and other species, and applied them to the study of that animal that is constantly by our side and yet rarely completely understood. A fascinating read for any dog lover, Horowitz explains how dogs "see" in "smell-o-vision", why it is important to take a moment to greet your dog when you return home at the end of the day, the importance of play, or marking, of barking, and many other interesting behaviors. Her style is engaging and not dry - this is a great read.

CARS !

2010-07-13T16:59:00.004-05:00

Hubster and I came of age in the 1970's, and while people often romanticize the cool "muscle cars" of that era, the simple fact is that most of us 1970's teens did not grow up driving them. Only the tough cool guy in school , the one with the long hair and wide flair bell bottoms who probably sold drugs - you know who you are - drove one of those kinds of cars. (Remember, muscle cars were expensive, only "Smokey and the Bandit" could afford one.) No, the car most likely to have been driven by any of us aging baby boomers back in the day was mom's station wagon. Large as a tank, it often had the fake wood grain side panels that were supposed to conjure images of (what, exactly? old wooden carriages ? the stage coach that took you out west to the gold mines? ) gentility and luxury. These cars invariably got about 5 miles to the gallon, (back when gas was 35c a gallon) and the seats were covered in cracked vinyl "pleather" that was coated with pet hair and mysterious smudges from the many children who'd wiped their grimy paws on them. Sure, it was embarrassing to drive one or be seen in of these cars, and I have even more painful memories of being chauffeured about by a boyfriend's mother, back when we were too young to drive ourselves. Said friend and I sat in the rear bench seat of a yellow station wagon with green interior (known to all as "the banana"), making eye contact but afraid to say anything, lest his mother overhear us. If one's mom didn't have the requisite station wagon, she often had a large sedan of some sort, a Buick, or a Chrysler. You knew you were moving on up when the seats were plush velveteen instead of that brittle plastic that scorched your thighs in the summer or froze your tushie in the winter.
It was a huge generational statement for my late baby boomer friends and I (as opposed to the early boomers, who made the VW beetle their emblem of youth) that when we were finally able to buy our own cars, (or our parents allowed us to chose one for ourselves) that we often preferred tiny little fuel-efficient hatchbacks, especially models made in Japan or Germany. In the early days of America's love affair with Toyota and Honda, these little cars were considered to be the epitome of "not my mom's car". Off to college we went in them, cramming those hatch cargo areas full of record albums, cases of beer, clothing, shoes, books, a portable typewriter, bedding, etc. They weren't as comfortable to make out in as mom's station wagon had been, but who cares ? They weren't our moms cars.

Cars have been on my mind considerably, of late, as GFT has reached that point in life where it's time to buy son #1 his first car. Hubster and I just can't juggle three drivers with two cars any more, when each of us needs to be at a different place across town at the same time - not to mention little brother and his transportation needs and busy schedule, too. Many families solve this problem by just hanging on to an old car to pass down to their children, but a few years back I was disgruntled from too many trashy old vehicles littering our driveway, and in a fit of pique sold all of them one day, just to clean up the yard. (Gone in one fell swoop : an old mazda hatchback, a Chevy pick-up truck, a Ford winstar mini-van.) Granny isn't doing us any favors this time, another time-honored solution to the problem, with offers of a hand-me-down; the recession has made her worry about her finances and she's hanging on to her old vehicle till her stock portfolio recovers or she goes in to the nursing home, whichever comes first.
*
Irony : A few years back, Hubster and I bought small fuel-efficient cars when gas reached $4.00+ per gallon, (the mommy van was one of the behemoths I sold - I was tired of driving all the kids in the neighborhood home after school and getting 9 mpg doing it) and bought what we thought were "cool, hip, young people's cars." He selected a Scion XB and I chose a Toyota Matrix. Both cars fit the carefree, "green", bohemian images we have of ourselves, and are tricked out with all the important gadgets and gizmos we need. We thought that we'd drive them for a bit (let our sons learn to drive on them), then turn them over to the kids and buy ourselves something else. But a funny thing happened on the way to the dealership .....our kids don't want our cars. Not only that, they are embarrassed to be seen in them. Sure, some of this is the eternal teen embarrassment of being seen with one's parents any time, any where. But offers to give either one of these cars to first born son were turned down, repeatedly, with scorn and derision. So what kind of car does this young lad want to be seen cruising through town in ? We told him we could not afford anything expensive; he had to chose something used, cheap, and reliable. "I just want a regular car, not one of those weird cars like you two drive. You know, something normal, like a sedan."
*
Ba-da-bing ! Ba-da-boom ! Anything but the car my mother drives!

Trip to Bountiful

2010-07-05T16:37:00.005-05:00

Taos, NM
I spent the early weeks of this summer participating in meetings and seminars related to the books, lessons, curriculum and teaching strategies of English, and in one of them spent a fair amount of time working up activities related to the idea of seeing one's own life in terms of archetypal characters from literature, or from archetypal movies. Developing writing activities not only for expository writing, such as to prepare students to be successful in taking the AP Lit exam, but also to foster creative writing as well. More than once, the question was posed, "what is the story path of your life?" The idea being that, at various points in our lives, we "see" ourselves as various heroic characters from literature or cinema. Those who know me are familiar with the Scarlett O'Hara or Blanche DuBois aspects of my life. There have been other chapters drawn from other books, as well : Harriet the Spy, Little House on the Prairie, Jane Eyre, A Room With View, "1900", "When Harry Met Sally". (Hubster has long said he felt like Don Quixote......while many only see him as Bluto.)
*
After my classes were over, I took a vacation to Colorado and New Mexico, something I have done every few years since I was a little girl (often dragging girlfriends or lovers along to share my passion for this region). I couldn't help but think of my trip this year in some of these mythic terms. It was clearly a quest for me this time, from the Dionysian to the Apollonian in my life, like Antigone, determined to do the correct thing and restore order from the chaos. Like the film "A Trip to Bountiful", it was also a journey to find a place and time that does not exist any more, or exists only in memory. For you see, my father passed away rather suddenly back in the winter, and having died without any burial plans- a will, an estate to pay for his expenses- and never having mentioned the subject or his wishes to anyone at all, it was left to me alone to make difficult choices as to what to do with his remains. All this was made more complicated by the fact that my childhood was not idyllic but highly dysfunctional. My father was an undiagnosed "adult onset" schizophrenic until very recently, and over the years as he struggled through the torments of his mental disease, various family members reacted to him with anger, fear, shock, and avoidance, no one fully comprehending what he was going through or why. His own mother and sister disowned him. My parents divorced and my mother refused to see him or speak to him ever again. My sister also disavowed herself from him. I alone, perhaps b/c I had a few good years with him as a child before his madness took its toll, saw and spoke to him - albeit infrequently. It was part of the nature of his disability that he wandered from job to job, apartment to flop to trailer house and girlfriend to girlfriend. Months and years would pass without a word, and I was worried that he'd end up a "John Doe" in a morgue somewhere with a toe tag and no one would ever know what had finally happened to him. So when he died, I alone was the one designated to make all the end of life decisions for him. As he was a charity case and had no assets, I chose to have him cremated. What to do with his "cremains" came to me as an idea, later.
*
I thought about my childhood, of the happy times. My mom, sis, dad and I long ago agreed the best memories centered on the vacations spent in the Colorado- New Mexico "Four Corners" area. As a family, we returned again and again to our favorite haunts : Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos, Durango, Gallup. Back in the 1960's we camped at various campgrounds in this part of the desert southwest, hiked, rode horses, fished, picnicked, experiencing the land in ways one cannot from a hotel room. Those happy memories must be seared in my brain, as I cannot go too long without returning to these places. So I decided that this was where dad's final resting place needed to be.

Ship Rock, NM, sacred place for the Navajo
Funerals are for the living- don't kid yourself; the dead don't care. It is through the ceremonies we construct for our dead that we reveal who we are, what they meant to us, and heal from the grieving of their loss. My mother (who is fixated on family genealogy- takes vacations visiting the cemeteries of her ancestors, and tidying up their tombstones) has her final resting spot already purchased, designed, paid for and ready to go. All that remains for her is to put the final date on her headstone. She will join her parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins in a family plot that is as cozy to her as a church picnic family reunion. As I was making my plans for this trip, she kept tossing out random "helpful" suggestions : buy him a burial plot (where? where he was born? where he died? near his other family ? his sister disowned him, as had the rest of his family.....and with what money? no one was offering to help me out in that aspect - I'd already fronted the bill for the cremation, no helpful family member stepping in to shoulder that burden, either), throw his cremains in the trash, leave them here or there. Leaving them in the cardboard box they came in , on the mantel, seemed to be not a viable option. This was all ridiculous. As no one else had any realistic solution, I chose to release his ashes at some of the various spots of our happy childhood memories.

Gallup , NM - the famous "Route 66"
My own mother went shopping on the day of her mother's funeral. I tell this story often, for I believe it reveals quite a bit about my mother. And it is true. God help me, I couldn't make this stuff up. I remember that day : a freezing late winter morning, with icy rain drizzling through our thin raincoats. My husband and I had driven 7 hours, through the night, to the northern east Texas town of Sulphur Springs from Houston, and were exhausted. My mother and sister drove east 2 hours from Dallas. The funeral was small ; my grandmother had outlived most of her friends and peers, even the pastor who had known her. A small canopy at the burial site sheltered us from the rain but not the wind. Mom at least managed to remember that granny loved yellow roses best, and a spray of them covered her casket. It was that small gesture that made my eyes well up and I had to turn away. Everyone deals with grief in their own way, and my mother sat dry-eyed through the entire ceremony. Granny hadn't been lowered into the ground 5 minutes, when mom said to me, "You drove all this way, why don't we swing by the outlet mall ? They have some of those dollar panties I like. Then we can go out to lunch, after."
*
Perhaps it is a hallmark of our modern era that I searched for something more personal and meaningful, yet in an unconventional way, for my father. Recent news sources guestimate that nearly a third of people are cremated in the USA annually and that figure is rising, each year (nearly 85% worldwide, esp in countries that practice Buddhism or Hinduism) . However, it is theoretically illegal to dump human remains - even in the form of dust - in most public places in this country. What to do, what to do? I ended up leaving a trail of dust, a little bit here here or there, in all of the places my dad loved best and was happiest in . Chose some spots he loved to paint watercolors of, for good measure. None of them public by any means. ;o)

sunrise at Mesa Verde, Co
Then like my mother before me, I went shopping. Took a "Trip to Bountiful" journey through all the beloved places of my childhood - Albuquerque, Sante Fe, Taos, Durango, Shiprock, Gallup. Saw all the sights, ate wonderful food, relived some memories of good times, created some new ones to add to the mix. And shopped. It really does help assuage the pain. Wasn't it right after Katie Scarlett buried her father Gerald in the old peach orchard, that she took the velvet curtains, made herself a new dress, and went to Atlanta?

Know Your Geography Terms # 66 Southwest

2010-07-05T15:30:00.010-05:00

Mesa
Our geography classes in school long behind us, many of us have all but forgotten basic geography terminology. Sure, we know what a river, an ocean, a mountain, are......but could you really tell me what an arroyo is, quick! without having to look it up? Read a couple of Tony Hillerman novels and unless you have been to some of these places for yourself, you have no idea what he is talking about.
*
A mesa is a low hill or mountain, (not as tall as the Rocky Mountains or other mountain ranges one is likely to run into) or series of low hills, that are generally wider than they are tall. Mesas can arise seemingly out of nowhere, or be intertwined with water features (rivers, creeks) that turn them into canyons or arroyos. Mesas are nearly always flat on the top, hence the name, which in Spanish means "table". A series of mesas can combine into a range of mesa mountains, and when one is traversing through them, it is like driving through low mountain ranges ( such as the Appalachians).

Butte
A butte is a similar land feature to a mesa, except that it is a hill that taller than it is wide. (Hill is really a misnomer here, as it must be pointed out this particular butte is thousands of feet tall and wide.) Most people think of buttes as flat at the top, but not always. It must be noted that Shiprock, sacred landmark on the Navajo reservation, is technically a butte, although it is pointed at the top, not flat. Many famous buttes are in Monument Valley, which was used frequently by Hollywood as a backdrop for westerns - hopefully this should all seem vaguely familiar to you. Just think of it as a refresher course.
canyon
As mentioned above, canyons are carved out of land by water features, typically rivers, over millions of years. Everyone knows about the Grand Canyon, but not many realize there are other famous canyons in N. America, as well. Many canyons in the southwest are intertwined with mesas, but they are just as likely to spring out of nowhere, as well. The one pictured above is the Royal George, part of the Rio Grand River, in northwestern New Mexico. One can be just driving along through flat land, minding one's own business on the road to Durango, when suddenly there is a bridge ahead and as you look down, you realize this river has been at work since the dawn of time, carving out the deep valley, below.
arroyo
An arroyo is a sort of baby canyon, in that it is carved out of the earth by a creek. Arroyos are often formed only during the rainy season, and can by dry for most of the year. Technically, any dry creek bed is an arroyo, although those can take a variety of forms.

Yoga Class from Hell

2010-06-12T21:31:00.005-05:00

Every summer, my gf Carol and I vow to spend the summer exercising, eating more healthfully, getting back in to shape - ad nauseum. Seven summers have now come and gone and neither of us has done it. Every fall, we reconvene at work and grumble how we did nothing over our vacations and are fatter and in worse shape than before. Well, not this year! Approaching one of those "big birthdays" may not put me on the death diet aka hubster, but I am going to make some changes - mostly b/c my overall health is horrible and I have to. Have already cut out all junk food, reduced sodium, am eating more low-fat, from scratch, less processed foods. (Does this enable me to lose weight? No! I once did Weight Watchers for a whole year - nothing ! Gave up all coco-cola - nada ! I was tired, cranky, and hungry, but did not drop a single pound.) So I have given up fixating on weight , and am trying to wrap my mind around health, instead. Have scheduled a physical to see what else is plaguing me that I don't know about, yet .... you know I am a charter member of the "Disease of the Month Club"...."the Gift the Keeps on Giving!"
*
Took a step in the right direction and signed up for a local yoga class this week. I used to do a quite a bit of yoga back in my 20's and was so flexible and limber, I took it all for granted. Now I struggle to do the things that once were simple for me ......but I am determined to continue. The first class was hellish, the second one bad but not as bad. More than anything, I hate the fact that my body feels as if it is "freezing up"; becoming so stiff in the joints that some movements are often impossibly difficult. In the words of Monty Python, "I'm not dead yet ! " and as someone from "Princess Bride" once said,"She's only MOSTLY dead."
*
I love it that our yoga instructor gives us little "life lessons" from Buddhist thought as we bend and stretch, pose, breathe, and grunt. She walks gently amongst our twisted forms, correcting this one's shoulders, that one's feet stance. Since I take classes in the eves she often turns out the studio lights and we work out as the sun sets, ending in the tranquil darkness. This is what church should be for me but isn't : I often don't want to go, too stressed out and frazzled from the world and life to want to make the effort. I leave feeling peaceful and uplifted.

All Things Southwest

2010-06-12T20:24:00.017-05:00

It is no secret that many Texans love the American southwest, and GFT is no exception. A recent conversation with random friends and co-workers about projected summer plans produced "Colorado or New Mexico" as a response 100% of the time to the question, "What is your favorite summertime destination? " The desert southwest, especially the Four Corners area, has long been a popular destination spot for Texans. I spent nearly every childhood summer camping with my family in the mountains near Durango, or occasionally, Ruidoso. Continued the tradition as a young adult taking myself and numerous girlfriends on shopping trips to Sante Fe. One of the little known commonalities I share with the hubster is the fact that his family lived in White Sands for three years when he was a teen, and he has a deep affection for the place and the culture, as well. Yet another frightening similarity between myself and my mother-in-law is our love of all things southwestern, cuisine, decor, and especially jewelry and arts and craft collectibles.

I keep trying to make my home as cheerful, pleasant, and funky as the adobe places I love.....it's an on-going process. Each spring I plant a garden ( which withers under the Texas heat). Not sure if the neighbors would appreciate some of the more vibrant colors, I keep them indoors rather than out.

I'm looking forward to a little trip in that direction in a few weeks : plan to take my mom to shop and sample the restaurants we love so much.

*
One of my fave books of all times is Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, and the lessons from that novel are applicable not only when I am in this beautiful place, but when I return to the (rather ugly) place that I live. The archbishop is sent to the wilderness of New Mexico to establish a diocese there, and views this mission almost as punishment, like being banished. Years pass, he dreams of the beauty of his homeland in Spain, builds buildings and plants trees. He eventually dies, failing to see the beauty he has created all around him. I hope each of us remember to notice and appreciate the beauty that lies around us, or that we are creating in our lives.

Summer Reads Pt I

2010-06-12T20:24:00.016-05:00

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Ok, I have a confession to make : I was given this book when it first came out, by my brother and sister-in-law, who normally have excellent taste in literature and know that I generally love anything Barbara Kingsolver writes. But for some reason, I just could not get "into" it at that time. Kept starting it and stopping. Put it on the shelf where it languished for years. People kept telling me "you've got to read this book, it's about missionaries in the Congo" - as if that would help. It actually deterred me further. Then I went to a writing conference this summer where excerpts from this novel were used for a wide variety of teaching /writing activities, and reading little snippets intrigued me and pulled me into the text. Once I read it, I realized why saying "it's about missionaries in the Congo" is a complete misnomer. That statement, to me, implies somehow that these missionaries are going to be good guys and their motives noble and that's a lot of cultural bias I just can't stomach most days. (I live in the buckle of the Bible belt and am completely surrounded by mindless people spouting sententious religious pap all the time. It's a subtle form of brain washing that irritates the heck out of me.) But I should have trusted Ms Kingsolver, for she always looks at the world from an out-of-the-norm almost anthropological perspective. This isn't just a story about missionaries in the Congo; it's about how the archetypal continent of Africa is an earth mother goddess who is a force both powerful and destructive, changing all who encounter her. The Poisonwood Bible tells the stories of various family members of a zealous narrow-minded crazed missionary, who all get dragged along with him on his self-destructive quest for absolution through the jungle of the Congo, and how that experience with Africa, earth mother personified, shapes each family member in a uniquely different yet powerful way. The wife and 4 daughters of the crazed missionary are really just symbolic stand-ins for the various types of western colonial experiences in Africa : one is completely destroyed, one sells herself out, one joins the local cause, one escapes and remakes herself somewhere else, one flees because this is not her cause. A powerful tale, The Posionwood Bible was every bit as lush and gripping as my previous favorite novel by Ms Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer. I should have read it sooner ; but maybe the time just wasn't right for me to appreciate it as much as I do now.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller. You are going to think I am on some sort of "Africa" story binge but truly I am not. I keep a running list of titles I want to read, drawn from New York Times book reviews, NPR reviews, other news sources, book catalogs, recommendations from friends, co-workers, etc. Like my Netflix queue, I just buy a few each month from the list, with no real appreciation of what order they will pop up, and sometimes look at something that arrives and say to myself, "What?" I probably put this book on my list because I was intrigued by the title and generally will read anything set in an interesting foreign locale. I do have several childhood friends who grew up in Africa, (Liberia and Tanzania) and have always enjoyed hearing their stories. I forget about why I specifically added this book to my list; however, when I started reading it, I quite enjoyed it. Ms Fuller recounts a variety of well drawn moments from her childhood spent growing up in Rhodesia that are alternately funny, sad, suspenseful, and dangerous. Her parents struggle to earn a living as British-born ranchers during the period when Rhodesia was throwing off colonial domination and asserting itself as an independent nation. Full of larger-than-life characters that are Hemingway-esque, this was a fascinating story that is well-written and provides a powerful snapshot into a brief historical moment.

Ft Worth Opera Fest Rocks on

2010-06-06T17:36:00.008-05:00

Fort Worth Opera happens in the beautiful of Bass Hall, a venue with incredible sweetness of sound and few "dead spots" (where listening is muddled or dulled)

It has quickly become an annual treat to attend the Fort Worth Opera festival with one of my oldest and dearest friends, a boy whose contagious enthusiasm for the genre sparked my own interest in this art form way back in 1975. We began our opera going lives with "Siege of Corinth" starring Beverly Sills and Shirley Verrett - not a bad way to begin this life-long adventure, with famous stars and a world class performance from the Dallas Civic Opera. Soon we added Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde" (we still joke about the wisdom or weirdness of teens choosing to spend 5 hours enduring a minimalist production of Wagner) and another iconic Beverly Sills performance in "La Traviata" - all before we graduated from high school. Here we are, some 30+ years later, still enjoying opera together, and this year's addition to the roster of performances seen together has proven a refreshing delight.

"It's not over till the FIT lady sings !

It must be noted that the Fort Worth Opera Fest typically puts on three or four productions a year, and has recently evolved into a compact season with an intense series of full (2 or 3 shows, each differing performances) weekends that run through May and June. Hectic end-of-school year scheduling often prohibits me from attending more than one show a year; my childhood friend, now a noted opera critic, flies in from France to experience as many performances as he can. We have recently been joined by a young friend and enthusiast whose charm and education in this and many areas adds vibrancy to our intermission conversations. This small slice of operatic heaven provides such fun that it carries me for weeks.
*
The opera I saw last year, "Dead Man Walking" (written by Jake Heggie) was a modern style opera written/sung in English and was so moving and beautiful that the ancient Greek concept of catharsis (i.e., great art should produce in the viewer emotional release) was achieved and my friends and I sobbed the entire time.
*
This year my schedule permitted me to attend a lighter, more comedic (in the true Shakespearean sense, that is, a romance with comedic moments) opera, "The Elixir of Love" ("L'elisir d'amore")by Gaetano Donizetti. The show was staged with a pre WWI setting in small town America, much like "The Music Man" or "Carousel". While no major headliners sang this year with the Fort Worth Opera Fest, the local singers did quite nicely. This bel canto style opera was sung with great skill and dexterity by Ava Pine, Michael Fabiano, and Rod Nelman. The beauty of the trilling notes and vocalizations felt like coming home to me, with moments recalling some of the vocal dexterity of Beverly Sills at her greatest.

Escapism of the Purest Kind

2010-05-30T18:05:00.015-05:00

Steig Larsson's trilogy of mystery novels The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest have generated such media buzz in recent months that I barely dare to mention them here, fearing redundancy. What is there left to say ? I enjoyed reading them immensely - sure. Read each tome, weighing in at 500-600 pgs, in under 13 hours - could not put it down - certainly. Many reviewers have speculated on a variety of reasons why these novels have captured our attention to the degree that they have : great characters, action packed, edge-of-your-seat suspense, etc. Along with these lists come ample explorations of the books' many faults: often too wordy; choppy sentences, plotting, and structure; long boring technical passages; too much "preachy-ness" on popular left-wing issues such as woman's rights, government corruption, and human trafficking; often walloping cliff-hangers or minor threads that were never resolved. Yet the first volume has been on the NYT best seller list for 48 weeks now and shows no signs of slowing down, with a movie recently released (which was a pretty good adaptation, I thought) and more films, of the sequels, in the works.
*
I have a few of my own thoughts on why these books are so popular :
*
1)For this, the last generation that still reads books ( more on that topic, later), readers want books that suck you in. Books that create a total world, with infinite details, gripping plot, characters you love and identify with and wish you were. Enough substance to get lost in. For previous generations, these books were Gone With the Wind or Lord of the Rings - whether you love hanging out at sci fi and fantasy conventions and arguing in Elvish while getting your Hobbit feet signed by the guy who played SamWise GamChee or staying up all night debating if Scarlet ever will get Rhett back while putting up your GWTW collectibles Christmas Tree, the end result is the same. These characters are people so interesting and fully rounded that one can extrapolate what they would do in the future; they live on outside the text. A friend of mine, who was tired of hearing co-workers argue incessantly about the destinies of characters on a beloved tv show, once said, "Who are these people ? You talk like you know them !" And so it is with Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. Lisbeth is the talented, spunky, determined and rebellious woman each girl knows dwells inside her. Mikael is the smart, feminist yet strong intelligent man we wish we could date, or know ourselves to be. It would be interesting to see how readers break down on gender and political lines, that is, how many women vs men, Republicans vs Democrats are reading these books....but I digress. The world of these books is one we enjoy so much, we over look the books' faults to spend time with them. Sure, there are plenty of good guys, bad guys, morals triumph - yet all if it is fresh. Cliches are avoided, new situations and characters are compelling.

2) Remember, in America we are reading these stories in translation by Reg Keeland (they were originally written in Swedish!), yet they still hold up as compelling narratives. Sure the prose isn't perfect, and a certain degree of literary-ness has been lost. But even through the translation, certain aspects of the culture, the "voice" of the various characters, the humor and feelings of the author comes through. This is thanks due to a great translator; I've read a fair amount of Russian, French, and German lit in translation and I've gotta say (as much as I love certain books), sometimes they're a bit dry. I'm trying to think of a single book or author that has rocked the English speaking book world in the past 50 years (roughly, my life span) to the degree that these books have. A brief conversation with the hubster has posited Solzhenitsyn or Gunter Grass as possible comparisons, and while these authors achieved amazing critical acclaim and both scholarly and literary kudos, they failed to excite as much mass culture popularity. Which has me wondering : how many other great reads are out there, that we never got to read, b/c they aren't in English ?

3)I just finished teaching a unit of mystery fiction to my students, so elements of the genre are fresh on my mind. These books are great examples of how strict and complex (like a sonnet!) the rules of mystery fiction can be, and the challenge to the better writers is to play with and individuate the form (like Shakespeare!), while creating memorable reads, plausible scenarios, puzzles the reader can't figure out till the end, and compelling characters we 'd rather spend an evening with than real people in our lives. Locked box puzzles, red herrings, clues, suspects, sidekicks who control the reader's point of view and the dissemination of information....This is the contest, and Larsson rules. The greatest tragedy here is that after presenting these three manuscripts to his publisher, the man just up and died. The audacity ! Now we'll never get to continue the journey with our two new best friends...Lisbeth and Mikael.

The Cheapest and Best Therapy Money Can Buy

2010-05-30T18:04:00.007-05:00

In Texas, it's warm 10 months out of the year; people wear sandals for nearly as long. It's no surprise that there's a nail salon on every street corner and prices are competitive. Once when I was touring the ruins of Pompeii, the tour guide said that ancient Pompeiians loved to eat out and did so frequently. Someone in our tour group asked, "How this could be determined? " The answer had to do with simple mathematical facts: there were more restaurants uncovered in the ruins of the city than there were citizens who lived there. What other conclusion can be drawn ? And so it is with the plethora of nail salons, in every price range and category, that dot my fair city and those all around.
*
People of my mother's generation deemed manicures or pedicures to be a special luxury item, the kind of thing one did for a very special occasion (weddings, prom). Perhaps due to the influx of inexpensive laborers, this once or twice in a lifetime pampering has now become a weekly event for many people I know. Prices are hideously cheap, to the point that I feel guilty sometimes - and always tip extravagantly as a result. Inside my local salons, clientele range from frazzled housewives to college girls to working women to teeny boppers. One can chose to have a quiet, soothing experience (New Age music, light massage, dim lighting, glass of wine) or be sociable and visit with friends while being attended to. There are so many choices in terms of which nail salon to go to, one can choose based on mood, price, proximity, cleanliness, decor, quality, or any number of variables. I used to go to a place at the mall - can't beat that convenience - but it started looking a tad ratty, and a year ago gave me a planter's wart. Scratch that one off the list. Now I favor one or two different spots, and use varies depending on where I am, how crowded they are, etc. Mani-pedi's take about an hour per procedure, (sometimes I do both, sometimes, one, sometimes the other, depending on season, time available, budget, etc) but the relaxation these procedures provide, after a rough day of handling kids - students or my own flesh and blood - is worth more than gold to me.

At Least I'm Not........(fill in blank)

2010-05-30T17:06:00.006-05:00

by the way, Jerry, they're real and they're spectacular !
It's challenging enough to be a woman these days, much less a woman growing up in north Texas, where people from my high school truly did become Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. Growing old in north Texas is also fraught with pressures. One is surrounded with "North Dallas specials" (the omnipresent blond, thin, rich woman who flaunts particular brands, hairstyles, cars, etc and a certain snooty looking downward glance-through all the plastic surgery), cougars, MILFs, designing women, sex and the city women, red hat ladies, various types of church ladies, and many other entirely superficial, worthless yet comparison-engendering role models. Add to that mix the fact that as one is growing older, certain unavoidable goalposts on the highway of life are quickly approaching, and issues of body image quickly can become all consuming.
*
This topic is a recurring one amongst my aging baby boomer gfs, and often takes a self-mocking humorous tone as we make fun of ourselves and each other on experiences as varied as : becoming too fat and arthritic to easily wipe one's own behind, or being too blind to be able to tweeze one's own chin hairs; fixating on accessories as one realizes one's figure will not support the latest fashions; where to get the best haircut/facial/waxing/spray on tan/mani-pedi; to color or not to color, that is the question; realizing that one just isn't willing to ever wear really high heels, ever again; why does my mother continue to buy me panty hose and/or slips when I haven't worn one since 1985? why do I keep gaining weight, in spite of diet and exercise ? how to avoid dressing like a really old person, (various definitions and arguments ensue) and its converse, how to be a youthful hip aging baby boomer; variations of "promise me, no matter what, you will never let me_____"(fill in blank) wear that, get that way, wear my hair that way, etc; and how did people ever live before Spanx? In quieter moments, and not to large groups, one will ask where to get the best Botox, "some work done", pros and cons and costs of tummy tucks, as well.
*
One day, one of my more philosophical gfs put a fresh new perspective on all this agonizing. She said,"I was sitting around at a dept meeting, was bored and looking around, and all of the sudden I noticed the woman sitting next to me who weighed at least 400 pounds, had on a thong that showed through her too shear white pants-let me tell you, a thong on a big white butt is not a good look, my friends ! - and as I looked at her more closely, I couldn't help but noticing that she has a full beard - I don't mean just a few chin hairs, no, I mean a FULL BEARD that it is clear she must have to shave every day. It was late in the day and her '5 o'clock shadow' had come out....and I thought to myself, enough complaining ! You really take for granted that your own problems, by comparison, are so mild as to be unmentionable. That's it ! I'm not going to complain anymore! Next time I start complaining, please remind me that at least I'm not wearing a thong on my 400 pound @$$ and having to shave my beard every day !"
*
In light of this paradigm shift, GFT and her gfs have started lists of things we are thankful for as we find ourselves aging. Each is unique....Here is mine:
*
1)I still have fairly nice legs. They continue to have definition and no varicose veins. My mother's legs were always thick and chunky and looked like link sausages strung together, even when she was young. She started getting varicose veins early on. Most important of all, I have no cankles ! I have fortunately been spared both problems - so far. I still wear shorts and mini skirts- proudly. I think leg shape is kept going by the Dr Scholls I wore as a teen....and the Birkenstocks I wear today.
*
2)In spite of having rosacea, which is mostly under control w meds, my face is fairly smooth, soft and full and has (thanks to the rosacea) kept that pink cheeks look. Because I never smoked or spent time tanning, I have few wrinkles. My fat keeps it plump, so I have avoided the stringy wrinkled look. Ya choses yer poison - thin and stringy-or plump and dimpled.
*
3)For whatever reason (I like to joke it's due to a pact I made with the devil) I have not yet started to go gray. I am a freaky anomaly in this regard, I know - most gfs started dyeing at 30. If you do not believe me, you can check out my hair, strand by strand, as my old college roommate did at a recent reunion...you will find 1 or 2 gray hairs there- proof it's all real. My mother says it's due to Native American heritage.......who knows ? Mom didn't go gray till almost 70.
*
4)I have nice hands and feet: small, delicate, no bulgey veins, no knobby knuckles. B/c I shifted into flats fairly early in my working career, my feet never morphed into trapezoidal claws so many women have , where the big toe sits at a 45 degree angle to the others. Good thing, as we wear sandals 8 months of the year around here.
*
5)Hubster says my skin all over is still soft and smooth. He likes to touch it....I'll take his word for it.
*
6)Ahem...like Terri Hatcher's character on the famous Seinfeld episode, I have always been fortunately endowed. As a young woman, was so perfectly proportioned that more than one bf suggested I pose for Playboy's "Girls of the Southwest Conference" edition. (Save your frenzied buying of old back issues...pride and modesty kept me from doing so. Come on, man ! I'm DAR ! We don't do stuff like that !) Getting pregnant and having babies only made me more "blessed". As my neck ages ( forgot to put sunscreen there, fat wrinkles, etc), the area right below looks pretty good. So far I have avoided the tube sock filled with coins look that comes when one gets old. As Terri told Jerry, "They're real, and they're SPECTACULAR!"

A Milestone Birthday

2010-05-30T14:16:00.008-05:00

Sexy old man or concentration camp survivor ? You be the judge
There are many seasons to life with the hubster....which oddly, often parallel the historical church demarcations of the year. (No surprise here, as hubster is Catholic.) While the historical church seasons of Lent, Easter, and holidays such as Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, etc are well known, what is perhaps not as well-known is what GFT refers to as "the season from Hell". Lent begins 40 days before Easter, often in mid-Feb, with a festival celebrated a few days before, known all over the world by various names (Carnival, Mardi Gras, etc) . The "season of Hell" begins at our house on New Year's Day. This is the date when hubster declares the holidays are officially over and he begins an extended Lenton season of denial and suffering, in a form that I refer to as "the death diet," which lasts until his birthday, in mid-April (often coincident with Easter). Hubster embarks during this time on a regimen of fasting / severe dieting and tyrannical exercise for the next 3 and 1/2 months that reduces him to his high school weight. During this time he is exceedingly grouchy and difficult to deal with. He only eats the same 3 meals over and over (clam sauce spaghetti, red beans and rice, and "tuna creole"- his own creation, which consists of tuna, tomato sauce, hot sauce, and garlic), often w/ a salad of iceberg lettuce - the entire time and works out 2 to 3 times a day. His lack of varied nutrition during this period results in canker sores, exhaustion, numerous physical ailments and what can only be called "a brain cloud". He does drop the weight each year, and then promptly goes out and gets his annual physical. (Each year, I tell him this is cheating, and that a true reflection of his overall health would better be served getting a physical the day after xmas - to no avail.) Once hubster reaches his weight goal, he documents each year with a picture of himself, taken shirtless, on his birthday.
*
Sometime halfway through this period of diet by torture, hubster begins planning his birthday party. Each year he hopes to encapsulate into one evening all his hopes and desires, socially at least, into one magical event that will take him back to the days when he was the Social VP of his college and bore the nickname "Bluto" ( aka "the Beer King"). My only stipulation for these events is that the house be basically clean and in working order.....and there's the rub. Life with an absent-minded college professor isn't all charm and joy, folks. In spite of the fact that hubster is an engineer, a man who enjoys both a good living and doing home repair projects, and is certainly capable of excelling at carpentry, painting, plumbing, electrical, masonry, as well as automotive repairs- most of the time he refuses to use these talents for good. Much like Rip Van Winkle, who was described by Washington Irving as willingly helping a neighbor build a fence or fix a sink, yet whose own home was falling down in a shambles around him, so it is frequently with the hubster. This means that each year we have to negotiate the list of repairs that will be completed before any social event is allowed at our home. It is a lengthy list, as hubster will only fix things around the house once a year. You may think GFT is being unreasonable here, but you will have to trust me that basic safety and cleanliness issues are involved. Failure to take care of these matters had resulted in no birthday party at all, last year, and this year , hubster was taking no chances. Instead of the usual arguing and stalling tactics, the list was agreed upon and work commenced by spring break, with a good 4 weeks to go. A small wrench was thrown in to the whole affair when first hubster's mother, then his father ( his parents are divorced) decided to invite themselves for a visit to this gala event. Hubster went ahead with his plans, in spite of this, and I must say, our home has never looked better.

It was a pleasant evening, with a mixing of hubster's friends from work, the neighborhood, and college days.
Of special joy were out of town guests, and old college buddies, Marti ( center, below) and Roy(right below). We have not seen them in awhile, and almost certainly never in this town together at the same time.

50 Years = 50 Beers

2010-05-30T14:03:00.005-05:00

Hubster's 50th birthday bash was a a"family friendly" event, continuing the recent trend of many boomers to incorporate their children into everything they do. That, and no one can find good baby-sitters these days. Keep it clean, guys ! Little ears are listening !

In the game room, the party was quite a lively affair, while in other parts of the house, it as a bit more staid, with varied conversations. Something for everyone.....

As the evening wore on, the hilarity increased.....is there anything as funny as watching a bunch of old guys who still think they are young ?

This photo sums up nicely the family dynamic that is hubster's...here , his parents, who invited themselves, reveal typical responses to the often over parodied, "what do you bring to the party?" Hubster's dad spent the evening flirting and chatting and mixing with folk; hubster's mom took it upon herself to run a load of laundry in the middle of events. (It must be noted that the washer and dryer are unfortunately located in the middle of a narrow passageway that connects all these rooms.)

Rites of Spring

2010-05-30T13:08:00.005-05:00

Spring is the time of year when a young man's fancy turns to love....and so it is with my eldest son. He hadn't really dated in awhile, not since his first true love, a former teen beauty pageant queen he dated in 9th grade when he was 14 turning 15, almost broke his heart. That relationship, besides being one that so powerfully rocked this boy that he sobbed for days alone in his room when it was over, toughened him in ways both good and awful. He wore his heart on his sleeve for that girl, but now he is more cautious, a bit (but not too much) more cynical, and more intensely aware of what girls around him are thinking and his role in their machinations. Some girl recently told him she thought he was "the handsomest boy in 11th grade" and he seems acutely aware of this impression others have of him, without for a minute truly believing it.
*
This recent school year, after sitting on the fence and observing the fair damsels around him for all of 10th grade, has son #1 carefully trying a little of this, a little of that. His girlfriend through the winter was a brilliant student and her positive influence on his grades was amazing....he made National Honor Society this spring I am certain due to the pop his GPA received while dating "the brainy one". Then suddenly it was spring, and the intense social jockey-ing for who would take whom to prom began. Son #1 suddenly dropped the brainy one (whom, I might add, was no slacker in the looks department) for a more popular ( yet still smart) girl who can only be described, with no unkindness intended, as a Barbie doll look alike.
*
As the weeks passed and the prom date neared, tensions were building in this relationship and others. A group of 18 kids, 9 couples, who had intended to go to prom together, began dwindling due to break-ups and crazy-for-no-reason-at-all fights, down to only 6 . Son #1 was harboring thoughts of taking one or the other of neighborhood friends, just as friends, if his relationship similarly soured. Some sort of chivalric duty prevailed in son #1's heart, and even though he and his date were frequently fighting, they agreed to put it all on hold for the night - both had spent considerable sums on clothing, flowers, dinner, rides, etc.
Read the body language of the different
players here- what does it tell you?
Who's in charge?
It all reminded me of another prom, held so many years ago. I remember my best gf and I agonizing over all this for months, starting sometime around spring break. The boy I was actually dating at the time claimed to have made a promise to his ex gf to go with her, and felt he couldn't back out of it. My gf had just come out of a long term overly dramatic relationship, and felt that she was too drained for anything serious. Several ideas were kicked around - would we just skip prom altogether, and go on a trip out of town ? Would we summon back some guy friends we knew, who were already in college, to come squire us to the dance ? As with most events of this sort (weddings, marriages), the guys were only barely clued in, told to do this or that by the women in their lives, who changed their minds frequently. In May, GFT was asked to be a model for prom fashions in the school paper and was given a couple of free coupons to a local men's tuxedo rental shop in exchange. Suddenly, the answer seemed obvious : I would ask my very best friend on this planet to escort me, and his best guy friend would be the date for my gf. It all fell in to place at the last minute, and turned out to be a perfectly charming evening, one that none of us would ever forget. There was even a bit of great drama and karmic revenge as the boy GFT had been dating, watching from across the dance floor as my best friend twirled me in his arms and it became clear I was not at home pining but was having the time of my life, became insanely jealous and felt an uncontrollable urge to stalk over and throw a punch at my date. O tempora ! O mores !
Look at the hope and excitement in those eyes
How did son #1's prom experience wind up, you ask ? His date decided she was would flirt with several other boys while at the dance....who knows the complex motivations of young women these days? Perhaps she hoped to incite similar jealously in the lad. Perhaps she was just bored. At any rate, son # 1, instead of winding up his evening in the passionate embrace of the lady while navigating the backseat of an automobile, abruptly drove the damsel home rather early in the evening, and unceremoniously dropped her off with a terse "good night". Then he texted all his homeboys to come over, some had been to the dance, some had not - and they stayed up all night playing video games and just hanging'. Way to go !

Snow Day !

2010-02-17T21:28:00.003-06:00

"I have Often Walked Down this Street Before, But the Snow was Never on my Feet Before"

We don't often get snow in north central Texas, (generally every other year or so we get a dusting) so we get pretty excited around here when we do. People around these parts still reminisce about the "great storm of '08" which happened in March, of all things. (Started snowing mid-morning; by 1 am they closed school. My normal 5 min commute home took 45 minutes.) This being an El Nino year, we've had 3 - or is it 4?- snow storms so far this year alone, and winter is not over yet. The one we had on Feb 11 broke all records for the greatest amount of snow to fall in a 24 hour period in this area, since records started being kept. The official record for this latest event is 12" for the DFW area, and Denton was no exception. School was cancelled for a record two days over this one; I can't remember that ever happening in my lifetime.
*
Of course, no one in north central Texas has ice scrapers for cars, snow shovels or blowers, much less snow boots or heavy winter clothes, gloves or hats. They don't even sell that stuff in stores. Hubster and I have a half-broken snow shovel we brought back with us from Virginia, and all the clothes we wore when we lived there. Our children, however, refuse to wear coats so I stopped buying them several years back. Fortunately, they now, as teenagers, think they are 2 kule to actually go out and play in the stuff any more, and would rather sit around with their video game systems, anyways.

Requiescat in Pacem

2010-02-17T20:28:00.002-06:00

GFT hasn't written much, lately......hasn't done much, either. Keeping up with the daily routine of going to work and running a home these long winter days feels like slogging through syrup; overwhelmingly heavy and slow-moving, with little progress being made. My little family spent the holidays preoccupied : I had 3 visits to the hospital myself (damn those kidney stones !) while hubster flew back east to take care of his very ill mother and slightly infirm father. (Who, b-t-w, are divorced, and live 200 miles apart. They're not going to make it easy on anyone to care for them, no sirree !) While I spent the holidays zonked out on pain meds and recovering from surgery, poor hubster had to clean up after and care for his parents in ways that made their diaper changes of him 49 years ago seem like a walk in the park. I think I got the better deal. Today at lunch I was chatting with several teacher friends, all of us baby boomers of various ages, and the overwhelming topic of conversation was taking care of our aging parents.
*
Things reached a climax in January with my father, who had been happily sailing along for the past several years at a truly luxurious senior care facility in a small town in central Texas. Suddenly dad became very ill, and I got a phone call in the middle of the day (while we were all at work) that my father was in critical health and to come see him as soon as possible. We didn't get the message, which was on the home phone, till we got home at the end of the day. As soon as hubster and I heard it, we called back and talked to the nursing home staff, and told them we'd drive out (3 hours away) the very next day. The nurse we spoke to said, "Perfect". Unfortunately, before we could get there, we got a phone call the next morning at 7 am that my father had passed away during the night.
*
Although I hadn't been all that close to my father these past 30 years - he and my mother divorced when I was in college and we kids stayed close to mom while dad moved out - my family is semi-dysfunctional, my sister talks to no one, and I am the only adult child taking care of both my parents, alone. I greeted this news of my father's death with shock and sadness, regret that I hadn't made it there to visit him one last time, and sorrow for his own sad, lonely, wasted life. Dad had struggled with mental health issues for most of the second half of his life, which alienated the majority of people he came in to contact with. All these thoughts swirled around in my head as hubster and I drove out to the little town on the prairie where he spent his final years. I was, and still am, alternating between a weird numb zombie-like state of shock and a child-like ferocious grief. This was the first death for me to deal with, personally, and I stumbled blindly through making all the "arrangements". Coped pretty well at the funeral home but teared up to a point of near blindness at the nursing home as I had to sort through dad's possessions, and a little old lady came up to me and handed me a card signed by all the other little old ladies and gentlemen who were his friends there.
*
My grandmother died 20 years ago, right around this same time of year. My mother, as I recall, went shopping on her way home from granny's funeral. "That outlet mall has a special on panties, three for a dollar" she said at the time. We each deal with grief in our own way, I suppose.
*
I have a theory about this time of year, "the dead of winter"; it goes like this : the weather is so difficult for the young and weak, the old and sick, the depressed. It's just hard to summon up the strength to get through it, sometimes. I confess to a wee bit of Seasonal Affective Disorder, myself. Recent "snow days" have provided a needed respite, so I could sleep and exercise and read some great books and just deal with my feelings. I know this is Texas, and spring is just around the corner. I'm trying to keep that in mind, and remember the good things about my dad.

Seinfeld Withdrawal

2010-01-14T18:34:00.011-06:00

Isn't this more fun than "Friends" ? For some reason, that show just never really did it for me. Maybe those characters are just a tad too GenX - while the Seinfeld characters are all Baby Boomers, as am I. I just couldn't relate to the "Friends" type of angst

I have many secret guilty pleasures which are sometimes embarrassing to admit ...one of them is an addiction to "Seinfeld." I don't know why this show is so funny, so applicable, so necessary to my life.....it just is. As a small child, my mother raised me to watch "I Love Lucy" reruns on a daily basis, (mom loved watching them while she cooked dinner) and I think, for a while, it shaped my life. I still treasure the "Hollywood" episodes of that series, with cameos from Harpo, John Wayne, William Holden, et al. Can still recite many lines of dialog verbatim, and perhaps modeled some of my own personal life and relationship expectations on episodes where Lucy and Ethel made bread, Lucy's commercial for "Vitameetavegemin", when she stole footprints from Grauman's Chinese Theater, or tried to sneak in to the show at Ricky's nightclub. Life got too busy for me to watch the show for a few years, and when I finally tuned back in, sadly, I found that my attitude toward "Lucy" had changed. In between, the women's movement came along, I went off to college, became a rad fem, grew up, got a job. Lucy's relationship with Ricky now felt demeaning, and Lucy's lack of personal empowerment was humiliating to endure. I just couldn't watch it anymore.
*
Shortly thereafter, I met and fell in love with with the 80's-90's show "Seinfeld". I don't remember when it first happened - maybe when I lived in New York, maybe some other time. The setting of the show is not what has held my attention all these years, rather, it is the comedy shticks and the relationships between the characters. Just like "Lucy", there are classic old vaudeville moments : "Soup Nazi", "The Bottle Deposit", "The Second Spitter". Kramer's (Michael Richards) physical comedy and offbeat ideas ( the "bro", a manssiere) never ceases to make me laugh, and the fact that "short stocky bald man" George (Jason Alexander) has a series of beautiful girlfriends who bore him, and whom he is always trying to get rid of, along with his futile attempts to avoid working at any real job - are great running gags. (Hubster says he likes Marissa Tomei, just as George does.) It doesn't hurt that one of the greatest comedic actors of a generation, Jerry Stiller, is a semi-regular on this show as George's father, Frank Costanza. (I like his son, Ben, in some of the movies he has made, but not all. Love "Dodgeball", hate "Tropic Thunder". It's just not funny to me.) Frank's stint as a chef, in "The Fatigues" is one of the greatest episodes of the series. Wayne Knight, as the annoying neighbor "Newman," is also a national treasure and needs to be given a lot more work.(I also loved him in the Branaugh-Thompson mystery romance vehicle, "Dead Again.")
I've been watching "Seinfeld" for years. Since I moved back to Texas, over a decade ago, it has aired regularly each night at 6:30 on a local cable station that typically shows reruns. At first, I was the only family member addicted to the nightly adventures of Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer - but soon, my entire family became pulled into the episodes. It became a daily ritual that I would cook dinner while watching the news, and we would eat dinner while watching "Seinfeld". What this says about my family, I fear to ask - perhaps my children are doomed to a life of juvenile delinquency due to the fact that we eat while watching tv, instead of discussing the day's travails with wise fatherly advice, like those smarmy kids in "Father Knows Best".

Does this remind you of anyone ? George and Estelle Costanza (Jerry Stiller and Estelle Harris) make hubster so uncomfortable when they appear, he has to leave the room. It seems they remind him of someone he knows or, possibly, is related to. (The other great tv mom who does that to him is Holland Taylor, who plays Charlie and Alan Harper's mother from "Two and a Half Men". Her voice, her clothing, her manner - excruciatingly familiar. ) However, George's relationship with his parents is stilted, frozen, and painful. He never learns how to deal with them and each encounter is nails-on-the-blackboard annoying. (Charlie, on "2 and 1/2 Men" in contrast, manages to make fun of his mother at least, although she still gets the better of him most of the time.) Watching the Costanza family dynamic ( my fave is when Estelle is in the hospital, George is visiting, and watches her roommate get a sponge bath.) is a great lesson in how not to be......and catch phrases such as "master of your domain" have become a permanent part of my family lingo.

I think, perhaps not too secretly, that I identify too much with Elaine. (This was such a great role for Julia Luis-Dreyfus, showing the full range of her talent; she also had a funny small part as the evil yuppie neighbor in "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation". I absolutely hate her new show, "The Adventures of Old Christine."A recent spate of tv shows, where divorced couples are chummy and hang out together after the divorce leaves me pondering : If they are such good buddies, then why did they get divorced in the first place? Who lives like that?) I used to look like Elaine, just a bit, and fancied myself to be the same sort of sassy, confident, career woman. I do have guy friends I used to date, but later became just friends with, like Jerry and Elaine. I would have loved to have had a career writing gibberish for The J.Peterman Catalog, (once bought a dress from them back in the '80's) and traveling with my boss to Thailand, England, Africa, and places in-between.
*
A few years back, hubster and I found ourselves country and western dancing in a honky-tonk in a tiny little town in far west Texas. The local denizens there thought our dancing style was, to say the least, peculiar. Neither hubster nor I have hung out in bars, discotheques, or danced much (other than at weddings) since our college days, and it is probably safe to say our dancing "style" froze somewhere around 1983 when we were at parties listening to The Judy's, The Clash, Gary Neuman, the Thompson Twins, Madonna, the Eurythmics, and the Ramones. So I secretly worry that I , too, dance like an idiot these days - just like Elaine - and that people are laughing at me behind my back.
*
With great anxiety I discovered one day last fall that suddenly and without warning, "Seinfeld" was taken off the air at my preferred 6:30 time slot. Sure, local stations were running back to back episodes at midnight...what's up with that ? What good does that do anyone who comes home from a long stressful day at work, needing a little laugh ? Sadly, I searched the dial, looking for something similar in tone to take it's place. There was no "Simpsons", no "Three Stooges," nothing. I was bereft. The days dragged on..... I still cooked dinner each night while watching the daily disasters on the evening news, but with nothing funny on tv, my attempts to get the various members of my family back to the dinner table were futile. We dragged on in this dispirited manner for months, me sitting alone at the kitchen table, kids wolfing their food down and going upstairs to play video games, hubster pacing around the house. In the words of Jackie Childs, we were "disgusting, salacious, outrageous !"
*
You can imagine my pleasant surprise the other night when I turned on the tv, was scanning the guide, and suddenly, in it's old 6:30 time slot - was "Seinfeld". Could it be that other people also missed watching this show while eating dinner, and hounded the station to bring it back? As perverse as it sounds, this show about nothing brings my family together. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Weird Moment

2009-12-26T17:27:00.004-06:00

In 1977-78 I was dating MC, an handsome older student at the local suburban high school I attended. The crush I had on him was severe and everything he liked, did, or touched seemed just magical to me. It is safe to say he was truly my "first love". At the time, I was 17 years old and taking a heavy academic load at school and did not have a part-time job. I remember wanting to buy him a Christmas or birthday gift (can't remember which) but had no money to do so; I asked my mother for some allowance or pocket money to shop for him. His favorite cologne at the time was Aramis, which seemed truly sophisticated to me in 1978 as it was only sold at Neiman-Marcus. Without remembering why or where I came up with the idea, I do remember I wanted to buy him something made by Aramis, and settled on the idea of a soap-on-a-rope, which was the least expensive item in the product line. My mother and I had a hideous, colossal yelling screaming fight about the issue, that went on for days, and she refused to give me the money to buy it - she said it was too expensive. A recent google search for this item turned up a pretty consistent price of $14.00 currently, and I extrapolate back to think it cost about the equivalent of that much, 30 years ago.
*
Instead of giving me the money, my mother went to some discount drugstore and bought a cheap soap-on-a-rope for me to give him, instead. I think the one she bought was made by Pierre Cardin and looked strangely phallic in shape. It was truly embarrassing to look at (and odd that my mother, so Puritanical in her view of the world, didn't "see" it.).
*
I vacillated for days, agonizing over the issue, b/c it boiled down to essentially no money = no gift or else the ugly creepy totally-not-the-right-one my mother had bought. Eventually I caved and gave MC the cheap hideous thing, figuring it was better than nothing. He was charming and polite and accepted it with grace. I felt agonizingly embarrassed.
*
Skip ahead 30+ years....I had completely forgotten about the incident. (Maybe this was why I got a job shortly thereafter, and have worked continually ever since, so I have almost never put myself in a cashless, powerless position like that, again. ) Imagine my surprise this Christmas when my two sons opened their gifts from my mother this year....and they each got Aramis soap-on-a-ropes. My mother had no idea why this was the thing to buy them - in her aging forgetfulness, she had also forgotten the original incident. I know, b/c I queried her at length. She just knew they were special, but couldn't remember why.

Dreaming of a White Christmas

2009-12-25T12:52:00.004-06:00

Snow is such a rarity in north Texas....and a White Christmas has never officially been documented since records started being kept in the late 1800's - until now. 2009 draws to a close with two, yes two ! Texas snowfalls in the month of December, one the very first week of the month, and the most recent one falling on Christmas Eve. It was such an unusual, exciting event, people felt they just had to get out and dance in it !
The snow started falling in the morning, but did not stick to anything for hours, because it had been sunny and in the 70's the day before. That's Texas weather for you. By mid-afternoon the ground temps had cooled enough that the snow, still falling (and not, I must add, our normal ice pellets which pass for snow around here, either, but real fluffy flakes of it) finally began to accumulate. Frantic last-minute Christmas shoppers attacked the mall in a frenzy. Traffic all over the DFW metroplex slowed to a snarl as highway overpasses began to slick over. (Sand trucks ? Snow plows? No one knows what those things are around here; we are the only people we know who even own a snow shovel- and we brought it with us from Va. They don't sell those things south of the Mason-Dixon line.) Fortunately hubster, who had just returned from visiting relatives during the Great East Coast Blizzard of '09, managed to fly in before the Texas snowstorm hit, and just narrowly avoiding being stranded on a plane or in an airport somewhere else and missing Christmas.
It was an unusual, welcome, beautiful Christmas present. Many churches started canceling their Christmas eve services, worried about folk driving in the weather as the sun went down and road conditions grew worse. Our little family carried on, easily making it to church but by the time the service was over, the drifts made it impossible to see where the road ended and the curbs began. We made it home safely, just in time for our family feast. My sons are getting to that age where they'd rather play video games than slide down the hill in the nearby park on giant pieces of cardboard ( what passes for sleds around these parts), and that saddens me, a little.

Visit with a Jolly Old Elf of Another Kind

2009-12-21T22:18:00.008-06:00

Imagine, dear reader, for a brief moment, that you are a girl. Maybe you were a bit of a tomboy as a pre-teen, but mostly, you are a girly girl. You wear pink and make-up and high heels and get your nails done and enjoy ballet and cooking and shopping and decorating and sad tearjerker movies. You fill your home with flowers and art and pot-pourri and those silly little hand towels that men have no idea what to do with, other than they know they are absolutely never, ever, to wipe their hands on them. You sing along to musicals, get massages, do arts and crafts, and you enjoy getting together with the girls.
*
Now pretend that you have a health issue that is.....predominantly male. It is an odd fact of medicinal practice that female doctors often choose specialties such as dermatology (few late night or weekend emergencies) or ob-gyn ( the joys of bringing babies in to the world, female solidarity), but rarely do they choose urology. So if you are "blessed" with predominantly male health problems, such as kidney disease, odds are you will have a male doctor. Oh, I have searched - in multiple cities - for a female urologist. Found one, briefly, before she left active practice to do research. There is nothing inherently wrong with having a male doctor; my internist is male, but he is a gentle scholarly metrosexual and very empathetic. Most of my doctors, for most of my life, have been male, but they have all been accustomed to female patients and managed to have gender-neutral office decor and approach to interacting with patients. I have actively sought out female doctors, as more entered the profession over the course of my life, mostly for solidarity and because I felt they understood female health issues better. Why not ? I had one ob-gyn who was male deliver son #1, and a female dr deliver son #2, and I liked them both and thought they did excellent jobs. So I have no particular prejudice; however, it is just plain darn weird to be a female visiting a urologist.
*
The urologist tries, and I've had three so far, my friends. He can't help it that 98% of his patients are male, which makes a visit to a urologist by a female a very alien experience. In the lobby, which is invariably decorated in browns and tans, the wall art is often of sports posters, with those catchy inspirational slogans, such as Perseverance, underneath a photo of a young man in a batting cage with a bucket of balls. Or fly fishermen throwing rods in the morning mist of some dewy mountain stream. The coffee table in every urology waiting room I've been to invariably has magazines with catchy titles like Golf, AARP, (Headlined: "50 Foods to Eat for Better Prostrate Health"), Men's Health, and Active Seniors Retirement. Behind the door, in the waiting rooms, the wall art consists of posters of the male reproductive system with the parts, especially the prostate gland, clearly labeled. There is often a 3-D plastic model of these organs, that can be taken apart and put back together, like a wooden Chinese puzzle, sitting on the counter. (It is an interesting note that I cut and pasted pictures of these things into this blog several times, and they would never show up. There must be some sort of block against that sort of pornography on this website. After all, this is a family blog, we just can't have drawings of body parts that look like road maps. It might incite the wrong feelings.) While I wait for the doctor to show up, I am given a specimen collecting receptacle that looks like this, and told to "produce a sample":

What gifts has Santa brought this time ?

Now, tell me what is wrong with this picture? Remember, I am a girl. Frequently, I am given one of these kits to take home with me, and told to produce and collect a 24 hour sample. It really doesn't matter how long you give me, folk, I'm not going to be able to get it into this bottle directly, no matter how many yoga poses I strike. (I have since bought a plastic funnel and some bowls and tubing and through a series of contortions similar to distilling homebrew, manage to do what the doctor intends.) After an interminable wait (made better in recent years by my trusty little blackberry with 3G, and I can now merrily while away the hours reading the New York Times or make facebook postings online with my cellphone - since there is nothing interesting to read !) there is a rustling of paper outside, as the dr reads the file, and the door opens.
*
Eventually the doctor shows up, and I can tell right away he is sort of embarrassed to be talking to me . The first urologist I had was a weasly fellow, and always called his assistant in, although I was never undressed, much as a gynecologist will call a nurse in, just in case the patient gets weird about being nekkid and having the dr look "up there" with a flashlight on his head and speculum in hand. The second urologist I had, the woman, was totally normal and just talked to me like a person. I miss her. The one I currently have, #3, goes overboard in the hale, hearty well-met department, is a tall giant bear-like fellow, with ruddy cheeks, and laughs LOUDLY and slaps people on the back. He is like an escapee from a Rudyard Kipling story, someone you would have expected to meet on the night train to Rajapur who would tell you any number of stories, as long as you kept plying him with liquor. The answer to any question he is asked, is "Drink more water! " and if you start any line of questioning that he doesn't like, he glares at you and says, "Are you drinking enough water ?" It's all very exhausting, quite frankly. I couldn't help but think of other cultural icons seen around this time of year, all yelling "Ho, ho, ho" and slapping their thighs and stomping their feet in much the same manner. Sure, Santa is supposed to be a nice guy, bringing you presents and solving all your problems...but why is it that most little kids, when they first meet him in the flesh, burst in to tears? Isn't there something just a wee bit off about all that forced jollity ? Wouldn't we like Santa better if he was more like Stanley Tucci in "The Devil Wears Prada" ? I don't know about you, but I would.

Я люблю все русское!

2009-12-21T22:17:00.006-06:00

My family's ethnic identity is German on my father's side, and mostly English (little bit of French, little bit Cherokee) on my mother's side. Yet for some reason, even as a youngish child, I became fascinated and fixated with various aspects of Russian culture. I think it all started with the PBS production of "War and Peace", which I remember held me spellbound in the early 70's for the several months that it took to run its course. Anthony Hopkins just sizzled in his break-out role as Pierre, the bumbling idealistic aristocrat rebel-without-a-cause. (He was the first of several of these types I was drawn to.) My bff Monica and I soon were re-enacting various plot lines from this long soap opera with our little dollhouse villages and reciting bits of dialogue while avoiding strenuous activity in the hideous p e classes we shared, which we likened to working in the Gulag or Napoleon's March home from Moscow in the bitter winter snow. (One of hubster's fave anecdotes in the field of metallurgy concerns the buttons on the French army's uniforms....) The tv mini series of "War and Peace" inspired me to read Tolstoy's novel at age 12, and I found that it was not (as it is often jokingly referred to) a particularly Herculean task. No longer than Twilight, Gone With the Wind, an Anne Rice or Steven King novel or any other dense tome that people love to bury themselves in, the only tricky thing is keeping track of the 30+ main characters with long Russian 3 or 4 part names. I simply give them nicknames, and skim through the long passages substituting the nicknames for the 3 or 4 part-ers when I read. I enjoyed War and Peace so much that I frequently re-read it, along with other Tolstoy works , and soon became immersed in other Russian authors such as Chekhov, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Gorky and Solzhenitsyn.
*
I also loved the movie "Dr Zhivago" as a child, and was inspired to read Pasternak's novel from which the movie drew its inspiration. If you ever undertake this task yourself, you will quickly realize that the plot of the film comprises only about half of the novel, and that the author's chief allegory of the literary work (each woman Zhivago gets involved with represents a different stage of the Revolution) is completely lost, as the final third of the novel (and final lover of Zhivago) is entirely omitted in the film. The love story between Zhivago and Lara is blown out of proportion and the author's point is completely obliterated in the sappiness of their movie romance. That happens, sometimes, when a novel is turned in to a film.
I wasn't one of those little girls who grew up taking ballet lessons ( lord knows why, my mother dragged me to art lessons and sewing lessons and many other kinds of lessons) but I wanted to be. I never got to experience the thrill of partaking in a student performance of "The Nutcracker" ballet until a little friend of my younger son was coerced into playing all the boy roles, because his sister was one of those little girls who studied ballet, and as each year passed, she rose through the ranks of her particular academe, starting out playing flowers or snowflakes and eventually working her way up to major roles in our small town production. So it became a kind of holiday tradition to show support and go watch my son's friend sullenly be one of the boys at the party, or Clara's brother, a dancing Chinaman, etc, as he danced alongside his sister, willingly or not. Who knows? Perhaps some of the great male ballerinas got their start in similar fashion. I couldn't help but think of this as I recently watched the San Francisco Ballet's "Nutcracker" production on tv one night. What a fresh new vision (costumes, set, staging) for this (sometimes stale, yet beloved) holiday classic. I haven't been this entranced since seeing Baryshnikov perform it....truly magical. The music never ceases to enchant; I love even Disney's version from "Fantasia". (It must be noted, I am a true curmudgeon, and many Disney films.......dare I say it ? Grate on my nerves. Too many singing __________! (fill in the blank: mice, butterflies, candlesticks, sea creatures, frogs, whatever.) Yet I can watch "Fantasia" endlessly and never grow irritable. The music is that wonderful.

Those of you who know me have heard the many bizarre stories about my mother-in-law, especially in the realm (that's another blog entry!) of gift giving. Yet a few years back, she gave me a truly wonderful present for Christmas, why I have no idea, and I have treasured it above all others. It seems she had recently visited St Petersberg, which I really want to do, esp after reading my book club's selection The Madonnas of Leningrad awhile back, a beautiful little book and not long or difficult to read. It is the story of the Siege of Leningrad, and how the citizens, esp the employees of the Hermitage, survive. As they are slowly starving to death, they play a game of remembering ALL the artwork - which has been hidden away for safety, and all they have to look at are bare walls - and where it hung, what it looked like, the artist, its provenance. Along the way, reality and fantasy begin to blur....... If you love art history or WWII, you will love this book! Anyways, my m-in-law had been to St P, and for some quixotic reason, bought me a beautiful enameled jewelry box painted with a scene from "The Firebird" on it. It charmed me immediately, and ( almost) made me forget all the tense moments we have had, previously.

hacked off

2009-12-15T19:06:00.003-06:00

I experienced a recent violation to my privacy and my life, an unwelcome perverse intrusion into my world, and it really felt icky. Someone hacked into my facebook page, changed my password (and I must note that it was a "strong" password, all you complacent little friends who are reading this, feeling a tad smug, and thinking, "Oh, this could never happen to ME !") and, while in complete control of my facebook page, pretending to be me, the hackers proceeded to "chat" and print status updates that claimed I was in London, had been mugged at gunpoint and my wallet, cellphone, and cash and credit cards had been stolen, and I supposedly desperately needed money (wired to London, natch) to check out of the hotel and return home. Hackers claimed that fb was the only way they could reach any of my friends.
*
I got a rude awakening from the doorbell ringing on a recent Sunday morning at 7 am from a local gf who was very worried about me, had been talking to the hackers for hours, was about to send me money to help me out of this predicament, and had been asking the hacker questions to try to make sure it really was me, before she sent the money. The hackers were clever enough that they answered enough ( but not all) of the questions correctly, and my gf tried to reach me on the phone but couldn't ( we were all asleep), and just before she was about to send the money, she sent her hubby over to my house to see what was really going on. Thank goodness she did that..... Even though she had seen me 48 hours previously, and I had never mentioned a trip to London, and I had recently been in the hospital and was doing poorly, she still believed what the hackers were saying was true. Or might be true. They were that good.
*
While I get a little verklempt and was extremely touched that my gf was ready to go to the mat for me in this supposed "dire" situation, ( tears form in my eyes when I think about it: "I was going to send more than you were asking for," she told me at lunch the next day," because I figured the stress of all this meant you were going to need a little extra, for eating and shopping, after this ordeal was over!" Is that not a great friend, or what ?) , I also felt entirely violated and, of course, had to close out my old facebook page at once. Then my gf and I started discussing the situation, and began wondering just how the hacker(s) were able to answer so many of the questions she asked him/her/them to check and see if it really was me. Some of the info they had was not published on fb, not in my photos, comments, or anything. Were they just extremely clever ? Are they so experienced, that they made good guesses ? Did my gf, growing increasingly nervous and worried, perhaps give some of her own answers away ? Did they hack into my private email address as well ? Now I am entirely paranoid.
*
My advice, dear friends, from this experience is : change all your passwords periodically and make them "strong". Don't get lazy and link or duplicate all your passwords. Keep things separate, compartmentalized, private. I certainly will, from here on out. There are several other ideas I have, which I will keep to myself, about how to modify my new fb page, and hope that I can make my personal fb page less enticing to hackers. Have been checking/changing info on my financial records and other things, just to be safe. I haven't felt this violated since my divorce.
*
Yes, I waited awhile, the withdrawal became too great, and I am now back on fb. I enjoy silly chitchat with my old buddies from high school and college. I enjoy staying in touch with family and friends. I am just going to try to be a lot more careful.

Frequent Flyer

2009-12-02T10:15:00.006-06:00

GFT is a frequent flyer of a different sort : emergency rooms and hospitals. In spite of a rather promising, semi-athletic youth (long before Title IX, soccer, and girls' sports took off I spent nearly all my free time riding bikes, horses, water-skiing, hiking, camping, etc.) and a young adulthood where I jogged 3 miles a day and was a habitue of aerobics and yoga classes, I have now devolved into a seriously ill mid-adulthood with alarming decrepitude.
*
It all started in my late 20's with endometriosis - numerous surgeries and various hellish medical treatments (Lupron therapy not for the faint of heart, folks) ensued. These were mostly of a predictable sort, however. Treatments and afflictions kept doctors' office hours. In my second pregnancy, during my mid-30's, my kidneys were damaged and I entered into a whole new world of pain and suffering. Things have taken a more quixotic turn with the arrival of kidney problems, specifically kidney stones, which in spite of the fact that I am monitored by a primary care physician, a urologist and nephrologist, and I regularly chow down the cocktail of meds prescribed for me and follow all their instructions, (most of which are : "drink lots of water") this all seems to have resulted in a basically negligible effect on my body's ability and desire to produce rather large kidney stones at an alarmingly fast rate. So it is becoming quite the common occurrence for me to spend the unexpected weekend or week in the hospital, starting with an emergency room visit and progressing on to the obligatory doctor's office visit, lab testing ( lots of blood drawn and peeing into various containers; since kidney/urinary problems are mostly a "male" illness, all these devices are typically shaped to accommodate male anatomy, not female - just an interesting sidebar), and progressing on to a surgery of some sort.
*
As a "frequent flier" of hospitals, I have gotten it all down to a science, and I have advice for the novice. If you or your loved one ever feels that a trip to the emergency room or hospital is imminent, and I don't care how urgent the situation seems at the moment, whatever you do, on your way out the door into the ambulance, be sure you grab the following items :
*
* Your ID and insurance card, natch. You probably already thought of that. Leave purse and valuables at home - they will likely be pilfered when you are not looking.
*
*Chapstick. Don't kid yourself, odds are they are going to stick tubes down your throat, or at the very least, stretch it really wide to look down your throat. Hospitals are already dry and over climate controlled ( some rooms too cold, or too hot, depending on medical need). Your mouth and lips will get dry and cracked, you will be begging for a chapstick. If you go visit a loved one in the hospital, bring them a fresh new chapstick, b/c their next of kin won't have thought of it, and they will love you for it. I rec Burts Bees but basic plain chapstick is fine, too. Avoid anything with too weird a taste or smell - all those meds will make you nauseous, and you don't want anything that will add to it.
*
*Socks. The thicker, softer, and fluffier, the better. Some people pack suitcases full of negligees to go to the hospital, some end up there in the middle of the night wearing only half their pajamas b/c the other half was torn away to save their lives. Whatever the situation, their feet will be sticking out of the too-short hospital gowns, the thin scratchy hospital blanket will cover their bodies but not their toes, and their feet will be miserably cold. They will need socks. I prefer thick cotton "rag" socks, the speckled kind Vermonters wear to go harvest maple syrup in, but everyone has their own preference.
*
*Toothbrush, toothpaste, and other toiletries. I was once admitted to the hospital in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, during what was supposed to be a routine doctor's office visit. I ended up being in the hospital that time for 9 days , had 2 surgeries, and never once was able to wash my hair or brush my teeth. I felt so oily , greasy, smelly and vile that it is the dominant memory I have of the whole episode. My poor husband was struggling to take care of our kids (who were little at the time) and handle the insurance and doctors and keep going to work all simultaneously, and he could never remember to bring me my toothbrush. To this day, I keep spare toothbrushes and toothpaste sets (the ones the dentist gives you, in the little bag, are perfect for this, or buy samples at your local drugstore) everywhere I can - at work, in the car, in my purse. You think it will not matter, but trust me on this, folks, when you are sick, the little things make a huge difference.
*
On the way home from the hospital - a plastic bag, bowl, or something to vomit in. I've lost count of the number of times I've been sent home from the hospital still woozy from all the meds, and as they start to wear off, the nausea kicks in. Hubster has permanent vomit splatter wear marks out the window on the passenger side of his car, b/c the acid eats away the enamel. Now he carries a plastic grocery store bag with him wherever he goes, because you just never know. Keeping a plastic bag around serves so many useful purposes: for trash, for cleaning up after your pet, for carrying unexpected items or things that unexpectedly leak. I recycle ones from the groc store for so many purposes, I never feel guilty about using them in the first place.
*
I hope you never become a habitue of the kind of seedy joints GFT frequents -but just in case, you will be prepared.

Multi Cultural Weekend

2009-11-27T20:46:00.007-06:00

One of the most anticipated social events of my year is the annual meeting of local Buddhists each November. This gala celebration, which coincides with founder Dawa's (owner of local store "Juliet's Jewels") birthday, always involves a visit by the "Jolly Lama" (Lama Dudjam Dorjee) and a wonderfully gourmet vegetarian potluck lunch. The crowd that turns up at this event is eclectic - various Asian nationals for whom Buddhism is a native faith, as well as a fair number of college kids, swingers, Unitarians, ex-hippies, curious, seekers, fruits, and weirdos. I am not sure which category of these I fit into...but the hi-lite this year, in addition to the Lama's speech (sort of like a church sermon, only far less annoying and more thoughtful) was some old geezer walking up to my gf "C" and I , and trying to pick us up. Now, GFT is a middle aged mom, far past her prime, who most days is about as noticed by most men as the wallpaper of your grandmother's house. My gf C is an attractive female who is several years older than GFT. We had spent the entire morning trying to set up C's friend D, a recent widow, with various men at this event, with no success. The mere fact that anyone would try to pick me up - and to this day C and I will argue about which of us, exactly, the guy was hitting on - we agreed to settle the argument with the decision that he thought we were a swingin' duo, a pair of chicks who would be willing and interested in forming a threesome with him - was hilarious. Never mind the fact that C's long-suffering husband, aka "Saint", was sitting next to us, talking to some random other metrosexual man. We figured the guy hitting on us assumed Saint was gay, and we're sticking to that assumption. No matter the truth of the situation, this event perked us up so much, we've been riding the natural high that followed for weeks now.
By a strange celestial coincidence, it happened that this year the weekend of the Buddhist fest was also the same one that the Indian Student Association at UNT decided to celebrate Diwali (a major holiday in the Hindu faith, somewhat analogous to Christmas.). So I got to have an all Indian multi-cultural weekend, and I loved it! The Diwali fest at UNT is a 5-7 hour long talent show, full of students in traditional costumes dancing and singing karaoke to Indian pop music. At the end of all this comes a dinner, which is always wonderful. The first year hubster and I attended, neophytes that we were, we went to the talent show portion ( agonizing hours spent listening to our student guides promising us "just one more - you must listen/see to this one!" before we could even sneak out to use the restroom) . Now that we are more savvy, we skip the talent show and just show up for the food. It is a large group and well attended- the food is always catered by a DFW area restaurant deemed "authentic" by the ISA. We had a great time visiting with friends and colleagues.....and the gastro-intestinal fallout of eating food that was spicier by several factors than what I typically eat, lasted for days.

If You Were on "Madmen", Who Would You Be ?

2009-11-27T20:45:00.003-06:00