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The Lives We Lead

I want to thank those of you that left comments and wrote to me off line about my last few posts. I really thought long and hard about whether I should do the last post and exactly what I should say.

The reality of life online is that we do think that we know others as intimately as their posts appear to reveal themselves. But how many of us really represent to the online community our true selves, warts and all? For that matter, how many people truly represent to the world their true nature in all aspects in real time? When I go to work everyday, I don't spend the day cataloging all my problems to my coworkers. My family would probably say that I am a nicer person to my coworkers than I am to them at times because I can keep my temper and act professionally, and not whine and complain as much as I do at home.

In writing my own blog, I am always aware of "eyes" looking over my shoulder. Everyone in my family reads my blog, so I certainly do censor what I reveal about them and about my relationships with them. My children are grown and I can't write about their problems or our relationship issues as frankly as I might have ten years ago. My 85 year old mother reads my blog, so I there are issues I never write about because I wouldn't want to alarm her. I also am very conscious that I write a column for a national magazine. Readers come here to learn more about me and to be entertained. I won't say that I have an "image" to keep up, but I would never write anything that would embarrass the magazine.

Aside from all that, why I am here? I started a blog as a means to write everyday. I have always been a writer and when I discovered the online communities about 15 years ago, my life as a writer opened up. How thrilling to write, press publish, and have instant feedback!  And the other side of it is: how scary to write, press publish, and have instant feedback!   Really to entertain and share with you. My readers are not my therapists, my confessors, or my social workers. I wouldn't expect or want that. And I am quite sure that 99% of other bloggers share my feelings.

Despite being very conscious of all these factors even when I read others' blogs, I still believe the fiction of what we represent to the world. There are blogs I read that are completely superficial and highly entertaining - like junk food for the mind. There are blogs I read that are very heartfelt and emotional, and I know I will be moved when I am there. There are blogs that are written by Writers with a capital "W" with whom I have wonderful email exchanges. Other blogs are like magazines - filled with gorgeous photography, whether original or cannibalized from magazines or other sites. They are just eye candy that make me smile. I read blogs of friends and people who have become friends. Sometimes I know a little bit more of what is happening behind the scenes than the blogger may let onto the general public. Many of these people I've even met in real life.

But do I still presume that I know who they are and what their lives are really like? Never. Writing a blog is like writing a continuing memoir and I can assure you that all memoir is shaped to present a storyline that is under almost the total control of the memoirist. 

Regardless of all this, I read your blogs because I love your lives. I love the life you chose to write about and to present to me. They are lovely lives, funny lives, hardworking lives. They have lives full of family, work, craft, art, writing, shopping, and entertaining. They are blogs that give me wonderful book tips; remind me of my life as a young mother and wife; blogs that give me inspiration to redo a room or cook a new dish, or call my mother and tell her that I love her. There are  blogs that make me cry, that I obsessively check to make certain that the blogger is well. There are blogs that are spread across the parts of the country that have lived in and let me know what is going on.

But most of all, the blogs I read are people whose lives I am fascinated with. How wonderful to check in with a fabric designer who is raising a family from 6 months old to college age. Or a woman who lives in Germany and always makes me laugh. Or a former Cape Codder who now thrives in Florida. I read blogs by dog trainers; by women who creates poetry from cloth; who paint pictures I drool over; who cook the dishes I wish I had the imagination to make; who work magic in art and travel journals: who make me dream of macaroons and cafe au lait; who cross stitch museum-quality samplers; who garden, paint, style, design, make jewelry, sing, write, and make art, give beauty advice, decorating advice, and lives in countries I can only dream of.

I would like to think that all these women (and it seems they are all women) would feel comfortable and accepted if they wanted to write: I am depressed, I am scared, I am very, very alone and very, very anxious. I need help.

And I hope that one of us would find a way to write, call, email, and say: you are not alone. We don't expect sunshine and roses everyday. We know you are a real, flesh and blood person with the same problems that we have. We love you anyway. We are here for you. As I know you are here for me.


Silenced

After the Palm Sunday cemetery visits and the sadness at hearing of Patti Gregory's death, the last thing I want to share with you is more sadness. But I was shocked to click on Elspeth Thompson's blog and read a post from her husband informing her readers that she had died on Thursday.

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Elspeth was a journalist who wrote a weekly gardening column for the UK's Sunday Telegraph. She also wrote the wonderful new book,The Wonderful Weekend Book: Reclaiming Life's Simple Pleasures,  which celebrated family outings. In addition, she and her husband and five year old daughter had recently moved to the coast and were rehabbing two railway cottages and gardens into sustainable housing, a very green endeavor. She was a wonderful writer, a vivid personality, and I even received a lovely comment from her once after I had left one on her blog. In the beginning of March, she had begun a new gardening blog that I was enthusiastic to read. So  I was speechless to read that she had been suffering  from depression and took her life at age 48. 

It is amazing how "close" we become to those who we only know through blogs and books. The Internet lends a false intimacy in these circumstances and the shock is almost as great as one whom you know in real time dies.

But I can't just wrap my mind around it after so enjoying all my visits to her blog, looking at her beautiful and simple photography of her home, of the pots of bulbs she was in the midst of forcing, at her enthusiasm for the return of spring, of the stained glass butterflies hanging in her five year old daughter's room, her trips to her beach with their dog, t and even of the tropical vacation from which they had returned just a few short weeks ago. Depression is a tyrant sent from hell and I pray that if you are reading this and suffering from depression, that you have the courage to reach out for help and let others help you out of the suffocating sadness that has you in its grip.

I want to promise that I won't write another word about death, but I am sufficiently enough Italian to not want to jinx myself.

But I hope and pray that I have no reason to write about it for a very long time.


How to Go From Pigs to Bones

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The last weekend in March, Palm Sunday weekend, and forsythia is blooming, some tulip magnolias have opened, daffodils are out in sunny corners, the lawns are covered with crocus and violets - and it is 28 degrees. Cruel spring, capricious spring, I can bear it because I know it will only  become more fulsome as the weeks wend on.

This lovely little tableau is one that my sister, Maria, has out. She is so talented in decorating and always hasthe most charming vignettes on her tables.  I've gathered up a bunch of Easter objects into a big footed glass urn, but that is far as I have gotten. Today we are going to bring crosses made of palm to Granny Pom's grave and to my Aunt Gussie's and to my great grand-parents.

I remember this ritual after Mass on Palm Sunday mornings of my childhood. It was hardly my favorite thing to do.  After the very long reading of the Passion of Christ where we had to stand for at least twenty minutes, with no breakfast in my stomach and pinchy patent leather shoes on my feet, the last thing I wanted to do was make the rounds at the cemetery, feeling awkward and sad and ultimately bored as my parents placed on the graves the palm fronds blessed by the priest. Most of the relatives we visited had been gone a long time and I had barely known them as they  spoke broken English at best.

Time has eroded that callow arrogance. Now I am the one to bend to place the fronds or pound the wooden stake supporting a cross into the plot, my back twinging a bit and knee aching, the bones all too aware of my change in status.   These dead are those whose graves I watched being opened and closed, those who taught me to ride a bike, whose cookies I ate and birthday gifts I opened, who gave me laps to sit in and cheeks to kiss, who danced at my wedding,  held my newborns, and for whom I lifted cups of water with straws to  cracked lips, and sat all night in dark rooms to hold a hand, and wipe a brow.   Now, I am only too grateful now to be the leader of the palm cross brigade, knowing that ultimately it is for us, the living, or even more specifically for me, the least I can do and the most I can do now for them, as I grasp at the few rituals I have managed to wrestle into this new modern age. 

My own children are surprisingly interested in accompanying us. Of course, they knew some of them a intimately as I did, but for the rest, they are curiosities, stories twice told of eccentric great aunts and fishmonger great-grandfathers and even great, great-grandfathers, and I think how amazingly fortunate we are to have almost down the street from us the actual places on earth that physically hold my children's lineage in their embrace.  Like a park, the two cemeteries are sprawled side by side over rolling lawns and "our" families are within walking distance of each other;  Daddy up front, Aunt Gussie parallel to the left, the great, greats in the old section along the narrow road, and then through the back gates to the maternal side of the family on the gentle slope above the pond where the geese gather.  Granny Pom is the only renegade, a few miles north, her cemetery is beautiful and old and full of stone bridges, but her single plot only allowed to be marked with those hideous flat stones, for the ease of lawn mowing is now more important in this modern age than the expression of memorials. 

I don't know why I would be surprised that my children are happy to acompany us. We've been taking them to cemeteries since they were little. What other families celebrated Memorial Day each year by touring the graves of the Civil War and Yellow Fever dead in dusty, forgotten Holly Springs, Mississippi?

It is the Italian Catholic in us, I guess, that fascination with ritual and resting places and pitted stone monuments engraved with strange nomenclature. My mother speaks of trays of marzipan "bones of the dead" that were given to children on All Souls Day and we read of the Italian practice of picnicking in the cemeteries on Sunday visits.  We ourselves wander through the old sections, trying to find the oldest birth dates, tracing our fingers along the carved names and dates like explorers visiting a foreign land. We admire angels  poised in sweeping poses, dogs intertwined in the embraces of small stone boys, broken crosses, empty urns, and scary Jesuses pointing at us. We are morbidly giddy as we come across modern stones with built in electric candles that flicker through eternity and glassed in pockets where fading color snapshots of the dead ones look out at us, frozen in wedding finery for the rest of time.

History does come alive and spirits do grab ahold of our ankles and drag us through the very, very thin veil of time. It is, after all, a physical place to go where the earth holds the remains of our beloveds, where their names still appear a if in a telephone book for the dead, where there is some tangible existence still in the cold, sharp lettering of their names until that too is buffed out by the wind and rain and their memories are but wisps of thoughts. I like knowing they are there, a short mile away, faces up to the sun, side by side, waiting for us. 

This is a subject of some disagreement ove the years in our family. Mr. Pom expressed a desire to be scattered at Yankee stadium, but now that its being torn down, he has rethought this. I was mortally offended at first by his inclination to spend eternity with Mickey Mantle and not with me, imagining myself alone in some single grave somewhere.

But now, I've changed my mind.

Me? I want to be scattered across the outer beach of  Monomoy. I want the shards of my bones and the ashes of my skins rub elbows with the tumbled grains of sand that have blown clear across continents to create the outer beach,  and now will rustle in the off shore breeze as they rearrange themselves to make space for me to nestle down into a hollow among them  and spend my eternity listening to the waves crash, the gulls screech, and the occasional whale blow. 

What could be a more glorious way to await the Resurrection?


Terroir

The French believe in "terroir", which simply put is that food will carry the essence of the soil, the air, and the sun that is indigenous to its geography. For example, pigs raised on local truffles will taste like pigs raised nowhere else. Vines bearing grapes borne on limestone from a certain valley will produce a wine that is infused with a DNA, so to speak, that cannot be replicated.

I believe that terroir applies to more than food.

The great artists understand terroir. Their artwork is infused with the textures, colors, and style of their geography. Their art is borne with the imprint of their spirit, a spirit that is fed by the light at noon, the screech of the subway, the breeze off the Hudson, the width of the sidewalks on Fifth.

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Maira Kalman.

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The gift shop at Wave Hill.

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I am entranced. I am in New York. I wouldn't have it any other way.


Great Sadness

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I am shocked and saddened to learn today of the sudden  death of Patti Gregory, the beloved wife of Danny Gregory from what appears to have been a tragic accidentt.

I had the pleasure of meeting Patti several years ago in the city at a picnic that Danny organized when he first began the everydaymatters art group. Patti and their son joined us and she was sweet enough to be interested in looking through one my Cape Cod art journals. I remember that she thought it was cool that we regularly went on vacation with assorted members of our family, like summer camp.

She radiated a love and warmth and an amazing  sense of humor and perspective on the accident that led to her becoming a parapalegic.

Above is a portrait drawn by their son, Jack, as part of a portrait party exchange.

I can't imagine what her family is going through right now and I am just offering my prayers for their comfort and consolation at such a devastating time.


The Quick Blue Day Jumped Over Us

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The day begins when we walk the cove, taking a long, winding well-worn path along the edge of the marsh grass that is just a stubble in March. We climb the long, gray stairs up to the road and load the dogs in the car. The road twists to the left and suddenly, "Look, there!" And across the road trots a large, beautiful glossy, proud red fox.

The car stops. We stare out the windows. Fumble for the camera, there! There!

The fox doesn't care. He's not unaware of his beauty; to the contrary, he seems quite proud of resplendence. He moves quickly but assuredly, a sly, fox grin on his pointed snout.

He is gorgeous. He is out in the middle of the day. He should be afraid. He's not.

He crosses into a yard, trots through the bushes, comes into a clearing, and freezes.

I fumble the shot.

He is gone.

Just another morning in Nauset Heights.

Do you see him there? That tiny brown blur.

I missed the shot.

A thousand minutes of sunshine pass. The bay holds the sunset in its wide, calm arms.

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The fox does not appear again. We are content with 2 rambunctious dogs who are goofy and carefree, with the gulls who screech across the sky, with the mussel shells that crunch underfoot, with the wind that rises as the last thermal rays hit the water.

Tomorrow we will walk the cove again. We may see the fox, he may see us. It is enough to know he is there.


Like many companies, my office has a group that plays the lottery. Put a buck twice a week and you have a chance to live the real American dream, which is to tell your boss to take this job and shove it, and retire to Fiji. Our lottery group has waxed and waned over the years and even was completely disbanded for a couple, the lack of enthusiasm directly attributable to our sum total winnings of $17 over 5 years time.

Lately, someone got lottery fever again, specifically Powerball, and a new group formed. The crux of the decision as to whether you want to play is the realization that, should a miracle happen, do you want to be the one left behind with all the work to do? My dollar bill sprouts wings and flies right out of my wallet.

This week, I had my dollar at the ready. When Tuesday was almost over, I went in search of Powerball Person. Don’t forget me – here’s my dollar! Oh, no, we’re not doing it now. Whadda ya mean? No, they had the winner, the big winner. We’re not playing now.

I’ve only bought a lottery ticket myself about twice in the past. I’m really not that familiar with the ins and outs and I’ve never played Powerball, so I was flummoxed. Maybe it was a monthly or seasonal game? No, no, Poweball Person said, someone won the big jackpot. I only play when it’s the big jackpot.

I considered this. The Big Jackpot. True, we were about 20 people, so bigger was better. But isn’t there a regular jackpot each week? Yeah, but I won’t play unless its multimillions. So, you wouldn’t want to win a 100,000? Or even 10,000? No, no, I only like to play for the big ones.

I started thinking about this. I must have low expectations or am easily seduced, because to me, I’d be excited to win a hundred dollars and 10,000 would make me feel like…..like I’d won the lottery!

Over the years, like most married couples with kids, mortgages, taxes, and bills galore, Mr. Pom and I have often moaned together, “We need to win the lottery”. Usually at that moment, I trot out this old chestnut of a joke (which, because Mr. Pom will tell you that I’m incapable of telling a joke, I have copied from Comedy Central although I’ve heard it in many variations over the years):


John, who was dire financial straits, walked into a church and started to pray. ''Listen God,'' John said. ''I know I haven't been perfect but I really need to win the lottery. I don't have a lot of money. Please help me out.'' He left the church, a week went by, and he hadn't won the lottery, so he walked into a synagogue. ''Come on, God,'' he said. ''I really need this money. My mom needs surgery and I have bills to pay. Please let me win the lottery.'' He left the synagogue, a week went by, and again he didn't win the lottery. So, he went to a mosque and started to pray again. ''You're starting to disappoint me, God,'' he said. ''I've prayed and prayed. If you just let me win the lottery, I'll be a better person. I don't have to win the jackpot, just enough to get me out of debt. I'll give some to charity, even. Just, please, let me win the lottery.'' The end of the week, John still hadn’t won.

He walked outside and yelled up directly to God, “Please, God! I have nothing left. My mother needs the surgery, the bill collectors are at the door, my wife is gonna leave me, and my kids are getting kicked out of school. Please, please, I need to win the lottery. “

The clouds parted. A majestic ray of sunlight beamed down and illuminated John and he dropped to his knees. John?” a voice boomed across the land. “Yes, God,” John quavered. “For God’s sake, try buying a freaking ticket!”

Which is why, this morning when I was listening to Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust podcast on my way to work, and she was interviewing the author of Racing In the Rain, and she asked him how he sold his first book, and the author said that after he wrote his first book, he told his friend about it and she said that her father was a literary agent and why didn’t he give it to him and so he did and the father then passed it on to someone in his office, who loved the book and bought it in two weeks for a sizeable amount of money and now he is on his third book, which has become a best seller, and here I am still driving to my daily grind of a job and now crying out in the car, why me, why can’t it happen to me?? I heard not the Lord’s voice but my own booming voice echoing off the low ceiling of the Mini Cooper and I said to myself,

“Try writing the freaking book.”

You have to be in it to win it.


I Is Alive

Work is kicking my butt, internets.  I try to have some energy when I get home to post, but usually I open the laptop and mindlessly surf all your blogs. (Not that your blogs are mindless; the adverb is applied to my actions, not yours...or something like that.)

What's new?

  • We have been in the midst of nor'easter since last night and as I sit on my bed, it is shaking. I have an old house with plaster walls, so either I have to call in The Exorcist, or it's bad out there. The city is all like in your face with automated phone calls and emails that are like, yo, don't call 911 unless you dead. And then, since you dead, you can wait to call us when the the storm is ovah.
  • So in the midst of the storm, I had the worst caffeine withdrawal/low barometric pressure headache known to mankind, so took myself to Starbucks, the far away Starbucks and to Borders. I was whistling the Wicked Witch theme from the Wizard of Oz to ward off any tree falling on my car, which is a Mini Cooper, and I'm talking like squished dead, y'know.
  • Scary how quickly a triple venti skim cap cured my headache. Addicted? Just sayin'.
  • Working on my Cloth, Paper, Scissor submission and using my bed as usual for my desk, so poor Mr. Pom just went to bed  in the spare room (MM: your room is now the "spare" ).
  • Since I've been in this room all day, I've watched
  1.  Precious - do not watch this while you are doing anything else because you will not do anything else, you will stare horrified, yell out loud at least twice, and cry several times. 
  2. The Women - seen it, but needed something mindless after Precious. I want to smack Meg Ryan in the head at least once and have to laugh at why any of those women would have the uber cool black lesbian friend.
  3. I wanted to watch The Food Network, but every time I turned it on, there was some newby cooking some inane thing with whip cream and Violet Mustard (?) and since I am dieting again, I shouldn't be watching any cooking shows. 
  4. Once More With Feeling: an Sundance movie about an Italian American family in which the shrink 60-year old Dad, Chazz Palminteri, has a midlife crisis and decides to chuck it all in favor of karoake. Yes, you heard right. And. The. Man. Cannot. Sing. Anymore. More like "Croakaoke". And so I wanted to hit him upside the head a few times too. (please: no anger management comments: It Is An Expression/ a New York Expression.)
  5. Now I am watching Hurt Locker cause Mr. P rented it earlier. Way too tense to watch at 10:30 at night cause if I wanted to be in a war, I'd enlist.
  • I have fallen into a new blog hole: blogs about what to wear when you are 50 and want to look stylish but not trendy, hot but you're not, and work appropriate but not dead. I blame Poppy for starting it and will refer all shrieking questions by Mr. P come bill paying time to her.  In the meantime, I will continue to read: 

                  Fashion For Nerds

                  Fabulous Over Fifty

                   Une femme d'un certain age

                   Corporette

                   Miss Cavendish

                    Privilege

                     

  • Okay, yes, shutting off Hurt Locker. Enough anxiety with the house shaking, trees bending, and occasional power brown-outs.  (Why is The Princess still out when I called her and told her to come home before dark due to storm. Why? To torture her mother. All my children are in the running for Torturers of Their Mother of The Year Award this week. )
  •  I am listening to The Sweetness at The Bottom of the Pie and the narrator is impossible to listen to without wanting to smack myself upside the head. So I bought the book. Don't tell Mr. P. I am reading The Three Weissmans of Westport and so far, eh, okay but very mannered writing style.  And I admit to buying Angelology, which was the cover review lat Sunday for The New York Times. And in so doing, Amazon somehow sent me to Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World's Holy Dead and what could be better than both of those books for Lent??               
  • Lastly, last week I made corned beef for the first time at the request of The Princess who just discovered it through Physics Boyfriend and Katz's Deli. So yeah, Italian girls don't do corned beef, so next time, I will buy it at Katz's (you can order it online but it's $25 a pound so fuggedabudit!) and then serve it at home. Rubber bands, I don't think it is supposed to taste like. (My word I'm channeling Yoda; bed time must be for.)
  • However, the Italians have it all over St. Patty's cause the real celebration is St. Joseph's on March 19th when instead of green beer, green bagels, salty beef, and watery cabbage, we eat these:
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And let's face it, nothing against the Irish, but which would you rather eat?


Artfully Yours


Last week we had the pleasure of attending the AP Art Class Senior Show. Both The Teen and my adorable niece Laura had their work in the show.


Unfortunately, The Teen had bronchitis and had been out of school all week. She forced herself to put on a dress and stand around in a daze with a smile on her face while she coughed her head off. What a trooper!

The Teen's concentration for the show was acrylic and collage layers based on the music of  Radiohead.  She explored the elements and principles of design through a consistent color palette of neon green and yellows, muted blues, and deep reds and oranges, which she drew from a particular album cover of the band. Conceptually, by the use of translucent layers and color, she symbolized the layers of melody and notes that make up the the songs.

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This is her painting of the album cover that inspired her concentration.

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I loved her use of color and strong design elements! I was really proud of her work because it was so conceptual.  In terms of my own art, it is the area in which I am the weakest.

Laura's work was, "The Testimony of the Heart",  based on her study of the heart, which she tied into both a physical and spiritual exploration of the importance of the heart and of "heart" in terms of her relationship to God.

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(Next time I eat at my sister's, I have to check that she didn't use that  measuring cup .....)

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I love how she transformed the heart into wings - what an apt metaphor!

Great work by all the AP students!  

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Sunday Smile

While I am making art and standing at the window gazing happily at the return of the sun, watch this amazing video and if it doesn't make you want to make things, then I hope it least gives you a Sunday Smile.



Sunday Silence

I am married to the most caring man in the world. He is out this morning with the dogs and left me to paint. Yes, paint. My next submission is due to the magazine and I am in the midst of several projects that have deadlines nearing. So in a very rare event, I've been painting since early this morning on  my bed (small projects).

Last week was rather dicey what with Mr. Pom's fall, some other urgent family matters, and both of us dealing with major overhauls at work that produce extra hours and extra stress. Of course, I can't compare my job with his: the man gets calls before he leaves for work at 6:00 a.m.; in the middle of the night; and when out to dinner, breakfast, or at the mvies. I would have thrown my phone in the East River by now, but he just sighs and curses a lot under his breath.

I have great photos to show you - but I can't find the upload cable to the camera. Coming soon - I hope!

Got to get to work - art work that is. Had planned to invite the family to dinner since we haven't been together since January, but can't do it today. Next weekend perhaps. More posts this week, I hope.

One last thing - our cable company has pulled ABC due to "contract negotiations" This appears to be the new ploy as they did it a few months ago with The Food Network for several weeks. So the Oscars? No one with Cablevision will be watching it.

A pox on you Cablevision!!


So Yinny and Yangy

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Now that I have ripped February off the calendar and have revealed March in all its splendor (you can all thank me for that), I am allowing myself to officially get excited about being back on the Cape. We reopen our little house in a few weeks and it is just beginning to really sink in that we have a place to go to in the summer that is ours.

 

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And the realtor called us - we got our first potential summer renter! What a hoot! It's pretty weird to be on the other side of this arrangement after skeeteen years as renters ourselves.

So here's a shout out - it's a sweet little place, near the ocean and the bay, in a great part of the Cape. If you are interested, leave me a comment with your email and I'll send you the link to the website.

We could use a little excitement around here - of the good news kind. Mr. Pom slipped on some ice in the parking lot at work and banged up his knee and his back. We spent Tuesday afternoon at the ER, but thankfully he has no fractures. He's hobbling but went to work (the man never stops) and we are hopeful that the anti-inflammatories will take care of the back.

We were going to visit MM this weekend, but Mr. Pom will probably not want to be sitting in a car for the long trip. We just saw MM, so we'll wait another week or two and maybe it'll be warmer(?)

Watching the new series, Parenthood. Only because Lauren Graham is in it. Hoping for a little Gilmore Girls flashback, at least some deja vu. 

Staying up too late! Cause Mr. Pom is sleeping in the guest room to nurse his knee and back. He would never let me be awake and blogging at 10:52.  Gotta go!