pomegranatesandpaper

Hello. It's Me.

 

 

 

I know.

Let’s just pretend I never left.

I’m home and nursing a bad knee. I was already scheduled for  knee replacement in early December when I exacerbated the knee a thousand fold two weeks ago. I went from wondering if I could just put the surgery off to next year, to having to call 911 to get EMTS to carry me into the house. If I’d known I would be using a cane for the last quarter of 2017, I would have held off on letting my hair go gray. 

Mr. Pom takes me for ride-alongs while he does all the errands I can’t do. I instruct him on what Halloween candy to buy and he goes into CVS with the coupon and buys enough candy for a multitude.  He hid it higher than I can reach, easy since I am 5’1” and can’t get on a chair. Besides working 60 hours a week, he is now hauling laundry baskets up and down three flights of stairs. Thus, I have to ignore that he washed my cashmere V-neck.

Also, he has control over what we eat. I find strange foodstuffs in the pantry. He is fond of packaged foods. Though I have never seen him voluntarily eat Thai food in his life, suddenly there are several plastic bowls in packaging for Thai soup.  And packets of dried pasta with dried sauce “flavorings”.  I text him a list of what we need while he is at the grocery store.  And then hear his phone “ping” in the next room.

There are some benefits. One of the dogs has lost his mind and won’t come upstairs at night. I hear him flailing around on his dog bed and whimpering until he reaches a crescendo of barking around 4:00 a.m. I can’t manage the stairs more than a couple of times a day, so the poor husband is on dog duty 24/7.  He is stoic and stalwart but I’m beginning to notice a few cracks in the façade, such as a liberal lashing of 4:00 a.m. swear words (that would in no way rival mine would I be the caregiver). 

We are celebrating our 36^th wedding anniversary in November. Between the two of us, we’ve  shared more surgeries than either can remember. Between the two of us, one of us can usually remember the name of the person that is on the tip of the other’s tongue.  We may evolve to communicating without words. Narrowing eyes or raised eyebrows are all we need to express a multitude of feelings, such as stop eating the Halloween candy since you can’t go out to get more,  to if you don’t stop channel surfing I’m going to scream.

Life as usual has gone on while I’ve been away. We will get through to the end of the year. I will have a bionic knee and leap tall buildings in a single bound. We will continue watching finding Nemo seven thousand times with the grandson. We will figure out meals, dogs, and who is going to answer the door tonight (not me, I have a hall pass! Ha!)

Out of Chaos Comes....Chocolate

 Morning 

 

 

 

 

 

till night

 

 

 

we live on the porch.

 

So many of you responded so compassionately for the Facebook request for prayers for Mr. Pom that I was misty-eyed. The outpatient spinal surgery went flawlessly and he was able to avoid the more extreme operation  for which he signed a consent should the surgeon determine in medias res that more extreme repair was necessary. He's  moving slowly and gingerly,  but each day has been better than the last, and knowing how many folks were thinking of him raised his spirits  considerably.  

We have spent most of the days since then on the porch, where the temperature has been perfect for porch sitting.  Cool enough not to need the overhead fan and warm enough for a cold glass of wine.   Mornings I am in the yellow cushioned chair impatiently waiting for the seven-minute French press to do its thing.  The sky is pearly white and blazing pink down the hill over my sister's house. To the west gray hazy clouds cling to the daybreak sky like the dog hair clumps that fly across my wood floors on the breeze.

Evenings, especially if Mr. Pom has gone to bed, like last night, I am on the sofa, quilts and shawls at the ready, trying to read under the fairy lights. It is quiet and as long as no one dares walk a dog by our house - or heaven forbid, have a conversation on the sidewalk - the labs will sleep at my feet.  It was a perfectly beautiful last Saturday evening in summer.  I was alone with  my thoughts and the twinkle lights, trying to practice the "mindfulness" that I had just read about in the issue of Flow pictured above.  All that was missing was a firepit, which  for some reason, Mr. Pom thinks is dangerous on a screened porch. My suggestion that I  turn on the overhead fan to blow the smoke away was met with that "you can't be serious" look that only long time partner dares give you after years of hearing your  harebrained schemes.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mindfulness is on my mind again this morning. Since vacation, the weeks have been jam-packed and I am glad to have the last week behind me.  For two weeks, I've been dragging myself around sick f and finally got an antibiotic.  The youngest has been interviewing for a new job and we were on pins and needles waiting for The Phone Call. (She got it!)Both Mr. Pom and I  were scrambling to get ahead at work  before his surgery. And then, of course, was the actual surgery. There was no time for mindfulness. 

 

Watching the child feed himself applesauce and watermelon is a great stress reliever, if you're not the New Mom who   has to carry him upstairs to the only working sink - twice.  

 

No, it was not propitious to begin some kitchen renovations right now. When we lined up the contractors and picked a date two months ago, we did  not foresee  back surgery occurring in  mid-September. When we returned in August from vacation,   the youngest and I leisurely began emptying cabinets and moving furniture and planned to finish c the weekend before the start date. Then the contractors moved up the date and arrived without notice while I was at work. They threw our kitchenware and food into boxes, crates - and even a baby pool they found in the garage! I rushed home from work, , burst into tears at the sight of the dining and living rooms,  grabbed a bunch of giant garbage bags, and sat in my suit sorting bagging up  expired cans and obsolete kitchen tools. Then I boxed "like" things together (my word, how many coffee cups do I have??),  and the New Mom  rushed over to rescue me and organized a mini kitchen in the dining room.  Mr. Pom looked on helplessly, only adding to his stress, of course. 

 

See the blue baby pool - dog pool actually - in the rear?

 

Two weeks later, we are a bit more organized and used to blowing plaster dust off our toothbrushes. Saturday morning, I would not leave the house until  I cleaned the sawdust and sheetrock dust on the first floor and organized our living space.  I lugged stuff outside and hoped for no rain. I dusted, swept and mopped. I moved all the foodstuffs from different areas (no more dog bones on the Victorian side-by-side) and onto the porch hutch. The quilts and blankets on the porch sofa got an airing and last week's Sunday papers were thrown into the recycle bin.  

When everything was clean and bright, I arranged some succulents  in a corner with the bear, the bunny, and the frog, and added my mother's white ceramic Cheshire cat and Christmas cactus. I had to make one space of beauty amidst this chaos.   I breathed a little sigh of relief and put my feet up for a minute, heard a  car door open, and the fellow who is  "the taper" was at the back door to spend a few hours troweling more  mud on the walls and do some sanding. 

Sigh.

It is what it is. 

Unfortunately, this is my favorite season to wander the Farmer Markets and spend Sunday morning cooking. I like to chop all the veggies into a ratatouille with fresh tomatoes sauce and brown up some pork ribs for the base for a long-simmering tomato gravy. It is my Sunday zen. I

You cannot make soup in the microwave nor roast vegetables in a toaster oven. I could be a little creative with the outdoor grills, but the problem  is the clean up - I am resistant to  scrubbing a roasting pan caramelized with chicken fat in the upstairs bathtub. Yuck.  Thank you the gods of paper goods! We apologize for temporarily increasing our carbon footprint but maintaining our sanity for a few weeks!

 

 

Last night, the New Parents brought over turkey burgers and delicious kale and spinach soup and I was able to microwave small red bliss and purple potatoes for a simple warm potato salad dressed with a rosemary and basil vinaigrette.   The baby had a variety of entrees until settling on ricotta with applesauce and a generous smear of ketchup sucked off  the turkey burger (he didn't care for the burger consistency), and mouthfuls of watermelon. Unfortunately, he ate this in stages before and during our dinner, requiring his mother to have to carry him twice upstairs to the only working sink to clean him up

Today  I have a full day of work  reports to do.  Since I could not spend the morning cooking,  I worked in the basement for an hour or two throwing out the junk of 15 years and lugging it to the curb. It was not as tasty as morning cooking, but in a way just as satisfying as moldy stuffed animals were, literally, kicked to the curb. This  lack of a kitchen may actually benefit my waistline.  

(No, that is a lie as there are  are leftover Italian heroes from yesterday for lunch and this morning we drove to Tarry Market for cappuccinos and continued up the road to Citarella's for a few imported cheeses and raisin semolina rolls, which we had for breakfast.)

I am about to set up my work laptop and make another cup of coffee and carry it all to the porch. Wishing you a fair and pleasant last weekend of summer. Make something wonderful in the oven like an apple pie and grill something in the backyard that requires woodsmoke and pork and let the smell drift over here, pretty please? Let me know what you are culinarily creating and be content that I will be sitting on the porch in the sunshine. 

À la recherche du temps perdu

 

This usually doesn't happen to me so soon into the change of seasons. The heat waves across the blacktopped street have barely stopped shimmering  and the apples are still ripening their blush, we are still able to sit on the porch after supper, and nary a leaf has fallen. But here I am, here I found myself , in a swoon of memory and longing for...... for what I do not really know.

Perhaps it was a long and spirited conversation with someone this morning, an unlikely person to have shared such an intimate - and yet totally banal - review of times past. When I got out of bed this morning I could not have foreseen a half hour leaning against the kitchen wall and names tumbling out of our mouths and faces appearing like apparitions against the bare plaster and lath of the walls. 

It set me up for the day, I suppose, triggered a melancholy that hastened the seasonal slide into longing that usually besets me by October's end.  Oh, I soon forgot about in the whirlwind of the day, the usual strings of beads that clack orderly like a rosary in a nun's hand:  dress, drive, depose, drive debrief, dine, undress, decompress. 

But still, I held something else inside all day, not sure what it was, not even aware, really, that it was there or that I was protecting it, probing it, harboring the feeling the way one can slide into a cold, succumbing almost with pleasure into tissues and pillows and books.  Yet, it also was a weight, not a dragging down weight, but more of a ballast, a tugging that straightened my head and aligned my mind and I realized: this is not at all what this is supposed to be.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I found an old movie on Netflix. George Cukor;  Cary Grant the gorgeous dreamer;  the younger vain, shallow sister love object; the sassy and deep Katherine Hepburn older sister madly crushing;  a nursery at the top of a mansion decorated by Sister Parrish. It skated on thin ice, but Grant and Hepburn do a somersault  onto a ship to France and all ends well. But at the beginning when they are at a Christmas church service and singing Hark the Herald Angels Sing, and the women wear hats and the men   fedoras and bulky overcoats, I fight back a sob. Later,  a glimpse of a huge, bulky double-doored behemoth of a refrigerator in the servant's kitchen causes tears to run down my cheeks.  Perhaps too many late nights at work?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I locked my laptop in my desk drawer and took nothing home with me today but my purse. My grandson and daughter surprised me in the driveway with a slice of pizza and a salad.  We sat on the landing  to the stairs and played with the vacuum attachments  as we pretended to vacuum.We pulled the retractable cord in and out of the vacuum and pressed the magic button that makes it  retract like a whip about ten times. We fed the dogs bits of graham crackers from our hands and sat (at least he did) in a plastic storage box that became a train chugging across the bare floor of the living room.  We looked at the fairy lights on the porch and were torn between counting them or going back to the stairs and playing with the vacuum hose while making sounds like an elephant. 

But  then we decided to return to the porch and he took my finger and led  me to the corner where a  foot high clay bear has lived all its  life and no one took  notice. We petted the bear on the nose. We repeated "bear". We petted the dark green stone frog that lives next to bear in the corner and said, "frog". We petted the cement baby rabbit that completes the corner trinity and finished with "bunny".

 After a drink of water and a fling onto his mother's lap, he pulled me by finger back to the corner and we repeated the names of the corner trinity.  Then he reached out a tiny finger to pet the bear's nose but was rather too afraid. I  petted each head and repeated their names. He stood and bent from the waist until his face was against the stone floor and he opened his mouth and left a wet imprint in his form of a kiss, a pilgrim in adoration. 

A warmth flooded me.  I had a sensation of simultaneously plunging back in time and seeing the future like a bird on a wing. 

I am a grandmother. I am a a granddaughter.  I remember my grandmothers. I have a grandson. I was the mother.  I am the grandmother. 

I am the grandmother who had a bear, a frog, and a bunny  in the corner of the porch and we used to pet their heads and feed them bits of graham crackers.

I am the grandmother. 

I am the memory.

I am the future. 

I will become the past. 

I am the grandmother who had a bear, a frog, and a bunny in the corner of the porch and we petted their heads and fed them bits of graham crackers. 

I am the memory I seek.

 

 

Taking Stock

Here in the northeast United States, we are at the crest of summer. There are very hot and humid days, rainstorms thick with thunder and lightening, and evenings that thrum with crickets like the reverb of a bass amp.  Fireflies still flick and tantalize the dogs who fancy a blinking morsel captured in snapping jaws. 

 

It is a time of abundance in the garden, as it struggles to survive with the heat of direct sun for twelve hours a day and torrential rains the next.  Our little garden is just a triangle of a plot, shaped just like a narrow wedge of cheese. We gained it through the taking down of a 100 year old tree, one of the many that dotted the neighborhood,  trees that were enormous, vastly branched, towering stories above our homes, their aged roots thick and gnarly, lifting sidewalks like playing cards helter skelter in a child's game. One by one, they began to fall - victims of age, decay, microbursts, hurricanes,   and sewer lines ensnaring their roots. Our tree was decayed and dangerous and when it was taken down  and the sickening sweet smell of rot filled out heads, plunging me back 40 years to the removal of a great elm on my parents' front lawn that had lost a branch in a storm and revealed its cancer. 

No one wanted these great survivors to be felled, but over the years they became lethal weapons, on several occasions missing houses and cars - and people - by inches as they fell with a thunder that shook our homes. Those that did not fall were wisely sacrificed by responsible neighbors, though mourned. A few refuse to see the wisdom, keeping others in threat of disaster. We, ourselves, hold our breath at every storm as several remain next door and most lean toward  our home.

 

 

I've digressed into some history, but nevertheless, I had a point minutes ago to tell you that our garden sprung up after a tree came down and the cracked and tilting sidewalk was jackhammered and hauled away. We laid a serpentine path of paved brick and were left with a peculiar narrow wedge that flanged widest at the edge of the property and narrowed to a point by the porch.  

When we first dug  out the garden, we wanted to  remove a rotting split rail fence that separated our yard from our neighbor's. He was an older man, retired, alone in his house having outlived his wife, and children grown and gone. He was one of the generation that spent their lives working hard, a traveling salesman in fact, and now had so much time to spare, too much time of course, for someone with more life behind than in front. 

He was the neighborhood mayor, trimming branches that hung too low over the sidewalk; planting saplings that sprung up in gardens; and well into his 80's, climbed a long ladder propped against the row of cherry trees that divided our properties and delivered coffee cans of fruit to our back doors.  He was opinionated and strong, assertive and sorrowful. We invited him for birthday cake and sent over dinners at times.  My mother knew his wife, who had died from breast cancer some 25 years before. He spoke of his job, traveling all over the states as a salesman, away from home, his children and wife. Now he could only fill up the house with his collections and tools and paper from a long career that supported them all. 

As our garden grew, he became edgy over our plantings encroaching onthe far side of his wide lawn. He propped up the split rail fence with odds and ends of pipe one day right before we had planned to take it down.  We were annoyed and hurt - we did not do all this work to look at old PVC pipe and ripped it down one Saturday morning and he came over to ask why. There is an old chain link fence where the split rail ended  and I encouraged a pretty variety of privet to grow thick and tall to obscure it  because there was no money to replace the fence. One Saturday morning he buzzed it all back with an electric hedge clipper, shearing it  down to  stubble against the fence. I cried and my husband told me to let it go, he was just an old man clinging to the last vestiges of control. 

Soon enough, he was not well enough to do much of anything outside. We came home one day and witnessed the row of cherry trees cut down and the logs and branches being carted away.  He could no longer climb the trees and could not bear to think of the mess of unpicked cherries ripening and falling on the lawn to rot and draw bees.  We were relieved that we'd never see him climbing a shaky ladder again, but wondered if there wasn't a way those beautiful trees could have been spared.

 

He now spent his afternoons sitting on a yellow bench on the front porch. While walking the dogs one day,  my husband was beckoned over. Don't worry about the garden, our neighbor said,  spread it out as wide as you like.  He was past the point of worrying over his property boundaries or collecting the fruit of his labors or policing the sidewalks of hazards. He began to be forgetful, to lose his strength, to have a softer smile and not always remember our names. An aide was employed to care for him and he stubbornly took walks around the block with her, bundled in a heavy sweater in midsummer, sitting on his walker when he became winded, admiring the neighborhood dogs, smiling and waving at the kids on bikes. 

His children began to get things in order.  They kept up the house beautifully, employed a gardener, fixed the porches, painted, and  quietly cleaned out crate after crate from  just the garage. His 90th birthday was celebrated on the sidelawn under one of the saplings that had grown quite tall. Eventually, we rare saw him outside at all and  in the last two years not at all, and only had news of him from his health aides aides or his children on the weekends. 

Our garden grew, filling in as it aged and we along with it. We never widened it; by the time he spoke to my husband, we'd bought the cottage in Cape Cod and were busy getting that property cleared of weeds and overgrown bushes. We moved the perennials around and added new hydrangeas and weeded and mulched but left the size alone, realizing that as much as we could cram into the little bed, we didn't have the time or strength to keep up  much more anyway. 

 

The garden is overripe these days. The edging has gone to grass, japanese lanterns have invaded and are choking the rudbeckia. The anemones are overtaking the entire front edge, obscuring the ground cover, carnations, and yarrow. The Russian Sage has gone leggy and enormous and sprawls all over the hydrangeas, hiding them from view. There is  a stubborn bush that we've never been able to fully dig out and now it is as high as the first branches on the crepe myrtle. The oak leaf hydrangeas are almost as high as the top of the first story windows and the lavender has gone woody and needs to be dug up and new plants put in. 

I pick a few weeds each time I leave the house. I water the potted plants if the watering can is full. I narrow my eyes at the volunteer sunflowers that stake their claim year after year  by the front porch; they have to be dug out permanently as their  leaves mildew horrible and the flowers are tiny and not worth the stalks of dying leaves by the front door. The azaleas I painstakingly dug out when we created the garden have sprouted anew from the earth and have  grown into full bushes again, competing with a large lace cap hydrangea and a new lilac bush. One of the azaleas is the flaming orange and red of a bird of paradise and I scream as I see it each spring, a glaring flame of color in my white and lavender early spring garden. 

 

Last week, our neighbor passed away. I don't know exactly how long they lived in the big white house on the corner, but I am sure he was there at least 50 years. Across the street is another neighbor, a widow of 92. She is the mother of a large family who is spread near and far; they attended the same catholic grammar school as my younger sisters and I. One of her sons was in all my classes. She is the last survivor of the 1950's mothers, last surviving baby boom mother on the street. Her children have white hair (as do I under the color). She gave up her car sometime this year. I don't run into her after work at the A&P anymore and she no longer drives herself to the noon mass but waits for her son to pick her up. She does still call me when she gets a New York Times by mistake, asking if it is ours and what she should do with it if it is not.  I wondered how she felt when she heard the news that our other neighbor, her own neighbor for at probably 50 years was gone.

In the garden this weekend, we should dig up and divide and transplant and mulch and edge and weed and rip out the sunflowers and put in a beautiful box hedge and reline the other side of the path with new lavender and pretty ground cover and pull out the bed in front of the oak leafs as they are encroaching on the hosta border and heavens knows the side by the driveway is just a mess of old bushes and frail hydrangeas that do not get enough sun and a spindly white dogwood I want to chop down.

But today, in midsummer, I saw the first golden slant of autumn light in the backyard with the dogs. The morning was cool and damp and I shivered out at dawn while the dogs did their business.  All that is left to bloom are the spindly sunflowers and the monster anemones, whose fragile white flowers will soon be the last flag raised to summer, and they will stay in bloom until the first hard frost. It is too late for major change. It is enough to enjoy what we have accomplished. 

The big white house next door is empty now. We anticipate a large family moving in. We wonder and dread the thought of the property being subdivided and a new house being wedged in between us, as has been done elsewhere in the neighborhood.  We look at our own house and begin long overdue projects, ones we really can't afford but most undertake because soon it will be our turn to cull the garden and weed the basement and haul treasure turned trash to the curb and call the kids to collect the spoils now instead of later. This weekend, though, is time enough to just sit and stare at the crazy magenta crepe myrtle, my souvenir from the south, and the under planting of golden daisies that clash so wonderfully and are so startling after the soft whites and lavenders of spring. The garden tells time better than my  watch. 

PACKING for CAPE COD or WHY DO YOU HAVE SO MANY BAGS WHEN ALL YOU WEAR IS THE SAME PAIR OF JEANS AND DENIM SHIRT?

 

 

One of two darling straw hats that I only wear on Cape Cod and the ubiquitous over-sized denim shirt.

In the spirit of full disclosure, the title of this post. 

Let's face it: I am an over______[fill in the blank]:

Over:

• eater
• shopper
• buyer (yes, there's a difference)
• reader

What I own too many of:

Creating:

• art supplies in general
• watercolor palettes
• black pens
• ink
• blank sketchbooks
• pads of watercolor paper
• Art Paper

Reading:

• Novels
• Memoirs
• Nature Writing
• Travel Writing
• Cookbooks
• Design books
• Lettering books
• Art Journaling Books

Wearing:

• Black pants
• striped tops
• blazers
• casual jackets
• winter coats
• black shoes
• button down shirts

Adorning

• scarves
• necklaces
• bracelets
• tote bags
• (You expect me to add "bags", but mais non,  actually haven't bought any in a few years.)

 

One of the many striped shirts (and adorable baby who for some reason looks like he is old enough to shave in this pic).

 

Now, take all that stuff up there, add in stuff for the beach likes straw hats, coverups, beach sandals, swim shorts, UV shirts, beach chairs, cute beach towels, umbrellas, etc., and you will understand.

And Mr. Pom, even before this latest back siege where he can't carry anything, is all up in my "luggage" saying stuff like, "Why do you have so many damn bags for two nights away??"

Why?

Cause I need my "stuff". 

Here's what happens:  

In my mind - very important distinction - in my mind, our weekend will be like this: Gloriously cool morning where we will hike through the woods, sunshiney lunch time on a boat, beach naps, perhaps later afternoon cocktails at....somewhere...dinner by the sea...cool evening by the campfire,  and repeat except that probably add in  a smurry day with fog and rain when I will read 3 books and bake something incredible from the two cookbooks I am lugging up there.  

Now translate that fantasy into necessary accoutrements:

jeans, hoodie, boots, camera; shorts, t-shirt, deck shoes, hat binocular, picnic hamper; swimsuit, cover up, straw hat, tote, gauzy scarf, books, journal, paints; white capris, tunic, chandelier earrings, jaunty short scarf, espadrilles; little black dress, strappy sandals, big gold bracelet, shawl; striped cotton knit sweater, sweat pants, woolly socks, heavier, scarf.

Reality: We will do ONE of those things above and it will never be a) have lunch on a boat; b) have cocktails anywhere except wine or beer in the backyard or with burgers  which c) will never be somewhere where I need to wear a little black dress (I have never worn a dress on Cape Cod except for my daughter's wedding weekend). 

 

Cousin, cousin's husband, black fleece, backyard, beer, campfire.

 

More than likely this will be the two days:

Drive like we are being chased by zombies on the New England Thruway from 5:00 Friday night to 11:30 Friday night wearing a suit from court because Mr. Pom wouldn't let me take the time to change; get up and throw on old sweatpants kept in the closet and an oversized, polka dot denim shirt and walk dogs in woods; drive to Wellfleet for coffee and pastry and sit in the car on the cliff, wearing sweatpants and denim shirt;  go to hardware store for some tool that somehow we left home (hammer, mouse traps) wearing old sweats and denim shirt; notice the sun finally came out as did the mosquitos, change into cargo pants and athletic tee and dose with OFF;  go to clam shack at beach for dinner, wear cotton knit sweater and cargo pants;  make campfire, change into oldest sweats and oldest denim shirt, wrap face and hair in old scarf so pillows in bed don't stink of smoke the next morning; change in flannel pj's; repeat the next day to go home. 

 

Hey, I found a pic of me having a cocktail at Chatham Bars Inn (wearing jeans but probably have a striped sweater under that jacket - and note the scarf....) 

 

And yet, I tell ya, and yet, I will still buy yet another tunic (Uniqlo! So cheap!); another la marinier (striped T from LL Bean);  another cute yellow waxed cotton jacket; another pair of hiking shoes that I are heavy as cement; another gorgeous indigo and white scarf (19.99 on sale at Banana Republic!); another of those cute bracelets made from braided boat rope or something; and another nautical tote to lug 3 journals (large, med, small) and watercolors AND gouache AND writing journal to coffee shop for ten minutes of uninterrupted "creative time", and then pack it all up and go home early Sunday to beat the traffic. 

I've tried leaving enough clothing there so I don't have to bring ANYthing. This results in me either 8 pairs of underwear or none; 3 mismatched socks; one pair of sweats that smell like lobster from the last dinner;  all the scarves I've been looking for at home; and every single raincoat, denim jacket, canvas jacket, and parka I own. 

Mr. Pom has his own unique method of packing: he dashes into the house, throws off his work clothes, puts on jeans and an Izod, gets in car, gets to Mystic, reaches for jacket and realizes that he left it home. Gets up in morning and realizes he left underwear home. Changes out of Izod after hacking weeds on the back 40 all afternoon and realizes he does not have another. single. thing.to.wear. Every weekend. 

 

Even ze dogs wear ze stripes on Cape Cod

So, whilst I can do a bang-up capsule wardrobe for 5 days at home office in Chicago, assembling a mix and match neutral pairing of two pairs of pants, two jackets, and a sweater that all fit into one carry on along with files and a laptop, I am quite incapable of packing for an ordinary weekend when I have a car and half my clothing where I am going. Don't even ask me about what happens when we go for summer vacation for two weeks. My sister and I have been known to have about 20 pairs of pants between the two of us and wash the same 2 pairs alternately each day and never take the rest out of our suitcases

 

You thought I was kidding?

Even my gorgeous, raven-haired, skinny cousin, who parks her car in town, and then runs to the beach, and is always in black shorts, black sweats, black fleece, confessed to bringing two little black dresses over Memorial Day weekend - just in case there was some reason to dress up (most likely our house; see above in re campfire smoke).

 

Even  when he was six weeks old, he knew  the dress code

But here's the thing about having a vacation house: in your mind you WILL be invited to a clambake on the beach where you will wear your skinny white capris, blue and white striped top, and espadrilles that tie in bows around your ankles. You WILL then be invited to a sunset cruise on a neighbor's sailboat where you will have on a maillot top, hiphuggers, and gold Birkenstocks (and probably fall overboard for not wearing deck shoes); and you WILL spend the entire morning on a little bridge in the marshes painting the tides ebbing and flowing in your small, medium, and large journals with watercolors and the occasional dab of gouache(with a heavy application of eau de OFF).

 

Vineyard Vines sweatshirt that I ruined whilst spraying Tilex on the mildew in the outdoor shower.

( Baby is rocking fur-lined suede booties.)

 

As my cousin always says right about when we are both calling either a plumber or an electrician or the septic guy , and spending Saturday afternoon stuck in the house waiting for them to come,  and are annoyed either at husband or children for various and sundry annoyances like abandoning us in the house to wait for the guy,  the best part of the vacation is the looking forward  to it while you are at work the week before vacation. 

 

Which is when I'm usually buying that extra tote bag and a new scarf.....

Sleeping Weather

 

 

After a few weeks of very hot and humid weather, I walked outside from work last night to  a huge thunderstorm deluge. My cute red patent leather loafers were almost floating off my feet at one point, but the upshot was the humidity cleared away and dawn came with cool weather. 

I know this because the big dog had me up at 4:30. Bad doggie.

I HATE sleeping with air conditioning, but there's been no way around it for the past week. Last night I was on the sofa watching TV with Mr Pom (actually he was watching the Yankees and I was on my laptop). He went upstairs before I was ready, so he shut the TV, and I stayed on the sofa, enjoying the breeze from the screen porch.

After I watched an episode of Grace and Frankie, I closed my eyes for just a SECOND - and woke up at 3:45 on the sofa. It was glorious! NO air conditioning, beautiful fresh air from the porch,  and no snoring by man or beast. 

I always think that life slows down in the summer. But you know it never does. Work seems to get more complicated or maybe I'm just not in the head for it. So spending as much time as I can outside - even if it's quasi-sleeping on the porch -  is a good thing.

 

I guess it's technically too late for a summer reading blog. I have collected a few new titles and somehow in my mind I think I'll be reading them all on our week away in August. Ha! I could read them all, but I'd spend the week on the hammock with a book AND WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT? 

Nothing except for the 7 other people who will be expecting me to HAVE FUN with them. Which you know I will. (AMAZINGLY, we are now a family of 9- when did that happen? I love it more than anything in the world.)

I will use the time to create the FALL READING GUIDE for you. 

We are going through some heavy stuff here. Mr. Pom has been has been suffering mightily with back pain since February. All the usual treatments have failed and it's  gotten worse instead of better and he's worn out.  Bottom  line is that A 30- year old discectomy, 28-year old spinal fusion, and 16 year old anterior fusion,  have all begun to out live their useful lives.  The last time he was this bad it only resolved with the surgery, but   frankly, at 62, he's not about to have the next level fused because it involves taking out the rods from the prior fusions (can you imagine??). 

So we are facing big decisions that we are not ready for financially or emotionally. I am happy when he walks in the door and yells , "Hola!", and those days are few and far between now.  I get a little scattered when we are on this roller coaster and I tend to withdraw and do nothing much than dwell on it, which is not helpful. So praying for miracles and appreciate it if you'd think of him and send some healing vibes.  

The best medicine, of course:

 

The Return to Everland

Nauset Light

 

Sitting on the side porch this morning side by side with Mr. Pom, coffee in hand, and noticing that the cicadas have begun their mid summer whirring. I want to scold them that it is not midsummer, what with Fourth of July being only one week ago, but they go by nature's schedule, humming away the passage of the sun across the sky. It is quiet and I am racing to finish reading a book that traveled back and forth to the Cape but remained unopened.***

We returned on Friday, caravaning down I95, meeting up at Mystic for a long break while the baby got out of his car seat, ate some lunch, threw most of it on the ground for thedog, and entertained all the patrons on the Starbucks patio with his loud commentary of giggles and gibberish on everything from the dog gobbling up leftovers to his mother's stern admonishments not to feed her.

 

 

Our House  Inn in Chatham

I will miss  waking up to his yells from the crib to rescue him and his shy tucking in of the head when his mother carries him out of the room, sleepy-eyed, to say hello.  Our days were long and uneventful, and full. There was the flurry of meals, where we all we seemed to was nursery food: pasta with butter and cheese, grilled cheese toast, raspberries by the handful, blueberry pancakes, avocado chunks and hamburgers with ketchup.  We managed one restaurant meal out, picked for its   high noise level, which was propitious since the baby was in rare form, squealing, giggling, and chattering, delightedly finger painting with ketchup on the paper covering the tablecloth (thank goodness).  After one particularly loud baby belly laugh, the couple at the next table  leaned over and said, "We'll have what he's having."

Except for  weekend visits by my son in law, the procession of visitors were all female, a phalanx of aunts and cousins who blew bubbles, held chubby fingers yearning to walk all over the beach, help carry the indispensable baby beach equipment of umbrellas, shade tents,  thermoses of water, and tote bags full of lotions, changes of clothing, and sacks of cherries.  Our heads hit the pillows hard at night by ten at the latest and there were no late night runs to the beach to see the stars (though several dawns were witnessed). My resolve to keep to my usual Cape routine of disappearing from 7 to 9 to sit with coffee and write or paint dissolved quickly into rinsing blueberries and slicing strawberries, buttering toast triangles, and sitting in the backyard while the baby examined every single piece of gravel on the entire terrace.

 

Rose Hips

 

The two weeks flew by and went slowly, were exhausting and relaxing, were close to home and far afield, at least from a baby's point of view, and were different but the same. We saw the beach from ground level up, examining sticks, shells, pebbles, and crab legs that were destined for someone's mouth. We made friends everywhere and watched the baby watch his first parade, where he was particularly mesmerized by the ambulance's flashing lights. We all stood up to go the Fourth of July fireworks until my daughter wryly noted that someone had to stay home with the sleeping child.  By the end of the two weeks, he was saying my younger daughter's name, the dog's name,  mum mum and "diddy", and maayyybbbee saying "g'ma" (at least I heard it!).

If we had stayed even a day longer,  I don't think I could have forced myself to return. The quiet slide of sunny days fragrant with sunscreen and baby smell were narcoleptic. My mind was reverting to the long, slow, local days of early motherhood. The endless hours of sitting on the floor with plastic bits and board books; the walks around the yard to discover wooly caterpillars and ant hills; and the constant stream of  cheerios and sippy cups and diaper changes. All my pants have greasy tiny handprints that no stain stick will remove. I automatically cut up people's food into tiny bits from force of habit. I sweep the floor with my eyes as I walk from room to room, on alert for large cookie crumbs or clumps of dog hair that might find their wayward way into a little mouth. 

 

                Nauset Light Beach

 

I just took a look at my IG feed. In the last few weeks, I haven't there isn't a pic  that doesn't feature the baby.   My hand hovers over the "send" button as I wonder if I dare to post just one more photo of something I consider adorable but know that many  do not.  So yes, it's turned into a grandma feed, as I've been cautioned.  If   I had a second, I'd discover I've lost  followers and even friends, but that's life.

One out of five is allowable, no?

 

At least that is  my life right now.  It is is amazingly and exhaustively full with work and family, and on most days  I honestly  cannot fit a hairpin into an empty second.  There is a large teepee in my small living room, baby books falling out of a basket, and a high chair taking up the space by the window that the dogs covet. There are floors to vacuum for crawling, groceries to buy, meals to cook, and work, work, work to prepare for.   Make room, make room I tell myself.  Let it all in.  Revel in the excess. I hear my  Italian grandmothers whisper in my ear, "The thin edge of the wedge is almost nigh. There's plenty of time  in the grave."

----------------------------------

A proper post on summer reading will be coming. I have read some great books in fits and starts!

 

-

Mid Point

I haven't taken a two week vacation in several years. 

It feels like eternity.

Halfway through, we have had a change of guests, cycling from nieces to aunties. 

What have I done for a week?

Say repeatedly that I need to vacuum. 

Buy stuff for beach lunches. 

Read half a page in one of the ten books I brought before Squishy does something cute and I am distracted. 

We have eaten lobster, had Bird Breakfast Sandwiches more times than my pants will allow. 

Watched Squishy watch his first parade.

Wash sheets and towels. 

Say repeatedly that I need to vacuum. 

Buy stuff for beach lunches. 

Read half a page in one of the ten books I brought before Squishy does something cute and I am distracted. 

 

Made s'mores which surprisingly go well with white wine. 

Smelt of woodsmoke despite two hair washings.

Endlessly gaze adoringly at Squishy. 

Wash sheets and towels. 

Buy stuff for beach lunches. 

Read half a page in one of the ten books I brought before Squishy does something cute and I am distracted. 

 

Crafted decorations for Squishy's upcoming first birthday (I know!)

Been too lazy to go to the fireworks (no see-um's; crowds; traffic).

Say repeatedly that I need to vacuum. 

Had pizza for supper at the beach.

Wash sheets and towels. 

Read half a page in one of the ten books I brought before Squishy does something cute and I am distracted. 

Fight over who will get Squishy out of the crib from his nap. 

Say repeatedly that I need to vacuum. 

Buy stuff for beach lunches. 

 

Did not eat ice cream, to my eternal sadness, when everyone else did.

Discovered the joy of cooking bacon in the oven for a crowd.

Wash sheets and towels. 

Say repeatedly that I need to vacuum. 

Buy stuff for beach lunches. 

Have Squishy lead me all over the house and yard with two fingers as he learns to walk.

Taught my cousin shit she didn't know (Never rent your house for the Fourth of July; if you do, raise your rent.)

 

Discovered that hammock naps only make you a feeding trough for mosquito cocktail hours.

Say repeatedly that I need to vacuum. 

Wash sheets and towels. 

Buy stuff for beach lunches. 

Read half a page in one of the ten books I brought before Squishy does something cute and I am distracted. 

Vacillated endlessly between buying groceries, sous chefing and chefing, sweating over the grill, cleaning it all up ( I hate fresh corn prep and clean up), or spending 40 bucks for 3 burgers, 3 fries, and soda. \

 

Have the jitters constantly from too much coffee/cappuccinos from Sunbird. 

Lure everyone in the house to Sunbird several times a day. 

Say repeatedly that I need to vacuum. 

Wash sheets and towels. 

Buy stuff for beach lunches. 

Read half a page in one of the ten books I brought before Squishy does something cute and I am distracted. 

 

Call fence guy about one foot gap in new fence that dogs sail through. 

Call exterminator  AGAIN about RACOON IN THE ATTIC AGAIN AND DID I MENTION IT RIPPED OFF THE METAL LOUVERS INSTALLED OVER THE ATTIC VENT TO KEEP IT OUT??

Call plumber about leak in outdoor shower. Pay plumber enormous sum for twenty minutes of labor. 

Call plumber -again- about septic smell in house.

Take pics of Squishy naked in his blow up pool and realize I can't pose on Instagram or I'll end up on CPS list. 

Buy ridiculous cheesy things at Christmas Tree shop to "beautify" the backyard since we hae no sprinklers and tenants wait for "someone"  to water anything planted, which turn to sticks in a few weeks. 

 

Say repeatedly that I need to vacuum. 

Wash sheets and towels. 

Buy stuff for beach lunches. 

Read half a page in one of the ten books I brought before Squishy does something cute and I am distracted. 

AND THE NUMBER ONE ACCOMPLISHMENT THUS FAR OF VACATION:

Teach Squishy to snort through is nose like a pig.

Which he does.

Repeatedly

While nursing.

Repeatedly. Much to his parents' chagrin. 

 

 

 

 

Be back in a week crying over returning to work. 

Glass half full/half empty/ Where's the wine?

 

 

 

The Last Weekend In June

I was so happy, happy, happy to hear from so many of my readers for the last post. Your compliments about the new blog design (ah, shucks, it not like I asked for it but I did) were sweet. Fear not, the very bland header will be replaced soon with a hand painted one. Soon as I paint it or find the one I painted two years ago and never scanned in.  I do find that as I age, I am trending toward clean, white spaces in my life.  It best be a passing phase because there is a whole lot of glittery magpie collections in my life and whatever would I do with it all? 

Here's a question to which I'd really like answers: I keep all your comments in my email inbox. I always plan to answer them, sometimes more successfully than not! Do people prefer replies to their comments to be sent to them personally, or do you check the comments to see if replies are made there? I think replaying on the blog is more interesting and makes for more of a community, but since I have not done that often in the past,  I am afraid no one would go to the box. So let me know what you think is the best way. 

 

 

 

 

Oh June, you are delightful.  Bright, hot days layered between cool mornings and nights that entice us to linger long past bedtime and read by fairy lights on the porch.  Days stretch to nine o'clock, mornings awaken us with bird song at 4:45 ,and it seems lunchtimes call for salads on park benches.

I hate to see you go!

 

 

 

The Graphic Designer and I were discussing our reactions to early summer this year. We are jubilant, yet distrustful. We are anxious for the season to be fully realized in all its popsicle moments,  yet nervous that it will pass by in the blur that leads to 6 more months of winter.  I most certainly have a touch of PTSD from last winter and now find myself reaching for the cord to stop the train that hurtles right through heat waves and deposits us at the station decorated with Christmas wreaths.

 

 

 

All this is on my mind as I stumble around this Saturday morning and shove two-week's worth of clothes, books, and art supplies into a variety of duffles in preparation for my vacation. I haven't taken two weeks in a row in a few years now, what with too many schedules of spouse and children to consider and the revving up of the workload that makes returning a holy hell. 

 

 

 

Going to the cottage these days is not unlike the planning that I imagine goes into a World Summit of all the heads of state. Work vacations, tenant leases, buses, trains, and automobiles, bed counts, cousins's tandem schedules, baby sleeping schedules, friends to accommodate, family to corral, it's all a bit much that leaves me rather beaten down and thinking of leasing a shed for one on an island in Maine next summer. 

 

 

I'd suffer it all, though, just to get Mr. Pom along with us. In the past six months, he has had a pernicious attack of back problems that has not responded to his usual bag of tricks: rest, ice, NSAIDS, epidural injections, chiropractor - all for  naught. It came to a head last week when the six hour car ride back from Father's Day on the Cape resulted in agony and he's been in bed since. Obviously, he is not coming, but he wasn't anyway, because he cannot take a week before or after a holiday, being in a business that is consumer driven.  But it means he'll spend the mid weekend of the Fourth home alone instead of with us for the holiday. Fingers crossed, fingers crossed, he won't be out of work so long that he can't come for our family week in August.  Exhausting pain, exhausting worry, and sadness to be there without him.

 

 

Fear not, hoever, there will be plenty of posts from up yonder once I settle in. I still have to report about Vermont indigo, Beacon indigo, pies, lambs, slip and slides,  Squishy pool adventures, and most importantly, SUMMER READING!

So tell me what you are up to this summer? Where are you going and what are you making?

 

 

Snarkily We Roll Along

I decided to return to the world of blogging with not a splash but a flutter of angel wings as I blithely told you of my renewed artistic passion, vision, and spirit and my idealized embrace of all that is my life, heretofore known as: Mrs. Pom, Lifestyle Guru. 

Yes, you can have it all. Yes, you can remain fulfilled and relaxed and fun and organized and all good things all the time. You can!

Except when you cannot.

Which is most of the time.

 

The combined effects of this:

 

Plus this:

 

Left me gaga for at least 5 days and I resolved to only post lyrical, artful, coy posts about friendships and farm to table meals and the authenticity of hands pulling hand-dyed floss through antique Belgian linen.

So I pulled out sketchbooks and novel drafts and the sewing machine,  redesigned the blog not that any of you noticed  AND I even volunteered to MAKE AN APRON to send to a good cause in Australia (I swear there were hallucinogenic 'shrooms in Meleen's salads).

And begun working on ...... .....nothing.

 

Yeah, two weeks of back to work and it all wore off. 

 

But it IS my favorite season of the year: very late spring/early summer. Today there is a bright orb formerly known as the sun in the sky, the bedroom drapes are blowing in the breeze, and it is 90 freaking degrees, which I actually love cause I am craaazy about summer.

I am back from an afternoon of mind-numbing, tedious questioning of a witness in a over-air conditioned court reporting office in Queens and that, combined with the battle known as the Van Wyck Expressway (what an oxymoron that is), have transformed zeal into ennui. Throw in the disaster of my room, wherein everything I tried on this morning when it is was cool and cloudy is flung on chairs and bed after I found out it would be murky and 90's,  has left me lying (laying?) on the unmade, laptop on my abdomen, and ceiling fan doing nothing more than showering me with dust motes.

Add in one of the dogs licking his crotch (penile) next to me and shaking the bed, plus the appointment tomorrow afternoon to find out why I've had a headache for about a year (stress/migraines/tumor: you decide!) and I'm about done in for the day.

Yet, as I walked the thoroughfare of the world known as Sutphin Boulevard, passing both the Supreme and Civil Courts, listening to the polyglot of languages, particularly a middle aged couple from India yelling loudly with finger-pointing at each other and the woman repeatedly yelling "Mamma! Mamma! at him in some musical dialect, I came to the realization that I love the city in the summer.

Give me sticky sidewalks, littered gutters, tarry roads, exhaust-belching busses, and restaurants sending out sulphurous blasts of garlic, and I feel alive!

(Very entertaining to watch a man in suit and tie hurriedly walking down the street with a vanilla custard cone in each hand,  quickly licking one and keeping a worried eye on the other as it was leaning precariously in full melt, and making me wonder how far he had to walk to get to the intended recipient of the other cone before it smashed on the ground....)

I really do love it.

As long as I can get into my air conditioned car and not a subway.

 

In some ways, summer in the city is so much more entertaining than even Cape Cod. It makes me feel like I really am in the heart of things and not just piddling my time away wondering, when can I move to CC, when can I move to CC, as I am wont to do. 

Like most highs, of course, there is a crash and I am in full crash mode as I wait for Mr. Pom to bring home a small anchovy pizza cause it's too hot to cook the refrigerator full of veggies that are rotting and too annoying to do anything after watching more videos that sisters sent me  of Squishy in his little flotation device bobbing around in the pool with them-who-are-not-the-grandmother.

So entertain me, please, with tales of your handspun days of painting and writing and eating shrimp cocktails with bellinis on sidewalk cafes.

 

PLEASE!

Spring ReDux

I took a ten day spring vacation, which I highly recommend, and have come back with renewed desire to simplify my life and surroundings and make room for whom and what I love. 

 

 

A late spring vacation two hundred miles north is marvelously timed to immerse you once again in lawn carpets of cherry blossoms,   nosy neighbors of nodding  lilacs, and in-your-face shouts of magenta-hued rhododendron and mountain laurel that rise like banks of psychedelic mountains along the roadways. 

 

 

It's a sly way to trick Mother Nature and get a second go-round of the ridiculously girlish sumptuousness of the double cherry blossom.

 

 

Don't worry about the weather as it will not be perfect. It can't be. Think about it: spring is the hormonal teenager of the seasons, all  fits and starts of balmy, peaceful, cumulus skies that turn on a windsong into plummeting temperatures of despair and fitful storms of soaking rains.  

 

 

When the fog banks rolls in,  do not lament but find a place with your Great Aunt Gussie's old decor and settle in for a pour-over,  quinoa porridge with almonds and dates, and that stack of Flow and Uppercase you've been carrying around for months.  Or just have a cuppa and a donut and stare at the rain.

 

 

And if the weather turns very fierce,  just cozy up with the family and  have your annual  baby spiderman races where the prize is wiping spit up off your forehead with a clean tea towel.  

 

 

 

Of course, iti s imperative that you vacation near water - or else what's the point?  Make beach runs as often as the winds allow,  layer sweatshirts and scarves  (don't even think about swim suits), and have a quick outing fortified by thermoses of hot chocolate. Feel the  sand on your feet (still slather sunscreen!)  and take great gulps of briny air that promises better times are coming,

 

 

If you have access to a baby, I would recommend bringing it along it as  a squirmy, sandy reminder that the most fun you'll ever have on vacation is when you are a kid at the beach and the ice cream is dripping down your wrist and turning to concrete with the sand and you really believe that you can dig all the way to China.

 

And when you are ready for the horizon to swallow you up,  walk to the waves, babe in arms, let him be lulled by the sound as you rock back and forth, and then sit in a beach chair for as long as it lasts and pray for many more springs to come. 

Double Macchiato. Stat.

 

If you are as illustration-obsessed as I, buy this book.

 

Early morning, I log onto this Mac and browse. I prefer to interface my way into my day with a little cyber playtime. I have a routine, which sites I go to first. I am very old school and still read blogs. I start the day with bright, pretty blogs that are worlds apart from mine. I like Mormon mothers who wear Anthropologie clothes, birth gorgeous children once a year, and decorate their homes in bright colors with whimsical touches. 

They're like a storyboard and, if I skip the proselytizing posts, I am very entertained.

 

I had to stop Mr. Pom from buying this gigantic can of salt packed anchovies (or were they sardines?)

 

Then I surf over to some of the Big Blogs, those that started off years ago and hit the big time and have become industry standards. I don't read a lot of them but I like to check in and see if I'm missing anything and what the latest internet scandals are. 

But the heart of my reading are the blogs who are my friends, some even in realtime, and some just in my head. With the dogs piled up around me and angling over who will be the first to knock the laptop onto the floor,  I spy into  lives in England, Norway, Canada, California, Vermont, Florida, and all points on the globe.

 

Painting in the car: Mobile Studio Time

 

I read about recipes, art, journals, turquoise interiors, women's rooms, Portlandlandia, LA, food, fashion, photography, and farms.

I skip over to Instagram to see what cute pics of the baby my daughter has posted. After that it's a quick breeze through Facebook to see what the arty friends are up to. 

 

Carried all these treasures home from the beach in a pink doggie poop bag mitt (clean) courtesy of the town beach . Waiting for an hour of free timeto finish sketching: I think 6 to 7 a.m. this Saturday is clear.

 

After that, I reluctantly get out of bed, shower, trowel on make up, select a suit, make lunch, pack two apples and granola bars, and head out. My rolling briefcase makes a lot of noise and I pretend I am a stewardess - yes not a flight attendant - headed for Tokyo instead of Starbucks and wherever they are sending me this day.

My reading is done in the car. Don't worry, I'm listening to it on tape. Finished H is for Hawk and it was AMAZING. Now onto In the Woods by Tana French, which is long on narrative and shorter on investigation but I think all the pieces are about to come together to solve two murder scenes: one 20 years ago; one last month. 

 

Messaging book covers from Cape Cod to daughter in New York before I bought them:  she had them all already. I definitely gave birth to that one.

 

My world has shrunk these days. I am juggling it all by filtering it down to the essence. I like to think of it as the Espresso Period. Jolting and quick.  I do nothing but what I most need to. 

I need to work. I need to spend hours and hours and hours at work. Sometimes I spend hours and then bring it all home to spend some more. 

I need to see the baby, so I find little slices of a spare hours that falls from the sky like manna, run around like a nut and vacuum up every piece of dog hair, order in, and have them over mid week so I can make him belly laugh, chase him chasing the dogs,  and inhale the intoxicating aroma of Baby.

 

The Mayor of Pastini

I need to cheer up Mr. Pom, who is in a 3-month siege of back pain. I need to buy some fresh food, cook healthy meals for him, and sit for an hour and watch TV with him whilst I finish a report or prep for the next day.  

And then right before bed, to ensure a calm, dreamless sleep, I watch whatever Netflix anxiety-provoking crime drama series I am obsessed with. Right now I am knee deep in the second season of The Killing. It's much better written than Bloodline, but I am missing the Florida Keys , and the Seattle rain and Linden's same bulky sweater and ratty parka are depressing me.  But Holder is quite entertaining.  I have adopted Linden's pinched, worried facial expressions for work: resting bitch face my kids call it, and it is quite effective for scaring people away from my cubicle when I concentrating.

In my mind, I am here.

 

What about you, are you gulping down quick shots of jolting life in carry out cups? Or are you all sunny morning sidewalk cafes and triple venti cappuccinos? 

Share with me your dreamy worlds, your studio time, your pages dripping with pigments, and lined with India ink words.......

 

 

Joyous Abundance

I've never cared for hyacinths. 

They remind me of the plastic flowers that were so popular with housewives in the sixties. At least one great aunt had one, if not several, potted plastic hyacinths atop her living room credenza. Worst of all was those singular hyacinths that popped up in the garden, most likely an errant bulb that survived being tossed in the ground in a discarded pot from Easter. 

Our office moved this year and our parking garage is attached to a Whole Foods.  My office is split 80/20 on the appreciation of WF, with the haters in the majority. I appreciate a place to get a fresh salad on the return from court or a roasted chicken for supper after a long work day. My daily run-throughs are enhanced by the displays of fluttery orchids, the langourous stems of blowsy tulips, and the massed pots of blue and pink hydrangeas. So nice to brush shoulders with spring while the snow was piling up on the sidewalks. 

One afternoon I turned the corner, hunting for the last of the blood oranges, and my carriage squeaked to a halt. In front of me was a table massed with hyacinths.  Amidst the refrigerator cases of meat and yogurts and beer was a huge display of the most outrageous, electric, clashing colors of magenta, purple, and white spikes. The chilled air of the market was laden with the heavy, perfumed fragrance that I usually reminded me of something rotting, but that day, filled my heart with the promise of spring. 

 

 

So I succumbed. By the armful. 

 

 

 

It seemed that the problem was not with the flower, but with the planting. It was meant to be seen in a crowd, shoulder to shoulder with its kind, a maddening crowd of spike florets, off-kilter stems, and colors that would make a minimalist cringe. Hyacinths are wild jungle creatures,  tropical birds meant to nest in steam, hot climes of tangling vines,  shrieking birds, and rotting vegetation.  Not in neat rows lining paved sidewalks in spring. 

 

 

 

The little wooden stool by the side window is with pots crammed side to side, stems supporting stems, teetering plantings in ever present danger of toppling in a heap of cracked pots and spilled soil onto the floor.

That is life, after all: abundance on the brink of ruin.  

May this joyous day be filled with the abundance of love.

Buona Pasqua! 

 

(De)Stress Reading

 

 

I've been complaining for the last few years that my reading habits have crashed due to the Damn Internet. Instead of a book a week, I am reading skeeteen million blogs and obsessively looking for new pictures of my grandson when my daughter posts on Instagram. 

I have now, however, solved my Internet-induced ADD due to my HAD (hyper anxiety disorder)! Yay for the Damn Internet!

You see, one of the few parts of my body   that still get a great aerobic workout and  keep my cardiac rhythm pumping overtime are my well-exercised adrenal glands. Kids, they are in the best shape of their lives - 60 is the new 20!

In order to tame these little monsters, which  have the sleep habits of a two-month old, I tried the following, to wit: 

•  meditation (completely bogus - if you can't concentrate, then you can't meditate)
• preslumber exercise (induced leg cramps)
• midnight eating (hence the 35 lbs I had to lose the past year)
• Pinterest black holes, 
• TV (wakes up the dog who whines to get out of his crate)
• obsessively predicting worst case scenarios for every mistake I have made in every case, investigation, or trial; diseases I suspect I have after in depth research on WebMD; and financial ruin (from all the shit I can buy on Amazon in the middle of the night).

After a few years of this, I realized that as long as I am going to shine the monitor  light into my face in the middle of the night and therefore completely upsetting my circadian rhythms, I would be better off reading books than scrolling down FB and "liking" a million pages about labradors and Cape Cod. 

So yay, I am not sleeping any better, but I am much more well read!

 

KINDLE-ING

Last night (and part of this morning, thus late for work by a half hour but it's Friday and I had an in office day) I finished The Girl on a Train.  Fast-paced mystery as seen from the vantage point (mainly) of an alcoholic, divorced 30-something woman who has invented a storybook life for a young couple she sees from the train every morning, only to find out that appearances are deceiving. It was very smooth, interesting,  well-plotted, and scary enough to divert my attention from my own under the bed horrors. As a middle of the night book, I highly recommend it for when you absolutely know that no matter what you do, you are going to be awake until dawn.

For when you are just off your game enough that you keep waking up but are not having night sweat anxieties, just mere why-is-it-so-hot-no-one-turned-down-the-freaking-heat, or will he EVER stop that FREAKING snoring, I cannot recommend enoughThe Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. Unless you find completely compelling endless pages about invading your family's privacy by throwing out their belongings without permission, or you enjoy staring at the ceiling wondering if your socks really do feel exhausted from being bundled into pairs instead of being folded flat,  I can completely recommend this book as a cure to any insomnia. And seriously, aside from being snarky, what exactly does she give as practical advice other than that you have to completely your declutter your house in one fell swoop or its just going to be be messy, which we learned in kindergarten.

For those nights when you are just fed up feeling anxious and old, please pick up India Knight's "Older, Wiser, Happier".  I really did like parts of this book, especially the make up and skin care parts because I love English products and just clicked on Amazon and ordered the English tooth-whitening toothpaste that she recommended (of course see above: middle of the night shopping straining budget and marriage). She is funny and has a great handle on all the crap that bedevils middle aged women like bad knees and stiletto heels, stepchildren, affairs, and what to wear to a cocktail party without looking like a fat frump. Personally, I haven't been to a cocktail party since my daughter's wedding,  have never had an affair, and haven't worn stilettos since my twenties,   so not really relevant but it's nice to know that I have avoided being that woman of a certain age who has had too much to drink and has lipstick up around her nostrils. 

LISTENING

Sometimes, I find I can fall back asleep pretty quickly if I put in the earphones and listen to a book. Of course, I then have to replay the whole thing in the car the next day, but that's okay.  Vanessa and Her Sister: If our mandatory online 24 hours of biannual Continuing Legal Education was taught by English barristers, I'd have it all done in the first month. I will listen to almost anything read in an English accent, and the narrator of this novel is just perfect and you will learn that Lytton Strachey is pronounced Stray-chey not Stray-key.  

All the kidding aside, this novel was very unsettling for me, which you will understand when I reveal that I have had a a photograph of Virginia Woolf on the wall of my study since college, where I  wrote more papers about her writings than anyone else. I have every novel and all her diaries. When I am trying to write, I often think of her in her deep, upholstered chair with her wooden writing board on her lap, turning out masterpieces with a fountain pen and foolscap, and wonder why I cannot do the same lying on my bed with laptop on lap.

So it was disturbing to find out that her sister Vanessa should have bitch-slapped her about a hundred times  but they were all so Bohemian upper class, which means that   all the Bloomsbury gay men were having riotous serial affairs with each other, the straight men were all sleeping with their friends' wives, but  the women were all stiff upper lip and just sighed and frowned discretely when their sisters poached their husbands right out from under them. It was somewhat soothing to learn at the end that   Vanessa had affairs throughout her life but remained married to Clive Bell; that her true soul mate  was Roger Fry, who paid Virginia no mind despite her best efforts;  and that she had a child with Duncan Grant, and she, Clive, Duncan, and his gay lover, all raised and lived together in Charleston house.   The Real Housewives of Anywhere have nothing on The Bloomsbury Group. 

The Miniaturist is a novel I really wanted to like, and did in major parts.  It takes place in the 1600's in Amsterdam but has a decidedly modern sensibility as it debates the role of women in the world and the abomination of the persecution of homosexuals. The city, the international spice trade, the food, the homes, the mores of society, and the costumes are beautifully and evocatively illustrated. Some of the characters are superbly developed and disturbingly unique. However, the eponymous thread of the narrative, though skillfully and creepily woven throughout most of the book, is left hanging, unexplained and tattered by the end. It is worth the read for the author's sheer brilliance at bringing to life a historical era not much written about and a strange, unrequited love story, but as a satisfying ending to a mystery, it falls short.

This week, I began listening to Joy Fowler's "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves". It is fast, witty, sardonic, and self-effacing. I already knew the plot hook and I am glad I've reached the part when it is officially revealed, but I find myself wanting to fast forward to find out how it all went down, which means that I am finding it more interesting for the plot than for the characters. Too soon to say, however, and I'm sticking with it. 

HARDCOVER, MY HEART 

There are tons of books around here. Really, it's a sickness when your TBR could only be read if you quit work and became a book reviewer for a living (I AM AVAILABLE AT VERY SHORT NOTICE). But whatever, I love books, book covers,  hardcover, paperback, and they are not going away. 

So here is the one I can't wait to continue reading tomorrow, Saturday!  H Is For Hawk.  I had just started it and knew it was going to be great when my cousin Alison, who has great reading tastes and is in love with ospreys and hawks, etc,  asked me if I had heard of it and my daughter laughed because the book was on the back seat of the car. If only I could be a writer with such writerly skill as to entwine with great love and care her grief over her father's death with a study of goshawks.  I've only read the first few chapters, but I'll let you know more. 

 

So, it is midnight, Mr. Pom is not snoring yet, and I need to go to sleep so I can wake up early, go to Starbucks and read H is for Hawk.  There's rumor of a fast trip to DUMBO to go to Jacques Torres' chocolate shop to look at huge chocolate chickens and bunnies and have more coffee and buy some Easter basket goodies. See y'all later and let me know what you are reading/kindle-ing/and listening to. 

 

 

 

Snow Is Falling On Marvel Mountain

Anyone else here have the words to every Raffi Christmas song imprinted in the brains of each member of the family?

If you could see out my bedroom window this moment, or I wasn't too lazy to go downstairs and find my phone and take a pic to upload, you would think it was Christmas Eve and we were having The Best White Christmas Ever.  I took a pic with Photo Booth, but it sucks and no matter what filter or adjustment I make, you can't see the snow coming down. 

So just picture a snow globe with heavy flakes falling quickly and thickly, and you have the damn scene outside the window.

The mister and I are very grateful that we blew out of the Cape at of 9:15 this morning because neither of us knew this was forecasted, and if we got caught on the New England Thruway in this mess, we'd both be crying. 

WIFE: What's the weather supposed to be today?

HUSBAND: Supposed to be sunny and above freezing.

WIFE: Really, looks like snow.....

HUSBAND: Nope, no snow today. 

 

I say no more.

It's been quite the week of travel, training, training, training, and then an unexpected FOURTH day of training, which resulted in me landing in New York Friday night at 10:30 PM and dragging my heavy suitcase all by myself up to the rooftop parking lot as the wind howled around me. 

I am not being that dramatic.

Then we jumped out of bed, rounded up the dogs, and  left for the Cape at 7:15 the next morning. (I hadonly agreed to so Mr. Pom wouldn't drive by himself and then  I had to drag him out of bed,  he who was in his PJs drinking wine when his wife pulled into the driveway and didn't hear her, and he who didn't have anything but spoilt milk for her to put in her tea after being away on business for a week.....)

But I digress. 

Someone on IG  described us such an adventurous couple when I posted that I was in Chicago at 6:30 PM and on Cape Cod by way of New York 18 hours later. 

Let me disabuse you of this notion: our idea of adventure is cappuccinos in the city on Saturday morning. 

 

We did not go to the Cape for the adventure, we went because of this:

 

 

And this:

 

 

And also this:

 

 

The top photo is the mountain of snow left by the front loader that bulldozed the driveway clear for us so an oil delivery could be made. The regular guy who plows couldn't do it because it was  2 feet of snow and 6 inches of ice on top. The middle pic is our bay beach - Cape Cod Bay - where we swim every summer. That little black dot is a crazy peson walking out on the water like you know who. I suppose I could have walked to Boston and visited The Graphic Designer. I usually sit on that bench to watch the 4th of July Fireworks and bat away the no-see'ums.   The bottom pic is one of about 6 rows of snow 20 feet high that stretch the length of Nauset Beach parking lot, apparently dumped there by the town. 

Nauset has been decimated by the storms and I'm not posting pics here, you can see them on FB or IG, because it is too depressing. Suffice to say that Liam's may have to cordon off a section of the parking lot to put the picnic tables before they fall into the ocean. 

We hadn't been up there in 6 weeks and we were scared to death that the roof was about to collapse, or the water in from the street  had frozen. Flip, who cleared the driveway, put us in a panic when he told us that our cable/internet line was laying in the street, and we weren't sure if the electric lines were down also.  We were very, very grateful, giddy almost, to discover we had water, heat, and electricity, no limbs or trees down, and only a few inches on the roof. 

[Question: If I can go on IG and FB and receive texts whilst hurting down I95 at 65 mph (with Mr. Pom in the driver seat, not I), why could I do none of the above whilst in my own house when the internet service was down? Why??]

And due to this  blasted snow, although we rushed home in plenty of time for our once a week Squishy visit,   the roads are too bad to get out and we won't see him for another week.

Oh good grief, what sunny, happy pics can I show you??

 

 

Chicago was just as cold and snowy. I was deliriously happy just being able to walk through this concourse at O' Hare and pretend it was spring. 

 

 

I tried to surreptitously snap pics of the floating glass sculptures as I pulled my 45 pound suitcase and laptop bag along without looking like a total tourist gawker. 

 

 

These beautiful window peels were created by students and I am trying to google the exhibition, but am coming up with naught. Sorry. 

The effect waslike walking into a tunnel of sunlight and summer, and very welcome after a week when my only contact with fresh air was from the space between the hotel door and the shuttle to corporate and back again at night. Without a car, few of us went anywhere for dinner, and instead became  fast friends with the hotel pub, where we had healthy and  balanced dinners each night  of tomatoes (Bloody Marys) and veggies (free popcorn).

 

But look who picked me and drove me to the airport, and took me to dinner and lunch!

 

 

Vermont and New York collide in Chicago! And Miss Carol showed up at lunch at Portillo's, which I knew nothing about and now am all jazzed to take my colleagues there to eat hot dogs  in October, when I return.  Or at least the Famous Chocolate Cake. 

 

So although our baby learned to clap this week, and I wasn't there, and although all his aunts have held and cuddled him all week, and I wasn't there, and although the snow has erased the time in the next week that I can see him,  and I will in truth probably pass out well before Downtown Abbey, I'm not bitter.

 

 

Just in a total funk. 

This Time of Year and A Girl's Fancy

 

food stylist: Betti Zucker

 

From my bed I can see the snow flying sideways across my window. The wind is howling  in the eaves and our chimney cover is banging like a bass drum. We are warm and cozy, though, with the fire lit, the dogs at our side and that first sacramental cup of coffee in our hands. 

I took a few days off for my birthday. I usually don't do so since, in case you live in Shangri la and have missed this winter, a cold, overcast, grimy frozen tundra day is not my ideal personal day off. This year, however, I decided to take a long weekend, weather be damned. 

My family was adorable at making sure that they brought the sunshine to me. 

 

The Empress used to call this type of baby schmutziness "swibbee"

 

Mr. Pom took a day off from work (and those that know him understand the import), and we hopped into the city. He left it up to me to plan the day, which meant we went right to Dick Blick on the Lower East Side for their 20% off everything in the store. Considering, I only bought a new watercolor journal and some cute Valentine stuff for friends, along with a few pens. 

 

We walked to Gemma's on the Bowery, a brunch place you cannot get into on the weekends, and had a gorgeous brunch under a huge Tuscan chandelier.  

 

Since it was my birthday, we ordered a starter of toast with Nutella. I still do not understand how this is possible, but Mr. Pom declared that he had never eaten Nutella in his lifetime. Huh? I think our pantry has seen about a dozen bottles in just the left 5 years.  He declared it, "Okay". (Proof that there are still new discoveries and mysteries even after 34 years.  He is a cypher.

I , however, had to restrain myself not to lick clean the compote of hazelnut chocolate goodness. I could have sat there all day and just ordered more coffee, please, and read the paper. 

 

 

 

I contemplated taking that little log cabin syrup bottle, but discretion prevailed. 

 

 

However, even poached eggs with proscuitto on brioche  could not keep me at table long when John Derian's shops were around the corner.  In three small storefronts are some of the most beautiful goods in the city.  Derian became famous for his brilliant vintage ephemera decoupaged plates, huge glass cake stand covers, coasters,  serving pieces, and more.  He appears to scour Britain for antiques that range from lighting sconces that must have come from 200 years old highland manor houses, stick style frames, vintage prints, and thus, everything I am in love with.

 

 

 

The first shop is his decoupage and a smattering of prints, luscious imported journals with French made watercolor paper, and all sorts of ephemera. I did not buy the French journal as it was quite expensive and I had just ordered two handmade journals from my friend LK Ludwig. but I'll be back in the spring!

 

 

 

 

The middle shop is vintage furniture, most reupholstered with his amazing range of antique textile, and the last shop, be still my heart, is filled to the brim with textile from around the world.

 

At one point, as we waited for a lovely young woman to cut us 5 yards of ticking to reupholster Mr. Pom's Morris chair, I looked at my husband of 34 years and said that my birthday would be complete if they left me along in the store and I could wrap   my naked self for a nap in French antique linen with a Shibori-covered pillow under my head and a hand-painted silk scarf around my neck.

 

 

He took me by the elbow and led me out the door. 

 

Then we took a wild ride through Williamsburg to pick up a vegan birthday cake ordered by the nursing Mama. She was making me a birthday dinner of pan-roasted chicken and maple syrup glazed carrots, and she deservedly wanted a non-dairy cake that she could eat, too. After a few missed turns we ended up in front of a tiny, tiny bake shop, Clementines, and took home a vanilla raspberry cake that was covered in coconut icing that was the most delicious icing I have ever eaten. And I've eaten a lot of icing over the decades!

So it was a wonderful day.

And the party did not stop there! All of us are going to the The Water Club for brunch tomorrow. I  intend to feed Squishy mashed banana and some avocado and a tiny bit of something sweet cause its his grandma's birthday and she can do whatever she wants. 

 

Completely gratuitous baby picture. 

 

If you are anywhere but  Palm Springs, and thus, we are ignoring you with a VERY cold shoulder here in the Northeast land of Sunday into Monday blizzards and below zero temps, I hope you are cozy and have a bit of stitchery in your hands if not a pen and paper or a paintbrush. 

I leave tomorrow for a week in Chicago  for work. Only I could go to a place colder than here for February break.  I'm off to buy some new pants since I have managed to take off 35 pounds since this time last year and Mr. Pom said I look like I'm wearing clown pants and go buy some new ones. Why yes, dear, I will! 

Try to keep out of trouble, though I'm sure I'll pop in after hours during the week. 

Sitting with Winter

 

It's awful, I know. The cold temperatures, the hazardous driving, the dark evenings, and the mounds of hardened snow and icy patches everywhere. Going outside to go anywhere becomes an Extreme Sport rather than just daily living.

But it can't always be Summer (though I suppose it can in parts of the world, and I can tell you that I grew mighty sick of it when we lived in California). 

Extremes are exciting and terrifying and never monotonous. Even the limbo of cold and snow forcing me indoors is not the worst thing I have ever suffered. In fact, I am learning to sit with winter.

In the spring and autumn, we sometimes go to the Cape several weekends in a row. Last spring we were having work down inside the cottage and we had to check on progress, write checks, and order supplies. I can tell you that as much as I love it there, spending 8 to 10 hours of every weekend in a car and having about 12 hours of actual awake time to enjoy the weekend made us pretty cranky and exhausted. I do not recommend it. 

 

 

I have learned to appreciate and savor our weekend at home almost more than our Cape weekends. There is something so relaxing and quite delicious about knowing that I do not have to get in a car on and battle traffic in the dark on I95 on a Friday night. Instead, we can go out to dinner or, like this Friday night, order sushi and pick up a bottle of wine and watch a movie in front of the fireplace.

I like waking up in our own bed on a Saturday morning. It's nice to have time to gather the dry cleaning,  sort through the mail, and put in the closet all the shoes and boots I've discarded under tables, by the sofa, or in the middle of the room where Mr. Pom falls over them in the middle of the night.  Frankly, it is fun just to be in my own house in daylight for more than the hour before I shower, put on make up, try on 5 outfits, and then run out the door for the twelve-hour day.  Helps me notice that the plants need to be not only watered but dusted. 

 

 

Of course, there's plenty to occupy us if we wish. There's that cellar waiting to be cleaned out - save it for winter, I said last summer, when Mr. Pom was making noises about what is all this crap and boxes that haven't been opened in the fourteen years we've lived here. Oh, and there's that call to the paitner I promised to make as soon as the holidays were over as every bedroom needs to be painted and oy, that entails lots of furniture, clothes, and books with nowhere to go. 

Saturday mornings, we usually  talk about going out to dinner later, using the gift certificates the kids having given us for fancy restaurants, or perhaps to the movies that night. We rarely get there.  We shudder at the thought of gloves, boots, sweaters, and coats, and the afternoon turns to dusk and we just laze around.

Today, I actually took a nap in the middle of the afternoon under the covers in my bed with one lab across my middle and the other butted up against my legs.  It was impossible to sleep, however in that position, so I roused myself to go downstairs, made a a little platter of aged gouda, parmigiano reggiano, and some slices of oranges that J brought us from Florida, and  shared it with Mr. Pom who was watching the Ranger game. I got out a The Paris Wife, which I just started, lit the fire, put a shawl on my legs, and sat with him. 

I was asleep in ten minutes in the chair.  

Sitting with winter is a balm to the soul and body. 

The sweetest part of our at-home weekends have slowly evolved this winter.  I find myself in the art room more than ever. I've organized it more (tho still needs much work!), gathered all my newest art books and magazines onto the shelves stacked on the big desk, and sorted through all the watercolors and gouache and separated them into an old cheese box and a cigar box. I pulled all the unused journals I have in various places so they are right in front of me, and ripped down lots of watercolor paper and toned paper into strips that I've folded into accordion books.  

 

 

 

In other words, I actually have a room that is neat and orderly enough to attract me to sit there and watch the snow fall, listen to music, and paint. After supper on Saturday night, I go back in to finish up some painting. Mr. Pom sits in his man cave on the other side of the wall, and reads and listens to music. I listen to a book on Audible on my phone and we check in on each other as the evening progresses to see if the other wants anything from down stairs, or whether the other would like to be  serenade the other by belting out an Adele tune (me) that I hear him playing. It is a nice little cap on the mid weekend and definitely one of those times I imagined happening when I wondered what it would be like when all the kids were out of the house. 

 

 

Best of all, we had a quick playdate with Squishy in the late afternoon and the Graphic Designer was here  with her girlfriend and we all made Squishy chuckle out loud, which is really the best possible thing in the world. 

 

 

Tomorrow, I am making brunch for the kids.   Apparently, though, there are no groceries, so it will be a busy morning while I rush out to shop, then cook, and serve. I will be sure to have some mashed banana or applesauce for Squishy, who has discovered solid food and will not be pleased if we are all munching on waffles wilst he looks on.

May your Sunday start with a good cup of coffee, something crunchy and hot, a brisk walk with a two-legged friend, and a pile of newspapers waiting to be read.

 

 

 

Friday night, the furnace is humming, a burrito is baking, and a book is awaiting!

 

Sssshhh, don't tell anyone or they'll try to book me into something, but this is the first "almost" free weekend I've had since Halloween!   I rushed home from work to try to visit the chunky monkey pictured above, but alas, he was cranky and his mother was putting him to bed early.  Last weekend was his "half birthday" and his mother made him a rainbow cake and his grandma made him a crown (so much easier than baking).  But they wouldn't let him have any! Just a tip of the tongue smidge of blue icing!   He did start his first solids this week and I'm told after a few shuddering reactions, he is learning to like avocado. 

So I went home depressed in the dark with the two dogs and an ailing Mr. Pom who is having a major back bout, with knowledge that there was no food in the house and -worse- only the dregs of a bottle of wine.  Before I fell into a tarred pit of Friday night pity, I found a new book at the front door, unearthed an Amy's Burrito in the back of the freezer,  remembered I had bought some new music on Itunes this week, and settled myself for a night in. 

Over the past year, Mr. Pom has staked out our son's room as his Man Cave. He put up pinstripe wallpaper, bought a big (ugly) flannel duvet, and stretches out in there at night to rest his back and watch football, hockey, or baseball in season.  This has led me to start referring to "my bedroom" instead of "our bedroom" and I'm in the planning for a major remodeling.

Is it very immature that I still like hanging out on my bed like a teenager over any other place in the house? And that my greatest delight iif no one's home, is taking a bowl of soup straight up to the bedroom from work, putting on pajamas, and not leaving the room again until the alarm clock goes off in the morning? (You know, the wall across from the bed could use a couple dozen of tear outs from some mags.....)

Yes, I prefer to work on my bed - I type deposition reports on my bed, surf the net,  watercolor, work on my planner, collage, read, talk on the phone, drink wine, tea, or coffee, catch up with whatever child is passing through, and kick the dogs off when they encroach too much on my personal space (i.e. no where to put my legs). 

Mr. Pom yell to each other across the hall thru the evening:

Are you watching Modern Family?

Hey - lower that game, I can't hear what Maggie Smith is saying on Downton Abbey!

It's a sitcom around here in the empty nest. 

Here are  some pictures (taken on the bed) of this incredibly carbo-loaded, amazingly art-directed, and absolutely scrumptious new recipe book that was waiting for me:

 

 

That is a brioche with blueberries baked into it.  I would give you my first born (but not her first born) if you made me this.

If breakfast or tea is your favorite meal, then you will swoon over  recipes like maple bacon biscuits.

 

 

And more. 

 

 

 

Don't wrinkle you nose at brussel sprouts; when roasted, they are taste like crunchy, tiny artichokes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I do believe I need a yellow kitchen aid, though my white one works fine and I use it only once a year; also: have had my eye on a seafoam green one.

 

y

 

My  go-to nothing-in-the-fridge-weeknight supper is a soft poached or sunny side up egg over any leftovers, veggies, tomatoes, or past their prime cold cuts that  I can braise and strew with goat cheese, parmesan, or sinfully, a little La Tur. Alas, only The Graphic Designer shares my love of runny yolks, so Mr. Pom is on his own those nights. 

 

I have turned a sad pitiful little Friday night into a one-person pajama party. I am listening to The New Basement Tapes : "lost"songs never finished by Bob Dylan 47 years ago and now with lyrics and arrangements by the likes of Marcus Mumford, T Bone Burnett, Elvis Costello, Taylor Goldsmith (my boyfriend from Dawes) and others. Uneven, but I have my favorites. 

 

 

Whenever I see these uber cool band publicity shots, I always want to be a musician. Or date one. And then I remember the incredible self-absorption of all the ones I knew in college....

Lasty, in this gallimaufry of a post, I leave you with a few pics of another book that is waiting on the other side of the bed (which Mr. Pom will shove onto my side when he crawls into his side after the Rangers game is over). 

 

 

 

 

 

GORGEOUS BOOK.  

I know, I know! Right now there are so many amazing new art books out there that I can't keep up. Though I pledge to bring you as many as possible, which means, of course, buying as many as possible. Hey book publishers - how about sending Mrs. Pom so review copies. I promise I'll get the word out! 

 

Do something cozy and creative this freezing cold, windy weekend. I am trying to garner some support for a trip to see the Matisse cut outs at MOMA tomorrow, but so far no takers. Sisters? Anyone out there?

 

 

My Winter Song to You*

 

Even a lax - perhaps lapsed - blogger like myself is seized with the need to mark the  year's end. 

I was trying out ideas for a year's end post all week, wandering through the path of the year laid out in my mind, picking up pebbles of thought and waiting until my pocket felt full to burst. Then I would pick out a a nice round stone and  tumble it around until it emerged as a sparkly, perfect jewel. The secret gem right under my nose that would explain it all, right  in my breast pocket. 

Because it always has to be right under my nose and perfect. 

I got ready to leave the house early this morning, on tiptoe so as not to awake my infant grandson. I was anxious to get out the door for my quiet time, physically hungry for the dawn light and a large cardboard cup of coffee in my hand. If I made it to the coffee shop before 7:00, I would almost be guaranteed a seat at the counter, my back to the crowd, the light pouring into the windows and onto my face.

And then I heard his cooing and gurgling and giggles. He was already in the living room, sitting on his father's knees and his face lit up in a grin as wide as the world when he saw me. I kissed his velvety head and sat down with a thunk on the wicker ottoman. I made silly mouth noises and raspberries, his favorite, and  said the words I have said to  him the words I have said to him a million times since July in my silly, high-pitched sing-song voice, "I love you". 

He squealed and pounded his right hand onto his leg in infant applause. 

 

Love is so alive in this house. 

 

I did not pick him up because if I did, I would not be able to put him down. I would melt into the warmth of his purring  embrace, his drooly mouth, his sticky hands, his bright eyes, and his toothless grin. Let me go now, I told him, and I'll be back.  I need to be there  before 7, I told his father, or it's too crowded to think. 

He tilted his head at me. "It's 7:25".

I had read my watch wrong: I had thought it was 6:25 as I congratulated myself for my early take on a long day. 

I should be an expert at this point in my life in balancing the blocks and making all my towers stand upright and balanced, but one always crashes to the ground with the subtle tilt of the earth's rotation. I am auto-pilot most days, getting from point to point on a tight schedule. Rushed, hurried, short of breath, near to tears, exhausted, tense, thin-skinned.

The baby just smiles and squeals and follows me with his eyes, waiting for a connection to grin and laugh. He has become our  our new axis, and we gather around like  satellites, bumping and glowing and buzzing  our love to him and, in turn, each other. He is the balm of our souls.

In the peace of this week together, in the cold, sunny days and the colder dark ones, I have sunk down into babytime, clocks unnecessary as he wakes and sleeps, and eats, and plays. The days melt into sitting on the floor, rocking him to sleep, walking the rooms, changing diapers, and taking pictures. The pleasure of two hours lost to holding him as he naps. The call to early bed so we are fresh for his early rise. 

With peace, comes self-enlightenment.  I have so neglected my writing. Not just this year or last year or any year, but in my life, all told. I have used every excuse I can muster: lack of time, lack of money, lack of mentoring, lack of privacy, lack of focus. But really just lack of commitment. 

I do not know what this year will bring.  I am ready for it, as much as any of us can be. I am truly content to remain here and there, at work and play, alone and with, in the nucleus of our family, traveling between two homes, missing one or the other,  gathering the kids into one place with one or another always errant, feeling well or ill, and 

My new year's commitment is simply this: write, paint, read, love.

Oh, love, love, love. All round me. 

___________________________________________

* Winter Song, Sara Bareilles & Ingrid Michaelson.

Artful News!

First off, thank you all for your sweet comments on our little Sous Chef Extraordinaire! He brings so much joy into our life each day and we have been extraordinarily blessed to have him. 

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In other artful news, a few fun things!

 

 

Lesley Riley's new book is on the stands and online ~ and I have not one but TWO pages in it! It is a fabulous book and you can look at it here.  It will make a great holiday gift for your friends and even a better one for yourself!

 

Also, my longtime online friend, Diane Perin Hock, and I have started our own Facebook page, "Drawing Together Coast to Coast". 

Diane and I have known each other since the prehistoric days of email listservs and as we are both quilters, artists, lawyers, and moms, we have a lot in common. Except she lives in California and I live in New York, and we 've never met!  

We hope to remedy that one day with a sweetly artful retreat, but until then, we decided to have some fun by sharing our lives through our journal pages.

We alternate picking a theme for each week, and then post on Sunday evening.  Now you have to be on FB to see the page, but I will occasionally post one here to give a sneak peak.  

This week's theme, selected by Diane, was At the Dinner Table.  As of this posting, she had not put her's up yet, but mine is.  Here is a sneak peek:

 

 

It's a little muddy, I know! The damn daylight savings time is kicking my butt in terms of getting a good photo of the page. I chose to do these in an journal that is too big for the flatbed of my scanner, a dumb mistake. Of course, if I was completely organized, I'd have the page done each work by midday so I could photograph it in natural light. But then if I was completely organized, I wouldn't be me, right? ;/)

The theme for next week is "Read any good books, lately?"  If you are inspired to join us, and we hope you will, please post it to your blog or FB timeline and post a link back to it on our page. We'd love to have a community of artist conversing visually!

Have a good week - are you feeling the holiday pressure yet? I'm already kvetching about it!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

 

My sous chef and all the Poms wish you a very happy, healthy, and delicious Thanksgiving!

I, for one, am having several helpings of this little turkey.

 

xx00xx

Baby Breaths

In this darkened room, early on a Friday night, I am in bed with the lights off. I am allowed my laptop light, but cautioned that if I turn on the TV, it must be closed captions only. Yet it is only 8:30 and Mr. Pom and I have barely had a chance to breathe out a sigh of relief and catch up with each other. And the youngest is home for the evening, a rare event.  

But Squishy is here, and sleeping overnight is  a very rare event. 

I'd like to report that his parents are going somewhere special, a concert, a dinner, or to a party. 

But the truth is, they are just plain ole'  4-months exhausted and need one night, just one, to lay in bed and watch TV, and then shut the light early and know that they have no reason to get up until late morning. 

I remember those days. I especially remember longing for the weekend, my body rhythm still in sync with a work week. And then Saturday would roll around and, guess what, I still had a two month old, or a two month old and 23-month old, or a 5 and 7 year old and an infant, and the weekend just meant the same. 

I didn't live near my parents. I was at least 45 minutes away from my family. My parents worked as did my sisters, and if I wanted to go out or have an afternoon to myself, I paid the kid up the street. 

Sometimes, though, I'd take some days off work and just go to my mom's for a few nights. I'd hand over the child or children, grab all my sisters' magazines, pull out the quilt I was handstitching, and set up my lair on the long blue couch, confident that the baby would be held, changed, played, with, walked around, and entertained all day. I often would get up in the morning and find my parents and sisters in my old room, standing around the portacrib like the Magi at the manger. 

So how can I not do the same for my daughter?

I did laugh out loud when they told me I had to  stay with him to put the pacifier back in his mouth should he wake up. Perhaps we did that for #1, and I know #2 was the worst child to put to sleep or to stay asleep on the face of the earth. But by #3, I'm certain that we tucked her into a crib, shut the light, turned on a monitor, and saw her in the morning. 

It is a sacrifice, giving up this Friday night. I can't mindlessly surf reality shows. I can't get up and down for a cup of tea or a decaf cap. I can't fret over what I have to clean, buy, and cook for Thanksgiving and how am I going to fit it around a 3-day work week.

 I have to sit in my bed in the dark, the only light this laptop. I have to turn on my electric blanket. I have to listen to the sweet, rhythm of my grandson's tiny breath in and out and his occasional loud suck on the binkie. 

And I have to write to you to tell you I'd rather be here than anyplace else on earth. 

One More Thing....

"Teatime comes early at Stillmeadow now. I hang the kettle over the embers, bring out the toasting fork, and open the sweet-clover honey."

                                                                                     Stillmeadow Calendar

                                                                                     A Countrywoman's Journal

                                                                                    by Gladys Taber   

 

I was so moved by each and every comment that I received in connection with my last two posts. I am answering each one individually, but before I can finish doing so, I want each of you to know what your words meant to me about pomegranatesandpaper, about the stories I told about family and marriage and children, and about the holidays and rituals of my extended family.

As the kids grew up and out of the house, as my law career became more involved and demanding, as I found less and less time to make art and be with my art friends, there was less and less to write about.  After my mother died, I could not bring myself to write about family without making a very melancholy and tearful post. I could not write about art and friends because I had lost  all time with them.  I have never written about my job and never will,  and I had become aware that more and more "real time" people in my career were awawre of the blog. 

I have self-censored myself into a corner. 

After reading your comments, reflections, and memories of the blog, I have gotten more and more angry - at myself.  I have allowed myself to become completely estranged from almost all that love in life. I cannot begin to write,  nor would I,  about how far-reaching this estrangement had become and had brittle I have felt during the past two years. 

This Spring, I started to see little bursts of light. I found myself smiling more, returning to some simple crafty pleasures, and spending time with people who were just easy going and fun loving and accepted me for who I am. 

And we had a baby. 

Well, we had a grandbaby. And it's been the most unbelievable event of my life after the birth of my own three glorious children.  He still doesn't seem real. We spend a lot of time just looking at him and saying "I can't believe he's real."  We also spend a lot of tie teaching him to do rasberries with his mouth and I am proud to say he is quite adept at blowing spittle at all of us. 

So I will cut to the chase: I am not closing down pomegranatesand paper.  I am not going to stop being myself and finding joy in writing about silly little things that make my house a home and my family my dearests and my friends my lifelines. It will never be the blog I once wrote, at least until circumstances  change whenI retire. It will be focused on art and creative writing, but it will still have occasional family posts. I will go live again on a regular basis in January. 

Over the Christmas holidays, I hope to have time to investigate starting a subscription newsletter that I plan to fill with writng and drawings of the most "Gladys Taber" kind. 

In the meantime, I am working on a full little project that I will announce shortly. It is the type of project I hope to do more and more of. 

See you soon over the kettle. I have honey from Vermont and a toasting fork. 

 

 

Oh geez, I had to write at least once more

Damn, I miss my parents.

 

I've been bing-watching Last Tango in Halifax on Amazon Prime streaming. (Where are the American series like this? See Lisa at Privilege for a more intellectual analysis.) I loved every minute of it.  Can't wait for Season 3 but suspect we in the colonies will be seeing it sometime later than the Brits. 

Whilst I watched, I noticed that the Grande Dame Ann Reid was reminding me of my mother. I can't put my finger on it.  Something to do with her clothes, her expressions, an Empress sympatico.  This led me into reflecting that my family barely has  2 "elders" around and I really, really miss having someone in polyester pants and a plastic tote bag come over to visit and bring me a box of Entenmann's chocolate chip cookies. 

November both excites and makes me melancholy. I become unreasonably anticipatory about pies and the smell of turkey roasting. I feel the need to make things with pumpkin. I decide to put the dining room table in the living room so we can all fit. Mr. Pom ignore me.

At the same time, I gaze mournfully at my mother's yellow enamel "lasagna pan" in which she probably made lasagna once and corn pudding every Thanksgiving. The yellow enamel pan with the practical metal slip on handle frame suddenly represents all I miss about her, about her generation and the generation before her. 

My memories are many-layered, like lasagna. 

You knew that was coming, right?

So today, November 2nd, All Souls Day makes me miss the familial souls. I didn't go to the cemetery because I was there during the week. I picked up dog crap deposited on MY MOTHER'S GRAVE with two wide hosta leaves, but it was a ver unpleasant experience. Seriously, why are there dogs in the cemetery. I assumed it was dog crap but as I picked up the disgustingness, I thought maybe it was a racoon or a huge, sick squirrel? Anyway, right in the middle of my MOTHER'S GRAVE??

I  then snaked my Subaru through the tiny, crazy 90 degree turns of the one cemetery that leads into the other and go visit my mom's parents and sister. Once again, I promise them that I will bring a clipper for the damn pine tree that their next-grave neighbors planted and now encroaches on their headstone. Yes, I can hear them muttering to each other 6 feet below: "Is anyone going to clip this?Why did they allow them to plant this here? She says she's going to clip it next time, but does she??" 

We only grow more like ourselves in death.

I promise next time! 

I did not do the great grandparents and godmother grave tour as that is reserved for days of complete melancholy-I-am-an-orphan. And when I pulled up, someone from work called me and I was blastedly pissed to be standing graveside talking about a case. Why did I pick up? I am stupid. 

My parents's are buried in my father's family plot, which lies between two above ground mausoleums. Legend is that my paternal grandmother intended to have a mausoleum built, but his sisters KO'd it for the cost, and instead put up a very large, very lovely and elegant headstone, complete with bas relief sculpture and Latin inscription. 

Unfortunately, that means that Mom and Dad end up with a flat "footstone", so if we want to plant Lilies of the Valley, my mother's favorite flower, then we have to do it up by the headstone and not by their flat tablet cause nothing is allowed to be planted there (except a dog pile apparently).

I don't recall visiting the cemeteries on All Souls Day when I was a kid. My mother talked about marizpan in the shape of bones that they would get at the baker. Damn, I missed all the good ghouly Italian stuff. The cemetery visit after church was the Palm Sunday ritual.

 My motherand her family are buried exactly halfway between the house in which she was born and the house they moved to when she got married. My grandmother lived within one mile of her homes her entire life and now can keep on eye on both. This year, the last of her generation died, my Aunt Anne, who was my grandmother's youngest brother's wife.  After my great grandparents died, that brother bought the house where my great grandparents, grandmother, and her sister and her family lived. Aunt Anne was the last of them and she died in the house. If you drive past, you can see the pink roses on the chain link fence that my great grandmother planted probably 60 years ago.  

I miss that continuity. I take nothing for granted these days in terms of my own children and their homes.

I woke up very tired today after a Saturday of cleaning and purging. I finally have a sock drawer that doesn't explode with unmated socks when you try to pull it open.  It was cold and sunny and windy today and I spent the morning painting in my journal. Then we bought cold cuts and drove to The New Mom's house so Mr. Pom could help the SIL hang a mirror and other things. 

The baby was sleepy and quiet, too. He only talked to me for a few minutes, content to sit and watch the Jets get slaughtered for awhile. Though he didn't carry on a conversation, he did do "flirty eyes' in which he raises his eyebrows and grins and expresses more than his grunts and intonations can say. 

And when he got kinda cranky and didn't know if he wanted to sleep, nurse, or watch TV in his swing, we gracefully left to go Trader Joe's, grab Starbucks and come home and roast a chicken. 

Tomorrow is my parents' wedding anniversary. They would have been married 68 years. I hope they are going out to eat with everyone and there's better be a sponge cake with whipped cream frosting, hand-turned roses, and slivered almonds on the side after that.

I'm going to bake something pumpkin. 

Remember Me?

For the few of you who still check in here, I am saying hello from a very autumnal Sunday morning with bright sunshine, brisk wind, and the red leaves of a dogwood flying past my bedroom window. 

As you may have noticed, I have stopped posting here and probably will not be doing so in the future. Unfortunately and with great sadness, I've come to realize that my exposure in the online world has broadened - not for any fame - but just due to circumstances of my work. I no longer feel comfortable writing about my life online.

I have not disappeared, however, and am still active, though limited, on FB. Instagram is where I feel most comfortable as I strictly control who can follow me. So if you want to see what is happening in our little world, especially about the baby, you can catch me on Instagram. 

I am scratching my head to try to figure out how to blog oneline without complete public access. If I password protect the blog, then I suppose people can email me for the password, but that seems cumbersome and ridiculous. I wouldn't go to all that bother if I were a reader of this blog. I could start a new blog that has absolutely no associations with my  name, but how would you or anyone else find out about it? LOL!

The truth is that times have changed. The first thing must people do when they are checking out a career adversary or new business contact, etc, is google them. Or so I've found out.  So until I can retire from the legal profession, I am going to have to close shop.  I am open to all suggestions as to alternatives, but for now Instagram allows me to share with those I know the pictures and comings and going of my family, the baby, and our trips. 

Crummy, no? But this is the world we live in.

Always and Forever and a Day

 

 

We are back from our vacation. 

There were many comings and goings. Adult children grabbing the beginnings and the ends.  Cousins twining through our days with laughter and adventures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Very sweet. 

The new experience of the baby with us in our house, around the campfire, at our favorite coffee place, and most especially, at the beach. Although he usually was asleep through it all, he graced us with plenty of smiles and cooing and squeaky, floppy snuggling  against our shoulders. 

 

 

We had to tear ourselves away.

 

 

 

This is how I feel when I leave:

 

 

Cape Cod is a beautiful, sunlight, reflective piece of my heart. 

When I have to leave, a piece of my heart falls out. 

But the space quickly fills in with the memories our family has made together. 

 

For always and forever and a day. 

How to Relax on Vaca

I've spent a lot of time since July 11th with a newborn on my shoulder.  Instead of that big glass of wine after work to relax, I go to my daughter's and hold the baby so she and her husband can eat dinner and maybe get a pre-sleep nap. I sit quietly on the living room couch with the news on in the background and the baby in my arms. 

I've forgotten what it is like to hold a newborn on my chest. I'd forgotten the weight of the warmth of a newborn balanced just so against your collar bone, one arm supporting the tush and the other the head. He radiates peace, calmness, and contentment.

At the youngest's college during finals, the school brought puppies to the campus for the kids to play with as a stress reliever. They should have brought babies who had just been nursed and were in milk comas. 

I have an aunt who had to wait to have children. When her children had children, she would spend every holiday or gathering with a baby in her arms. Everyone would offer to take the baby so she could eat, or get up, or even perhaps talk to someone besides the baby. She would refuse and remain in her chair throughout the party until the parents were ready to go home. 

We taked about that with her recently. She said she remembered everyone telling her that she could put the baby down in the crib. She'd tell them that they could put the baby down in the crib after she left. I thought it was rather extreme at the time. I understand it perfectly now. 

Squishy is with us for the second week of vacation. I have lots to do: I am working on completing two watercolor journals; need to prepare some sketchbooks for the demos I'm doing in Vermont; and I have an illustrated quote due. I brought it all wtih me to accomplish this week.

Ha! 

You'll find me sitting in the shade in the backyard, babe on chest, book in the other hand. I'm pretty adept at juggling baby and other demands. I just typed this whole post as he sleeps on me in the bed. 

 

I'll put him down when they leave. 

 

Beginning and Ending Part Deux

 

 

 

I

It was a tumultous night. 

When my daughter told me a few months ago that she wanted me present at the birth, I had mixed feelings. I was apprehensive about being with her during the labor. Despite having given birth to 3 children, I barely had a labor pain and ended with 3 C-sections due to complications. I was afraid not of what I might see but what I might feel. I did not know if I could control my emotions if my daughter was in a great deal of pain. I was not sure I would not break down or go all Shirley Maclaine in Terms of Endearment. 

Once she was admitted that night, nothing could have pried me out of that room.

It seems strange to even me now, but  I could not bear to think of the two of them alone all night as they went through this journey.  It felt to me that they needed a mother there, someone else to share the emotion, to keep them steady, to hold them up when they were exhausted. It just seemed right when the moment came. 

As soon as the doctor told her she was not being sent home, the baby seemed to sense that it was time to ramp things up. Her labor became harder and she asked for an epidural in a few hours. I left the room for that event, remembering all too well how grueling that procedure can be. 

After that, she was able to rest more comfortably and we agreed to shoo everyone home and let her sleep. S. and I took turns sleeping in the recliner that pulled out into a bed. The room was large and quiet and there appeared to only be one other woman in labor on the floor. I watched the fetal monitor record the hills and waves of her contractions as they ebbed and flowed. 

Around 3:00 a.m. her water broke and the nurse came in to see to things and help her get more comfortable.  We sat up with her for awhile, made sure she was comfortable,  reassured her that things would speed up now but her epidural would keep it manageable.  She tried to sleep and I was dozing in and out S. shook me and I looked up to see the nurse putting an oxygen mask on my daughter's  face. 

 S whispered to me that they couldn't find the baby's heartbeat. As I shook myself awake, the lights were flipped on and several nurses ran in and they began to twist and turn my daughter as if she was a rag doll.  The rupture of the membranes causes the baby to lose the bouyancy and cushioning of the amniotic fluid and it is not uncommon for the umbilical cord to become twisted or compressed by the baby's body.  The nurses quickly moved her into different positions with eyes on the fetal monitor to see if they had made the baby move off the cord. 

I am writing this with calm, steady words that give reason and sense to what was transpiring. At the time, I only knew that the baby was in trouble and controlled chaos erupted as every nurse on the floor was in the room punching keys on the computer, opening her IV drip up to full drip, turning her every which way possible. 

After  about 15 minutes of emergency measures, the OB gave the order to call a back up surgeon into the hospital and prep the OR for an emergency C-section. I left the room and paced the darkened hallway and tried to get my shaking hands to hit the right numbers on the keypad to call the rest of my family.  

In a few short hours,  we had gone from expecting perhaps as much as 24 hours until the baby was born, to an emergency situation of life and death.  I could not process any of it. I only knew that it could not  come to this end, not after all this time, not after all they went through to get here. My fears about the delivery, about my reaction to her pain, about whether my SIL wanted me there, all dissolved into the wild prayers you say when  life is on the line, prayers that are not pretty or formal or memorized. Prayers of desperation  to all the saints in heaven, including our parents and grandparents. 

And then just when they were about to wheel her into the OR, the doctor exclaimed "The heart rate's up!" and then just as quickly, "It's down!" And then, again, "It's up!" Every face in the room stared at the fetal monitor,  as if our gaze could  will it into keeping a steady flashing beep of life.  Finally, after what seemed like hours, the OB declared that the heart rate appeared to have stabilized, called off the C-section -for now - and we all waited.   

I left the room to update the family, not sure what any of this meant.  Would she still need a C-section? Will the baby need to be rushed into NICU?  I composed myself so I could return and be of support to my daughter and son in law.  I walked back into the room just as the OB announced that  Jessica that was at a 10 and they would begin delivery.  We all stared at each other in amazement, dumbfounded by the miraculous transition from disaster to birth.  The nurses all cheered, comforting each other and us, giving us smiles as they cleared the room. Her nurse and the OB advised us what we had already gleaned and apologized for not telling us what was going on while it was happening.  I just shook my head and said we just stayed out of the way so they could do what they needed to do.  I was touched at how many of the nurses returned to the room to ask our nurse if she was okay, if she needed a break, if she needed a hand. 

On the turn of a dime,  the room changed from a scene of emergent care to orderly preparation for delivery. A table was uncovered and equipment unwrapped. A huge  huge ceiling tile was  lowered and turned around into a bright light, the foot of her bed was removed and draped, and the doctor placed an old fashioned, sturdy metal stool up against it. 

 They gave us some time alone and I promised my exhausted daughter that nature would take its course and the doctor and nurse would coach her through every second of it.  Within minutes, the doctor told her it was time to push and like a cheerleading squad,  we coaxed and cajoled and cheered and wept through it with her. She rode the wave of each contraction with at least 3 gigantic pushes each and within 30 minutes, William Gehrig was born as dawn filled the room with light. 

 

 

 

 

 

My daughter and son in law had the most wonderful, charming, and beautiful baby boy on July 11, 2014,  at 5:30 in the morning just as the sun was awakening the world to the glorious news of his birth.

 

 

 

  

 

 

After all the drama of the delivery and the birth, the plain fact remains that he was born with slate blue eyes wide open, landing in the doctor's hands with nary a sound, staring up at the world, gave a few little bleats, and was handed over to his mother, where he nestled against her neck as if he had been waiting his whole life to do so. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And I guess he was. 

 

 

 

 

6.3 pounds, 18 inches long, he is known as William, Wills, Billy G, and Squishy, my favorite.  My oldest daughter is now a mother at 29 years of age, just as I had her at 29 years of age, and just as my mother had me at 29 years of age.  They have become parents just like that. We have become grandparents just like that.  They are exhausted. We are thrilled. They are adapting to having a newborn; we are fighting over whose turn it is to hold the baby. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are all punch drunk with baby love. 

 

Beginnings and Endings

 

I was on the telphone in my office representing my employer in an arbitration hearing when my cell phone, my office cell, and my other office lines began ringing off the hook. I knew what it was before I even looked at the number: my daughter was in labor. 

She had already been to the hospital the day before and had been sent home. I had spoken to hear earlier that morning and she reported that her labor had continued erratically all night but was growing more rhythmic. I had already advised my manager that I may have to leave early, but had not anticipated her calling me so soon.

As the arbitrator was summing up the opposing sides of the arguments, I was frantically trying to figure out how to text her while she was calling me. My door was shut and I strained to open it while remaining in contact with the phone, in the hopes that I could attract the attention of someone in the unit to  tell her I'd call her in five minutes. 

Since I really wasn't hearing a word he said,  I just interrupted the arbitrator (who is a very courteous and compassionate person) and told him the truth: the ringing phones in the background were my daughter calling to tell me that she was in labor with our first grandchild. He and my adversary immediately wound up the hearing. (It was based upon a loss of earnings calculation for a claimant - can you imagine trying to do mathematical computations while this was going on?)  We adjourned the other hearings for the day and they all wished me luck and I ran down to my manager  with my laptop and briefcase to tell her I was leaving. 

And then  my para  found me in my manager's office, who just needed to discuss a few quick things before I left, and said  the arbitrator wants to know if you can just quickly do  the next arb  as my adversary was already sitting in the arbitrator's office.  So I called him back, my adversary and I agreed to disagree, the arbitrator took note of our positions, and we wound it up with more good tidings. And then my manager buzzed me one more time, we had another quick pow wow, and I broke the speed limit all the way to my daughter's home.

She'd just gotten up from a short nap and was a little grumpy. She  reported that as soon as she called me, her labor had stopped. Just like yesterday. Done. Early labor, the OB informed her. 

So we sat in the sun on her deck and ate some cherries and talked about other things, but she suddenly began complaining about her back and said she couldn't move. No, it's not labor, I moved the wrong way in the chair and gave myself a spasm, she said.  She asked me to rub her lower back with my fist really hard, then harder. She could barely get up to walk back in the house. I massaged her lower back until she could get up without pain and sent her upstairs to her husband to lie on her bed and rest. 

I ran into the powder room for a minute and was contemplating making a peanut butter sandwich and going online to do some work.  I took the laptop out of the case, called my husband to tell him false alarm, texted my son and daughter the same and then heard her calling me. 

"Mom? Mom! We're going to the hospital."

"What?" 

"The back pain is getting worse and we called the doctor and she said get to the hospital."

Okay. Teach me to go to the bathroom in medias res. 

I was to follow them, and they were to remember I was following them because I'd only been to this hospital once before (on New Year's Eve when everyone thought she was losing the baby) and my hands were shaking too much to GPS the sucker and they weren't waiting for me to do that anyway. Of course, they lost me two minutes from the house.

We still arrived in 20 minutes, were sent straight up to Labor and Delivery, she was put into a bed and hooked up to the fetal monitor. 

And her labor stopped. Again. 

My daughter was quiet and I saw her spirits sink. She'd already been in early labor for almost a day and nothing seemed to be progressing. We were all trying to be reassuring but were picturing the car ride back home. 

I began the texting. So much texting over the next 24 hours....

I was already looking ahead to whether I should take the next day off or risk having to run out of an assignment again if she went tomorrow,  when the OB came into the room and threw us out to examine her. Her own OB was not on duty, but we knew this doctor from a hospital visit a few months ago. I liked her. She was  petite, wiry woman, probably in her early 50's. She was efficient, a little brusque, but knew her stuff. She disappeared for a few minutes and then came back.

She stood at the end of my daughter's bed and solemnly told  my daughter that she knew she was afraid that she might have to have a C-section, and she was sorry, but she could not guarantee that she would not need one. (There were other issues, had nothing to do with the progression of her labor at this point.) 

We all looked at her quizzically. Silence fell.  

She's not afraid of having a C-section, I found myself blurting out, she's afraid you are going to send her home.

Oh no, I'm not sending you home! You've gone from 2 centimeters to 3 and your due date is 7 days away. Things are changing and there's no reason to postpone this.

There was a sharp intake of breath by all as the collective unconscious in the room was zapped from oh my we are really embarassed to have jumped the gun again  to oh my you mean you really are having a baby we thought you were faking all this for 9 months!  

I looked at my daughter: her face was  pale. I looked at my  son in law: his eyes could not get much wider.  My own face was a perfeclty composed frozen smile that said mummy is right here and everything will be perfectly fine just relax and breathe whilst mummy goes into the bathroom and throws up those cherries. 

So much more texting ensued. 

 

Stay tuned for Part II wherein we discover that it's not over till it's over and that holding a baby person is even more fun than holding a baby goat. 

June's Skirts Have Rustled 'Cross the Meadow

 

 

I am in love with my home and my travels. I am equally blessed with both.   

Friday's drive back to the office  is a delight as I zip along the parkway that snakes between verdant banks of trees, tracing the river that lends its name.  Each switch of the road reveals a panorama as luscious as a Thomas Cole, with a sky deep and clear and towering heaps of cumulus clouds floating merrily above. Back in the office, it is a little easier to hunker down under the flourescent lights, bouyant with the promise of Friday evening within arm's reach.

 

 

Birdsong begins at 4:10 these mornings and I am grateful that the dogs ignore it and slumber on. I often cannot do the same, and world outside begins to turn pink, my mind goes on full alert and the day's events begins to tumble through my mind until I am seized with the need to jump up. I resist, though, knowing the second my bare feet touch the floor, the dogs will awake, ready for breakfast, business, and walks and I will have no quiet time on the porch with a cup of coffee and a sketchbook.

 

And, truth be told, arising at 4:00 will guarantee a sloggy head all day and crashing into bed by 9:00, which will make me miss the most romantic part of the evening. When darkness falls and the windows in our neighbors' houses shine out on the street,  I love to lie in bed and watch the lamplight filter through the lacy, delicate leaves of the birches outside the bedroom windows.  The street looks like a Monopoly board with all the houses lined up just so, little cars parked outside,  windows lit up, and the hundred year old trees rustling in the breezes.

 

 

It reminds me of being a kid again in bed in our childhood home, in my tiny, narrow room, in bed before my older sisters, listening to the house settle down with my face pressed up against  the metal window screen, trying to catch a glimpse of someone walking by.  I fall asleep hearing in my mind my parents playing Scrabble on the porch and feeling the cool cotton pillowcase beneath my cheek

Today is a luxuriously empty catch-up Sunday. Yesterday was the last event in a string of pearls as we celebrated the graduation from high school and college of my baby sister's two daughters. It was a lovely night: light until after nine, just cool enough to reach for a scarf, with good food and  family. After we came home, we were all readon the porch until at some point, the three of us were asleep under the fairy lights. 

 

I wish you a Sunday afternoon along a river, hamper of cold chicken and bottle of rosé by your side, a book of poetry in hand,  a pillow 'neath your head, and the heady scent of June lingering for one last Sunday noon. 

 

 

Little Bit of Summer Makes Me Feel Fine

 

Hey, I have decided that, finally, it is really really really summer. Not chilly, damp spring, or even balmy fall, but dye-in-the-bathing-suit summer. Hence, even when it takes me 5.5 hours to drive home from Cape Cod and then spend the next 2 hours looking up my court assignment for the next day, my bad mood will disappear as soon as I put my feet up on my pretty "porch blue" ottoman and turn on the ceiling fan. 

My evil moods blow away in the sunset and even when I find that someone has cracked a raw egg on my windshield and it turned to egg cement overnight and also knocked over all our recycling pick up, I can shrug it off as soon as I get my coffee and spend a precious twenty minutes on the Starbucks patio all alone in the soft summer morning breezes. 

 

I have lots of things planned for this summer. All of which begin with a "B" for baby, baby, and baby. In between I will try to tame the monster that is the studio. I threw out innumerable bags of old supplies and UFO's as well as dragged a lot of stuff to the Salvation Army. Nothing is more unsettling than finding unfinished art projects in the back of your closet that you can't even recall making. Or looking at them and saying, "What was I thinking of??" The garbage truck pick up at the front curb is good. 

I binged watched over several nights all of the second season of Orange Is the New Black. Y'all let me know when you're finished watching it so we can discuss. I will just say that it featured much less Piper, which is a good thing, too. 

 

 

I usually feel like these beached kayaks when summer rolls in and we rent the cottage. Why oh why do we do this? Well, first off, to pay the bills, and second, cause you can't get from here to there in less than 6 hours in the summer. Seriously, someone hurry up and get on the market those personal helicopters they had in the NY Times last week. I need one.

This year, though, a much as it felt like ripping off a limb to leave this weekend and know we won't back to the Land Of Water until mid-August, I am so happy to sit on my porch at night and read, and to make plans to go back to our weekend mornings in the city, and to see friends. I haven't see my Art Sisters since Christmas!

And reading - Emma Bridgewater's memoir about growing up in England in a very creative family and how she began her wildly successfull pottery business out of the back of a rented van. I love a book that has whole sections devoted to describing toast and butter and picnics and her mother's kitchen dresser filled with mismatched cups and cracked plates. Sigh. English country love. 

I am also reading The Vacationers, which is very New York Upper West Side and it is fun. I  started My Salinger Year, which is also very New York and bookish and drily funny. 

I confess to ordering Sibella Court's Gypsy: A World of Color and Interiors, but I haven't taken it out of the wrapper yet. Saving it for an especially missing the Cape type day. One doesn't actually "read" her books as much as ogle them, so it will be a good escape. 

So, what are you all doing this summer and what are you all reading?  LMK!!!

What Are You Doing?

I'm reading a book. 

Or I was, and then decided to take a ten minute break and write to you. 

I don't know what's going on here. I try to get at the blog and write, but life seems to get it in the way. 

And then, if I have a spare second, I remember that I never uploaded or transferred the pics to go with the entry...

But right now, instead of uploading or transferring pics, clearing out a million emails, cleaning in prep for Julia's graduation party, recovering from the baby shower, cooking dinner, doing laundry, writing reports, planning trips to Baltimore for 5 peeps to attend Julia's grad, or racing up and down the New England Thruway every other weekend to oversee some repairs for 6 months, or juggling work and overseeing repairs being done here....

I am reading a book. So far, I love it!

"Bittersweet" by Miranda Beverly Whittemore. A story about a college girl who is given entry into the world of the elite by her roommate who invites her to spend the summer at the family summer house amidst the wealthiest of the wealthy. 

And I'm drawing and painting in my little watercolor Moleskine. I got away for 3 days to #meleenandcharlottesvermontgetaway. I hope to see my other art friends some time over the summer, since its been since Christmas. 

And then, of course, there's the impending little baby boy to be born in 6 weeks or so. 

SIX WEEKS OR SO.    

I attend to spend the summer reading, drawing, and rocking a baby. 

Sounds pretty sweet. 

 

A Mother's day

 

 

As a child, Whenever I thought of my future, I knew that it involved being married, having a romantic old house, and having kids. I would write and sew in my little sewing room under the eaves and the kids would run in and out of the house, bringing treasures of rocks and pinecones and bugs to share and line up on the windowsill. They would take old tea cups and fill it with mud and water and invite me to sit under the huge maple tree and have some tea with acorn candies. They would pester me for popsicles, for walks, for friends over, for bowls of cereal and toast, for stories, for baking cookies, for helping to make Lego Ferris wheels, for playing dress up and putting on lipstick, and pieces of stale bread to use as "bait" to fish off the footbridge behind the church. 

I knew there would be many, many sleepovers, with prepubescent girls shrieking around the house at 2:00 a.m. with cans of whipped cream;  intense fort building  behind the guest house by grade school boys; sledding down the giant gun club hill by the lake; tent camping in the heat of a Southern summer in the backyard; swimming with the pool lights on and the shrieking because of the bats; and spending endless hours playing Candyland and making flat little cakes in EZ Bake Ovens. 

I knew that they would have solemn, slightly scared faces when they donned white veils and blue blazers to walk down the aisle to receive First Communion; I knew a baby cry all through Thanksgiving until I realized the baby was sick; I knew they'd sneak down the big staircase after we went to bed on Christmas Eve and count the 3 piles of gifts to make sure they were even; I knew they would have want their father to read before bed and I'd find them all asleep, a book splayed against their chests; 

I knew there would be punishments and school problems and "unsuitable" boyfriends; there would be teasing and crying and fighting and tears; emergency room visits and throw up all over our brand new car; i knew there'd be fights with friends and lying about things done wrong; I knew there'd be anger about moving and new schools so many times and homesickness for their cousins; I knew there'd be disastrous boy scout camps and hot as blazes music camps in June;  as well as evenings so cold the 8th grade graduates would turn blue in the pool and sit around the kitchen table in towels with wet hair; and I knew that there would be a night when we sat in our car across the street and watched another family look at our house, going room to room and inspecting our things, and we had nowhere to go but sit and wait until the realtor led them out. 

I knew they'd take my breath away in gowns and tuxes for prom;  make my eyes sting in caps and gowns and grow giddy when they brought home diamond rings.  Wedding gowns and moving vans and baby strollers and faces I would no longer get to kiss each night. 

I knew that they would grow up, go away to school, find work, careers, meet significant others, marry or not, have children or not,  move away, maybe come back, help us with chores like installing cabinets that our old muscles and bones could no longer do. And I knew when their grandmothers passed away, we would all cry until the muscles in our cheeks hurt so much that we used ice packs to go to sleep. 

I knew all these things. 

What I did not know was that the cycle of the generations would nudge me ahead before I was ready to make the next turn around the wheel. I did not realize that the continuum begins to narrow and grow steeper and then it would be a free slide like the last hill of the Dragon Coaster. 

This weekend we are going to our youngest child's graduation. Known here as "Micalangela", most friends understand the play on words since she was an artist and she attended MICA - Maryland Institute College of Art. She fell in love with the school at a precollege program, applied for early admittance, and never looked back. 

The night before she left for college, I had to hide in the guest room because I was crying so much that I would scare her and embarrass her in front of her friends. 

The 4 years have flown by with twists and turns and ups and downs. I am used to her being away. I miss her. I know from hereon in, she will mostly always be away. 

My little last baby, the one who wore a denim jacket with a black velvet collar and a heart pin everyday of nursery school, is graduating with a  BFA and continuing at MICA in the graduate school for a Masters in of Teaching in Art. We could not be more proud. 

I am wishing the hours away until we are there and are walking through Brown, the building where all the  senior projects of the art students from all disciplines are on display. Julia says the art is AMAZING.

I just know that she is, too. 

 

New Thoughts/Old Themes

 

 

 

Good Friday, overcast and chilly. Appropriate weather, I think. I remember a Good Friday growing up that was a sunny day and suddenly around 3:00, a storm blew in and it grew dark and thundery. I, a good Catholic girl, took it for granted - didn't it do this every Good Friday at 3:00?

Too many Good Fridays have gone by unmarked by weather theatrics and I have lost my innocence. But never discount a little drama to aid in faith formation and the rendering of a young soul. 

 

 

 

Growing up and attending Catholic School, what I remember most about Lent is:

• Mite boxes - saving your pennies in a little cardboard purple box the size of a juice box, to donate to the  poor.

 

• Statues clothed in purple damask cloth (which they stopped doing after Vatican II and now have begun again - theatrical faith formation is good for the soul.)

 

• Stations of the Cross - most Catholic churches have an area where the walls of the sanctuary are hung with plaques commemorating the La Via Dolorosa, which  depict in 13 plaques the final hours of Jesus's life as he carries the cross  to Golgotha, where he is crucified. It is a very long devotion, which much standing and kneeling. And  much yawning and staring off into space, and the poking of classmates, the snickering if someone nodded off or passed gas, and then the swift black-hawked repercussion of a smart rap from a nun or for serious offense, almost always by a boy, being dragged out of a pew by the collar of their school blazer and deposited in the principal's office waiting for detention or suspension and at the least, a conference with furious and ashamed parents, and the afternoo is truly transformed into a Passion Play.

 

• The inevitable "what I gave up for Lent" internal drama as the six weeks dragged on and you became obsessed with the desire to stuff your  t your mouth with cookies or candy or watch TV into oblivion. Thus, the capacity for great buckets of blackened guilt, the mental imagery of the whiteness of our souls being steadily erased day by day as we cheated and snuck around our Lenten commitment. Thus, great liars and sneaks are born, all well-suited for life as police officers and politicians, and repressed housewives and fathers whose tempers rivaled Mt. Etna.

 

 

Ah! The good old days when discipline, corporal punishment, and righteous anger was the norm in schools filled to the brim - imagine at least 3 if not 4 of each grade, each class averaging around 30 students. What did we learn? Timetables and catechism; diagramming sentences and reading out loud; the  the taste of warm milk on our lunch trays and boxball on the playground. Afternoons long and dreary with spelling bees and math drills, both making my brain freeze and mouth stutter. 

 

 

 

 

 

Holy Week, the lead up to Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday did not have the same tremulous stomach churning excitement as the week before Christmas. There was, however, the total frivolity of dyeing Easter eggs that involved the house smelling of boiled eggs and the vinegar that is added to the water to cut the waxy finish of the eggshell to allow the dye to permeate. Little glass Pyrex bowls filled with a hard tablet of concentrated dye in pastel colors and a flimsy copper egg dipper shaped in a hexagon. There was a waxy crayon that worked as a resist and we tortuously tried to replicate fancy patterns or writing that never came out as we expected. As we grew and life became more consumer oriented, there were kits to marbelize the eggs and tie dye, or the use of multiple rubber bands to make patterns, and little punch outs or stickers to stick on the eggs. 

My favorite was and still is just the clear, lovely colors of robin's egg blue, rosy pink, and the magical combination of the two into purple.  We didn't keep the eggs around for days, either, as everyone tends to do now. We made them on Saturday and by Monday, my mother had made them into egg salad. Our few attempts at blowing them out with a straw only led to popping eardrums and slimy messes of yolks and whites all over the table. 

My youngest sister was talking about how much she hated the Palm Sunday ritual of going to the cemetery after Church with our palms and visiting the graves of my parents' relatives and placing a palm at each one.  We had plenty of palms, all the dried fronds you would like. I never mastered the art of braiding them into a cross and envied those who would sit in the pew during mass and quietly work their wavy fronds into little works of art. The best I could do was peel it down the side, cross one end over the end and tie it into a cross with the stringy fiber. 

This year, the palm crosses were hammered into the ground at all the graves - I understand that more than one at each as we sisters did not quite coordinate with each other this year. 

 

 

 

Of course, Easter Sunday was all giant baskets covered in purple cellophane and filled with candy, hidden under tables and behind drapes and the awesome freedom to stuff myself with the head and ears of a solid chocolate bunny before Mass. 

There were always dresses, whether hand me downs or new, tights,  Mary Janes or the most envied Capezios as we grew older. I remember being in 9th grade and buying a lilac spring coat and a knitted cloche at Bloomingdales, inspired by  Ali McGraw in Love Story. Does anyone take their children for new spring coats in pastel colors anymore? Even at Church, only the youngest children come in with straw hats and bright coats and little white purses. Life can be  awfully drab these days. 

Easter dinner is a blur. I'm sure it involved ravioli and homemade gravy, shrimp cocktails, and  leg of lamb with mint sauce. The desserts were pastries and a cassata, which in our family was a plain cookie base baked in a tin, which was the top of a fish tin and as large as a pizza pan. It was  topped with  cannoli filling  and dotted wtih  halves of maraschino cherries that bled red into the sweet cheese mixture, and either sprinkles, candied almonds, or chocolate chips. Our modern ritual is the Bunny Cake, started by The Empress and carried into theyfuture by The Momma to Be and sometimes by the youngest 

 

 

 

We're going out to dinner this Easter. The youngest doubts she'll get home since she has no school days off for Easter and a field trip on Saturday to a museum in D.C. (Thanks secular college for adding insult to injury). (Not to mention end of college projects as she graduates in 5 weeks!!) It will be just the Momma and Father To Be, Mystery Man, Mr. Pom and I. We are letting the restaurant make the meatballs and lamb and desserts. We will wander through the West Village, have some gelato, and sit under a glass-topped courtyard and admire the containers of roses that filled one wall. 

 

 

 

May this weekend be filled with sunshine, family & friends and something sweet, even if you do not observe any holiday, religious or otherwise. We need some brilliant sunshine, warm temperatures, daffodils, blooming cherry trees, lilac spring coats, straw hats with fluttery ribbons, patent leather shoes, and linen shorts on little boys who climb under pews to find remnants of palms from last weekend that they will fashion into swords. 

 

 Happy Easter! Blessed Passover! May your life be blessed with the waters of renewal and the promise of yet another spring. 

Ain't Nothing to Sneeze At

 

It is 5:30 a.m. and I just inhaled the most vile, battery acid of a nasal spray in the hopes that my nasal passages, sinuses, and throat will not explode with whatever is packed inside there. 

What a lead. You have my permission to close this tab. 

I am just going to say this real fast: since January I have had a round of obnoxious and sometimes grueling medical tests and procedures that were partly "Oooh, you'd better biopsy that," and partly, "You have to because you are old." No one in my family wants to hear One. More.Word. or drive me to one more test where I either have to have anesthesia or have my hand held while needles are poked in one side and come out the other, scopes are inserted, plumbing is plumbed, things are gouged off, or a series of injections are required weekly. I cam more than relieved that   every single test came back negativo, zero, nadda. I got one more dealio left, and  thought I was home free.  

Until early Tuesday morning when I had my first ever kindey stone. My husband is still walking around with his eyes at half mast because every torturous exacerbation would slam us awake in the middle of the night. You know you are in pain when you agree to go to the ER in your old pajamas at 3:00 a.m. when it is 20 degrees. 

Mr. Pom gets up at 5:30 every morning. He just poked his head over the covers and saw the laptop light. Whats the matter? Is the pain back? Are you ok? "No, I am dill." "Dill?" "Da dold, da really bad dold and doff." And then I coughed all over him and turned on all the lights to rummage through my "throw everything in here" drawer to find the Astepro, which my highly allergic daughter swears by but seriously does nothing for me but I use it all the time in hopes it would. Mr Pom could be heard sighing and I swear I heard him trying to book a hotel room in Vegas for the weekend whilst in the shower. I haven't gone back to work yet, but I have already lined up the next medical event. 

The allergic preggo daughter has not had her allergies kick in yet. While I am typing this, I just spit three times over my shoulder and said, "poopoopoo" like my friend Betti does to ward off evil.  They are moving this weekend from their beautiful newlywed apartment to a more practical 2-story garden apartment that does not require her to park 3 blocks away or walk up 3 flights of huge marble stairs, engendering grandparental nightmares of slips and falls.... poopoopoo!

I can't do much to help her because I'm not supposed to be near her with these germs and I feel like crap. 

And I'll take all this run of age- and symptom-related testing, the juggling of appointments around work, the scary procedures, the week's waits for test results, the pain-like-I've-never-felt-in-my-life-before, and the head-pounding coughing and gagging, with the knowledge that all my tests were negative, that  this cold will pass, that I probably already passed the stone,  that another couple of years will pass before I have to go through all of this again, God-willing, poopoopoo. 

I am focusing all my prayers and thoughts this weekend since I've learned of one of our beautiful Art Girlz is seriously ill and in the hospital. Prayers for Allison, for her wife Midge, for her sister Tracy and her wife, Sue, and for her children, nieces, nephews, and friends.

May this week bring them a plan of action, an assault, and a glimpse of a kind future. 

Do Ink Smears Make Me Look Old?

 

 

When I was young, I used to worry about grey roots, saggy jowls, those batwings that suddenly hang from upper arms,  and whether my left ankle would swell to twice it's size like my mother's. 

But I never dreamed in a million years that ink smears on my fingers would make me look old.

When did reading a newspaper mark me as someone who had to be born before 1980? 

I was sitting in court this morning and I was reading the Sunday New York Times. Yes, I said the Sunday edition. I was so looking forward to sitting in court this morning and reading the Times that I even bought the Wednesday edition, which has the Dining Out section, in case I read too quickly.

I should explain, first off, that I rarely have time to read the paper on the weekend. I don't know when that began, but it is a dismal state of affairs that I am trying to correct. Reading the Times with Mr. Pom in the morning at some cafe was something I looked forward to all week.  We've got to get back to that, and quickly.

So when I got an assignment this morning to cover a court part where I only had a few cases, I grabbed a bunch of sections of the paper and stuffed them into my bag. This is a conference part and the court won't conference the matter unless the attorneys for both sides are there. This involves a lot of waiting around until your adversary shows up or, if you are also covering a part on another floor, a lot of running around trying to get everywhere on time. 

Today was the former so I knew that there would be some downtime when I could just sit and read. What bliss! It's been very, very stressful month and this may have been the first time I had to sit and do nothing (other than wait for my cases to be called) and read the paper. 

Reading the newspaper in court is not always guaranteed or an easy thing to do. When the judge is on the bench, there is no reading of books or newspapers. And certainly no use of cell phones or Kindles. Or talking. It can be excruciatingly boring so some judges try to be very entertaining by excoriating whatever hapless attorney is before the bench, thereby capturing our attention and making the minutes fly by until it is our turn to get up and get lambasted and reduced to chewing gum under his or her feet. 

If you want to read the paper, without a court officer yelling at you to put it away, you have to master the "quarter fold".  You take the paper, open it to the page you want to read, fold it in half horizontally and then fold it vertically, thereby ensuring a perfect and invisible fit inside a file folder that you conveniently have opened on your lap at a 70 degree angle. Of course, when you have to turn the page you're screwed unless you leave the courtroom or wait until the court officer is busy harassing someone else or sleeping with his or her eyes open and then you can quietly lower your paper behind the bench in front of you and try to quickly turn the page, fold, fold, and put back in the folder on your lap

I remember getting busted by court officers and once even yelled at from the bench To Put That Paper Away. And forget about using a cell phone and by "using", I mean having it in the courthouse.  Can you imagine nowadays entering a courthouse and being told to put your cell phone in a big basket on the court officer's desk - no receipt, mind you - and then picking it up on the way out? All of this was to prevent you From Taking Photos in the Courtroom. It didn't last long because the court officers union had no intention of having their members liable for hundreds of phone being returned to the right owners. Things have changed but it is still forbidden to have one in your hand in a courtroom, even to check the time, if the judge is on the bench. 

 (Once a friend of mine HAD to call her office about a case she was up on next and she bent all the way down in the seat until her hair was scraping the floor and tried to mouth the words into her phone to her office because she had forgotten the motion papers and did not know what the case was about. I had to tap her on the shoulder so she would sit up and find the court office there with her hand out, and she surrendered her phone until the part closed for lunch. But I digress). 

Fast-forward ten years. I still can't make a phone call in a courtroom under any circumstances even if there is no judge on the bench. In some venues, I can't even take the cell phone out of my bag to check the time without an officer heading my way. But what I saw today made me realize that it is only a matter of time until we are dialing up our offices and clients right from the bench. As I sat in the courtroom where all the attorneys were waiting for their cases to be called, and I had the paper spread open with two hands in front of me, and I began to turn the page and the paper made that suddenly loud crinkly noise it does when you are wrestling with the width and height of New York Times size newsprint and I suddenly became aware of many eyes on me as THEY ALL LOOKED UP FROM THEIR CELL PHONES. 

Besides myself and a fellow reading a file, every single man and woman was looking at a phone.  Texting, facebooking, emailing, checking voicemail, surfing the web, or reading a book (that’s an age difference: I cannot read a book on a screen the size of a cell phone.) Their faces were down; their hands were raised. They were lost in their own silent, tiny world.  No one was doing the Wednesday crossword, which everyone knows (or knew) was the last one of the week that most of us could completely finish. 

I quickly turned the page and lowered my paper.  I couldn’t concentrate. I felt that itch in the palm of my hand. Why was this article was so long? Good grief, it’s continued on yet another page and I have to refold the paper!  Then the thought came to me: I can read it on my phone.  It will have a nicely lit background. It will be so artfully abridged, I’ll never notice what I as missing. I can ignore the advertising (though I enjoy looking at the outrageously expensive jewelry and leather bags) I get 10 free Times article a month, and the connection is actually quite strong in the courthouse. But I only have 20% battery power left.  Suppose I have to call about something on a file? Just then the clerk called one of my cases. 

I put the phone and paper away and went into a conference room. When I shook hands with my adversary, I realized that my hands were dirty. Newsprint. On my fingers. I hoped she didn’t notice. Her hands were spotless; her manicure perfect; and her cell phone case was covered with Swarovski crystals. She was probably 20 years younger than I was . I hid my hands, embarrassed just not that my hands were dirty, but that I was marked. Marked as a reader. A newspaper reader. I felt as though I had a big scarlet PR across my chest. I was old school. I was old. Really old. I Read The Paper in paper.  I kept my hands  in my lap.  Then I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. Then vibrate again.  A nice tingle against my side.  A little quiet, secret notice that someone was trying to get ahold of me.

The court referee was checking her computer for the status of the case. The phone tingled again. I casually put my hand in my pocket and palmed the phone and glided it out into my lap and looked down. Someone had "liked" my photo of my dog on Instagram. Someone else had invited me to like their Rainbow Spirals Facebook page. Amazon notified me that my order had been delivered. My town sent an alert that today was glass recycling.  Verizon wanted me to know that I had used 75% of my data plan.

The court attorney coughed. I turned red. Put the phone back in my pocket and looked up. Busted.  

When the conference was over, I got up with my hand in my pocket to make sure my phone was still there. As I stood up, my newspaper fell out of my bag and landed under the table. Instead of smartly and confidently placing my folded newspaper under my arm and striding out of the courtroom as lawyers have done for generations, I took out my phone and held it in my left hand and pretended that I was reading an important message from my office.  Looking at my phone, I clumsily bumped  \ into the courtroom door as someone opened it.  I looked up for a beat and made that “Oops, sorry, important business on my phone” face and pushed past the attorney coming in. He had a paper under his arm. He could wait while I walked out. He was old. He was weak. He was a Paper Reader.

 

 

 

Coming Back Home

 

 

 

 

 

It's never easy, a return, that is.  Whether you are landing at JFK in a snowstorm after a week in Mexico or going back to work after an illness, you just have to plunge in. 

So here I am, at least for today and now.

I've have a few moments to myself this weekend because Mr. P is on the Cape and I'm doing nothing this afternoon but watching a movie with the youngest, who is home on spring break.  I'm working late nights and quite a bit on the weekends, so I can barely bring myself to flip open the laptop to check email. 

You know life is out of whack when friends emailing you to get together causes stress instead of a smile. 

Life moves apace, however, so there is no sense pretending that tomorrow is another day. Events slip by in a flash of an eye and trying to recap months of time away is an exercise in dull writing.

I am trying to manage my life more realistically.  I don't bother with a lot of stuff that I should be doing. (Right now there is a pile of laundry in the dryer since last Sunday and I've worn all the undies this week that your mother warned you about should you be in an accident. Knock on wood, I survived without anyone finding out that the elastic was shot on all of them.)

I still have Valentine bits and bobs all round the house, and the big chalkboard in the kitchen still says, "MERRY CHRISTMAS BABY WON'T YOU TREAT ME NICE".  If the chalkboard was reversible, I'd just turn it around and use it next year. Perhaps I could find something I have been waiting to hang and put it there instead.

So I give myself kudos for getting a few things under control. After my favorite doctor gave me a stern talking to, I rid the house of carbs, sweets, and white wine. I have only lost 4 lbs in 2 weeks, but the most wonderful thing is that the cravings are gone! I was on a vicious cycle of sugar/sat/fat to butter all the long hours and stress, and where has it gotten me but in the red with health and wardrobe. So I am quite happy to be able to just feel hungry and ignore and be satiated with an apple. Seriously.

I've been watercoloring. Nothing to show, but just learning to use paints. I never used hot press paper before because I just couldn't control the paint on it. All my strokes showed and it all looked so ungraceful. I am learning to use less paint, more water and let watercolors do what they were meant to do. I have a long learning curve to round, but it's nice to see some imagery appear as I pictured it in my mind. 

 

 Right now the sun is brightly shining at 6:00. My neighbor's bamboo is fluttering in the breeze and making beautiful, lacy shadows on the side of her house. Mama-to-Be daughter is more than halfway through her pregnancy with our grandson! The youngest is home on spring break we shared a big platter of sashimi last night and watched a movie together this afternoon. Mystery man sent me a cable so I can use the big monitor he bought me for my birthday and that will make blogging so much easier than on this small screen.  And I've been listening to Edna O'Brien's memoir, "Country Girl", and once I got used to her breathy, sibilant voice, I am completely fascinated and have to force myself to shut the car off when I get to work rather remain in the car and listen to her  stories about childhood in rural Ireland. 

Tonight, I am going out to eat - having a colonoscopy/endoscopy Monday afternoon, so it will be the last solid food until Monday supper. I intend to eat something carby tonight for dinner,  and regardless of what the instructions say, I am having my cappuccino in the morning since the hospital told me not to check in until 11:45 Monday! Therefore, according to my calculations, I should be able to eat my breakfast and have coffee on Sunday morning and then begin the clear liquids, no? Well, at least the coffee! 

After a day of  my fast of broth (ugh) and diet jello (no red!) followed by the dreaded "solution" I must begin drinking at 4:00 p.m. Sunday, Mr. Pom will be smart not to come home until after I've gone to bed. 

See you on the other side!

 

Regular Programming

 

 

 

has been suspended while:

 

• work ack! 

• commuting ack!

• reports reports reports ack!

• winter yuck!

• dirty dirty dirty snow yuck!

• dirty drifts hardened into dirty ice bergs in the yard yuck!

• too much stuff blech!

• cleaning out the linen closet blech!

• hauling out basement junk blech!

• listslistslists of repairs to house horrors!

• finding someone(s) to repair house horrors!

• estimating the cost of getting out of here horrors!

• weight! weight! weight! aargh

• diet diet diet aargh!

• healthy eating healthy eating healthy eating aargh!

• mammo phew!

• skin biopsy phew!

• endo visit denial!

• colonoscopy denial!

• nutrionist denial!

• migraines denial!

• baby coming! baby coming! baby coming! excitement!

• who will knit? quilt? baby shower? pressure!

• hot water heater Sunday flood! couldabeenworse!

• join a gym/invest in equipment that becomes a hat rack dilemma!

• no time to write/paint dilemma!

• I'lldoawellwrittenphotographedillustratedpost......tomorrow symdrome

 

LOVE TO YOU ALL! CATCH ME ON FB OR INSTAGRAM UNTIL .....???

Kale and Cannellini

 

It just seemed like a night for something warm. The leftover chicken cutlets would be fine,  though I'd bought them at a market on the way home last night. Seems impossible to actually make a full meal by the time I am home, feed the dogs, play  with them in the backyard, and shovel a walk or two.  So I am very grateful for the small market that has a big selection of good, homemade food, which is very convenient  when Mr. Pom is in the mood for sushi and I want minestrone.  Of course, it is ridiculously overpriced, but one of the benefits of an empty nest is only having to shop for two.

I'd planned on a cutting the chicken cutlets into strips and layering them with black beans over a spring mix salad. By the time I got home, the sun had gone behind the clouds after its two hour appearance subsequent to the 3 inches of snow. When I began scraping up the snow and ice, I could feel the temperature plummeting with the light. By the time I got inside, the idea of cold cultlets and cold salad was as appealing as eating a popsicle in the snow. 

What to make? What ingredients to fool around with? What could I find in the pantry if I looked very hard? 

I found a box of Adobe Mexican rice that Mr. Pom bought when he thought I wasn't looking. I love Mexican rice, but don't like packaged mix that are so high in salt. And we are both supposed to be off carbs, so I felt guilty just long enough to decide that it was perfect for a Tuesday night. 

The produce bin revealed a slightly withering bunch of kale bought last week in a burst of enthusiasm over eating more nutritiously. A quick soak in ice water brought it to life and I glugged some olive oil into a pan, chiffonaded the kale and removed the stems, and added a couple of minced cloves of garlic, salt, pepper, and coriander. 

Still, it looked a little "medicinal" for Mr. Pom's taste. What to add to it? Artichoke hearts? Not sure the flavors would be compatible.  Tomatoes and diced peppers? No tomatoes a qui. But we did have several differnt kinds of beans and suddenly I was remembering a very simple and delicious dish of garlic and cannellini beans in a little chicken broth with parmesan cheese  that I'd had a few weeks ago. I added the beans to the kale, a little more olive oil, and a generous showering of grated parmesan. 

I'm waiting for Mr. P to get home. He won't be expecting chicken cutlets, Mexican rice and kale and white beans so I hope he enjoys it. It is easier to scratch up a meal for two. For one thing, there aren't as many competing desires and pickiness as when we were 5. The grocery bill is less but the take out is greater. We force ourselves to eat at the dining room table a few times a week, but in the witner it's cold in there and the living room fireplace is so inviting. I do make him turn the TV off or at least put on the evening news and not TMZ.

Are we turning into an old married couple? You know, the ones with the TV trays, prescription bottles lined up on the end table, a copy of Readers Digest turned upside down on the arm of the chair, and our slippers kept by the front door? We're not exactly there yet, but there is a certaine level of familial slovenliness after 33 years of marriage that we both accept. I have on pajamas and an old sweater by the time he gets home: he rereads The Post, which I can barely tolerate being brought into the house. 

It's nice to be comfortable, familiar, and ultimately, feeling that the nest is not empty, just compact-sized. 

He's home now and it's time to warm up the cutlets and serve the food. 

Which we will eat by the fire while watching TV. 

The Tonight Show. On demand. At 7:30. Because who, after all, can stay up to midnight - midweek or weekend and watching ANYTHING?

Oh my, we really have become our parents. 

THE BEST KIND OF VALENTINE LOVE!

 

THE THEME FOR THIS V-DAY IS SIMPLY:

LOVE

 

I am sending you bundles and bundles of juicy, red love!

 

 

TO ALL AROUND THE WORLD!

 

 

HOOKY LOVE!

 

 

PUPPY LOVE!

 

 

ROVING LOVE

 

 

PIE-IN-THE-SKY-LOVE

 

 

SEA LOVE

 

 

SNIPPY LOVE

 

 

 

2-LIPS OF LOVE

 

 

LOVE-UNDER-COVER

 

 

LOVE-UNDER-GLASS

 

 

CIRCLE OF LOVE

 

 

SWEET LOVE

 

 

PIRATE LOVE

 

 

BEACONS OF LOVE

 

ANDANDANDANDANDAND

 

 

 

 

BABY LOVE

 

Just call us GrandPoms from hereon in!

#meleenandcharlottesvermontgetaway (Hashtag Heaven)

 

 

 

Time seems to stand still in February. As often as I check the calendar, the dates never seem to progress. At work yesterday, I handed a letter back to my paralegal before signing it and told her the date was wrong. But it wasn't - it really was February 7th, but I thought it was at least the 18th!

 

So it was with great excitement that I found out that Charlotte Lyon's and Meleen's Dupreé's Vermont Getaway Art Retreat had a last minute cancellation and Charlotte invited me to come. 

 

 

 

Look at the adorable room that was waiting for me to appear. Do you spy the "swag bag" on the green chair? It is filled with little hand-hooked and charming art goodies from the girls and their sponsors. Notice that the bed looks a little rumpled? That's because I had the best night's sleep there - I meant to ask Meleen for the name of the mattress!

The retreat is held in side-by-side houses built in the mid-1800's. Each house is charming and adorable and decorated with an amazing lifetime collection of farmhouse, rustic antiques that look perfect in the Vermont landscape. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The main project we worked on was to learn rug hooking. Look at the sweet work in progress by Jeanette of her dog. The craft tables were always filled with goodies and freebies and bits and bobs of art supplies, threads, yarns, and sweet photos to add to the paper journals we made the first night. 

 

 

We also learned how to make felted goat soap. Tammy, an amazing woman, came to visit and brought her handmade goatsoaps and lots of dyed roving for us to wrap around the cakes and dip into hot and cold bowls of water. The soap was creamy and smelled beautiful and after 15 minutes, we had our own bars of felted soap. 

 

 

 

 

 

Swing by her website at Wing and a Prayer Farm. It is a family farm that she pretty much runs by herself. I love her description of the farm: 

"Wing and a Prayer Farm is a happy place to live and grow.  We raise and care for a variety of poultry, Shetland Sheep, piggies, bunnies, horses and ponies, dairy goats and honeybees.  Our farm, in the Green Mountain State, is a beautiful pastoral homestead where the children have grown up barefoot and the pups can run around without a leash!"

 

 

She also is a marvelous baker who supplied the retreat with probably 2 dozen pies and muffins each day. It was quite a treat to be watching the snowfall and eating strawberry rhubarb pie or "Peachin' to the Choir" (peach almond). She is researching selling her delicious and creatively named baked goods online, so check her site in the coming months. She is a dynamo of energy as a mother, wife, farmer, and animal caretaker. Her favorite month, she says, is April when the lambs are born. She usually doesn't get  much sleep but is so excited that she doesn't notice!

 

 

My favorite part of the retreat was the meals (duh)! Meleen cooked 3 hot meals a day for 13 women over 3 days plus dinner on Thursday night. The food was rich, delicious, and served as smoothly, calmly, and enthusiastically as if she had run a restaurant her whole life. 

As good as the meals were, the condiment that made them sing were the lovely, funny, bright, artistic, and crafty women who sat around the table. It always amazes me that when I go to an art retreat how quickly everyone relaxes into their best selves and shares their stories and love. I didn't know a soul besides Charlotte and Meleen but I feel that I made fast friends with all of them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you, Meleen and Charlotte, for a fantasy escape to midwinter Vermont, filled with quilts, wool, fabrics, hookers and strippers galore, book shopping, wood buying, treats and laughs, and even a covered bridge. Goodness - what more could you want out of 3 days away?

 

 

Saturday Afternoon Eye Candy

I was supposed to meet a college friend in the city today, but at the last minute we called it off due to bad weather and the general agreement that it was a stay-at-home kind of day. We'll wait for a spring day when we can wander around the city and catch up. 

So Mr. Pom and I stopped at a new cafe to have a cappucino and a croissaint. (Meh. Not wild about it.) Then we (me) wanted to hang out in a bookstore, but short of driving into the city, lower Westchester County only has Barnes and Noble bookstores now, so we want there.

 I always head for the illustration and design magazines, such as this beauty:

PRINT Magazine with the 2013 Regional Design Awards for graphic design. 

 

 

So much eye candy! 

 

 

 

I pretended I bought it for the youngest to take back to her last semester of art school, but in reality I am not letting her look at it until I get finished drooling over all the pages. 

I have zero graphic design talent but I know what I like:

• letterpress
• foiled letterpress
• hand/chalk lettering
• watercolor lettering
• lettering lettering lettering
• vintage colors
• handpainted anything esp -
• hand painted backgrounds
• vintage fonts
• textured/collaged pages
• product design that is from soup to nuts - i.e. hangtags to boxed sets

I am also dying to get my hands on this book:

 

 

Deb Millman is one of the deans of graphic design. I gave the youngest several of her books for Christmas. I have been waiting for the Christmas bills to buy this one as it is filled with her hand illustrated essays and poems. She is also the designer of the cover of this issue of PRINT and of the illustrations that separate the different regions in the awards sections. You can sign up for emails from PRINT and download a few excerpts from her book here. 

 

PRINT has great online content, also.

Check out The Image of the Day for daily inspiration. Here is one from 12/19/13: 

 

Image of the Day, 12/19/2013: 3D Type Illustrations

By: Ronson Slagle | December 19, 2013

     

 

Lauren Hom creates beautiful 3D typographic illustrations from flat sketches and gave some insight into her process on the Daily Dishonesty earlier this year. Via We Love Typography.

 

Online content also included a blurb about this  poster design contest to celebrate America's National Parks. The exhibition will open soon and you can sign up here to get the link to buy the posters. I may have to make a day of it and go up to Hyde Park for the exhibition.

 

America, Call Home . . . 
Aaron Perry-Zucker, creator of the Design for Obama initiative, and the Creative Action Network are  launching a new campaign next week: See America. In partnership with the National Parks Conservation Association, they are inviting artists from all 50 states to create a new series of posters, reviving the legacy of the 1930s New Deal arts projects, while celebrating American’s shared natural landmarks and treasured sites. The campaign is launching today, 1/10, with an exhibition at the FDR Presidential Library & Museum in Hyde Park, NY.

 

 

See America is a crowdsourced art campaign, enlisting artists from all 50 states to create a collection of artwork celebrating our national parks and other treasured sites. “We’ve got nearly 100 designs so far and once the campaign goes live next week,” Perry-Zucker told me, “anyone will be able to submit their own, and prints of each are available for sale to support the artists. Here are a few and sign to see more here:

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

What do I take away from this magazine today? How does it relate to the art and writing projects that I am concentrating on? Normally, this might distract me into a whole new venture - for example - let's learn Illustrator! 

Um, no.

This is how my new aim low/underachieve mantra for 2014 works:

instead of putting aside what I am currently working on, spending a lot of money on new fun gadgets, eventually not having the patience to learn how to work or use the new gadgets, and eventually abandoning my project because I've lost the flow of it, I try to take away from this bits and pieces that I can easily  incorporate into my current work:

 

• hand-lettered work is HAND LETTERED.

• It is not going to look like digital hand/chalk lettering or even digitally-enchanced hand/chalk lettering. 

• Is my own shaky hand-lettering good enough for my work?

• Yes!

• I am not aiming to be a graphic designer. I am aiming to develop a hand-lettering style that can complements my watercolor illustrations. 

• Buying and downloading a program like Illustrator will be 1) expensive; 2) require me to get a laptop with more storage and a desktop monitor; and 3) take months for me to master, especially on my own.

• Is any of that necessary for me at this point?

• No!

• Instead, how about I actually I  attend the 2 Skill-Share online classes that I signed up for in late fall, buy a few calligraphy pens/markers, and work from there.

 

THAT, MY TRIBE, IS AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT I MEAN BY AIM LOW/UNDERACHIEVE

 

How has your week been? What choices have you made in your creative life that have allowed has facilitated your work, your ability to have find time to work, and the enjoyment of the work you are doing? Let me know!

 

     

 

 

 

 

Finding Your Tribe

This is me leading the Parade for the "Year of Aiming Low".

 

Each day, I log onto Typepad and smile at the variety of comments in reaction to my last post. I have heard from old friends I have not heard from in a very long time; from faithful readers; and from artists who I did not know, but now feel as though I do. . 

Thank you, thank you, thank you to each and every one of you who took the time to say, "Me, too!" or "I wish you well!".  You are each as dear jewels to me. Isn't it amazing what we will share on blogs that we really do not even tell our families or close friends?  As much as a time sucker that social media is,  it fills an enormous void in people's lives and allows us crazy creative types to find our tribe. 

All of your comments gave me pause for thought and contributed warmth and understanding to a situation where so many of us find ourselves in competition - with ourselves when we find a million reasons to resist just sitting down and making art. 

Shirley, Regina, and Lyle all wrote similarly about how even in retirement, they still don't find the time to live the creative life they thought they would. This is one of my biggest fears. I can see it happening as easily as I fritter away a weekend.  Think about how we spend our weekends - do we really give up all the chatter and errands and TV and internet in order to have a solid day of working on our passion? As much as I intend to, or say I will, I rarely even spend a half day that way. 

Cara wrote that she was crying because I had tapped the feelings she kept locked up inside. I know Cara personally. She is a young mother with an active children, a big family, and an enormous talent. I have seen her sit down, pick up a brush and literally whip out a series of gorgeous paintings. I saw her as a woman with boundless energy and creativity who was overflowing with ideas that she could not accomplish fast enough. 

I saw the image Cara hoped to project, but I did not see the pressure she was under. Cara, we need to sit down and draw some pickles. 

All your comments were so significant and touching. Whether you shared my feelings, understood my feelings, or just empathized with my feelings, you stood in my shoes and nodded your head and I felt your affirmations. 

It's so funny, you know. I was being facetious when I wrote "Aim Low" and "Underachieve" - but I wasn't.  It really struck a nerve in a lot of people. 

Dear Terry Grant, I love your description of what art is in your life. This is how it used to be for me and where I hope to get back to this year:

 

I hate to think of art in terms of achievement—under or over. It is a way of living, fitting itself around everything else. It is a refuge from ambition and stress and expectation. You might become very good—even famous, but that is a SIDE issue, not the goal. Be generous with yourself and adjust your expectations, but try not to think of it as "under achieving." Please..

 

Aiming low and underachieving are words that people have strong reactions to. I know that some of you still felt a little unsettled by it and were quick to reassure me that I am so much more.

So are all of you. We all are. 

Aiming Low and Underachieving are not dirty words. 

I am suggesting this: Take The Pressure Off Yourself.  

Allow yourself to drift a little along in life. Permit yourself to dilly dally, mess around, make puddles of paint, play at crafts that have no purpose other than creating a pretty thing to look at. 

 Linda H, you have expressed exactly what I have been feeling. The only thing I would add to your list that you didn't summarize is, "make little art gifts for my wonderfully loving and amazingly generous and talented art friends" !: 

 

Loretta, been there done that and wondered how to fix it. Finally I decided I can't be: the perfect watercolorist and the perfect memoirist, and perfect my spanish language skills, and learn french to the point I can join the local French club, and finish that vest I started knitting 3 years ago, and have a home totally free of clutter not only on the surfaces, but in the closets and drawers as well, and hold down a 3-day/week job, and be the perfect friend/family member who sends cards for every birthday/holiday as well as the perfect gifts and entertains and cooks for my friends with recipes I've seen on the Food Network, and keep my car clean and maintained, and take great care of my two cats, including one who is currently suffering from hormonal imbalance, not-so-great kidney function numbers, and a dental abscess, and tile my kitchen backsplash, and keep up with all my home improvements. 

And this, my friends, is what I mean by needing to underachieve. 

We spend our lives maintaining a life that we do not want to live. The STANDARD OF IMPOSSIBLE PERFECTION is not  just about artwork for those of us afflicted with it; it is our approach to life. 

And as my dear friend Diane wrote to me, 

We attorneys had to be fairly organized and driven (in our own not-necessarily Type A ways) to get our degrees and bar admissions and all, and we operate in a world of hierarchical and fairly rigid views of success and achievement.  It's hard to not let that infect our tender brains and hearts.

I don't think that you have to be a lawyer to have those characteristics; Diane and and I just happen to be ones.  My dear old editor at Cloth, Paper, Scissors, Cate Prato, has a great blog post about getting over her fear of experimenting in her art journal and not being concerned about it "coming out right". 

Dana made me giggle. She is a friend I've actually only meant ... I think once? I live to receive her painted Christmas cards each year. If we did not live at the opposite ends of New York State, I'd probably move into one of the gorgeous artistic rooms she has in her extraordinary house and never leave.  

Leave it to Dana to have EXACTLY the same reaction I had to Mim Stella's comment: 

"wait, did someone say they took a class on illustrating children's books...I want to do that."

How did Dana know that as  soon as read Mim Stella's comment, I had to restrain myself from immediately googling classes on illustrating children's books (I already have several books on the topic...)

Just so you know that I am not just whining about the state of my life, I have started to simplify. I am not teaching at Art Is You this year. It was a very hard decision to make (love you Sal and Ellen), especially since they are going to be right outside Memphis for Art Is You Dixie. I will be at Stamford as a student, though. Can't miss AIY in some form!!

This year as I aim low and underachieve, I am going to spend a lot of time with my husband, kids, and sisters; drink a ton of Starbucks; get an Elliptical machine and torture myself; make a lot of stuff that requires glitter; and bug my friends to get back to regular art dates. 

I wish you delightfully the same!

 

 

 

 

 

A RESPONSE IN WHICH I EXPLAIN EVERYTHING & NOTHING

 

 

 

I received a couple of emails in response to my last post from people who felt I was being derisive and that I've lost the "joie de vivre" that my blog and articles used to have.

Perhaps its true.

Or perhaps I've grown up and out of the innocent first entry into the art world where everything seems possible and nothing is unattainable.

Am I cranky? Sure. Stressed? Sure.  So are all of you.

Let me explain my intent in my last post for those who believe that I am abandoning the "Everything is possible if you put a little bit of effort into it every day School of Creativity".

 Every mother of her first newborn takes a deep breath when handed this warm, soft, sweet bundle, looks deep into the baby's innocent eyes and says softly,   "I will be the best mother in the world. I will never lose my temper. You will never cry; never go hungry; and never eat sugar. You will never be bullied, bully others, watch TV, or  play with video games, Barbies, or toy weapons of any kind. 

And then one day at breakfast, your adorable, red-cheeked home-schooled 3-year old,  looks up from his or her  homemade Quinoa and organic blueberries sprinkled with Chia seeds, in a household that makes a Friends School look like the Tet Offensive, and as he takes a big bite out of his rectangle of gluten free toast, holds the long side up and points the short side at you and says, "Look, Mommy, I made a gun. Bang! Bang! You're dead."

Welcome to the world of real life. (And that was a true story.)

No matter how much love you give it,  and despite your best intentions, your best education and qualifications, and your unlimited time and energy, you cannot raise a baby in a bubble. Some of us come to this realization after the first child; for some of us it takes multiple births of adorable children who end up with a mind of their own, exhausted parents, and the realization  that all you really want is to sleep in one morning and you leave a box of Chocula on the kitchen table and tell the kid to make his own breakfast.

 

This is the point I am on in my creative journey.

 

 

I have  counselled others, written articles, and given talks with the subject that you will never get anything creative accomplished if you think that every project will be a masterpiece and lead to anything other than a learning experience. Process and the journey should be your focus, not the end result, nor certainly any benefits that might result due to the end result. 

You are all nodding your head in agreement with this. You fully understand this. 

But do you?

Cause I certainly didn't. 

I thought I understood.  Hell, I founded an identity on it. I made it a brand for this blog and for my articles. 

But subconsciously,  I did not think it applied to me. 

Consciously, I understood, embraced, and passed on the message.  But when I sat down to work, all I saw were dozens of recalcitrant children pointing toast guns at me. There is the  novel that will not progress; the  series of unfinished portraits sitting in a drawer; almost-finished art quilts;  planners filled with unexecuted ideas; and teetering piles of sketchbooks and journals with barely a dozen pages used in each, and multiple pages ripped out.

Over the past few years, the more intense my "real job" became, the more the stress I put on myself to make my creative life the GOLD STANDARD.  The more I felt myself losing ground in my "real job", the more I felt the pressure to make my creative life (i.e. my "true calling") reach the level of UNATTAINABLE PERFECTION. 

Each time I sat down to work, a  little voice would surface from the deepest, most embarassing depths of my Id that would whisper, "This could be your breakthrough. This could lead to an agent/a gallery/the bestseller list/to quitting your job and doing WHAT YOU WERE PUT ON THIS EARTH TO DO".

Please tell me that at least one of you hears a similar voice. I won't believe you if you tell me you don't - unless, of course, you are actually a working artist or writer who goes into the studio every day and puts in the hours and juggles 20 assignments in order to make a sustainable living. Then you don't hear this voice, or when you do, you know to tell it to SHUT UP.

The rest of us, or at least me, we work under different standards. We do not start or finish anything unless it meets  THE STANDARD OF UNATTAINABLE PERFECTION that will lead to the above. 

This little voice has more control of me than my mother ever had. It manifests itself by excessive procrastination while I research methods and backgrounds, surf Pinterest and YouTube, order how-to books, new supplies, and rearrange my studio, until I lose interest in it all and go onto The Next Great Idea. 

This syndrome is exacerbated by my real job, in which I literally have about one hour a night when I am not ready to fall on my face. I drive home determined to get started on a new chapter of the novel OR an illustrated history of ALL OUR FAMILY VACATIONS (OMG, this could lead to a writing and illustration career a la Maira Kalman!) and when faced wth the enormity of it all, spend my free hour surfing Facebook and falling asleep with a book I haven't read under my arm.  

It is a family curse. Trust me. And I have passed it down to some of my progeny. 

Because what is the point of any of it if I I don't produce THE PERFECT NOVEL/ILLUSTRATED MEMOIR/ FOLK ART PAINTINGS?  

You try sitting down to "play" with some paints or write a first draft with this ridiculous  guillotine waiting to cut your paper into shreds?

In 9th grade my English teacher, the to-swoon-over Barry Breen, had me stay after school to tell me he had read my creative writing and given it to a few friends to read and they'd all thought it was "amazing" but he also felt that I was, well, lazy. I wasn't giving it all. I wasn't motivated. I COULD DO BETTER. 

I swear to God it's all been downhill from there. 

I wish I could tell you that I have the antidote (OMG, I could get a bestseller in the self-help genre out of this blog post alone!!!!), but I haven't.  The only motivating factor that has begun to release me from the icy grip of my Inner Critic (you are a failure; a waste of resources; a sham) is the realization that the years are slipping by in a cycle of stress and exhaustion. I am failing to find the work/life balance. It is eating into my sleep, my friendships, and my emotional strength.

So this year: I AIM LOW. This year I UNDERACHIEVE. This year I take baby steps, piddle along, waste a lot of time fooling myself into thinking I am just making drafts and sneaking myself into producing the best of what I can produce at the moment which may not be much but which is SOMETHING. 

Let's all aim low. Let's hit the ground walking. Let's go bird by bird (thank you Ms. Lamott). 

Let's go for a walk with our walkers and orthopedic shoes and  see if by springtime we can make it to the end of the block. 

Or perhaps just take a nap. 

 

Watching Woods Fill Up with Snow

A snow-induced 3-day weekend is a thing of beauty: white, soft, silver, with infinite hours to fill.

 

 

Despite a tempting invitation to get together with old friends, I  made the promise to myself and Mr. Pom To Do Nothing.

Nothing except put away the china, silver, and crystal from Christmas Eve dinner. Take the leaves out of the dining room table and put away the extra chairs so we can actually walk in the room. Nothing as in take down the tree and put away the decorations. Nothing as in dig out from boxes, wrapping paper, laundry, dog fur, and an empty fridge. 

 

 

 

This morning, the fire is lit and I have command of the big Morris chair set by it.  

Others have usurped the sofa.

 

 

 

 

The youngest is still home from college but she will sleep until after noon, I am sure.  I will get my exercise letting the pups in and out in the snow, changing wet  pajama pants after each run outside to clean up after them. And there's a brief case bulging on the floor next to me as it's time to play catch up after the holiday time off. 

I could do worse than typing up reports by the fire with a steady stream of coffee and random surfing in between for an elliptical machine buy - also time to get rid of the rolls of cookies and cannoli that have appeared arond the midriff. 

Spending 3 days inside seems bliss. These won't get read by themselves!

 

     

I did finish Home Place. I did not write my Christmas cards. I have the box right here next to me. Wish I could send you all one, but at this point, January 3rd, I'll aim my low and try to get at least one into the mail to an aunt and uncle. 

Do you all want to know my New Year's Resolution" 

AIM LOW!

Do you want to know my "word" for 2014?

UNDERACHIEVE!

 

Think about it. 

I'm pretty sure it's going to replace The Secret as the latest fulfilling-your-fantasy-fantasy. 

You heard it here first. 

 

 

Begin the Year Aslant

 

 

 

Tell all the truth but tell it slant -
 

Emily Dickinson

 

 

We carry yesterday's truths

 

 

 

Into the morning of now. 

 

 

With reliance on Dickinson, these are the truths I tell aslant:

 

  

 

 

Faith is A Large Blue Sky.

 

 

 

Memories cause the Soul to stand Ajar. 

 

 

 

Revelry alone will Do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Strength is Artifice over Weakness.

 

 

 

 

Fortune befriends the Bold in friends.

 

 

 

Nature does not Knock.

 

 

 

Madness is Divinest Sense. 

 

 

 

 

Family is capacious. 

 

 

 

Tradition  a Bulwark.

 

 

 

Animals are the Things with Feathers. 

 

 

 

 

 

Home is the Headland. 

 

 

 

 

Idleness a Tune. 

 

 

 

 

Playthings are not to be Abandoned.

 

 

 

 

 

Children

 

 

 

are

 

 

our

 

 

 

 

 

 

Immortality.

 

 

 

 

 

 Love is Anterior to Life.

 

 

 

 

Love is so Startling

It leaves Little Time

for Anything Else. 

 

 

Happy New Year

 

May you Dwell in Possibility!

 

 

A Christmas Tale

 

Christmas beckons in the full, ripe solstice moon shining like a beacon across the snow.  This winter moon is so proud and strong and white. It rises early and remains low in the sky; it doesn't have the bravado and showmanship of the harvest moon, all golden orb pinned to a paper sky. No, this winter moon fills our bedroom with light as strong as day, sharp and clear to lead Santa on his way. 

 

 

I am trying to not miss Christmas for the trees that sparkle so shiny in my eyes. Distracted by loose ends of tinsel stuck to my pants by static electricity, by tags that fall between the cracks, cards that fly through the mail slot like snowy owls, and twinkly bits of sprinkles and snow tracked in by four-legged elves. 

 

 

The sky is low and dark and threatens perpetual snow. Satin sheets of clouds wrap round the sun and my head is stuffed with taffeta and meringue. I bleed sugar and spice when pricked by pine needles and the sharp points of starfish wriggling to be hung. 

 

 

By candlelight I look for the promised land: symmetry and bows and silent nights, raffish reindeer and mercury glass mirros that crack my reflection into a million points of light. I search for misteletoe to shoot from trees and rummage through closets for tins laden with gingerbread and pfefferneuse.  I spray powdered sugar into the air and dust myself with bennies and cinammon drops. I string myself along, hoping crystals form if I keep very still,  giving me a rope to climb on out of this sticky morass. 

 

 

 

It is here but not.  Yearning for tartan and velvet in a landscape scoured into rusty brown. The steel of ocean and fawn's ridge of sand, the arms begging stark naked imploring into a sky so low that it will soon weep with pain.  I want to be foolhardy and gambol in the meadow  like spring but itis time for herding and brooding and gathering thoughts in tight knots that defy untangling amidst the carols and jingling bells.

 

So I pack a carpet bag and travel far away, walking paths lined with Aubusson, browsing walls lined with Dickens, windows peeping into marzipan landscapes and pink kitchens and tables spread from porch to foyer, damask cloths, china plates and crystal glasses, tinkling bracelets  on arms, woodfire crackling, gifts piled at my feet, eyes sleepy with raspberry tarts drizzled with marscapone, sugar cubes for the taking, nuts to crack, oranges to peel, until I slip under the tassels and sleep at the feet of them all. 

 

 

 

And then my word!  The dream is here! L ook - snowflakes as big as comets, tasseled beams of ice,  waterfalls of fairy lights, and as many silvery shades of white as icebergs calving into the Bering Sea.

 

 

 

Off in the distance I see it, the nest of dreams, the house of houses, the nugget, the stone, the bare heart beating, the point of all my yearning.

A crown of candelights, a necklace of crystals, trees illuminated from within, clouds weaving through the roof, paper lanters spinning themselves silly,  mortar to lick and shingle to bite and I race to it with  shoes made from the feathers of white swans and lined with lynx and sprouting wings of ermine.

 

 

 

 

I try to run past white-clothed moutains but slip off a rock candy cliff and become airborn, gathering speed like a snowball shot from the arm of Hercules. 

 

 

I am light as an ember floating to ash in the Arctic sky, rushed up and up to the firmanents to Orion and Jupiter and Mars. I  soar amidst snowflakes and shooting stars and dancing bears and flying fox with coats of crimson red.

 

 

 

 

Down below, the world spins on,  my absence a vacuum where the sound of melancholy disappears. 

 

 

I grab at candy canes and lollipops, laden my skirts with caramels, and adorn my hair with marshmallows.   I dip silvered ladles into chocolate lakes and drizzle it across the Alps.  I string ropes of ribbon candy across  the Grand Canyon and spin candy floss from clouds, aloft with a puff of breath to float along the Yangtze River. Showers of peppermint crunch stud the the Eiffel Tower and I light afire a crackle of brulee across the surface of the Great Lakes.  

And then arises  a rush of wind and water, the ocean a morass of whipping cream afloat with ships of Charlotte Russe. Teddy bears buzz by in prop planes  and dolls cry "Mama"  as they skip across Floating Islands in the Sound. The moon pops through a slit in a velvet curtain drawing back, and speed skaters link arms with mine and I am whizzing now on skates of fire to the center of it all. 

 

 

I tremble with anticipation, then suddenly become afraid. What if no one will let me in? What if no one is there?  I look for a door, a knocker, a bell but can only peek in  windows lined with gumdrops as big as fists and wheels of licorice whips and thick molasses sticks. 

 

 

What if I cannot, like Alice, fit through the door?

 What if the room is empty - or worse too full - with sticky hands beseeching for more, faces covered in marshmallow fluff, eyes glazed as they stare at the fat man in the red suit that in fact looks nothing like Dad?

 

 

With a feeling of dread that this nest is but a cardboard box, I take a full breath to expel the treacle from my lungs and plunge like lead past seven lords a leaping and six maids  a milking and dive into five golden rings.

I awake in my bed to the sound of a velvet dog barking,  and spring to the window and open the sash. 

There is no sound but of the present. The light of memory is gone. My hands are empty and my feet are bare. There is no "Merry Christmas" being called as guests pile out the door and  pipe smoke rises up the stairs.  

The night is ordinary and cold; the sky is dark.

I am alone.

 

When, to the east  a star appears and I hear what sounds like the softest bleat of a lamb.  

I am led by a light as pure and enchanting as any comet in the viewfinder of an ancient mariner's glass.

In bare feet, I run across  the dirty, rutted snow of my backyard, jumping over  the holes dug by dogs and  circling round the rubbish bins aflutter with tattered shred of wrapping paper. 

 

 

 

But how can this be?

The gates are locked. The hour is late. The dogs did not awake. 

How there be a  baby and a stable and an angel,  donkeys and lambs, a mother and father and shepherds on high?

How does no one else hear the  bleating lambs and mooing cows or smell the hay and dung? Who are those  three distant figures wearing crowns coming into view? Is now one else aware of the beating of the wings of an angel hovering right there?

My breath cannot sustain me; my lungs threaten to collapse.  

This is it: the nest of dreams, the house of houses, the nugget, the stone, the bare heart beating.  

This is the cave that  will shelter me  when  the undertow of memory threatens to drown, the breath of love that fills my lungs until  I reach the surface. 

This is the star that never sets, the star whose light illuminates the  sleeping bodies of those I love,  those given to me to love,  placed under the tree of life with a big fat bow. Those who are  yet  flesh and blood and not projections on the wall,  but  silly and sad and fierce and cowardly and tender and gruff. Those that I can reach out and touch, trace their crow's feet with my hands, smooth the tangled strands of hair, and quiet their own quickly beating hearts. Those that are utterly mine and mine alone. 

Dawn  breaks the sky,   the  eastern star begins to dim, and  though my feet are burn with cold, I slip and slide across the snow to reach the magic of  my heart of hearts,  but all for nought.

I  wake with a start in my own bed,  and frantically chasing in my mind try the last lingering sweet memory of that star's light. 

I turn to rise and see there, on the nightstand, a battered shoebox on its side. I pick it up and it is light; I shake it but hear no sound. I lift the lid and glitter dusts  my pillow, so I hastily sit up to look inside. 

A faded yellow construction paper star, a tumble of popsicle sticks glued into a crib, an empty spool of thread with two ink dot eyes, wrapped round with  lace. Cardboard  figures kneel  askew on either side,  and dusty cotton balls of baby lambs patiently keep the baby warm. 

My manger,  my creche,  made 50 years ago and not seen since!  The handkerchief lace my mother snipped! The glitter I shook into yellow mucilage! The faded box from the discount store, bearing shiny black patent Mary Janes on Christmas morn! 

 I look around but there  is no note, no one else home but me.

There is nothing to explain it but the Christmas mystery. 

 

 

Did You See My Brain Cells? I Left Them Right on the Table Right Before Thanksgiving Dinner

 

I am going to do the book post!

Just not today.

 

 

Blame stuffing, corn pudding, mashed potatoes, and gravy yesterday and then trying to diet today, which caused me to eat an entire bag of celery, some horribly seasoned hummus, an apple with peanut butter, a truly horrif container of lentil soup from the cafeteria, a Starbucks egg white and turkey bacon sandwich (think a pillow with flabby egg and cardboard bacon), and then come home from work and eat 3 After Eight mints, a handful of pita chips shared with the dogs, shrimp Pad Thai, and a dumpling.

Carb coma. 

 

Tomorrow's breakfast.

 

Then, we watched HBO's new series, "Getting On", about a nursing home ward headed by Laura Metcalfe, a doctor flaming out in her career, who is obsessed with a feces study, and scares me because she reminds me of a judge in the Bronx, who also clenches her teeth and rigidly smiles while ripping you a new one, and then dramatically and totally falsely apologizes while her face twitches.

Shudder.

The series, however, is FANTASTIC.  Everytime we decide to rip out cable, we realize that we only watch on demand shows (except for my completely guilty but proud of addiction to various Housewives of (when the hell does New York start?)

I am now watching with a fascination bordering on  stupefation  a hot mess of a 39 year old Chris Lilley in drag as Ja’mie: Private School Girl.  

Yet, somehow in an Australian way, it works - oops, Mr. Pom just hit the remote. That's all folks!

So, book giving will have to wait a bit, but with Amazon readying the drones, you can order Xmas Eve and expect a drop by Santa Drone before the kiddies go to sleep.

Speaking of Amazon, I was on the edge of my seat all day Sunday waiting for SUNDAY DELIVERY of Lesley Riley's new book , for which I am a contributing artist. 

 

 

I had planned a glorious post with pics and an enticing review that would have all you hitting "Send" before the night was over. 

But it never came. Nope. Nada.

Customer Service tells me that the "delivery could not be completed". They have no other information but advised me to check my address. I told the nice person who was typing in stilted English that I am sure it is correct because about every other day for the last 5 years,  Mr. Pom grabs an Amazon delivery, walks into the living room with it and gives me the look that says, "Really? Another book?" So yeah, I'm pretty sure Amazon knows where I live. 

So I can't give you a good look at it nor could I show it off to my kids, all of whom vamoosed on Sunday for a life where they are not being force fed smoked turkey and stuffing. 

Instead I was advised to reorder it and they would process a refund. So don't hold your breath about magic helicopters leaving the complete works of Jane Austen on your front porch 5 minutes after you think about it. a

(I'm usually not this harsh: it's the Pad Thai talking).

 

Good night and have a pleasant tomorrow. 

Throwback December

 

I have a 5 year old MacBook Pro that I fire up every once in awhile in order to sync my phone. I never figured out how to transfer my Itunes onto my MacBook Air, and despite many children and children in law telling me they'd do it for me, it hasn't happened, so I have to use the dinosaur laptop. I found this old profile pic on it  and thought it seasonally apt to post.

 

I don't mind using the old laptop, but I'm afraid one of these days it isn't going to fire up. One of the hinges for the lid is hanging by a wire. But all my old photos are on this old laptop or on a hard drive. I find that putting them on a hard drive is like putting them out to sea on an iceberg. Either I'm too lazy to get up and find the hard drive and the cable, or I can't find either,  so I never even see these old pics.

Since I just have my 11th year blogeraversary, I am going to make December "Throwback December" and post from this dinosaur lots of Christmassy photos from years past. I promise not to deluge you with them, though!

 

Hmm, so I used to change my banner seasonally back in the day? Wherever did all that energy go??

 

So far Thanksgiving weekend has been pretty perfect. We entertained, cleaned, served it all a second day, cleaned, and now Saturday, we are doing much of nothing except the usual chores and some organizing.

I can sit at my drawing desk once again and I am working on our Christmas card. I can't guarantee that it will go out before Christmas, but it will go out.

 Tomorrow is the first Sunday in Advent. There are only 3 weeks and two days until Christmas. I, for one, am truly unprepared. It will all come together, in some semblance or another. If only I could convince the kids and Mr. Pom that all we need is lots of candles and some greenery from the woods. I have a 4 foot silver tinsel tree and I'd be glad to decorate that instead of the usual 6 feet of mammoth greens. Also, if we would all pretend that we were going on a cruise and say, go on a cruise? I'd like that wrapped up with a bow, please. (Actually I hate cruises, but an island by plane would be fine.)

 

This is great picture. I was so color coordinated! It's like finding a blueprint for decorating. I'll just run down and whip all this out.

 

 

 Candles. We only need candles. Repeat after me

 

Also, on the subject of Christmas presents,  all I want is to replace all the tubes of gouache that dried up over the last 5 years. And don't try to pawn off some student grade stuff on me, thank you very much. I want the good stuff. Along with all new groovy ink pens (check out Roz Stendahl's blog today). I can always use some great paper. I think a trip to New York Central Art Supply is in order as I haven't been there in 2 or 3 years.

I have the itch to sew/embroider/bead. Micalangela suggests that I start with the ripped seam on her favorite sweater that's been on my sewing table for 2 years. I suggest she learn to sew or buy another sweater (don't tell her I threw it out awhile ago thinking that if she hasn't asked for it by now...). How did these kids not learn to sew? It's not like I wasn't always making a quilt or something. Along the lines of leading a horse to water....

 

 

 

This is what Christmas is really like at the Pomegranates. The Youngest is always sick and Mr. Pom succumbs about 4 hours before he goes to pick up 4 trays of highly garlicked seafood, and then I fall over midway through the Christmas Even meal, and all our guests go home, wash their hands in Clorox and swab their orifices with Listerine.

 

One of these crazy days, I am going to save ALL my vacation time and take off the month of December. I will make felted ornaments beaded with antique rhinestones from my aunt's button jar. I will go into the woods and cut fresh greens, bittersweet, holly, and not get poison ivy, and wreath this house in white lights, red bows, and fresh greens. I will bake a different cookie every day of December, revive the annual cookie swap, have all the girls over for tea, go ito the city and visit each Christmas Fair, see all the shop windows during the weekday mornings when no one is around, go to all the bookstores in Brooklyn, every Anthropologie, eat at the Russian Tea Room, hear all the Christmas concerts at all the churches, visit Lichtfield, Ct., and then do the Martha's Vineyard Christmas stroll.

 

 

Or just look at the pics on this laptop of what we did a few years ago. Like  drool over the giant gingerbread Chatham Bars Inn.

 

A cookie boat and candy canal!!

 

 

 

Instead, I am will probably manage the gingerbread cookies, hang my big "Believe" glittered sign on the front door, take out all my felt and beads and pat it lovingly every time I pass the pile on the way to bed, manage one trip to the city and be smothered by tourists, probably convince Mr Pom to go to Brooklyn for Brunch, and be happy next weekend to go to the Cape for his birthday and take lots of pics of the Christmas lights.

 

That actually sounds pretty good.

 

I would like my hair back to this color and style, but it means returning to an old hairdresser and y'all know how complicated that can be.

 

I also would like this lamp back but someone cracked it right down the middle and then somehow put it together and I didn't discover it for a long time until I tried to move it and it fell apart in my hands. The crime has never been solved......

 

 

I have to admit that ever since the kids graduated from wanting "THAT" i.e. Tickle Me Elmo, Barbie's Dream House, or the X Box that will only be released 5 days before Christmas,  I have lost my Christmas anxiety. How bad can it be? With online ordering, the marvelous invention of gift bags instead of wrapping paper, and nieces who use Pinterest, I am pretty set.

 

How about you? What is the distance between the fantasy and the reality of your holidays? Christmas in Connecticut versus the bus on Long Island? Channukah in Costa Rica versus your grandmother's apartment at the senior center? The Von Trapp Family Inn (a real place) versus Walmart before the kids wake up on Christmas morning?

These, my friends, are how memories are made!

 

Thanksgiving to You All and For You All

 

Learning to cook for a Thanksgiving crowd is an art. The menu planning, the shopping, the several days of prep, and the timing of the actual cooking is as close as I’ve ever come to being a chef, and as close as I’ve ever wanted to be.

At some point during each holiday, I reach critical mass and whilst everyone else claims work demands, school demands, and travel demands, I will have my Annual Shoutfest, after which all will skulk away, pissed off at me.

Hmmpf. Such is life, I've learned.

 

 

In my late 30’s, I was as lonely and adrift when we lived in Fresno as I have ever been in my life. Holidays were challenging with 3 little ones who missed their grandma, aunts and uncles.  I was too young and sad to let all the trappings go and invent a new holiday style for us. I only knew the way I had been raised.

I'll never forget peeling chestnuts at Thanksgiving as the heavy scent of roses from my neighbor's garden filled the kitchen and in my sensory disorientation, all I could register was the lack of wood smoke and falling leaves. I insisted on a traditional holiday meal with 3 courses, the best cloth and china, and everyone dressed up. Nothing spells Thanksgiving more than 3 adults and 3 kids sitting in a large empty dining room, and watching your family chew dry turkey, with the little one crying that she wants to watch Barney.

It sucked.  

Of course, it wasn't all seasonal affective disorder. 

All I could see and feel and hear were what we were missing. Actually, what I was missing: my father, recently deceased; my mother and aunt; my sisters and their families; my quilting group, my best friends; my garden; and even my uterus (it was a tough year). My entire sense of who I was, who my husband was, and who we were as a family, even as New Yorkers, blew up when we moved to the Central Valley where the only daytime sounds were pool filters kicking on and off, gardeners trimming hedges, and garage doors remotely opening and closing as unknown neighbors left in cars with tinted windows. 

 

 

I was starting to feel that same sense of loss in the last year.  Isolated, cut off, alone, yet this time I was right in the midst of  family, work and friends. I was focusing so much on what wasn't here and what who wasn't here and how little I wanted to adjust to it all. It comes in waves, those moments when I realize with a start that there is no one home to   to set the table or clean the shrimp. When my feet ache, my bones complain, and I snap at the dogs, I wonder how on earth I will get through the rest of this life, with just my husband and I listening to urselves chew our food in such a quiet house at dinnertime. It all comes out at holiday times, when that that loneliness rears it head front and center and I i raise my voice and everyone skulks off and is pissed at me for the rest of the day.

If I let it, I will spend the holidays regretting the best of what is past and lamenting what is missing from the present. 

If I let it, I will spend the rest of my life regretting what is past and lamenting what is missing from the present.

I am very good at telling others to learn to be in the moment,  but the truth is that I too easily slip into nostalgia and melancholy. It is my deepest character flaw and I find myself haing to work on this lesson over and over again. Since the death of my mother last year, I have had to go back to the beginning and start the journey anew. 

This year, I find I just can’t get carried away with the stress anymore. I hope the meal is all done and done well by the time we sit down. I outsourced all the pies to any family member who will want to eat one and my sister always brings many of the sides. I hope there’s room for 12 people to sit in the living room without anyone having to sit on the floor.

And I have really, really tried to stop counting the empty places at the table.

 

 

During a quiet moment last night, I emptied a bag of fresh, gleaming cranberries into a sauce pan, sectioned an orange and a red grapefruit, added a glaze of orange juice, a dusting of ginger, and turned up the heat. The red marbles of berries looked so beautiful against the gleaming stainless steel pot and I waited for the moment when I would hear the berries pop. Music played in the background, the youngest made it home from college safely in the rain, and I worked quietly in the bubble of task lighting above the range.  I felt my stomach unclench, a smile play across my lips, and I generously flipped pieces of stuffing baguettes to the dogs as they danced under my feet, eagerly awaiting scraps because their last meal was 5 minutes ago and they are starving.

 

 

I have accepted that I am the matriarch of my own family now. That it is my responsibility, at least for these years, to get us through the holidays with a minimum of stress but without martyring myself. I enjoy this role and I am learning to relax into it and create a holiday that is sustainable for all.

I can only do this by grabbing some of the hours that fall through my hands like autumn leaves and carve out time to write. It’s not a luxury or an option or a hobby. It is the essence of what makes me a loving person and prevents me from devolving into an angry, irritable woman who huffs and puffs and pushes the dogs off the bed.

So this afternoon, when I should be prepping, cooking, stirring, and dicing, I will shut the stove, close the office cell phone, outsource the dogs to the youngest, and sit for several hours at Starbucks writing with my headphones on and laptop open.

 

 

I want to leave my own children not just the secret to the cornbread chestnut herb stuffing, but the secret of a life of happiness. I only know that when I am writing, I am living word by word. I am not sentimentalizing what words I used in my childhood, nor am I lamenting a paucity of words in my future.

I am simply proceeding word by word into a simple, full life.

I wish you all the most satisfying of Thanksgiving days, ask that you be blessed with having those around you who bring you laughter and love, and thank you all for giving me this forum to chronicle my life to you, word by word.