Brain tumors?

Tonight while I was putting together something for work, Doug put on TCM and there was a movie playing with Bette Davis, Dark Victory. She's a "young socialite diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, and must decide whether she'll meet her final days with dignity." I'll say this - she lived a pretty good life post-unsuccessful brain surgery. Married her doctor, moved to Vermont to a huge farmstead, chain-smoked and drank like a fiend, rode horses stabled by none other than Humphrey Bogart, and had no outward symptoms of her inward destruction. Not too shabby!

There was a time when I thought that I had a brain tumor. Sometimes I still wonder. I don't think I'm a hypochondriac, but I do think that I sometimes manifest symptoms that indicate certain... ailments. Possibly my only ailment is that I think too much and focus too much on the ills of the world (though if I were Bette Davis, even with a brain tumor I think I could deal. She was actually quite good in this movie, animated yet thoughtful, and man, those eyes!). Sometimes it is very difficult to not worry about life. War, famine, crime, poverty, recession, depression, materialistic consumer culture, obesity, global warming, loss of natural resources, cancer... I could continue. But eh, why bother? Was there ever a time when terrible things weren't happening in the world? People used to dump their chamber pots outside their window onto the sidewalk below, and somehow I'm here to write melancholy blog posts. Mostly, people survived. I guess I can survive, too. Just like Bette Davis. For though she goes blind at the end of the movie and does not survive her brain tumor (sorry for the spoiler), she certainly decided to focus on the positives, and she was out planting hyacinths and petting her dogs, walking and talking and smiling until about five minutes before she lay down on her four-poster bed and died. How inspirational!

So here is my last list of positives for the week. Hope it's inspirational!

1. Finding a new local pizza place that's actually quite good!
2. Mochi ice cream. Have I used that one before?
3. Ebay.
4. Turner Classic Movies.
5. The sound of rain on the roof when you're trying to go to bed (and the sun brightly shining when you're waking up).
6. Iced tea.
7. The last day of work before vacation.
8. Vacation!
9. Photographs.
10. Discovering old CDs that you haven't heard in ages and deciding they're not so bad after all.

A few more pros.

I've had a bit of a set-back in my positive thinking - yesterday was a bit of a downer and this morning, perhaps because of the weather, the mood just isn't shaking - but I want to reverse that, so I'm back to present some more positives for the day.

1. Plums. I think they're in season. I love plums.
2. Book reviews.
3. A night without a humping cat (he was in the room, but just wasn't humping. Miraculous!)
4. Softlips coconut lip gloss.
5. Library Journal

I probably could muster more out of the depths of my being, but today's a busy day so I need to get going. And actually, I'm hoping that today is so busy that I won't have time to think about anything. That usually works out best.

Another summer weekend slips away.

It's baaack! The humidity is back, having taken a break from late April until now. Please understand - I am not complaining. We have had a way too mild summer so far for me to even think about complaining. I am simply commenting, and would also like to say that the cats don't like this weather. All three have assumed their summer positions of lying upside down with their legs in the air at random spots on the floor. I just don't want it to get so bad heat-wise that they start to pant. I hate that.

What I don't hate is that Wyatt and Meg have a wonderful friendship. I really am pleased, because Meg can be a cool customer at times, somewhat of a loner, and I worry that she doesn't get enough of our love. She gets lots of Wyatt's love, though, and sometimes too much, as the case was today. I was in the sun room working on my picture frames (more on that below) and Meg jumped on the table to beg for attention. I petted her, but she eventually jumped into the kitty condo, which at the time was occupied by Wyatt. Didn't matter, as Meg curled up next to him and Wyatt immediately started to lick her.That went on for a few minutes, but then Wyatt decided to kick it up a notch. He got her in a body hold (which looks a bit like a hug, but I know better) and then bit her neck, readying himself for the hump, but she was having none of that and fought back.It took a while for Wyatt to understand that he was rejected,but after the confusion he took the hint and jumped down to stretch himself out and give himself some consoling licks. The good thing is that within an hour they were back at it with each other, so no hard feelings from either of them.

We didn't just spend the weekend peeping on the love lives of our cats, though. I got my hair cut againbecause the other hair just wasn't working if it wasn't blown dry, and since I never, ever blow dry my hair it just wasn't working. There were all these funky layers that didn't blend properly, so those are cut off and I'm back to a plain old bob. Sometime this fall the layers that are left in my hair should be grown out enough so that I can start to have some kind of more interesting style, but right now I'm just glad that my hair isn't causing me to avoid the mirror anymore.

Doug spent a good part of today posting stuff to Craigslist (anyone want some used guitar gear and/or a Lazy-Boy style recliner? Please?), and while he was doing that I cleaned the kitchen, downstairs bathroom, organized my desk a little, and then began one of the craft projects that I had planned for the day. For a while I've been eager to get this one started, since I really didn't like the frame in which I had the informal wedding photos, taken by Marieke and friends. The frame, if you recall, was silver and the silver was too modern-looking for our living room. So, I got out the paint, ribbon, and drill and made another hanging photo frame, like the one I have the cats' pictures in. It looks much, much better.

This project took me way longer than planned, though, so I won't have time for my other craft project (since I still have to fold four giant loads of laundry...). I will have time to eat a piece of homemade strawberry pie, recipe courtesy of Cook's Country. Doesn't it look good? It does look good, but I can't yet vouch for its good flavor; I left out the sugar! I realized it at the very end when I was about to put the strawberry mixture into the crust, so I added a bunch at the very end, but I was supposed to simmer the sugar with the strawberries way before that point. Oh well. I'm sure it will still be good... and I'm about to go find out!

More pros.

I'm on a roll. Here are some more positive thoughts I've grown somewhere in the pink and puffy positive part of my otherwise gray and cloudy brain:

1. Strawberries for breakfast.
2. Crossing the days off the calendar.
3. Apple juice.
4. Wearing a skirt with freshly shaved legs.
5. A cool summer, allowing my freshly shaved legs sans evil, itchy heat rash to be exposed in said skirt.
5. The potential to once again be musical.
6. The idea of finally learning a language that I can use in everyday (or almost everyday) life.
7. No meetings with vendors for three days.
8. A lunch of coffee yogurt and an apple with peanut butter.

You know, it's amazing that almost 40% of my list of positives today is food-related. Food has been obsessing me lately. It's partly because my stomach has been regressing... I rarely get hungry and more often than not have that old and nagging feeling of fullness. I haven't stopped eating to compensate for this feeling, though, as I did last year, and so now I just always feel bloated (TMI, perhaps?). So my stomach is always on my mind, and I guess by default the food I put into it. Plus I'm trying to eat better. More vegetables. I'm trying to eat at least one vegetable a day. Don't laugh - it's actually a very good goal for me. Very attainable. Future-building with attainable, realistic goals. Setting my sights a little lower so that I'm not always setting myself up for disappointment. So many new themes!

To the beach!

On Sunday, Doug and I went to the beach with my sister, brother-in-law, and my nieces (my nephew, a true sign that he is getting older and will soon no longer be our little Frankie anymore, was at a sleepover the night before and opted to go to the beach with his friends rather than his family), and we had a great time. The weather was absolutely perfect for a beach day... about 72 degrees, a light breeze, warm sun... couldn't have been more perfect. Doug and the girls built a sand castle, we buried the girls in the sand, and my sister and I tried to bring a little color to our ghostly-white skin (though actually, Doug and I were the only ones of the group who were ghostly white. Even Maria noticed it - "You guys are really white," she said to us in her adorably frank six-year-old way. This is the same girl who on another occasion told us that we were really annoying. What a charmer!) Proof of our fun times:

Ah, the beach. The sun. The sand. The salty air. The sticky feeling you get from being exposed to the elements all day. The little red splotches you notice when you leave the beach and can see where you missed with the spray-on sunscreen. The peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The people-watching. (Rhode Island is a great state for people-watching. There are all kinds in Rhode Island.) I'd love to spend my summer at the beach. How I envy those with beach houses and time to spend at them.

But anyway, back to reality. When we came home from the beach on Sunday night we discovered that something was awry with our fence. Seems our elderly neighbor across the street backed into our fence, and now it's partially knocked over. I don't have photos of it; I don't really want them to see me taking a photo of the fence because I don't want them to think I'm going to get the insurance men after them, and this neighborhood is very tiny so I figure they'll see me, or if not them then one of the other neighbors. We got home and one of our other neighbors, the family that just put in the pool, came over to talk to Doug as he was assessing the damage. The lady of that family said that she saw the older woman across the street from us back into the fence and that the older woman planned to call us regarding the fence, but we didn't get a call. The next night Doug and I knocked on their door, just to acknowledge that we knew about the fence and that there are no hard feelings, because there aren't really - it's just a fence that was (though now more urgently) in need of attention anyway. So Doug and I went over to talk to them about it, but wouldn't you know that the old woman didn't fess up to anything! The old man, Dick, answered the door and he had no idea that anything had happened to our fence. He said maybe some kids on bikes rammed into it. Doug and I didn't know how to react to this so we said sure, maybe kids on bikes, sorry to bother you, have a nice night! Then, about 20 minutes later, our doorbell rang and poor old Mr. B is outside our door saying that he's sorry but it was his wife who rammed our fence. She didn't tell him about it until just then and he had no idea and he is so sorry and he could just club her for doing it... We assured old Mr. B that there are no hard feelings, and that the fence can probably be mended. He went away, but not before telling us that we needed to install a railing at our front steps. Old people - gotta love them! So I guess fence repair is now in our future...

... just like masonry is, or was. We started to tackle the repair job to our back stepsbut the job is going to be a lot more complicated than we thought. Pretty much every stone is loose, and all the mortar/cement around them is crumbling. We don't have the right tools to apply the mortar into the stone holes to patch it, and the mortar that we have was way too liquidy to do any good. We are thinking of calling a repair person. We are reluctant to do so, as it seems so straight-forward and we would prefer to do it ourselves, but we may be in over our heads. Because there are two things that we don't want:

1. To have our steps fall apart while we research how to fix them and then find some free time to spend fixing them.
2. To spend all weekend, and maybe more, trying to fix the steps.

Isn't there something called a cost-benefit analysis? The cost of us doing the steps ourselves in both time and money (we already spent over $50 on tools and mortar that apparently aren't correct) may outweigh the benefit of doing our own home repair. But we haven't decided on this one yet.

What we have decided on is that we are looking forward to vacation in a couple of weeks... this time next week we'll be looking at a lakeside cottage in Maine with Chris and Chris (and baby girl chris) right in the eye. Hello vacation! I'm ready.

The pros.

In the spirit of my last post, I will again make a list of my positives for today. Future-building. Forward-thinking. Looking at the positives. Not dwelling in the past or on the negatives of life. These are my new mantras, and my new favorite clichés.

1. Leaving work early to go to a doctor's appointment - yay for getting extra time for being in the sun!
2. Yay for the sun!
3. International yogurt varieties (current favorites are Icelandic, Greek, and Australian).
4. Leaving the house without a jacket.
5. Dancing with Wyatt.
6. Mochi ice cream.
7. The beach (more on that another day).
8. Hydration.

A good list. A good start for the day. Now, if only I could have a mochi and a Greek yogurt while dancing with Wyatt in the sun at the beach... that would be ideal.

I deleted a post.

I deleted a post from my blog. You may have read it, but since it was from yesterday you may not have read it. It was a rambling post about wearing security badges at work, having your photo and home address posted on the corporate intranet site, and not wanting to work where I had to swipe my way through halls and doorways. I wrote it before I read this really timely article by Stephen Abrams in a prior edition of Information Outlook. His article was titled, "Start Now: 30 Days to Prepare for Your Next Position," and it was really quite good. I did a lot of highlighting in it (with my new favorite color of highlighter being green, by the way. Used to be orange.). But one of the most poignant pieces of advice he gave in this article, which can be applied to any situation and not just to the job hunt, was #24: Always be positive. Even if you hated your last or current position don't let anyone know. Your attitude is, after all, the best predictor of how you'll be at your next employer! Now how true is that. And so I was thinking about the post I did yesterday about my security badge, and my complaining about not wanting to work somewhere where I had to wear one, and where the only way I could know all of my colleagues was by looking them up in the facebook on our intranet site, and was thinking about how that might sound to someone who didn't know me. I don't want to come off as a complainer (ha!). As one who is ungrateful. So I took the post down (but actually just gave a nice summary so maybe I just defeated the whole purpose of the deletion).

I may not be helping my cause, here... the more I write the more I risk going down a path I don't want to go down. So I'll wrap this one up with a photo of good stuff - a photo of me and Doug taken right after our engagement, July 4th, 2007(seems to be a time for anniversaries of all sorts). On that day I felt happy, energetic, ready for the future. It's my goal to feel that way every day. I do know that I'm not always going to have an amazing guy ask me to marry him every day, handing me my happiness on a silver platter (literally). My happiness is something that I'm going to have to create for myself. Future-building. That's what I'm going to have to focus on each day. Looking at the positives. So far, here's a list of my positives for today:

1. I'm alive.
2. My cute husband missed my mouth when trying to give me a kiss goodbye this morning (his aim in the early morning is not so good).
3. My cats didn't wake me up in the middle of the night last night.
4. It's Friday and I have a weekend ahead of me.
5. I will accomplish the three things I have on my to-do list before noon.
6. I am planning a new course of training at work for new-hires and today plan to discuss my ideas with library peers.
7. I will ride my bike tonight.
8. Plan on making a corn tart for dinner, and I love, love, love corn.

Not a bad list so far, right? Maybe I'm on to something here.

The Green Mountain State is really green.

We're back and none too pleased about it. Doug and I get very used to being away from home. Being away from work, the cats, the house, the chores, the every day-ness of home. We liked Vermont. We want to go back. Soon.

We did lots of things in Vermont. We wore funny hats:

Saw fireworks (it was only drizzling at the time of the show - not enough rain to cancel the event altogether, thankfully):

Had free beer at Magic Hat:

Took a narrated boat cruise on Lake Champlain (though I can't recommend the cruise in the driving wind and cold rain. Neither can I recommend the narration. You're better off reading a brochure. But the scenery is lovely.):

Saw Banjo Dan and his band perform and were inspired to form our own bluegrass band, with me on the fiddle and Doug on the banjo. We'd call ourselves Sheriko. It could work.

Went to the Ethan Allen Homestead:

Walked around the beautiful grounds of Shelburne Farms and interacted with the wildlife:

Took lots and lots of photos of the lush Vermont scenery:

Bumped into Marieke and Curt, who were on their way to Montreal (and I am happy to see them, just tired and windblown, unfortunately):

Ate yummy, wholesome local food, like this fruit and yogurt parfait (and believe me, this one is so much better the ones from McDonald's):

And stuffed ourselves silly with yummy, wholesome local ice cream on the way back home:

We really had a good time. The bed was big and fluffy, the hotel was clean and had a nice pool (that Doug even went in!), and we got plenty of sleep and ate three square meals a day. We were living the good life in Vermont, and we wish we were still there (even though we had this lovely thing to come home to):

Anyone want to rent a house in the Burlington area with us next summer? We're totally there, man. Totally there.

Can there be a fireworks display in the rain?

This holiday weekend cannot come fast enough. Tomorrow night directly after work Doug and I are making the 4+ hour trip to Burlington, VT, for a little get-away. Sort of a belated birthday/engagement anniversary trip. I hope that it's not a washout weekend. I have heard that in Boston it is supposed to rain through Friday, but who knows. It's probably going to rain forever (my abilities to be optimistic about the weather are non-existent). But Burlington has a big fireworks display planned for Friday night, and we hope to get in a tour of the Ethan Allen homestead, the UVM morgan horse farm, the Magic Hat Brewery, and maybe a trip across Lake Champlain to New York. These plans are basically contingent on the weather, so you can see why I am eager for NO MORE RAIN. We have snails in our yard and mushrooms growing all over the place... It's just so damp.

This past weekend we did have one sunny day, though - Saturday, my brother's birthday. Doug dropped me off at the fabric store in Manchester, CT, and there I met up with my mother and sister. I bought the fabric that I need for the first part of my quilt, and then some other fabric that I need for another of my sewing projects, spending WAY too much on fabric. But I got some good patterns, so I guess it's okay.

To celebrate my brother's birthday, my mom, brother and I went out to dinner and then to a play at the Hartford Stage. Dinner was good, as it always is at Alfresco's (I am amazed this place has a website). The presentation of the food is so nice there (see below) and the quality is very good, but the atmosphere lacks something. Then again, it is on Burnside Avenue in East Hartford, so I shouldn't really be asking for fancy decor.

The play was good, too (Dividing the Estate), but was a little long. It lacked a real plot. The children of this old lady are urging her to divide the estate before she dies, and then she dies without dividing it. Does one need two hours and fifteen minutes to relay that story? I liked the acting, though, for the most part. The people behind us hated this play, though. Hated it. They spent all of intermission ripping it apart (overacted, no plot, too long, caricatures, blah blah blah) and trying to decide if they should stay for the rest of it. They stayed, but my goodness. They were more annoying than anything about the play. Post-play we had a bit of birthday cake, the cake (and cake-decorating) courtesy of my dad. Birthdays just aren't birthdays without a little cake.

The next day my mom, brother and I took Tyrone for a walk, but he ended up getting lost half-way through our hike and so we spent a lot of our time looking for him ("Tyrone! Tyrone! Come, boy!"). The photos of the hike were taken before the dog got lost. After the dog got lost I lost my enthusiasm for picture-taking, as I was dreaming of being stuck in the forest at midnight still looking for the dog. Apparently it's been done before.

Overall, though, the weekend was a very good one for me, and for Doug as well. He enjoyed his time in Monroe, traveling to Southbury and to several garden stores looking for a birdhouse. He came home with three - one new, and two from his dad's shed. Now we just have to put them up outside and hope that the birds come!

And speaking of nature, Monday night we took advantage of the dry weather to mow the lawn and trim the trees at the front steps, so now we don't have to do this for another four weeks. Note to anyone doing yardwork - get it done before dusk. Man, those mosquitoes are killer.

But before I end... congratulations, Chris and Chris, on the news of a healthy girl! Can't it be November already? We want to meet her!