pomegranatesandpaper

2

On Wednesday, she wore her velvet jacket, the one she only wore between Thanksgiving and Christmas. She kept it tenderly wrapped in tissue paper in a silver gift box under the bed. The box had come from an old boyfriend,  but although it's silver wrap had made her shiver, the scarf inside was prosaic brown and as commonplace as she learned the boyfriend to be. The jacket was a more suitable occupant for the  elegance of the box.

On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, she made a ritual out of pulling out the box, untying the green satin ribbon, peeling back the clouds of tissue, and gently trying the jacket on, holding her breath until she secured the embroidered clasp around her waist, always her fear that the few pounds she lost and gained would make a difference in the fit. It was  cut tight around her waist and had a peplum that flared slightly around her hips. It was the color of garnets and rose hips, blood red against the snow and made her brown eyes as deep as pools in the woods.

She looked at herself in the standing mirror, turning this way and that to admire herself. She'd bought the jacket years ago, in a secondhand shop on St. Mark's Place. She'd just begun working in the city and had taken the subway to the Village, holding her purse in her lap, tightly, and avoiding eye contact with anyone in the car.  She emerged from underground like Persephone, trying not to gasp for air but not loosening the hold on her purse. She convinced herself to have an egg roll and a cup of tea in a chunky blue and white Oriental cup at the first Chinese restaurant she saw.

Fortified by the food, she relaxed a bit and let her shoulders unhunch. She walked along the street, looking down into the windows of the headshops stuck in amidst the laundries and shoemakers and stopped when she saw the window filled with black jet beads hung in an arc and underneath it, a mannequin with the glowing red jacket and a green satin bag and embroidered cloche that she couldn't imagine wearing anywhere. But the jacket, the jacket, she couldn't draw her eyes from the jacket. The buttons were bone, the cuffs were turned back and embroidered with gold tracery as delicate as a bee's path through the flowers.

She left the store before anyone could ask her if she needed help. Not that anyone had looked up when she walked in. She'd barely registered on their consciousness; the woman with the jet black hair continued flipping through a magazine, and the girl with the pink hair cut in a bowl whom she could barely see behind the haze of incense. She walked quickly back down the street. It would be dark soon and she needed to catch the train back before her mother knew she wasn't at Gail's. .

This is what is waiting for me in my art room, she thought:

silken ribbons
swaths of velvet
in the hues of emeralds, rubies, and sapphires
fluttering rick rack in bold red
and gossamer shreds of black and white
vials of stardust, gold nuggets, and pieces
of the sea

Sometimes though, even the sound of a marker squeaking across a page is not enough to turn a head. She'd rather be in a smoky coffee house, listening to Ravi Shankar, and slowly dragging on a cigarette. She wondered where she left her hip huggers and the sash from Mexico, the one embroidered in red and white, the one that fit across her hips. She'd like to turn up the stereo and put on the heavy earphones and stare out at the stars.

Instead, she knew tonight was for

downy blankets
flannel sheets
the bright floral scent of Earl Grey
in the wide cup of robin's egg blue
a gift from a friend by the sea
tonight and tonight and tonight

Tonight it was enough to notice that the leaves gather in the ell of the house like children waiting to be picked up after school. And that the hydrangeas have faded to the color of an old lady's coat, viewed from the back at church. She realized that she'd already gotten used to the fall of dusk before she left work, making the drive home like a search party for the beacon of her house, all yellow light in the windows and the mail piled up in the mailbox,  and that it was just close enough to Christmas to make her breath quick as she sorted through the envelopes thick and thin in search of a card encrusted with the inky black of a fountain pen and infused with the scent of fir trees and beeswax. 

The Party's Over

The Teen and I  have dueling laptops going on the bed. We are looking at the humane society adoption pages, trying to decide which dog and cat to adopt (Note: I am only stringing her along for a good time. No way am I getting either, but she doesn't have to know that because she doesn't read my blog. These are the devious tortures that parent devise when they have been with all their children for four days).

I have shopped with children
eaten with children
prepared food with children
made special dishes for children
laid in soy milk, cold cuts, fruit,
salads, and junk food for children,
cleaned up with children
(mainly me cleaning and children watching)
shopped more with children
stopped children from more shopping
goaded children into doing chores
argued with children about chores not done
that they still haven't done and
they're leaving in an hour or so.
Went to Mass with the children
the mother
and the husband
and watched the youngest
serve Mass without too many mistakes.
Got the youngest to blow the yard
in exchange for money to buy us Christmas gifts,
the middle to take out the air conditioners
and the oldest to smile.
Then the husband and I ran
to Pier I and
bought
many unnecessary Christmas baubles
with which we could have lived without
and paid a few bills but
it was worth it
to calm down from a weekend
with the children.

They're all gone now
(except the youngest who has
to live here, despite what she says),
our wallets are empty
their gas tanks are full
the kitchen is clean
the living room is picked up
no music is blasting
the many cells phones are silent
and it's quiet,  prderly, and calm.

Damn, I miss those kids!

Don't Let the Parade Pass You By

Our urban town has its own Thanksgiving Parade on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. It used to be on Thanksgiving Eve when I was growing up, and then it sort of fell by the wayside. About ten years ago, the city brought it back and it's become a great family tradition for us.In years past, we've watched my son in the marching band, my nephew march with his Cub Scouts, and my 85 year old uncle march with the Elks Club. My sister instituted the after-parade brunch and after several hours in the cold November air, we would troop us to her house for waffles and bacon.

This year, neither of us could do the brunch thing, so we started a new tradition: the no-muss, no fuss, pre-parade diner breakfast:

Followed by the pre-parade dash to the restroom:

While waiting for the parade to reach us, we entertain ourselves:


Which mainly involves buying very expensive gee-gaws from these guys:

Like most parades, it seems necessary to start with a show of police force - y'know, just in case any of the clowns get out of hand:

And we are all-inclusive in our parades; even the animals get to march:

The most thrilling part of the parade is when our high school band comes marching down, all in step, all music in sync, all nattily dressed, and working in unison. It thrills me because I know a lot of these kids, and I know that a mere hour ago, they were home in bed with their parents yelling at them to get up and get to the parade.

And I love the bagpipers, but wonder how cold they are under those kilts? A gust of wind would be interesting...

But really, when all is said and done, what is a parade but an excuse to clown around?

To bring a smile to a face,

To reflect on a possible career in clowndom:

And to make her Momma very proud!

Happy Thanksgiving to Y'all

 

My List

Here's what I would do if I had off the next 5 weeks:

• Make the Thanksgiving pies from scratch
• Reality: ordered from Fresh Direct, except for the chocolate pudding which I will make, but use a premade pie crust
• Make my own Christmas cards
• Reality: go back to Targets and buy the ones I put back last night when I decided I would make Christmas postcards.
• Now that I found a good online source for felt fabric, order more and recreate the Christmas tree skirt I made years ago in Memphis, the one with all the cut-out mittens and snowmen decorated with rickrack and sequins and ribbons, the one that someone stored in the basement where it got mildewed.
• Reality: forgive my husband for storing it there and be content to look at the Christmas tree stand under the tree because I'm never going to have time to recreate that sucker and the ones I liked at Target were $40.
• Make a different Christmas cookie each weekend day starting today so I have a variety of homemade cookies in time for Christmas
• Reality: Look for Archway gingerbread cookies at Stop and Shop to appease the Teen who misses the huge box of cookies Aunt Anita used to make. Or, plan to just make those because I miss them, but most of all miss her, more than anything else I miss at Christmas.
• Go upstate, preferably after a snow, and cut our tree with all the kids.
• Reality: None of the kids will be home at the same time and none will want to dedicate day to this; it doesn't look like snow any time soon; Stan will hurt his back if he has to cut, drag, and throw the tree on top of the car, and they have great ones six blocks away on the corner and they tie it to the top of your car.
• Make little handmade gifty things for all my support staff and the few people I can stand to talk to at work.
• Reality: you should see the adorable Christmas mugs they have at Target for 3.99!
• Send little holiday care packages to all the wonderful people I've gotten to know online.
• Reality: Happy holiday emails to all!
• Stay absolutely calm this Christmas, enjoy each moment, spend lots of time by the fire, with candles lit, listening to Mary Did You Know sung by Kiri Tekenawa, and don't care what gets done and what doesn't.
• Reality:  Some version of the above.

Saturday Night

Out to dinner for our anniversary. A big occasion, an important date. Going  out to dinner in our family is usually limited to a quick meal of sushi since the husband's capacity for prolonged sitting without back problems is extremely low. We were all atwitter that it was Saturday night and we were putting on suits and dresses instead of driving to Borders for a magazine. 

We'd made the plans two months ago, keeping our fingers crossed that the good spell of no back pain would hold up and we wouldn't have to cancel. We were supposed to go with two couples that are our oldest friends, friends who danced at our wedding and knew us before we tied the knot. Then the date  changed and signals were crossed and one of the couples had to drop out, so one of  my sisters and her husband sat in for them and we were happy they could join us.

The restaurant was very warm and inviting, decorated  with beamed ceilings and beautiful linens from Provence, as well as heavy ceramic hand-painted dishes and a display of 3-foot ceramic roosters and turkeys. (I would have taken more photos, but I think the moneyed patrons would have risen up in alarm - I never saw so many white-haired, reactionary-looking couples in my life.)

Here we are, looking very celebratory and mindful  of "occasion". I'm showing it to you in black and white because the whole evening reminded me of my parents and of watching them get dressed  to go out with their friends. My father would come down the stairs, resplendent in suit and tie and my mother would be applying a final spray of perfume and giving us orders of what to eat and what time to go to bed. I remember that deflated feeling after they left, of knowing that the evening was dry and dull and even torturous if one of my older sisters were babysitting and intent on controlling the TV and sending us to bed early. We don't really do evenings like that - so combined with the dressing up and dropping off the Teen to be with her cousins and my mother, plus the added surrealism of celebrating such a milestone anniversary, I thought I would picture the occasion in black and white like the old photos I collect and draw.

But this time, I was the one going out and we were so excited that we got to the restaurant 15 minutes early and had to have a champagne cocktail before everyone us arrived.  We started the meal with two "amuse bouches" consisting of a tiny strip of duck crackling on a pumpkin puree glazed with balsamic vinegar. I could have licked the plate. Next they gave us slivers of toasted bread served in a cup like coffee stirrers. Most of us had a first course of seafood - either a warm lobster salad in a vinaigrette dressing or oysters with a bechamel sauce.

the food was too beautiful to portray in black and white. Stan chose halibut for his main course. He wasn't overwhelmed with the sauce, but it looked very pretty.

My brother's-in-law entree of prawns was gorgeous.

The rest of the table had rack of lamb. The adorable muffin was filled with a noisette of mushrooms, and all was glazed in a very rich sauce.

Dessert was splendid - chocolate souffles with a rich chocolate sauce that the server spooned into each individual souffle. Stan and I had chestnut creme brulee, which I didn't care for, but soon forgot when my sister shared her souffle. To top off our coffee, they gave us an adorable "trees" of petit fours.

Try as we might, we were unable to finish every last one, so some went home in my purse and the Teen ate them up before  bed.

At one point during the meal, feeling splendid from the champagne, I looked at my husband, who was smiling broadly and rosy from the wine, and  I thought of all the holidays and events that we'd shared together. I've known him longer than half my life and he was there when my parents celebrated their 25th anniversary.We can be tempestuous with each other at times, and lately I've felt a little like roommates when we both are so exhausted from work that we barely kiss good night, but when we finally have time to relax and enjoy ourselves, our love pops back up and fills all the cracks and makes us whole.

We've grown old and fat and thin and young together. We've danced at weddings and stood witness at death beds. We've each steadied the other on trips from hospital bed to bathroom.  We've traveled cross country and spent months homebound. We've packed up our family and household four times and managed to have us all arrive safe and intact thousands of miles away. We've waited together for test results, for new jobs, and watched our bank accounts swell and disappear and swell again. We've faced unemployment, illnesses, and the faces of our children when they transferred mid-year into yet another new school.

We've also toured colleges - first for ourselves and years later, for our kids. We've had huge house parties when my parents weren't home, and snuck home early from our own weekends to see if our kids were doing the same. We've taken ferries under the Golden Gate and gotten drunk in Sausalito. We've sat on a blanket on the ground in a stadium in New Jersey waiting for Sly  to finally take the stage at 1:00 in the morning. We've driven straight from Cape Cod to Broadway because we had theater tickets. We've ridden horses in Yosemite and motor bikes on the cliff walk in Newport, the smell of the roses and the ocean making us swoon.  We've driven the family north for Christmas, with the minivan decorated with twinkling lights and a wreath and listened to Raffi so many times we'd thought we'd scream. We swam naked under the moonlight skies of California and  Memphis, and we've stood on the beach in a hurricane to watch the waves crash. We spent a week in the fog in Nova Scotia, left a camping trip in the Sierras early after a bear spooked us and our son threw up in our new car, and conceived our second child when a storm window fell on us in bed.

And all  of it  felt right and good and true.  I wish us 25 more years of Sunday papers and toast in bed, of Friday night sushi, of Christmas Eve lobster feasts, of sandy weeks in Cape Cod, and evenings with the fire lit and pizza on our plates, the news on, too tired to read the papers, waiting for the other to get up and shut the TV and lights, and turning over in bed to nudge the other to find the remote and shut the TV and stop snoring. Right, and good, and true.

NO Black Friday at Our House

Let me clarify one thing: I hate "holiday shopping". I hate the stores, the frantic search, the inability to decide, the debate over the price, and the guilt when the bill comes. I do, however, like buying things for people, especially people who like the same things I do. It's very easy to shop for one of my sister because we have the same tastes and interests. It's very difficult to shop for another sister because we don't share the same interests at all.

However, whenever I shop and whatever I buy, it will never be done on Black Friday. Am I the only one who refuses to get out of bed at the crack of dawn on the day after Thanksgiving to buy stuff on sale? I absolutely refuse to be manipulated by the goddamn retail industry and force myself out of bed in the cold and dark after a day spent preparing and serving and cleaning up. WHY is it necessary to be at the store at 6:00 a.m.? I just don't get it. Wouldn't they draw the same amount of people, actually more, if they did it at 9:00?

I know I'm just costing myself more money out of my pocket, but you will never catch me being involved in this consumer madness. Screw you, Walmarts and Targets and Macys, if you get my money, it won't be on that day at that hour. This year I will probably repeat what I've done for the last four: sit in my bed, coffee at hand, and do all my shopping off the Internet.

Need I Say More?

It's Friday.

I haven't written all week.

You fill in the rest.

Now, attention, (tapping on monitor screen with pencil), please pay attention.

This is the weekend before Thanksgiving, which for me, is the official start of -

The Holiday Season.

By that I mean that many things coincide in the next 6 weeks. Too, too many things:

Shall we begin:

1. My wedding anniversary - on the 23rd. I refuse to reveal how many years. Let's just say that I remember my parents [fill in the blank] wedding anniversary and there's no f-ing way I can be married as long as that. And for any family members reading - do NOT give me any silver.

2. The husband's birthday is the week after next.  That's right - I have to come up with an anniversary (and this is a big one so it had to be good) gift, a birthday gift (not a big one, thank god) and a Christmas gift, all in six weeks. And the man never buys himself anything, except at this time of year when he's in the store doing Christmas shopping. Then he buys himself exactly what you bought him and hid in the closet last week. ("Honey, don't you like this blue sweater on me....").

3. The Teen's birthday on 12/21. Now you're starting to see the light - her birthday is four days before Christmas. She was supposed to be two days after Christmas, but I had this searing pain and told the OB if he didn't get her out of there I was going to get a toilet plunger and get her out of there myself. Being great parents, we never make her get one gift, no, no, after all Santa still brings the gifts, so she has to get a set of birthday gifts, then a set of Christmas gifts. Do you have any idea what it's like to come up with that many gifts in four days? And give ideas to the rest of the family who wants to know what to buy her? I tried giving her summer stuff that I'd bought in the summer, but she didn't take kindly to getting snorkeling gear in December when she found out that we weren't taking her to Florida to use it.

4. Christmas itself. The Princess has already begun sending me emails - with links - to watch she wants for Christmas. Since they were toddlers, I began giving them "surprise gifts" on Christmas Eve, and always the same thing - Christmas pajamas and slippers. I've kept up the tradition all these years, even if just giving them oversized Christmas t-shirts. The Princess didn't like pajamas I bought last year from Target, so she's kindly sent me a link to a pair of flannel pajamas she found - at Victoria's Secret, home to very over-priced lingerie. Scrooge deleted that email very quickly.

But this year, I'm in a big holiday mood. I intend to decorate the house right after Thanksgiving. We're going up county to cut our tree next Sunday. We're buying new lawn decorations, since the plastic Santa and Frosty has about had it and I've hated them since we got them. I'm getting to decorate outside with all white lights and those adorable reindeer made from grapevines....I'm making a new wreath to replace the gorgeous one I made in Memphis. It survived the move, but when I hung it here on the column to the porch, I overlooked the fact that in Memphis, we hung it on the front door of a covered porch. It rained lightly that Christmas, and as we opened gifts, we kept hearing a sound of something falling and shattering. Inspection outside revealed my beautiful glass ornaments falling off the wreath onto the sidewalk as the hot glue used to adhere said ornaments was melting in the rain.  Sort of summed up the whole sucky Christmas, that being the year that Stan blew out a disc in his neck and the tree fell over while we were sleeping.

Now, go make some stuffing or a pie or something. I have to work on a round robin journal that was due 11.1.  A Famous Artist is in this round robin and my work is following hers. Can you say: BLOCKED?

What Are You Reading?

An attorney I've known for several years asked me in court what I was reading. You always read interesting books, he tells me. This of course makes me blush, and when he asks how I find the books I read, I blush some more and stammer out my answer.

It is not so much the attention from this tall, good-looking lawyer, at least ten years younger than I,  as it is the crack in my defensive posture. In court, I am armed with my conservative suit, my briefcase, my hose (I love that word - so 40's), and my brisk, cheerful, bitingly sarcastic demeanor that I have perfected for my "professional" appearances.

In law, nothing is worse than an emotional attorney. No one wants to be stopped in their tracks by someone who needs to unload a story of pain and sorrow - unless of course it has to do with what horrible thing the judge said to some other lawyer and how he or she  crumpled in front of their eyes.In court, we are all running at a rampant pace, from floor to floor, part to part, case to case. As we pass each other in the halls or are crammed into an elevator together, our words are short and clipped: Where are you? 707. Me too, but first I have the basement and Victor. Can they pile it on anymore? Please -they're making us come in on Sundays now. No! Email later - I'll tell you what the dunderhead did today.

That's pretty much what passes for personal conversation in court. The level of intimacy is pretty low, except among some girlfriends that I consider working friends. So I felt very exposed discussing my reading habits on the bench in the hall for all to listen to. And how do I describe where I find the books I want to read? I really had to think about it. I read the NY Times Book Review, subscribe to the Time Literary Supplement, visit bookstores regularly, and just browse the aisles and tables in the chain stores pretty frequently. That was my canned answer, anyway. I don't really know how I find the books I want to read. Sometimes they just appear in my hands.

What do you like to read? Books I wish I'd written. It came out of me before I could retract it and bit my tongue afterwards for a painful penance. Write? Do you write? My usual dithering begins, sort of, a little. And then the inevitable: What do you write? What? Uh, stories (I can't believe I said that out loud). I used to be involved in writing professionally, he says. What does that mean? He read the paper? I uh, (now he's stammering), I used to write a weekly column on local topics and news for a paper in my hometown. No way. Yeah.

I'm reading about the slow food movement, he tells me. I'm trying to get my wife to adopt a slower pace. She's a teacher and she always has so much to do, up at 6:00 even on the weekends, always busy, always with a list of things that have to be done. I'm smiling at this point but in my mind, I'm trying to reconcile this very aggressive attorney with what he's telling me.  I really like this attorney, but I've seen him curse out another lawyer like a drunken sailor so this whole other side of him was a revelation that made my  little admission that I wrote a column on art and creativity disappear into the air. .

Both of us agree that working for a corporation and working on your own is just trading one set of evils for another. We bond over our desire to get out, to find that slower way of life, to find a way to make a meaningful career in a world where all that matters is paying the bills. I'll think of him differently next time we have a transaction. I wonder if anything I've said could be seen as a weakness on my part? Could he use it to my disadvantage the next time we have a contentious matter together? Will he use it as a ploy when I'm trying to get a decent settlement on a case? Will he tell other people??

This is the paranoia that surrounds you when you practice law. No one is really your friend, whether he's on the same side as you or not.  Which is why I don't journal in court, don't sketch, and read only sanitized books that can hold up to scrutiny (either best sellers or books so esoteric that a glance at the cover shuts up inquiries about what are you reading).

I live in a cynical world. I've built up the armor to survive. Don't mess with me.

I spend the weekend trying to shake off the depression and anxiety that came to a head at a horrid meeting at work on Friday morning. I thought I'd be fine after my greasy hamburger feast, but I woke feeling knocked about as though I was getting over something or about to come down. I sent Stan off into the world as the poor guy had a weekend of no commitments and felt good for once. I had plenty of artwork commitments to keep me housebound anyway and he ran a few errands and then took off.

I tried to escape the house about midday, but a telephone conversation with the youngest left me screeching and I threw off my clothes and went to bed. My head had barely hit the pillow before I was asleep and I slept soundly for say, three minutes, before every leaf blower and lawn mower in the neighborhood were turned on, simultaneously it seemed, as though being orchestrated for Beethoven's Fifth.

I do not exaggerate when I tell you that the high-pitched roar of power motors lasted the entire two hours that I surfed in and out of sleep. Finally, at 3:00, being awoken by one more machinic squeal outside my window, I gave up and went downstairs and put the tea on and lit the fire. As if by magic, every sound outside ceased, and I stayed curled in the chair watched a rental movie.

Today I could not stand myself any longer and showered and blow dried and put on makeup and called my mother for dinner. We ate a chicken roasted on the barbecue, baby artichokes sauteed in olive oil, butter, and garlic, yams roasted in their jackets in the oven, and  bread studded with olives. I even made a cranberry compote with fresh berries, honey, and the juice of several Clementines. For dessert we had a sweet potato custard pie and strong coffee and for five minutes I felt sane.

Tonight I am self-medicating with ginger ice cream that stings my throat and a call down to the Teen to see if a cup of tea could be procured for her mother. We won't mention the incident a few hours ago when I discovered that my laptop no longer recognized my printer, when her computer could not connect to the internet and print out what I needed, and I got so frustrated at having about $4000 of computer equipment in the house and not a one that could go on line and print, that I threw a sheaf of papers up in the air in her room, then retreated to my bed like a two-year-old.

Sigh. I offered her peace with a bottle of pomegranate juice which she grudgingly took. Now she is asking if the 2:00 dinner constituted supper as well. There's a pizza in the freezer that will do her well as I have retired to my bed - again - only this time with pajamas and Martha Stewart's Holiday Cookie collection. I can't decide what to make for my sister's cookie swap. More on that later. For now, good night.

Friday Night Dining Choices

Tonight I am eating a bleu cheese hamburger - medium rare- and a Greek salad. I never had a better hamburger than tonight, sitting on my bed, laptop on my lap, napkin poised to catch the greasy, ketchup, cheesy drips. To cut through all the fat, a tart Greek salad loaded with cucumbers, tomatoes, and feta cheese. Ah, diner food and a husband willing to run down the hill for take out.

When we moved out of the northeast, we spent our Friday nights looking for the diner. Instead we found Applebees, Chili's, taco stands, rib joints, blue plate cafes, Wendy's, and McDonald's, In 'n Out burgers, Backyard Burgers (oh the Hawaiian burger was sweet and sour - to die for with Bermuda onions). But no diners. Sunday mornings, we had to go to Denny's or Ihop, or the faux bagel store. We ate grits, tamales, ribs, fried green tomatoes, tacos, biscuits and gravy, and sausage rolls. We found a place that made great banana pecan pancakes and we could always go to Crackerbarrel for stewed apples and the Big Sunshine breakfast.

But where were the diners? You know, the place that has the giant pies and cakes in the revolving case, huge pastries and cookies covered in plastic wrap,the seventy-year old, flat-footed waitresses who slosh the coffee into the saucer, and a menu that begin with eggs, travels through soup,wraps, burgers, lunch specials, the dinner special of three courses including bread basket and stuffed clam appetizer, and ends with rice pudding and egg creams.

The thing about the diner is, you can each order the meal of choice. Belgian waffles for dinner? Grilled cheese for breakfast? Mid-week hot turkey open sandwich with mashed potatoes and a side of carrots and peas? A towering slice of lemon meringue pie at 3:00 a.m.? Lenten Friday shrimp salad wraps and iced teas? An adventurous after-church choice of fish and chips?

Democracy is  in action at the Greek diners that serve Italian meatballs and spaghetti, chocolate pudding, nachos, french toast, souvlaki, gyros, jello with whipped cream, and hot dogs and beans. Big tables, spacious booths, even  individual juke boxes. And Mary, the waitress, knows your mother, sisters, and their best friends. She tells you that your sister was in for breakfast and Joe had his fluffy pancakes.

Okay, so sometimes the mashed potatoes are instant and the carrots and peas are swimming in water. The waitress gets all the orders wrong and the table next to you has a baby that won't stop crying and a kid running around with a toy car that the waitress almost falls on. And sometimes, just sometimes, you don't want to make small talk and the old guys at the next table shout at you and your girlfriends to hold it down. One last thing - why is it cool for the college kids from the dorm next door to all eat lunch in their pajamas and slippers?

But wait until you are living in a wasteland of fast food and themed restaurants and all you want is a BLT on white toast or an egg salad on rye. You'll be willing to overlook the ersatz crystal chandeliers, turquoise upholstered booths and the tired saucer of coleslaw and basket of saltines and little packets of butter. You'll be lured by the name in neon lights and the chrome trim, unless of course, it's a repro diner, all Johnny Rockets with teenage waitresses and blaring fifties' music, which are to avoided at all costs since the food will be overpriced and horrible. You can't order pancakes and sit in a booth for an hour and draw the coffee mugs at a Johnny Rockets.

The diner by the courthouse is really great because they serve grits with their eggs. And they let me sit there for two hours between court and a deposition and just refill the coffee while I work my way through the Times. They'll even spot me a meal if I forget to go to the bank, and by the time court breaks at 1:00, the place is full of lawyers bullshitting about their mornings and court officers having lunch with cute secretaries.

You should never pass up a diner on the road. However it looks from the outside, it will  have the standard fare that is comforting when you've been cramped in a car all day. And no one will tell you that they stop serving breakfast at 11:00. Just don't expect those cookies in plastic wrap to taste like anything but sawdust and stay away from the fish.

If Ya Don't Like Snarky, Surf On

Things are weird here in the blogosphere:

1. One of my favorite bloggers is closing up shop.
2. Dooce is getting $500 a week per ad on her site and she is paying her mortgage with it.
3. And people are criticizing her for making $2000 a week (4 ads currently).
4. Keri Smith is vowing never to have ads on her site and her decision engendered such controversy that she has had more than  150 comments over 3 days.
5.Personally, if my husband and I could work at home on creative pursuits and pay all our bills from my blog revenues, you would be seeing this post in between sidebars as busy as Dooce's.
6. Not to worry, because my traffic would barely support an Amazon Associates, let alone direct ads.
7. Another blogger scored the big one and landed a book contract. My favorite quote from the post:

And so my friends, it's an honor to share with you this news. Me---little ole me who little more than a year ago imagined a terrible life for myself in a tiny law firm with a billboard and a mustache and a commercial where I say "Have you been hurt in an accident[sic]".

8.   I do not have a moustache.
9.   My law firm is medium-sized.
10. We don't represent plaintiffs.
11. If anyone would like to advertise here, I have no corporate affiliations and will take any ads as long as they do not promote violence, bigotry, or Britney Spears.

Thank you to all who commented on my painting. I know it is clumsy in many areas, but when I look at it, I like the energy and personality that it has. Some of you wondered why I was pointing out the "mistakes" - because they are not really "mistakes", but areas that show my level of competence. I am on the way up on the learning curve and I'm not afraid to share my efforts along the way. There's so much to learn to pull it all together and it's easy to get overwhelmed and throw it in a closet. When I feel like that, I remember what writing was like in high school and college for me and how blocked and clumsy I was. I didn't feel confident about my writing until about ten years ago, and looking back, I can say that I am leaps and bounds beyond where I was then. I hope I can make the same progress with painting. There's something about sitting down to a fresh canvas and having an idea in your head and knowing you can get it onto the canvas and begin painting your vision. It's so cool! A year ago, I couldn't have drawn it, let alone painted it, so I am buoyed by my experience. I especially enjoyed those of you to write that I inspired you to go hunt down your paints and begin painting again. And Jan, I would rather have a gift certificate to Daniel Smith any day over one to Nordstroms!

Thank God Gilmore Girls is new tonight! And I found some malted milk balls left over from Halloween (how does candy find such good hiding places?) Everyone at work is bringing in their leftover candy and simultaneously hoarding the kind they like best. My boss seems to think that the cleaning service is eating her favorite candy out of her bucket. I was so good by not bringing in a bucket and not bringing in any candy. So instead I'm eating it at night at home. Can't seem to escape the situation where candy ends up in my mouth. Answer: Throw out the malted milks balls, the junior mints, butterfingers, and, sigh, tootsie rolls. Or give them to The Teen who is very good at hoarding and not sharing the enormous load of candy she has in her backpack. (Must be a trait from her father, who is an only child.)

I'm Taking a Deep Breath

and showing you this painting. It's my first attempt at a large watercolor painting. Large for me anyway - it's 11' by 14'. It's done with Daniel Smith watercolors on 140 lb. cold press Arches.

I drew this from a black and white photograph taken about 50 years ago, of my grandmother and a group of friends. They were having lunch at the house of the woman with the dog, Mrs. Marinacci. My grandmother is the woman third from the left - not that it looks anything like her, as all my family managed to tell me.

I love painting groups of people from photographs. I like lining everything up and getting each proportion correct in relation to the other. I enlarge the snapshot about 100%, and then lay a grid on top of the copy. I make light pencil points on the watercolor paper that correspond to the intersecting points of the grid. I work from left to right, and I usually have to go back and correct more than once. I like this part of the painting the best; it appeals to the analytical part of my brain, you know, the part I have to beat down when I start doing anything creative. .

Once I have the cartoon laid down, I paint the background. But before I get to that, I have to select the colors. And therein lies the rub. I never had this problem before, whether I was picking fabric for quilting or painting with acrylics. I couldn't figure out why I was making so many mistakes and having such trouble representing what colors I wanted until I took out my old craft paints. There was a whole box full, with many gradations of color. I quickly pulled the exact shades I needed, then looked at my watercolor palette to match it....No, I had to mix these colors. Unless I had unlimited cash and could just keep buying tubes of Daniel Smith, which I don't.

Before I start mixing colors, I have to decide on what the colors should be. Lights and darks, shades, hues: where is the spontaneity?  I decided I had to start with the woman with the dog. She was the center of the photo and I wanted her dress to stand out. I worked my way around the painting from there, putting lights and darks in contrast to the other. I was doing okay, until I decided the little woman on the right with the flying nun hat needed a turquoise outfit. The color selection was fine, but I have two different turquoises - one transparent and one opaque. Stupidly, I chose the opaque and it threw off all the other colors.

I could continue to point out all the mistakes I made. The most glaring is my lack of finesse on the faces. But I'll stop here. I loved painting this. I love depicting the vintage dresses, hats, and shoes and I love working from these old photos. It makes me feel very close to those who have passed on. Sunday, I started another painting, but this time I am using an old photograph as a starting point for something strictly from my imagination. And, I'm painting with acrylics. Know why? Because you can paint over the colors! I've already painted the background two different colors and have changed the hair color twice. It's all part of the process. If I had more time to paint, I could learn more quickly. But this is the time I have and I can't hurry the process.

Through a Lens, Darkly

Foggy morning punctuated by  leaves of cinnamon and gold, a morning born of a dream. Wrapped in gauze, the sky is a diffused glimmer over the trees, a promise of something over the hill if you're in the mood to take a walk and wander into the damp.

Not me. I have no desire to leave my bed and my husband indulges me with coffee and biscuits he carries upstairs on the New York Times. We can read through Saturday's and Sunday's editions, and torture The Teen, who has to get out of bed and go to Sunday School. Of course one of us has to drive her...

Stan pulls the short straw and I sink back into the pillows while he tends to prosaic things like teeth brushing. I'm allowed to stay in bed and be A Great Thinker while I supposedly ponder the turn my novel is taking. I am the Artiste this morning, pondering nothing and allowing my brain to be as fuzzy as the view from the window.

Yesterday I was bright and busy. I tended to daughters, sisters, and friends, my car trekking from one side of the county to the other, leaving the house in the bright morning sun and not returning till dark. Today, I have no compunction to leave, except to meet at Mass to remember my father. Today is fit for remembering, for staring out the window as the fog shifts and swirls and  chartreuse leaves appear like gumdrops on branches dark from wet. A fairytale sort of day meant for peeking at, or even, if I gather great strength after lunch, a walk holding hands through the dark woods, collecting stones and bittersweet to memorialize on the mantel. Days for dreaming and moving slow, remembering those now part of the bittersweet earth, the earth that turns over to provide firm footing in a  Grimm world.

Read This

It's Friday and I  relax a little. All my trials for today settled and so I might get some work done this afternoon. So get a drink and sit down for awhile. I know it's early, but I could really go for a Mexican coffee with some Kahlua and whipped cream on top...

Someone pointed out to me that I haven't updated my blogroll lately and she's right. I just got the blog up and running with a little help from Typepad who pointed out that the side bar titles and post titles weren't missing, they were there - in white font. Seems like in my zeal to get rid of the blog clutter, I switched everything to white, and I mean everything.  See why I can't quite my day job??

So here are some great reads that I've been meaning to add to the blog roll and will eventually add to the blog roll, but not today. Lord knows what havoc I could wreak if I tried it today, since I've already lost this post twice. (I'm great at writing blogging, just not great at actually making the entries. I need a scribe - anyone want to be my blog scribe. No dictation required.)

So you should all read these blogs and leave lots of comments saying I found you on pandp. (Let them figure that out.)

Bemused - she knits, quilts, stitches, and muses. My kind of woman. And always a good photo or two.

Britt-Arnild's House is a blog from Norway. Her life is so charming, with her cottage in the woods, hiking, cross-country skiing, travels to Venice, and always lovely photos of her house, gardens, and the beautiful landscape.

Coffee Grind is the new blog from the author of Kitchen Logic. Updated almost daily, acerbic, witty, and sarcastic. Also sells cool jewelry.

Craft Monkeys is by a Brooklyn blogger who is a fabulous artist. I can't believe I never blogrolled her before as she is one of my favorite sites. Her journal pages always inspire me to paint.

Seattle Bon  Vivant - I've been to Seattle, I liked  Seattle, I don't know if I'll ever get back to Seattle, but I read this blog faithfully.  She posts daily with gorgeous photos of her meals, food purchases, and new restaurants. Always makes me want a latte and a nice lunch, something I don't come across in my work commute. Not too many latte stands int he Bronx. 

Simple Eye is a blog near and dear to my heart. It is written by my oldest friend in the world. We met in third grade and have been friends ever since, with a 20 year leave of absence after college while we both did our thing and then the internet brought us back together again.

Visual Chronicles is the blog of those art journaling Sisters on Sojourn. Almost-daily entries are always funny, usually art-related, and these women will never be accused of not having an opinion. Plus they have a new book on art journaling coming out and I'm sure it'll be very cool.

Woolgathering - Elizabeth Perry decided to make a drawing a day in her Moleskine, and she posts them on her blog. Always artful, always cool to see what she draws next.

Wee Me and the Wolf is a really fun blog. Right now she is on a short hiatus to catch up with real time work, but check back, if for nothing else than her gorgeous banners, which she changes frequently.

THIS

is what I'll be doing for the next six weeks.

Gifts.
Presents.
Little fabric things.
Tiny little handmade sweet things.
Felt and Japanese fabric and embroidery.
And beads.
Seed beads.
Pearl beads.
Felt.
Silk.
Perl cotton.
Tiny books.
Sewing kits
Wristlets.
CD cases.
In the shapes of
flowers
bugs
fish
and leaves.

Luscious. Check back for results.

Happy Anniversary!

This is my second year anniversary with my blog. I never thought when I first started it that I would be doing it two years later. Although I've had my lean periods and my abundant periods, I've enjoyed it all around and hope that it has remained as entertaining as I first envisioned.

In the past two years, I've written 575 posts. I've received 2263 comments. There has been 71,746 visitors and an average of 256 visitors per day. I'm proud to have created this website and I hope to continue with it as long as possible.

Thanks to all of you who are faithful readers and commentators. I've made such wonderful friendships, some even in real time, with other bloggers. I think it is a wonderful medium and I am constantly adding bloggers to my own favorites.

I plan to beef up the art postings, as it was always my aim to keep it an illustrated blog. Right now Typepad is disappointing me terribly. There are a lot of problems with the site, such as post titles  not showing up, my side calendar disappearing, and titles to side bar items are gone. I have a ticket into Typepad and I'm beginning to consider that I may have to migrate to another server. If so, y'all will be the first to know!