pomegranatesandpaper

From Sea to Sea

Mr. Pom had one week of vacation left, so he dragged me and The Teen to the ocean. The Princess has been here for three delightful days, but she has to leave early tomorrow morning to go to work. MM is back in school as classes started Monday. We miss him!

It's lovely being here, but a bit strange as my get up and go is not yet fully returned and I am fairly limited to getting in the car, falling out onto the sand, and keeping my duff in a chair all day. Y'know - none of the usual water skiing, surfboarding, and fly fishing that I usually do. Heh heh.

Yesterday, The Princess wanted her full share of sun. So we started the day in the Sound, left mid-afternoon to tour the town, buy candy, and go find the seals that hang out at the fishing dock. The Princess insisted on standing on the edge of the dock to take pictures, while her father and I kept squinting at her from the car. Sure enough, as she turned to  leave, she lost her balance and did one of those I Love Lucy grabs at a dock piling. Thankfully, she's more graceful than Lucy and managed to right herself. NO problem - I'm having my hair colored when I get back anyway. We ended the day at the ocean, where there was a strong sea breeze and we were fighting over the one dry towel.

TheTeen has no turned into the Skim Board Queen, or as a 12 year old girl told her cousins on the beach, "Come watch this girl, she's wicked good," I told her if she had any common sense, she'd start giving lessons so we could license her and just move from warm weather to warm weather as her managers. Can't the girl even try?

The rental house is cozy and adequate. The owner lives next door. He fixed the grill tray that Mr. Pom somehow put in backwards and couldn't get out. Yes, we told him we didn't know what was wrong with it and could he look at it. We just didn't tell him that he did it. Fancy lawyering or a sin of omission?

Photos, you ask? Ask my sister and ILife 08!

Miss you, Mar!!!

I Could Get Used to This

Other than the fact that  it's been 56 degrees and raining for three days, I've been slowly coming round enough to enjoy being home for these weeks.

I have all sorts of art and writing projects which must be done before I return to work, so naturally, my mind seems unable to process anything creative and I've done nothing.

However, I have instead been into the organizing mode and I cleaned up the bedroom and put away a lot of stuff that had been lingering in the living and dining room since .....well, Easter.

I began organizing my art room, but realized quickly that I could not bend easily nor reach up  high, so sister M, being bored by the rain and end of summer, came over and did a masterful job of cleaning up my shelves. I can see the top of my desk! I'd take photos and show you but I still can't upload any photos due to Life 08, thank you so much Apple!! I'm better but not up to a trip to the Genius Bar.

I have managed to go to the dentist and the post office. Yesterday, I took my first official "fun" trip and went to the giant art store. I used a carriage to lean on so my hot/cold/hot post-surgery endocrine system could have some support. I felt totally validated to be shopping and spending money because I was WALKING and every keeps telling me I have to WALK.

I even managed to cook dinner!  I cleaned out the freezer earlier in the day and I made all the little mysterious blocks of foodstuff that were wrapped in aluminum foil and lingering in the bottom of the shelves for months. So we had a "mixed grill" of chicken paillaird, a stew of homemade marinara with Italian sausage and cod, and a squash casserole.  I could only stomach a tiny bit of squash and a little cod, but it was quite good.

The Teen is painting the TV room on the third floor, which will now be her bedroom. She's been begging to move up there for two years and we decided that we'd rather have her mess up there than next to us, so we said go for it. Which she did, about two months ago for twenty minutes before camp started. But now camp is over and she's been up there painting for two days. I know because her hair now has more white in it than mine.  Her cousins and friends have come to help and they're almost done.

We're going away for a few days for some R&R. I figure I can sit in a beach chair as easily as sit on my couch.  If it's possible, the suitcase will be even heavier with books. Somehow, I've managed to read nothing this week except dribs and drab of The Secret of Lost Things.  Yet, I'm sure my first stop will be to our favorite bookstore.

We wanted to bring my niece with us, but she, who attends private high school, had to read 5 books, watch 5 movies, and do a science packet, and she still has 1 book, 4 movies, and part of a science packet to go. When does the madness end???

My youngest, she of the most laid back approach to life and living, had one book and an art project to do. She's done neither. So that's coming on vacation, too.

Thank god I went to school in the good old dumb days. When summer was for babysitting and going to the beach. Really. How would I have read all those armfuls of books I brought home from the library. The books I chose and wanted to read. That weren't on a list!

Road trips

We've been homebound this summer, for a variety of reasons. The plans are to get away next week for a quiet stay at the water, soaking up sun, reading, walking, and allowing the ocean to heal us down to our souls.

Mystery Man had the biggest adjustment of all this year. He began a working  internship in January that involved him moving to Connecticut and living alone in an apartment and working a 40 hour week for 8 months. He finished it up two weeks ago, moved all his stuff to his off campus house at school, and came home for the 3 weeks till school started.

The plans were to take off with friends and go on road trips - the destination changed every time he told me - but as I wrote a few posts ago, he had the dreaded glands the size of golf balls. So he was sick 2 weeks before he came home and 2 weeks after until he suddenly felt much better about 5 days ago.

It was nice to have him home while we both recuperated. If I needed him, he had me call him on his cell because, even though he was about 10 feet away in his room, he had on his a/c, fan, and the dead couldn't wake this child, but the cell phone, he'd answer whatever his state.

As he began to feel better, the plans were on for the big Road Trip with two of his friends. Where are you going? South. Uh, that's a big place. North Carolina. Where? Outer Banks. Have a place to stay? No, that's the whole point. Have a tent? Do we have a tent? Not anymore. Then no. Reservations? Ma, it's a road trip!

He refused to bring his 2 friends over so I could lecture them about state troopers in the south, speed traps, drinking and driving, when his father got mugged on a similar vacation, and speeding tickets that land you in jail.

I don't know why. He promised to give the 2-second version to his friends.

So Jack Kerouac and his two friends took off last night - don't we all start major road trips at night when we're tired??  He promised to stay in touch. First call came in at 10:30 last night, waking up Mr. Pom and I and clutching at our hearts in fear: accident, speeding ticket, lost, mugged......

"Dad, where can you get a Philly cheesesteak in Philly?"

For some reason, Dad had no idea.

We decided to let it go. Be the cool, no worry parents, and definitely not the "Are you out of your mind you're not going anywhere" parents that we both had. We went back to sleep. 

And then the phone rang this morning. Mom, the doctor called me with the results of the mono test. (Why is it when they turn 21 that the doctor feels it is appropriate to call the child instead of the parent??? Damn HIPAA!)

It's positive.

So....he's feeling much better, but he can't have any alcohol, shouldn't be using ibuprofen (I think he took a bottle over the last month), and has to  listen to his body when it gets tired. With 2 friends. On the open road. 21. Last summer fling.

I, however, am going downstairs to mix some tequila in with my yogurt.  If you need me, I'll be passed out, but you can  call me on my cell.

My Manners!

It occurred to me that it might have been polite to thank you all for your good wishes before I started my crank-a-thon. You're all a delight and cheering me up almost as well as some gooey brownies with nuts.  Blame it on the drugs.

Good things:

• Having the strength to finally blow dry my hair. There oughta be a special treatment you can give your hair before any hospitalization so it just hangs straight like a helmet and you don't wake up all Don King due to profuse night sweats.

• Fage organic Greek yoghurt - like freaking custard even just mixed with Equal. Try some berries and honey if you can.

• Chunk up yellow squash and zucchini, marinate in olive oil, salt, pepper, a little garlic, and basil. Grill. Puree roughly with cream of tomato soup, serve cold. The sweetness of the tomato, the smokiness of the zucchini, what a gazpacho!

• Between, Georgia - thought it would be yet a 'nother Southern crazy family novel, and it was, but hilarious and an unusual storyline.

• Tylenol with Codeine - say nighty night, Mr. Pom would say, tho once I accused him of not using the little med cup and just pouring it into a bathroom cup, thereby trying to overdose me so he wouldn't have to run up the stairs for at least an hour, the poor thing.

• Cottonelle flushable wipes - how did I live without flushable wipes for all these years. Bathroom tissue - yuck! That's all I'll say.

• On demand movies.

• Freedom Writers - The Teen thought it "dumb" until I made her walk the dog and she asked me to pause it so I knew she was into it. And then it got heavier and I was crying and I know she was a little tho she hid behind her laptop.
• Music and Lyrics - does your head hurt from too much Tylenol with codeine? Then watch this and it'll put you too sleep. Otherwise, watch it to try to figure out when Hugh Grant became Crater Face. Sniff, sniff, Hugh Grant was my boytoy for so many years!
• Mrs. Potter - I don't care that Renee Zelwigger played the role like an 19th century Bridget Jones, how often do I get to watch a movie about a female artist?? And that studio, I must have it. I'm already planning to wallpaper MM's room as soon as he leaves cause he has those nice gabled corners.

• IPOD it
• Nora Ephron's, I Hate My Neck. You will laugh. You will cry. You, too, will admit you hate the time and money you spend on your hair, that your heels look like loofahs despite all the scrubbing, and that you never realized that there are 3 Ephron sisters, because you really don't know anything Delia wrote.

• Bernadette Peters singing "There Ain't Nothin' Like a Dame" (I won't let Mr. Pom listen to it because he would truly leave me for BD and so would I after listening to it.

• Shall We Dance from The King and I (I know, what century am I living in, but there's something about that polka rhythmn and Yule Brynner, the big yellow taffeta ball gown....alternate universes/romance/political power/foreign lover/....now you know all my secrets.
•  
• Ethel Merman singing "There's No Business Like Show Business". (What can I say, I had a theatrical youth.)

• The soundtrack to the entire second season of Grey's Anatomy. Really. Just buy it. I know, I know. But you will have about 15 hours of music to listen to and if you are like me, you're long past knowing the names of anyone anymore but you know what you like - then this is it.

For tomorrow's adventures, I am going to try to go to my sister's for my nephew's birthday and I am going to take knitting. Soons as bribe someone to look for the knitting needles in my mess of an art room.

Later.

Mrs. Pom Gets Cranky

I am so bored by myself.

Rather, I am bored of myself.

I'm bored of my aches and pains.

I'm bored of wearing semi-fitting pajama type clothes.

I'm bored of the smell of my hair, which reminds me of the hospital.

I am definitely bored of Paula, Giada, Ina, and Top Chef Miami.

I'm bored of talking on the phone about how I am.

I'm bored of my house.

I'm bored enough that I called People At the Office to chat! But then someone annoyed me and I remembered how much they all annoy me and I hung up.

I'm even bored of THE INTERNET.

I swear if one of you posts a new blog entry, I've read it before you've had a chance to proof it.

If one of you uploads a photo, I'm all over it.

Look at your referrer lists - really, I'm not stalking you.

Just bored.

RANDOM BORING FACTS:

• There's a tiny spider living under my bathroom vanity in the corner and no matter how many times I brush it away with my foot, it comes back.

• How is it possible that our wastecans fill to the brim Every Single Day? And who empties them when I am at work?

• Where do the napkins go during the night? Does someone unload the napkin basket just cause they know I can't get into the lower shelf to get them out?

• Do manufacturers make individual snack bags as rescue devices so  they can be left in a trail from the kitchen to the living room, porch, and bedrooms in case mothers misplace their kids?

• Children grow weary of the novelty of bring mother water, ice pops, drinks, bandages, the phone, et al. They hide. They bring you a bell. And then they don't answer it.

• Anything that falls on the floor has to stay there, unless I have kitchen tongs with me, which I have taken to wearing on my waist like numchucks so I can retrieve things like my tweezers or the remote when they fall out of my feeble hands onto the floor. Can also be used to pinch children as they try to flee past your bedroom without seeing what you want. Again.

Other than that, I have nada, nothing except wiping the drool off my face when I find myself nodding off in my chair on the porch. Or when I woke myself up in the middle of the night, sleeping in a chair with my mouth wide open like a 100 year old nursing home resident.

Oh, and a certain "Wise" commentator has suggested that perhaps Mrs. Pom has gone underground for a little facial tightening, perhaps a brow lift, some major Botox around the eyes, maybe a little chin lift.....

Ha!  No, because if I did, I can guarantee you that a little elective surgery would turn into a stay in the extended care center, followed up by at least one ER visit, and a superrating facial implant that would have to be dug out of my face.....

Now, if you've gotten through this self-pitying drivel thus far, I have a question: has anyone installed the new ILife, could you tell me how to upload my photos since they've now all disappeared when I try to upload onto the blog?

Sigh. At least I have something else to think about now.

Signing off from the pity couch,

Resurfacing

Last week I had some surgery - elective, worked out fine - but it has taken more time than I thought to struggle back to the surface and feel like myself again than I thought it would. Mr. Pom became nursemaid, cook, driver, launderer, bather, purveyor of drugs, picker-upper of anything that fell on the floor, and night time pillow fluffer and blanket smoother.

True, he didn't read me to sleep like my hospital roommate's husband did, but he did everything else, and I mean everything as only those who have experienced abdominal surgery can understand.  Only 27 years of marriage prepares you to have your spouse see you in contortions that you haven't been in since the Our Bodies, Ourselves workshops led by the sweaty, red-haired, short hippie/feminist in the dorm lounge.

With the exquisite timing that is only afforded by whenever a mother gets sick, Mystery Man came down with strep throat and glands  the size of golf balls. Wait, let me restate that. MM came down with strep throat and glands the size of golf balls two weeks before my scheduled date, but it only became a crisis situation when he called from school the evening before the surgery to announce he was going to an ER several hours away.

When I go have my hair colored this month, I have to ask for an extra ten minutes to cover the new gray.

We're still waiting for the results of the mono tests, but after 3 and 1/2 weeks, he's finally feeling better. He was a great help, in the thick of it helping me out and thus, considers his dues paid for all the times he threw up in various parts of the country while we were on vacations.

I am home alone for the first time today. I don't have any doctor appointments, the sun is out and it is breezy and cool. I am sitting in my bedroom with all the necessities at hand. I am going to use Mr. Pom's desk and do some artwork (ssh, don't tell him; he says I glom every available space, which is true.) 

A lovely day ahead.

Stop in and say hello!

This horse is wearing nifty but scary looking blinders to keep the bugs out of his eyes. I've had on my metaphorical blinders, too, while I hunker down to get an important project seen through to the end.

I'm sorry I haven't been around very much, but soon I'll be back to regular posting.Once I climb out of this well, there will be more tales of summer and starry nights.

I hope wherever you live, that you are as refreshed and cool as this lovely rose leaning against an old granite wall.

 

 

To Read is To Live

I started reading A Thousand Splendid Suns yesterday. My mother had borrowed it and sent it back. (My mother is the only person I would lend an unread book to. She has rights after all these years.)  I hadn't started it because The Princess had quickly finished Harry Potter and I had started that.

Actually, I have the following books all started. I usually  never have more than 2; it is a sign of my dithered state this summer and all that is going on with too much work and no vacation yet.

• Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows
• Born On a Blue Day
• Body of Work
• The Sunday Book of Lists
• Luncheon of the Boating Party
• A Year in the Maine Woods
• The Snoring Bird
• Between, Georgia

Yes, I am unable to concentrate and a distracted mind needs entertaining but can't settle on anything. However, I began reading A Thousand Splendid Suns yesterday afternoon. I was a little bored as it sounded familiar. Then I began to get impatient as the story switched from one main character to the other without explanation. When I picked it back up this morning at 8:00, the story all came together and I sped through it. At one point, I gasped aloud, something i haven't done in a book too frequently in the last few years. Mr. Pom looked over his newspaper at me.  I put down my breakfast (omelette and home fries made by Mr. Pom).  My coffee got cold. At 10:45, I'd cried, stopped, cried several times more, and then finished it.

My God, a whole lifetime spent before 11:00 on a Sunday morning!

Now I shall go to church to thank God for writers and for lives so ordinary that I should have nothing to write about, but always do.

In a Cabin In the Woods

Our friends bought their lake cabin the same summer we moved to California.

We were miffed! Why didn't they do this years ago!

Turned out to be a great diversion for us when we would visit from out of state. There's only so long you can sleep on your sister's third floor - on the floor- and only so long your sister can put up with you sleeping there.

So off we would go to the cabin, with three kids, sleeping bags, our friends following behind with a trunk stuffed with food, and our friends at the cabin with a refrigerator full of food.

You have to understand, we are all Italian - except for one husband and one wife and they are each half-Italian.

We spent most of the weekends cooking and eating and drinking and now that the kids are grown, we spend most of the weekend cooking and eating and drinking.

They expanded the cabin a year ago. Now that we don't come with the 7 kids among us, they decided that they need more than one bathroom, a master bedroom away from everyone, and stairs that you don't have to duck down to get up.

Inside, it's more spacious and there's a great view from the living room, but it's still cabiney and piney and rustic and comfortable.

Just looks more grown up.

But there's still the wildflower garden and the grapevine tangled up the porch pilings, the hummingbirds that dive bomb you at sunset, the ducks that divebomb each other at dawn, a nest of baby bunnies, and a million birds.

And the bear.

And now's there's a bobcat.

Yeah, so as much as I fantasize about staying there for a week by  myself to write and paint - it ain't nevah gonna happen. Way too quiet at night. Isolated. Perfect werewolf bear and bobcat territory.

My favorite view is the view from the hammock.

Where I tried to read Harry Potter but it was too heavy and so were my eyelids. Later they told me about the snake in the woodpile.  Much later.

The best view of all - friends, old friends, life-long friends, friends who have been around longer than  your kids friends. Specifically and best of all, friends who you are not afraid to wear a bathing suit in front of friends.

Which is good because after the smoked turkey, baked brie, fresh tomatoes and basil,  guacamole,  and french toast bagels, plus the dark ales, Hurricanes, and margaritas, no one was exactly in swimming shape.  More like floating. With noodles. Close to shore. With flip flops on (so we don't step on the snakes.....)

I wish I could tell you that I haven't been posting because I've been outside, having lunch in a sidewalk cafe, and reading in a hammock.

Er, no.

Workworkwork would be the boring topic.

So I'll spare you.

We had a beautiful weekend up at the lake and I am going to upload the photos tonight to show you.

Mr. Pom has been reading the book pictured above for about 3 months. It's very heavy. And it weighs a lot, too. He never reads fiction. Never. However did we get together? He reads biographies, historical non-fiction, and contemporary non-fiction. He likes books about politicians, past and present, the Civil War, and of course, baseball.  When he whips out Doris Goodwin at 10:00 at night, I shrink to my side of the bed so he doesn't hit my in the head with it and so that he doesn't notice that I'm reading The Hot Flash Club, which is the level of my mental comprehension these days.

I do not think the book is breakfast-worthy. Who pulls out such a tome whilst having omelette and cappuccino?  At breakfast, one should read

• the newspaper
• magazine that you haven't gotten around to
• small paperback
• the mail
• all the catalogues choking your mailbox

But Mr. Pom has never worried about what I think of his choice of suitable reading material. Just that the book is so heavy and I think he's carried it all over the place for the last months. In fact, he may have been reading it last summer. I tend to recall he had an enormously heavy beach bag, which means that I had an enormously heavy beach bag because, Mr. Pom, he don't carry no stinkin' beach bag. Oh, he carries everything else (chairs, umbrella, cooler) but an actual bag to put his personal stuff in. No, That's what I'm for.

Glad I'm good for something. I feel like I've spent this summer in the office or collapsed on my bed. But in my defense, I will tell you that I've had an extraordinary amount of artwork due hither and yon and so I've been holed up painting. Which is not such a bad thing.

Whew, I didn't think I could get a whole post from nothing.  You can tell I am a blogging pro.

Spend the day outside, preferably in water, and tell me about it.