For What It's Worth

Nothing much (new) to say.

2012-02-11T11:14:00.001-05:00

I realize that I have been harping on and on about food choices, recipes, healthy eating, weight, blah blah blah... but I have to continue my harpy ways. I have been feeling very strongly and have been very motivated about all of this. For whatever reason, some kind of switch just flipped in my brain three or four weeks ago and now I'm very much obsessed with correcting bad habits (at least bad eating habits).

I finally finished Why We Get Fat, and I have never read a book that I so thoroughly hated for the first ten pages but then started to live and breathe every chance I got. It's like it penetrated my cells, just like simple carbohydrates seem to, but in a much more positive, much more healthy way. This book, conversations with friends, and some good old Internet research, have really turned me off to my constant and devotional intake of simple carbohydrates and sugars. I have also realized that the vast majority of my diet was composed of simple carbohydrates and sugars. Take a look at one of the last meals I had before I started to read this book: a giant pile of sweet potatoes, a giant pile of mashed potatoes, four slices of oatbran bread, some generous pads of Smart Balance spread, a glass of orange juice, and a whole package of Trader Joe's Bistro Biscuits. I ate all of this under the pretense of being healthy. Potatoes? Good for me - a vegetable! Oat bread? Good for me - whole grains and fiber! Non-butter spread? Good for me - not butter and with added flax! Orange juice? Good for me - vitamin C! Bistro Biscuits? Not good for me, but better to eat the whole bag at that point then have them sitting on the shelves calling to me and driving me batty (right?).

So. You get the point.

I have been pretty devoted to my new way of eating since I started this almost a month ago. I have also been better about getting Doug to eat less sugar, or at least drink less sugar. Now, sugar is a treat for us, and so is a giant bowl of cheesy, saucy, coma-inducing pasta. Christmas comes once a year for a reason; if it were Christmas every day then it wouldn't be special. Same thing with cookies, cakes, breads, and others of my absolute most favorite foods. This is a regimen about moderation, not about complete denial. It's also a regimen about eating at home more. This does mean that meal preparation at home takes so much longer than it did before, and that we are spending more at the grocery store than we did before, but it's worth it. I know it is worth it. I can feel it every day that it is worth it. So I'm sticking to it.

There. Hopefully that's it for a while on the whole food revolution thing, because I don't want to get boring.

Otherwise, not much has been going on, which you can tell from this so-far-pictureless post. Just the usual. Work, gym, cooking food, eating, reading, watching a bunch of nothing on TV, cleaning, hanging out. I did see The Iron Lady with friends a couple of weekends ago (a movie that I didn't understand, mostly because it focused almost exclusively on Margaret Thatcher being old and kind-of out of it, and very little on her as Prime Minister, which makes no sense because people who want to learn about Margaret Thatcher don't want to learn about how depressing it is when people, especially influential people, get old and decrepit), and joined a friend at a pretty interesting lecture on the Connectome the other night, too. Doug is recording, as you know, so I have been spending some of my weekends out of the house. This weekend I am spending my Saturday at work. In fact, I'm here right now, taking a break from writing proposals and analyzing fines tables, though I should be getting back to all of this:

One's work is never done, is it. But I'm not complaining, because I know that if in a few months my job is eliminated then I will be wishing I were sitting here in front of a messy desk (at work) again.

News flash - I am an introvert.

2012-02-03T17:48:00.002-05:00

You know, some days - most days, really - I would so much rather be doing this job: Library Technician, Camdem Public Library. Have you been to Camden, ME? It's beautiful. Have you been to the library there? The location is just fantastic. I would not mind, not one bit, serving customers at the circulation desk; answering reference and reader's advisory questions; assisting customers and staff with basic technical support; and playing a vital role in their 21st century library if I could overlook Penobscot Bay all day. Or climb Camden Hills on the weekends. Or drive up to Belfast to my favorite fabric store every once in a while. Sign me up for that job!

But no, I am here persevering through the Library Transition, because we live here and not in Maine, and because there is something strong within my psychological makeup that does not allow me to simply walk away from a house, a job (for however long I have it), and an established life. Curse that something strong, because that Camden job is my dream job.

How could that job be my dream? It's not a management job. I would not be a leader, I would not be a director, I would not be in control of anything. I would do my 35-hours a week and that's it. What kind of a career is in that kind of a job? How does the strong, independent 20th century Sex and the City woman who can do and have it all fit in with a job like that? How could I possibly be happy with it?

But I could be. That's the thing. If I could get rid of that stupidly annoying something strong within my psychological makeup that also causes me to push forward and strive for things that I somehow think that I should want but do not actually want, I would go for a job like that in Camden and be happy with it all. Because I'm an introvert. I'm not looking for fame or fortune or for anything else but a place where I can fit in and be comfortable, and be myself. Read the cover article in the February 6th issue of Time and you'll see what I mean. I read the article and finally felt like someone got me. Like there were others out there like me. Like there really is an upside to being an introvert! And that it's okay that I am the way I am.

So if it's okay that I am the way that I am, and if 30% of all people are right there next to me on the introvert scale, why do I always feel so strange? So unique? So out of step and out of touch with the world? Look at me. Do I look that strange to you?

No, of course not. Clearly this is just some kind of personal hangup, and the more that I learn about other people who are like me, successful people (successful because they know who they are and work to their strengths), the better off I will be. Which means someday I may stop trying to fit myself into some kind of round hole that this square body just can't fit into, and instead I'll learn to be satisfied with being me. And I'll be happy to answer your informational questions while on shift at the local public library and not make myself crazy with guilt about not doing something "better."

Of course, you do realize that much of what I say is exaggerated. Because I am often quite satisfied being me. I have fun, in my own way, and I often enjoy myself. For example, I recently turned one of my homemade scarves into a cowl. This scarf was way too long and wide to be a good traditional scarf and I never really wore it. After wearing the cowl that Doug's mother got me for Christmas for about twenty days straight, I started to think that maybe I should get another to mix into the wardrobe. But why buy one? I should be able to make one myself, I said to myself. So I then said to myself, "But wait - you practically have made one already!" I pulled the scarf out of the closet, knitted the two ends together, and viola!

One rather large, rather cone-like cowl. Now I know what Sherman feels like. And I feel like I've accomplished something worthwhile and fun.

And, of course, I entertain myself in other ways. Like keeping up with the most cutting edge technologies. I have finally dipped my toe into the world of QR codes and have been making them for everything these past few days. Every sign I create to hang in the library, or to put in the cases of the e-readers we now circulate, has a QR code or two on it. But why limit my creative powers to work? I could start using these QR codes for everything. Could I now blog with QR codes? Post a QR code on this blog for the text of a post that exists on another of my (long abandoned) blogs? Perhaps that's going a little too far, but I can add a code that brings you to this site to any other site of mine.

Like a Facebook site. Or my twitter page. I'm sure the possibilities are endless.

So while others are out there trying to climb the corporate ladder, updating their resumes, searching job ads, getting advanced degrees to make more money and to have more power and control, I'll be thinking of places to put my QR codes. You know you'd rather be doing that, too.

Monday night thoughts.

2012-01-30T21:55:00.003-05:00

It's Monday night and I have a purring cat on my lap (this cat

our first cat, our brownest cat and the one who gets the least amount of attention, except when she's doing something fun like relaxing inside cabinets) and a husband and his bass player in the basement recording some tracks.

That's what's happening on this Monday night, the last Monday in January. It's a good night to get you caught up on my life.

Work is going well. The e-reader pilot project that I worked on for the last eight weeks has finally launched and all the e-readers are checked out. Did it go off without a hitch? Not really, but overall it has been a success. I'm thinking about putting some kind of article together to talk about our pilot development, decision-making process, launch, and assessment. I've never written an article for publication before. Normally I don't do anything publishing-worthy, so this particular event should be documented. Plus, I think it's worth getting word out that Harvard is only now dipping its toe into the world of e-readers. I don't know if Harvard really talks about the programs going on in our libraries in a public way. I think we should. I'd like more transparency into what it's really like at Harvard.

Of course, there was a bit of transparency into what it's really like at the Harvard libraries this past week when the whole world learned of our Library Transition. I capitalize that phrase because it's an event, a noteworthy happening, something that will be captured in the annals of the University. I don't think that the Transition has been a secret, but I don't think that it had the library world's attention the way it did after the Town Hall Meeting we had to discuss the next phase in the process. This phase involves voluntary and involuntary staff reductions in order to meet the Transition goals of efficiency and effectiveness. Rumors had been flying about at Harvard of layoffs (or "staff reductions" in Harvard-speak) since the beginning of the years-long transition, but they were finally confirmed. Harvard librarians were aghast, angry, and offended. They took to Twitter and their blogs to write about the news (a particularly good post about the news was made by my colleague). The story spread and other librarians wrote about the news, too. It's been quite dramatic at work these days to say the least.

(My own two cents on the whole situation is this: From the get-go, this Transition has been about creating "efficiencies and effectiveness" at the Harvard Library, bringing an absurd number of independently-functioning (and collecting!) libraries under one albeit broad and still many-headed umbrella. Anytime anyone talks about "efficiencies and effectiveness" you know that layoffs will be involved. This is how it works in the corporate world, and - newsflash! - Harvard is just as corporate as any big business. I was not surprised when the rumors were confirmed. I am not happy that so many of us could be without jobs by the end of the fiscal year, but I am not surprised. What I am glad about is that we are being given carte blanche to spend time at work - and with our HR departments - working on our resumes, sharing job postings and job leads, and we will not have to clandestinely apply and interview elsewhere but can do so with encouragement. I have no idea if my position will be cut, or if my position will be changed enough in the new organizational structure such that it turns into a different position, one for which I will have to reapply, but I do know that I will be getting great advice on my resume and on my skillset, and I will be in a good position to start interviewing if need be. Because we have only limited (well, none, really) information on what the new organization is going to look like it's too soon for me to get too nervous about my job. The really bad news hasn't hit us yet, and until it does I cannot get too upset about this; I don't want to live in uncertainty and despair for longer than I have to.)

Instead of going home and crying about the possibility of losing my job, I am focusing on my physical and mental health by way of changing my eating habits (which you have read about before). I am not a vegan, nor am I a true vegetarian, but I am definitely a more informed eater. Maybe a reformed eater. Or no, more like a reforming eater. For the past week and a half I have had virtually no dairy, no cheese, very, very few refined carbohydrates, and little to no refined sugars. I've lost a few pounds this way and I am feeling a lot better.

The little amount of weight that I have lost hasn't come off because of Weight Watchers, of which I am now a member. Weight Watchers is teaching me stuff, so it is doing something; I'm learning that portions are key. At Weight Watchers, everything is based on a point system. The more I eat of something the more points it costs me, and because I have a limited number of points that I can eat during the day I have to watch how much I eat. But points are also accrued by the types of foods I eat. Processed foods high in calories, carbohydrates and fats are more points. So I should be eating fewer of these types of foods in order to stay within my points range. Here's the thing, though - I have not actually ever counted points while I have been on Weight Watchers. I find that kind of tracking of what I eat to be tedious and I don't have the patience for it. Instead, I have read through the booklet that tells me how many points different foods have and I now have a sense of what foods have the lowest points. They are, not surprisingly, whole foods, foods like fruits and vegetables in their natural state (not juiced or dried or anything like that), and lean proteins. So that's the vast majority of what I'm eating. And it seems to be working.

It's like a food revolution in our house (maybe Jaime Oliver can come film us!). Doug is joining me on this eating makeover, too. But, lest you think we have buried our deep-fryer in the backyard, know that we never had one in the first place. This makeover may not be as drastic as I am making it sound. Our revolution is not moving from eating deep-fried chocolate-covered donuts each morning washed down with a glass of Quick to eating a plate of egg whites, but instead not eating snack foods that come out of a bag, and being aware of the ingredients and nutrients in our whole day of eating and not just each meal. I viewed each meal and snack as a separate entity, getting my daily requirements of proteins, fats, and carbs in at each meal instead of throughout the course of the entire day. Now I am treating my whole day as if it were one meal, being thoughtful about what I am eating when and how much of it I am eating. Our dinners are remarkably similar to what they used to be (minus the bread and the dairy), but it's the breakfasts and the lunches that are, for me, quite different.

We are both approaching this new diet, this new lifestyle, with enthusiasm and interest. This has not been forced upon us because we have high cholesterol, are at real risk for heart disease or diabetes, or because we are obese. We are choosing to spend more time on making meals like vegan cream of tomato soup (taking the time to dice sun-dried tomatoes, even!)

because because we want to be at our physical and mental healthiest in order to have an improved quality of life, in order to respect ourselves and to live our values. No, I am not giving up ice cream, and no, in no way am I giving up chocolate, but I am just not going to eat it like I once did (when you imagine me with a bag of Hershey's Kisses think Cookie Monster in one of his cookie-eating fits). That's the plan, anyway. And so far I'm sticking to it.

Baaahh.

2012-01-22T17:06:00.000-05:00

When you're young you marvel at old people. You know, people who are thirty or older. You wonder how they got to be so weird; doing things like waking up early in the morning without an alarm clock, falling asleep while watching TV, going to bed by 9pm, eating gross things like fish and mushrooms and nuts, reading the obituaries, spending free time after work doing dishes or ironing or vacuuming rather than doing something fun, etc. Then you reach the ripe old age of thirty and you realize that you are that old person! You're up each morning by 7:30 because you just "naturally wake up." Even if you're not in bed by 9pm you wish you were. And you find yourself ordering the bags of mixed nuts from your aunt's church fundraiser instead of the bags of gummy bears because suddenly, without warning, you actually like nuts (and you eat mushrooms even if you don't like them because you know you should).

Who are you? How did you get to be this person? What happens when you hit that magical age of thirty? I've noticed that over the past few years I've been going through these changes myself. My tastes have changed. My sleeping habits have changed. My priorities have changed. And my metabolism has changed.

A couple of examples of these changes:

1. I am now interested in things like natural, homeopathic remedies for healthy living and am more inclined to believe in astrological signs and symbols than I was even five years ago. I'm very keen to find the right homeopathic remedy to my over-anxious temperament, my stomach and digestive woes, and my other "ailments." I have been going to my homeopathic doctor for almost two years now (whoa) and am still soldiering on with finding the right essence to give me the improved quality of life that I want. (Now we're trying out the essence of the naja snake family, and putting any bit - even if it's not even a real bit - of a snake in me would have been unthinkable years ago.) And I am open-minded to certain astrological belief systems like the Chinese zodiac. I learned on Friday that I am a goat in the Chinese zodiac calendar - specifically an earth goat - and the description of the goat (in some circles the sheep) is just about spot-on. I'm eager to learn more about goats and Chinese astrology (and Eastern philosophies), and really could have cared less about this kind of stuff before.

(Thank you to Taking Back Tiffany for the goat photo.)

2. My diet and nutrition has become an almost-obsession, and this is probably linked to the fact that my metabolism has clearly changed. I have never been thin, or what I would consider skinny, and I have at various times of my life been what I consider "pleasingly plump." But my weight would fluctuate, and I could control it. If I ate a lot of sweets and breads, which I love, then I would get heavier. If I wanted to lose weight I could, just by cutting down the amount of food I ate, or by kicking my exercise regimen into high gear. Now, not so much. I trained so hard for the 5K in November and December, burning so many calories and not eating much more to compensate, and yet am still weighing in at a number I haven't seen in many years. Hence the Weight Watchers thing. And hence the obsession with vegetarianism, veganism, and cookbooks and recipes. As I write this, Doug is reading to me from Alicia Silverstone's The Kind Diet, because I am eager to learn more about how this healthy way of living might work for me. When in Florida with Jipty and Chris it seemed so natural to follow a vegan/vegetarian lifestyle when we were in the timeshare cooking meals for ourselves, but when we went out to dinner it seemed... mostly inconvenient. You can't just go to any restaurant and expect that there will be food there that you can eat. I didn't think I would be able to put up with that. I like convenience. But now that I am on Weight Watchers (sort of) and I know that I want to be healthy, and now that I'm learning that maybe a plant-based diet would render my snake and spider and whatever-other-kind-of-creepy-creature remedies unnecessary, maybe I can put up with that inconvenience.

So what is it about this aging thing? Do our habits really change as much as it seems they do as we get older? And don't people become more conservative and less open-minded as they age? I seem to be doing the opposite, but I'm not necessarily complaining, at least about these particular changes. The falling asleep while watching TV (or, worse, falling asleep while in the warm, dark movie theater...), well, that I wholeheartedly complain about and curse the aging process for hitting me with this one so early.

Fun and food.

2012-01-21T09:06:00.000-05:00

It snowed yesterday and it's snowing again today. This is what greeted me when I walked out of the front door this morning to pick up the newspaper from the front step:

I'm not really complaining about the snowy scene this morning because it is January 21 and this is the first time we've had any snow cover, or any lasting snow cover, and we haven't had to bust out the shovels just yet (though we may have to today). But I am complaining just a little bit, because it was not that long ago - just last week as a matter of fact - that we were still in Florida.

Florida! My experience with Florida has been minimal, limited to a trip I don't remember (only through photos) when I was probably 4 years old to my grandparents' place near Naples; a trip to Disney World when I was about 8 years old; and a fleeting trip to Disney World with my high school band, sophomore year (I think?). We flew into Fort Lauderdale this time to spend some time in the warmth with our friends Jipty, Chris, and their son Ely, and even though we stayed for only three full days I feel like I got to know Florida a lot better. And I liked what I saw (even with all the gray-haireds!). So did Doug. We're on a south Florida kick now in our house.

What did we see? Here's the usual photo montage of our trip.

At Everglades Holiday Park we took an air boat ride in the Everglades. We saw... a few birds, a couple of large lizards, and some alligator eyes poking out from some weeds. We'd have seen more if it was sunny. Still, it was fun.

We went to the beach and we actually SWAM! (Or, at least went into the water. In January!) The water was clear, the sun was out (and we have little patches of tanned skin to prove it), and the sand was soft. It was a great beach trip.

We saw lots of strange birds; strange because none of them live in New England, save the gull. This little guy was everywhere, and he's native to Florida. We affectionately call him the turkey duck.

Pelicans, too. We saw real pelicans at the beach, just hanging out in the wild. How amazing! Here are a couple relaxing with their cormorant friends on the beach in Key Biscayne. (The sand was so very soft here, too. I could have sat on the beach for hours.)

We got to spend more time with Ely, who we only see once or twice a year, so his development between visits astounds us. He is such a polite boy, and really, very well-behaved. You can have conversations with him - with full sentences! Fun ones. The ones we were having usually involved some reference to Toy Story, but that was fine with us. We had fun with him.

We went to Bill Baggs State Park and saw this fine example of a non-New England lighthouse, the first either Doug or I had seen. Naturally we were impressed, and all the palm trees and clear, green water helped.

At the park we decided to rent this bicycle-built-for-four, and what fun! Ely didn't do any pedaling, but he enjoyed being in the front seat and telling us where to go. Doug got to steer. I liked getting the exercise and didn't mind the stares we got from the other park-goers. They were just jealous they didn't think to rent one of these things!

And, of course, we spent some time in Miami Beach, walking along Ocean Drive, and got a taste of what it might be like there in Spring Break or in the height of the season. We ate at one of Gloria Estefan's restaurants, and while there wasn't much for non-meat eaters to enjoy on the menu (though the friend yuca was very good - better than french fries, I think), we still had a good time.

Doug and I could have spent a lot more time in south Florida, exploring Miami, revisiting the Everglades, driving to the Keys, and just spending time on the beach or at the pool. We hope Jipty, Chris, and Ely want to go away with us again next winter, because we'd go back in a flash. And maybe by then we'll all have to be on the look-out for the non-meat restaurants.

Jipty and Chris (and Ely, too) are vegan now. Have been so for a while. And this means that eating out can be a little difficult. No meat and no dairy. You'd be surprised how many restaurants have few options for this kind of diet. At Lario's on the Beach there was a vegetarian platter (the black beans were vegetarian, so that was good), but that was it. That was the only option for them. Everything else had meat - because who knew that Cuban food was such a meat-centered cuisine? After spending time with Jipty and Chris and learning more about veganism and plant-based diets, and seeing for ourselves how much healthier they are since they have had this vegan lifestyle, I began to be converted. Just a little bit.

Doug and I don't eat a lot of meat. In fact, we really only cook meat once a week if that. In the past few years I have incorporated more vegetarian meals into our diets than meat-based meals. Listening to them and learning about how much better they feel on their vegan diet made me all the more convinced that we need more plants and grains in our diet. Plus, fruits and vegetables are 0 points in Weight Watchers Points Plus system, so I can eat all of them that I want (more on this Weight Watchers thing in another post).

So now I am obsessed with healthier eating. I'm reading recipes and looking at cookbooks each chance I get. I've found two that I'm particularly excited about

(during the big Patriots-Ravens football game tomorrow we'll be enjoying acorn squash and black bean empanadas instead of buffalo wings), but am always interested in recommendations. I am keen on adding a Mexican and Indian cookbook to my collection. We are not giving up on meat (or fish) entirely, but we are certainly focusing more of our attention on plants.

With that, it's time for the gym - healthy living can't just be based in the kitchen.

First three things.

2012-01-09T23:41:00.001-05:00

Three things! The first three things post of 2012! I'm carrying over a theme from last year, like continuing with a New Year's resolution. Consistency and routine is the name of the survival game; it's going to be what keeps my blog going.

Thing #1: Film

We saw two movies on Saturday, one right after the other. The first was The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Who could say no to over two and a half hours of Daniel Craig? He did not disappoint, but he was a little more covered up in most of it than I would have liked. Wish I could have said that about the girl with the dragon tattoo. There was something about her naked body that bothered me. It was so incredibly thin, and there was this muscle that stretched across the length of her ribcage that you could see contracting. It was disturbing. Actually, there were many things that were disturbing about the movie, but not necessarily all in a bad way. I thought the use of disturbing scenes was effective, and if you're looking for an action thriller then you could spend your time watching a worse movie.

We also saw The Artist. This movie was a sweet little film that was clever and visually impressive, but ultimately, for me, a little light; a little fluffy. Maybe it just seemed that way because I had just spent a couple of hours watching a somewhat violent drama, but nevertheless I liked this film. I don't like silent movies as a rule, but this one held my attention. The well-trained dog helped quite a bit.

Thing #2: Vampires and Werewolves

I can't even begin to count how many pages of vampire and werewolf melodrama that I have read over the past couple of weeks. It started the week after Christmas when I plowed through New Moon in two days (how glorious it is to spend two days reading!). Because the book went so quickly and because the story is so enticing despite the frustration I feel at the utter simplicity of the writing and character development, I immediately went to my local public library and checked out the final two books in the saga. I devoured the third one with almost as much speed, but because work and routine are getting in the way again, my progress on the fourth book is somewhat less speedy.

The series, as I said, is enticing and gripping in the way soap operas tend to be, but also as I said, I am just so frustrated at the flat emotional output that I have when I read the books. So what does this mean? It means that there is only so much sparkle and so many tortured vampire looks that I can take. I have reached saturation, but will finish the book and the series - can't give up with only one hundred and fifty pages to go!

Thing #3: Weight Watchers

And yes, my third thing to write about is Weight Watchers. I joined Weight Watchers at Work, which is Weight Watchers but with meetings held at the workplace. The informational meeting was this past Friday, and our first meeting is this coming Friday. I won't be around for the first meeting, where we have our initial weigh-in, set our goal weights, and determine what our daily point allowance will be (so I'll be a week behind everyone else), but at least I've paid my monthly dues. That's a start.

Why join Weight Watchers, you may ask? Well, I asked myself that same question as I looked around the room of easily forty women (and a couple of men!) and felt like the smallest person in the room. But this is not necessarily about weight for me, though I would be lying if I said that I didn't want to lose a few pounds. This is about re-establishing a healthy relationship with food for me. In my last post I mentioned that I had put on a few pounds since Wyatt died, and that's true. For the past year and a half I have been trying to eat my emotions (as if happiness or contentment really does live in a bag of potato chips). Emotional eating has never really been my thing and I don't like it, but I'm at the point that I don't really know how to stop it. I eat well for a few days and then have one chip or one French fry, or one cookie, and bam! The whole bag is gone. So I'm hoping Jennifer Hudson and Charles Barkley can support and encourage me in ways that I don't seem to be able to do for myself.

So yes. Three things. Movies, books, and food. That's my life, people, all right there in those three things.

Thoughts for a new year.

2012-01-02T21:54:00.003-05:00

My first post of 2012 was going to be about a realization I came to a few days ago. A light-bulb moment. The realization hit me when I was on the elliptical machine one morning. I realized that I have three very strong personality traits, all of which start with B, and all of which are quite shameful. I admit it. More often than not, I am 1) bitchy, 2) bratty, and 3) bullying. Am I being a little hard on myself? Ask my mother that when I chastise her in front of my father's family at Christmas for overfilling the take-home containers with pie such that the covers would squish them and make them "unpresentable." Or ask Doug that question when I fly through the bedroom at 8am with way too much energy, like a tornado, grabbing my sneakers and exercise clothes to head for the gym, all the while chiding him for being lazy (because he's still in bed, god forbid). And these are just two very recent examples. So I would say no; I am not being hard on myself. Just honest.

But what would really be achieved by spending a whole post on these three Bs? Just a lot of belly-aching from me about how I'm not my ideal self. That in and of itself (belly-aching about not being my ideal self) is not a wholly unpleasant topic and is one I often dwell on, but today I'd rather spend my time and energy on another topic. Let's talk about things to look forward to in the upcoming year. Christmas and New Year's a behind us; 2012 is underway (I've successfully written 2012 on three checks so far!). Let's focus on the good stuff before we face the end of the world.

Sherman is doing much, much better with his scratching. The prednisone is helping, thanks to Doug's determination to get the little pills down his throat. It is true that Sherman still scratches and breaks the skin, leaving crusty scabs and patches on his ear and neck that are completely hairless, but overall he is doing so much better than he was even a month ago. He has gone days without his cone. And just today I saw him touch noses with Meg before she let out the death growl! This is a Christmas miracle! Maybe 2012 will be the year of cat harmony in our household.

Doug and I (and possibly my mother and brother) plan to go away sometime in May. A trip! Involving a plane! For more than two nights! I am very excited about this and so is Doug. Last night I started doing a little research into places to go. At first we had our sights set on Europe but based on ticket prices I think we're going to stay domestic. Over $1100 to fly to Berlin? Close to $1000 to fly to Paris? And $800 to fly to London! Iceland was our only relatively inexpensive European option, at a little over $600/pp/round trip, but Doug's not all that keen on it, mostly because of the cost. Neither am I, really, and mostly because of the cost. Maybe I'm getting cheap in my old age, or maybe just more practical, but when I think about spending most of my waking life at work and sloughing through the days there, I think much longer and harder about how I spend my money. Spending a few days in San Francisco and then a few days in one of the Redwood National Parks would be fun. We've never been to Northern California. Or exploring the national parks of southern Utah - we haven't been to the Southwest, either. Or maybe 2012 is the year that we visit Seattle and Portland! We always say we want to go there, and we could see Rod and Tina. The funny thing about "settling" for domestic travel is that we really haven't narrowed our choices by much. I want to go everywhere. I am still overwhelmed by the possibilities.

But how wonderful it is to have possibilities! Yesterday I got side-tracked by looking through all the photos that we had taken in the past few years while I was transferring the files from the desktop to DVR discs. I was simply shocked by all the things that we have filled our life with. We've documented so much of our life, which makes me realize that every day we are doing something no matter how mundane or tiresome the days can feel. There were photos of our move to the house, photos of the many meals that we have made in our kitchen, photos of day trips and vacations and times away from the house, and photos of family and friends and friends' babies and friends' pets. When you do a mini-retrospective like that you realize so many things are possible.

I learned, too, by looking through these photos, that it's possible that Wyatt's death had a profound impact on our lives and for much longer than we originally thought. In looking through the photos from 2010, I can see how we felt his loss each day. The pictures of us and our life were very different post-loss than they were when he was still with us. Doug lost a lot of weight after Wyatt died, and I started to gain a fair amount of weight after Wyatt died. We looked different in other ways, too. Doug looked paler. My hair looked stringier. We also entered our professional crisis period, with me leaving my corporate job and Doug leaving his job. There was definitely a dark cloud above our house for that latter half of 2010, and really for the vast majority of 2011. But the final couple of months or so of 2011 have felt better. The cloud is moving on. The fog is lifting. Maybe Sherman has helped us. Maybe therpay has helped us. Regardless, we are seeing the possibilities now and it feels like a much better way to be. We look forward to 2012 because we know now that we can face difficult times and come through to feel the sun on our faces and breathe the fresh air on the other side of the void, but also, and quite possibly more importantly, because we have this one cat, this one soft cat in the photo below, who, regardless of year or season or mental state of her owners, is just the most photogenic cat ever and she makes us happy.*

*Much of the time.

Wrapping up.

2011-12-31T17:04:00.001-05:00

So, we leave 2011 behind in just a few hours. I don't tend to be nostalgic for the passing year, so I will not post about what I liked in 2011 and what I didn't like, or what resolutions I had and didn't keep or that I had and did keep, etc., etc. Let's just catch up on how 2011 ended, which was with a nice holiday bang.

The Christmas holiday for me and Doug now goes like this:

We wake up somewhat early on Christmas Eve morning and get ready for our Connecticut Christmas. Once everything is packed up and the cats are fed and watered, we spend some time around our tree and exchange the gifts we got each other. This is one of my favorite parts of the holiday, because it's the one I'm most awake for. I haven't yet stuffed myself silly with any of the holiday goodies that await down I-84. Plus, I like watching Doug open the gifts that I get him. I try to put thought into what he gets, for at least one of his gifts. He has stand-bys, like socks, t-shirts, underwear, and also sweaters, but I like to throw in at least one "surprise." This year it was Slowhand on vinyl.

With the new furniture arrangement (couch downstairs in basement along with TV, and record player set up in living room where TV was), we have been listening to our record player like we never have before. As a matter of fact, before we moved the couch and TV downstairs to the basement we were trying to sell the record player. We didn't think that we liked it (too much like a DJ turntable), not to mention the fact that we never listened to it. But now we listen to it quite regularly and are amassing quite the collection of classic rock albums, which sound fantastic on vinyl. Slowhand is the poster-child for this. We heard my father's copy of this album at my uncle's house in New Hampshire this past Labor Day weekend and it had such a great sound on vinyl. Doug is normally not an Eric Clapton fan, but the vinyl won him over. He talked often of the quality of that album since we heard it in New Hampshire, so I tracked down a copy. Slowly but surely we are creating for ourselves a nice library of Eric Clapton albums and are really enjoying what we are hearing.

Okay, so I surprise Doug with at least one gift that requires a little thought and creativity on my part, and Doug does the same for me. This year it was a necklace. Good job, Doug!

Once we open our gifts and give the cats one last pat good-bye, we pile in the car with all of our Christmas CDs and make the drive down to CT. This awaits us chez Sisko:

As does this:

And this:

We never forget to sing "Happy Birthday" to Doug. This year his birthday cake was a carrot cake. Whatever bakery the Siskos go to down there in Fairfield County certainly does cakes well. This cake was so moist and not sweet at all. Which reminds me - we still have some in our refrigerator. Yay! Cake tonight after Doug's homemade meatballs.

Anyway, once we celebrate well with the Siskos we head an hour north and visit with the Sheridans. This year my father, my aunt Mary, her husband Fred, and Doug jammed on their acoustics. I think that this was the first year that Doug played with them. I'm glad he did - they sounded good, and I think that the older folk are excited to play with Doug. He's in a band, after all. He's Doug Sisko, Guitar Guy. Rocker. Cool City Dude. All very impressive.

Once the family jam was over, which just may become a new Sheridan Christmas tradition, we headed over to my parents' house to spend the rest of the evening around their Christmas tree exchanging gifts with my mother, father and brother. My brother is notoriously difficult to buy for, so much so that it is a topic of conversation between me and just about every member of my immediate family in the weeks leading up to Christmas. What to get for Brian? We never have any idea. He already has his New Yorker subscription. He really doesn't need or want anything else. Really. So for the past few years I've been getting him artsy-type gifts. One year was a set of ceramic owls. One year was a Monet doll standing at an easel. This year I decided to make him a stupid sock creature (see previous post), and I think he liked it.

Then, once we all start to fall asleep on the floor surrounded by wrapping paper bits, we call it a night. Doug and I make our way back to Massachusetts the day after Christmas and get back to our regular routines. The holidays are essentially over. We tend not to do anything too thrilling for New Year's, mostly because we are tired from all the birthday and Christmas activities in December. This year is no exception. We got a bottle of champagne for Christmas so we decided to stay in and have some of it. Doug's making some meatballs, we'll cook up some cocktail weenies, we'll sit on our couch and reflect on the year that's ending and talk about things to look forward to in the new year, and, if we are lucky enough to be awake, will clink our (champagne) glasses at midnight. Sounds truly wonderful to me. I smell the meatballs cooking now. It just may be time to go out and pop that cork early!

Mostly good.

2011-12-19T21:05:00.004-05:00

When I was thinking about what to post about today, I thought that I would list the good and the not-so-good things that have been happening lately. The only problem is that there have been mostly good things happening lately. Mostly. The post will be a little lop-sided.

Let's get the not-so-good out of the way so that we can focus on the good stuff, shall we?

It's not-so-good that I:

- am feeling anxious about work 70% of the time (has mostly to do with work politics, which I decidedly do not like)

- keep going over my texting limit on my phone plan

- keep forgetting to email people back... I am usually so good about emailing people back

- and seem to have regressed in the kitchen when it comes to baking, though this last kitchen disaster didn't have much to do with baking and was more of an equipment malfunction

Other than that, things are great. Really! Please observe:

- We got a visit from friends, and the cutest, littlest Santa was just adorable as usual.

- I have been sewing up a storm, branching out to include aprons

and more stupid sock creatures in my repertoire.

- I ran the Cambridge 5K Yulefest in a better time than I ever would have thought (placed 458 out of 813 finishers!). No walking for me. I ran the whole way and even passed people! I think it was the ungodly cold air that was propelling me - the thought of a hot cup of tea never left my mind.

- And then of course there was Doug's birthday. On the 16th we celebrated with a dinner out and some cupcakes from Sweet.

- Then, when Doug's fellow birthday-celebrator came on the 17th, we had some more cupcakes.

- Christmas celebrations are in full swing, as evidenced by my sister's family and my mother, father, and brother coming to celebrate with us. It was certainly a good day, and not just because of the wonderful array of desserts (the thumbprint cookies made post-Kitchen Aid mixer disaster, so mad props to me for picking it up, cleaning it off, putting it back together, and moving on as if it never happened). Smiles were had all around!

- Lastly, Doug, eager to try out his Christmas gift, cooked us a fine-tasting roast and carved it up for dinner last night.

Not too bad, right? Really pretty good. December has been a great month overall, and I'm looking forward to these last two weeks of it. This week brings more Christmas record-playing and Christmas gift wrapping, and another birthday celebration for Doug on Friday before we spend the holiday weekend with family. Then there's next week. Next week I have off from work and I am spending it holed up in the house wearing my new fleece pajamas and reading all the books I've been getting from the library (I should not be allowed to shelve - I do the one-for-the-shelf-one-for-me trick, which is not good for my to-read list). But don't even try to tell me that I can't finish White Teeth and read The Influencing Machine, The Lost Continent, Bossypants, Blankets, and New Moon in one week. I ran a 5K, after all. That says world domination right there.

The most wonderful time of the year.

2011-12-05T21:10:00.002-05:00

I love this time of year. I really do. I think it's my favorite time of year (though summer, because of the sun, the warmth, and, most of all, the beach, is a very, very, very close second). From Thanksgiving until New Year's it's non-stop excitement and fun. And food!

This is a little of what I mean:

Thing 1: Thanksgiving

Doug and I hosted Thanksgiving this year, as you know. We'd happily do it again, too. What fun! I really liked picking out all of the recipes and gathering all the ingredients. And cooking it. I had a lot more fun cooking the dinner than I thought that I would. I was able to time everything well so that it was all ready at once, which was something that I was worried about. But it all came out great.

Doug was in charge of the turkey and he took great pride in his bird.

We upgraded to a 19-lb turkey because we thought we would not have enough with the 15-pounder, but 15-lbs would have been fine. As would have fewer brussels sprouts.

That's only 2/3rds of the brussels sprouts that we shredded to saute with shallots and a little white wine vinegar. The more brussels sprouts the better, though, because I have learned to love the little cabbages (and I never in a million years would have expected to say that).

So this Thanksgiving I was thankful for friends and family, no kitchen mishaps, and the chance to finally use all of the dinnerware that we got for our wedding (some of which had never been unwrapped!). I look forward to more Dedham Thanksgivings.

Thing 2: Our Nation's Capital

This year I was also thankful for our somewhat impromptu trip to Washington D.C. and Alexandria. Doug was recently in Alexandria and D.C. for work and I didn't get to go with him, so we decided to head down there for a few nights. True to form, we crammed a lot in to our short time there, like:

The new MLK Memorial, which leaves you speechless for a variety of reasons:

The National Gallery of Art, which had a nice, though small, collection of 20th century American art:

Arlington National Cemetery, at which we were able to see the JFK burial site, eternal flame, and the graves of Robert and Ted Kennedy. That was pretty moving (but I didn't take photos because it somehow felt wrong to photograph their resting place).

And historic Alexandria,VA, which is just absolutely bursting with history.

I'd be telling a lie if I said that Doug and I didn't think about moving there at least a few times during our trip, but I will happily report that this is the first time that Doug and I didn't frantically search real estate listings and job ads when we came back home. We really liked it there and could see ourselves living there, but that obsessive-compulsive need to leave our home and all of our troubles behind was distinctly lacking this trip. That was a vacation in and of itself.

Thing 3: Christmas

We came back from D.C. and suddenly Christmas was upon us. The neighbors had begun to put lights up around their houses, Christmas music had taken over the radio, and the tree was lit in Dedham Square.

This, of course, meant that it was high time that we put up our own tree, so this past Friday night we got the tree and decorations down from the attic and decorated.

The white tree has grown on me. I like how it looks. I do miss the Christmas tree smell in the house, though, and we are out of balsam fir candles. This coupled with the fact that Sherman thought that the tree was a giant chew toy when we first put it up might make us consider throwing a real tree into the Christmas tree mix some years. But for now this is what we have, and I have been dying to turn down the room lights, put on the tree, and sit and read. That's my idea of a good and relaxing holiday evening!

Thanksgiving at our house.

2011-11-23T10:23:00.003-05:00

I used to have a three-things rule - get three things done during my day, or, in the case of my blog, cover three things in each post. I haven't really been keeping to my three-things rule. I generally like rules that I make for myself, though you'd think I'd be better at following them than I am at following those rules imposed on me by others. Doesn't seem to be the case. But I can make efforts to change that - starting now!

Thing One: 5K!

Brace yourself for this news - I am running a 5K! I am quite excited to be running in the Cambridge 5K Yulefest, as this will be my first 5K, and it gives me a reason to push my efforts at jogging, getting past my 18-minute-and-then-collapse routine into something a bit longer. The race is December 18 at 10am. If you come to watch it, I'll be the runner at the back of the pack with no costume other than my stretchy running pants, t-shirt, and my earband and gloves. My goal is to finish the race and to not stop to walk. I've been doing well at training for it so far - I have been doing 9-minute miles (approximately) both on the treadmill and outside, and I have successfully, several times, run for 30-minutes straight, also both on the treadmill and outside. If I can keep this up I should be able to meet my goal on the 18th.

Thing Two: Sherman

I haven't written about Sherman in a while (mostly because I haven't written about anything in a while) so here's my latest Sherman update. Sherman's October biopsy showed that he has some kind of allergy. Naturally, the vets do not know what is causing his allergy. We have him on special food (which he does not like and I do not like because it is sticky and smells), we are giving him prednisone, and we are supposed to be continuing with the Advantage treatments, even though he doesn't have fleas and doesn't seem to have mites. He has also tested negative for ringworm. So. Where does that leave us? It leaves us with a cat who is scratching at his head much, much less, but still scratching. It also leaves Doug having to force-feed Sherman his prednisone pill each day, which Doug does by straddling the poor thing.

I really think that it's the prednisone that is helping the cat feel better, because as we decrease the dosage he is getting itchier and itchier. This means that when I call the vet to tell her Sherman's progress I am going to request that Sherman continue with a higher dose of prednisone. Is it okay to keep your cat on these steroids for eternity? Because that's how long Sherman is going to need to be on them. Because no one can figure out what is making him itchy. And I really don't want the cat in the cone for the rest of his life. It looks like Sherman and prednisone are going to become the best of friends, and Doug is going to become expert at forcing pills down cat throats (which, believe me, is a real skill).

Thing Three: Thanksgiving at our house!

Doug and I are hosting Thanksgiving this year. We are giving my sister and brother-in-law a break from hosting the whole extended family at their house for this most wonderful holiday and having the smaller immediate family to our house for Thanksgiving - for the very first time. I'm more excited about this than nervous, though I do think I am nervous about people liking the food. Mike, my brother-in-law, is a great cook. Like, really, really good. He mixes traditional items with non-traditional items, traditional flavors with non-traditional flavors, and the result is always outstanding. I like to try new recipes and I like to cook and bake, but that doesn't mean that things always come out so good (you've seen plenty of evidence of that). But, fingers crossed that the cooking gods will be smiling down on me tonight and tomorrow as Doug and I prepare for Foodfest 2011. Here a peak at our menu:

Herb turkey (a 15-pound bird)
Herb gravy
Herb biscuits
Sautéed brussels sprouts
Honey-orange glazed carrots
Buttermilk mashed potatoes
Wild rice with mushrooms and dried cranberries
Chewy molasses cookies

All of this will be homemade by me and Doug (Doug's got turkey duty). Scared yet? I am. My sister and brother-in-law are bringing a pumpkin soup and cranberry sauce, as well as a dessert, and my mother is bringing her homemade breads and pies. I don't think we'll starve! At least not all of us. Those of us who have already poo-pooed the brussels sprouts and wild rice (ma soeur! dear nieces and nephew!) may, but that just means all the more for the others.

So. If I live to tell about Thanksgiving I'll have to do so here. Expect photos.

Happy trails.

2011-11-06T20:28:00.000-05:00

There must be a quote by some kind of sagely person floating around out there in the sea of collective wisdom that says something to the effect of "Life is better when traveling." If there is not, then I will be the person to declare that life is better when traveling. And by traveling I don't mean getting on a plane and flying across time-zones, or even staying in hotels. I just mean leaving your cats and your chores and your life behind for a little fun away from home.

Doug and I have had a bit of that lately. We spent the weekend of the October nor'easter in Provincetown and it was wonderful. Granted I was just coming down hard with a bad headcold, and we only had about five hours of dry conditions before the winds and rain kicked in, but we enjoyed each and every minute of being near the water.

We had such fun daydreaming about buying a small condo on the far east or west end of town and spending weekends near the water. I pictured myself sitting in a light and airy room with my sewing machine, sewing whatever new creation was inspiring me that day. Artists abound in P-town (even those that compose their art right on the beach), and Doug and I like the creativity in the air there (not to mention the fresh, ocean air).

I came home to a week of feeling like poo, which is what bad colds usually do to people, and unfortunately no amount of Halloween candy could make me feel better (believe me, I gave it my all). But the bright light at the end of the tunnel that week was a trip to New York City to see Doug's band play at Arlene's Grocery. Initially I was not that thrilled about seeing him play and then having to make the drive up to his parents' place in Monroe (I'm notorious for going to bed early), but I'm glad I stayed awake for it and paid my $10 in support of his cause.

Hot Molasses played well, considering that both Doug and Julia were sick. They looked good on stage, and, even though this wasn't their best show, they had energy and sounded so much better than the band that played before them.

Doug is funny about these shows. He acts like they are no big deal, but the need to debrief is always very strong. I'd like more Doug in the songs; more Doug-driven songs. A song about Puritans could be a great addition to the set list.

What was potentially more exciting (for me, at least) was walking around SoHo. This was my first trip there, believe it or not. I've been to NYC before but never to the Lower East Side, and I think I'll be going back. I made it to Purl SoHo and The Strand! That may have been worth the lack of sleep for me. I now have two and a half more yards of fabric to craft into something very useful

and have a souvenir from one of the most overwhelming (in a good way) bookstores I have ever been in.

How much are rents in SoHo? Could we afford to live there? I could get very used to walking the twenty or so blocks up Broadway between Purl SoHo and The Strand, though I may not have any money left for rent (or any room in my minuscule apartment for all the fabric, yarn and books I'd buy).

Keep traveling. That's what I say. Those are the words I will live by.

Just stuff.

2011-10-17T22:53:00.001-04:00

I'm not blogging from my phone today, so maybe I'll spell things correctly and use correct grammar this time. Maybe.

Life has been chugging along at a nice pace. We've been doing stuff (I'm not going to say that we're busy, because we are, but we always are so why dwell on that. And I'm not even sure if busy is a bad thing anymore. I think that it just is.). I mentioned in my last post that we had friends over for a end-of-season cookout, and you saw the remains of the beverages consumed. What's funny is that I don't think I had even one glass of wine or a sip of beer all night. I was spending my time talking, or eating, or swatting mosquitoes. Man, oh man, the mosquitoes are still deadly, even this far into October. Another effect of global warming that we have to contend with.

After our cookout two Saturdays ago my family came up to visit. We went on a walk in Boston and then ate dinner along the Boston Harbor. I am amazed at how little Doug and I go into the city. Even when we lived in Allston we rarely went into the city. However, when we're there, we ask ourselves why we don't spend more time there. We complain an awful lot about it, but what do we really know about it? For example, there was a movie being filmed right outside the Old State House. A big-budget flick, too, with Ryan Reynolds and Kevin Bacon. Who knew? Probably people who spend their time enjoying their city rather than wishing they lived anywhere but here. So we are going to change our mindsets a little and we are going to start saying things like, "I like Boston," and "What a nice place to live," and we are going to see how this goes.

We learned that Maria, my youngest niece, wants to live in a city when she grows up. And she wants to be on Broadway. So this means that she wants to live in NYC. She is pro-city and knows this with 8 year-old certainty. I like that.

Maybe this will be our backyard someday; the Boston Harbor.

It fills Doug's requirements of being near the water. It could fill the requirement of being near a public transport line that runs more frequently than the commuter rail. It could also fill the requirement of allowing for a better commute. If the Boston Harbor were in our backyard, do you think we'd actually go on a cruise of the Boston Harbor Islands?

Dreams of water views and twenty-minute commutes don't stop us from keeping things alive and cooking at home. In an effort to live our values, we rearranged some of our living spaces. I don't have many photos to share with you because I'm waiting until the rooms are "complete" to show you the final product, but here's a photo to give you an idea of what we're doing:

Where's the giant TV? In the basement. Where's the bookcase? To the left of the plaid armchair. Where's the computer and table? Out in the sunroom again. Now we have a more formal living space, but I hesitate to call it a formal living room. We are not the kind of people who have "formal" spaces. It is really more of a library, or a study zone. I have been sitting in the armchair to study. Doug has been sitting in the vinyl chair to read. And, without the couch and TV in the living room, we are eating meals at the dining table. The change has been good for us; helps us to structure our time better. We aren't watching less TV, either; we just have it on more infrequently. We use other things, like the radio or record player - or nothing at all - as background noise. There's something very civilized and natural about this arrangement.

But there's nothing natural about Sherman's arrangement with his cone. He has a new one now, because he destroyed the cone he came in. Scratched it to death. Last Saturday when one of our friends came over to our house, he took one look at Sherman, who he had never seen before, and said, "Ew." Maybe it was the ratty cone that elicited that response. Maybe it was the crinkly ear. Or the runny eyes (which are runny because he can't wipe them, thanks to the cone). Regardless, the poor guy needs help. And we just can't decide if we want to pay for it, because it seems that the kind of help Sherman needs is expensive.

Decisions, decisions. Life is all about decisions. Here's one decision that I just made and it was so terribly easy to make - I'm going to bed now. I wish they were all this easy.

Having people over.

2011-10-08T23:19:00.001-04:00

(Warning - like my last post, this post is being sent from my mobile device, so please pardon all typos.)

I really don't like the word "entertaining." Or, more specifically, I don't like the verb "to entertain," and the phrase, "perfect for entertaining." Or the phrase, "We love to entertain." I hear these phrases all the time on home and garden shows, the ones that showcase the people shopping for the home of their dreams. Their forever home. Their overpriced, top-of-their-budget, cookie-cutter home on the end of a cul-de-sac, with plenty of yard for the kids and dog to run around free. What does entertaining mean to these people? Bringing people over for some kind of song-and-dance routine?

Doug and I like to have people over to our house. We like people to come over and sit around and enjoy being in the company of other friends, family, or similar-minded people. We like to make sure they feel welcome and taken care of when they come to our home, meaning fed and watered. We like to make sure they have a clean place to sit. That's what we like to do. We like to open our house to others.

We did that tonight. We had friends over for an end-of-season barbecue. Hot dogs and hamburgers on the grill, a couple of types of salad, chips, appetizers courtesy of our guests, and plenty of wine and beer (most of which was consumed, as you can tell by the above photo). It was nice. Very nice. We really like having people over. We like bringing people together at our house so that they can enjoy it as much as we do.

I was thinking as I was baking and cleaning and preparing for the cookout that our house is too small for having people over. That we need a bigger kitchen. That we need a deck or a more convenient door to the patio for more seamless use of the outdoor space. But then I checked myself. Because our house is just fine. Better than fine, even - it is great. It is small and compact so people are forced to be close and socialize together. It is colorful. It is clean and comfortable. It's a home that reflects our personalities. Anything larger, anything more, would be too much. We don't need more. We have enough.

This is why I never say that Doug and I "like to entertain." That phrase reminds me of women who covet dual sinks in the master bath and granite countertops in the kitchen. Doug and I like to have people over. We like to bring people together. We like to do it in our little house with our over-turned plastic totes as tabletops. The day we start "entertaining" is the day we give up hot dogs. That would be a tragic day indeed!

Testing, testing.

2011-10-05T18:00:00.001-04:00

I am trying out something new - blogging from my phone. If this is successful then imagine the possibilities! I could blog from anywhere about anything, and even post pictures (like the one here). Maybe, if I can blog anything from anywhere at anytime, I will actually keep up with this blog more.

I took the photo in this blog the other day when I got to work. I pulled my lunch bag out of my tote bag so that I could put it in the staff refrigerator, and I was struck at how elementary school it looked. I have mentioned this at various times on this blog, but as a kid I never wanted to be anything in particular when I grew up. Had no career aspirations, and, really, my only dream was to "be old," which to my ten year-old mind meant retired. I did, however, when thinking about being an adult, think that it would be exciting to have to get dressed up for work and wear shoes that clicked along the ground as I walked. I wonder what my ten year-old self would think about my latest choice of lunch bag. And maybe it's not the bag itself that seems so elementary school, though that pattern certainly screams first grave; it's really the label. My lunch bag is labeled in the same way it would have been labeled back in the day.

Maybe this is just more evidence to help make the case that one never really leaves one's childhood behind, and every day one is, at least a little bit, one's grade-school self. If this is true, then I am glad it's being expressed through my lunch bag and not my aqua-blue high-top LA Gears.

Paging Doctor Freud.

2011-09-25T17:37:00.006-04:00

I am taking a psychology class this semester. I'm just a few weeks into it and we're already learning about Freud. First we learned about research methods (to remind us that psychology is indeed a science) and then we moved on to biological psychology (to also remind us that psychology is indeed a science). Now we are learning about Freud and psychoanalysis. Unlike some intro psych classes that stick strictly to the textbook, we dive right in and read a primary source. Freud, probably for a variety of reasons, has a difficult style. Takes twelve words to say what could have been said in two. But I'm sloughing through, thanks to being able to read aloud to a seasoned student of psychology.

I am not taking this class because I plan to become a psychologist or a therapist or anything like that. I just thought that this would be a good way to kill off a pretty standard pre-requisite for a potential career change, if that were to ever interest me. Teaching, dental-hygiene, nursing, speech therapy, even counseling - all of these things appeal to me, and all of the additional schooling I would need in order to pursue these careers requires a psychology class. So. I'll have my bases covered.

In the meantime, it's fun to learn about the brain and about different theories of psychology. I'm learning that Freud was one whacked-out dude, but some of his overall themes I actually think are useful and relevant. Even the idea of the id, ego, and super-ego. The idea of the self, of me, trying to create and maintain a balance between the more basic, biological needs that are battling against the bloated conscience of the external world. I like that. Maybe this is why some days feel like a struggle.

Of course, now whenever I look at something I'm reminded of some kind of psychological ideal or theory that was briefly touched on in my class. I just went through the photos on my camera to dump those I wanted onto the computer and saw this one:

I immediately thought of Freud and the possibility of Tyrone unconsciously exhibiting repressed sexual tension towards my mother (one can see Freud in anything). And then I saw Sasha trying to bust into the bag of catnip that came with her new scratching post

and was reminded of those doctors, like good Doctor Freud, who experimented with the medical possibilities of cocaine, morphine, opium, heroin, and other narcotics, on themselves and wound up, in some cases, dope fiends.

So I'm enjoying this class. It's fun to learn again, to do homework assignments, to be forced to read things that I may not otherwise have read. But let's just see if I'm singing that same tune in a few weeks when I have my first mid-term exam in something like six years. I'll have to get my seasoned student of psychology to do some review sessions with me. It will be like UCONN all over again.

Postscript: A little more, a little less.

2011-09-17T17:43:00.014-04:00

I owe my fair readers, my mother in particular, some additional, clarifying notes on my last completed post. I got an email from my mother when she read my post in which she stated, and I quote, "I can't figure out why you are always so unhappy in your jobs. You have had some very nice jobs. A lot of people would love your job." When I read that part of her email, I immediately wanted to call her up and exclaim, "I don't hate my job! I am not unhappy! No, no, no, you misunderstand!" But, in fact, is she misunderstanding? I believe I am at fault here. I believe I am putting out false impressions about my current mental state. And I believe that it deserves clarification.

Clarification: I do not hate my job. I repeat - I do not hate my job. I will even venture to go so far as to say that I like my job. Yes, that's right. I like my job. My job allows me to have a workable schedule. I like all the people with whom I work, even the ones who I feel have talents that are best suited to a different role and are maybe not appropriately matched to their position (that's my code for people who frustrate me and who I vent about (if I do actually vent, because I am doing that so, so much less now) when I come home to Doug). I feel less like a fish out of water in academia than I did in corporate finance, so I feel much more comfortable and confident when going to work each day. I am learning new things each day (different things than I learned in my research job, but still, my mind is being stimulated). I am not as sedentary in my new job. I can walk underground through a tunnel system directly into the stacks of one of the nation's most revered library collections and borrow whatever I want from it for a whole semester. I am lucky. I have a very good job. No job is perfect, but this job is closer to whatever professional perfection is for me than my last job. So please, yes, I do not hate my job. And I am not unhappy in my job.

I am beginning to think that I am just a perpetual "venter" (I hesitate to call myself a complainer, because I really don't feel like I am complaining when I talk about what I talk about. I am just getting my feelings and reactions to life out in the open.). Like I just said, I have a need to get my feelings and reactions to life out in the open and a forum for this is my blog. I am also opinionated, strangely enough, since if you have the pleasure of hanging out with me in person you may not really gather that. I tend to be more opinionated if I feel that the company I am keeping will be receptive to my opinions, and in the case of my blog, it is always receptive to my opinions. That's the great thing about a blog. So maybe that's why I tend to do a lot of venting here.

Again, clarification: I am not unhappy. I think that I may be bored, and I may have room in my life for more (more activity, more interesting-ness, more satisfaction), but I also may just have learned coping and protective habits during my development that cause my mind to run away with its thoughts. I'm overly-analytical. I think too much. And that causes a somewhat gray and swirling cloud to form above my head, not unlike that that trails Pigpen, that can be mistaken for unhappiness. I think that I have mistaken that cloud for unhappiness at times. At a lot of times. Like, fourteen years of my life. But it's not unhappiness. I enjoy my life. I like my house. I like my cats (depending on the day). I like to do my crafty hobbies, I like to read, I like to watch the movies and TV shows that I choose to watch, I like all of that. Of course there are things that I don't like, and of course there are things that I would like to change, but they are small. They are small and somewhat inconsequential, and they hardly constitute an unhappy life.

Let's just say that I am continually searching. I'm continually thinking and searching, trying to always live up to the standards that I have set for myself (and hoping that others will live up to the standards I have set for them). My mind is often tired from this, and many, many, many times I have wished that I could just have a quiet mind. That the thinking and searching could end. But it can't. I am who I am, really, and I can't change that. I can just learn how to cope with it. I suppose what you witness, either by reading this blog or my tweets or my emails or by talking with me and hanging out with me, what you witness is my learning process. Aren't you lucky?

Okay. Because I made you read through that long diatribe, let's show some more stimulating visual content. Stimulating visual content that show some of the things that make me happy.

Last Sunday I went to work at 2pm and I left work at 8am Monday morning. (Please note: I am not complaining, or even venting. Simply stating the facts). Before Doug went to bed he sent me this photo of him and Sherman to provide me with some distraction on my very long night.

I laughed out loud when I opened this photo. It made my night. Doug was so thoughtful to send me that.

And just today I opened up my email and found a series of photos from Uncle Jimmy that are documenting the progress on his house in New Hampshire. He is having some major construction done to it, including fixing up the porch and creating a second floor in the attic space. Here's a shot of the work so far:

I can't wait to see more photos!

A little more, a little less.

2011-09-14T21:18:00.007-04:00

What's in my backpack?

I look at job ads all the time because I am still trying to figure out what one can do with a library degree. There are all kinds of jobs out there and they are all over the place. Berkeley, Middletown, CT, Maryland, everywhere. I just saw a posting the other day that made me say, "Cool!" Associate Archivist at Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC. Of course, the job may not really be cool when you discover what it actually involves, but if I read the posting with my Antiques Roadshow goggles and think about being in Asheville, then I become very excited and I wish I had stayed in the archives program at Simmons so that I could have had a job like this. Wishes and regrets about my professional life I have plenty.

The job, you'll note, is in NC, which is not within commuting distance of my current home in Dedham, MA. The vast majority of the jobs that I see posted that make me go, "Hmmm...." are not within commuting distance of Dedham. This is a bit of a problem, since we own a home in Dedham and the market right now is pretty poor for house-selling. And, as I have said time and time again on this blog, we really like our house and we've grown used to Dedham. But this doesn't change the fact that our house ties us down. Weighs us down and keeps us in one place. Makes our backpacks very heavy.

What do we do about that? Not quite sure. We go back and forth on this topic each day. Sell or not to sell. Move or not to move. It's the same old, same old. Blah, blah. But Doug and I are in the process of lightening the load in our backpacks in other ways. Like going through our bookshelves and pulling books that we won't read or don't have any attachment to.

Doug's going through all of his pedals and is selling some. I have started a bag for clothes and shoes give-away. We are donating two chairs to Uncle Jimmy's house in New Hampshire for when the construction on his addition is completed. We have started a tag sale pile and have several things in it already, including some pots and pans that we haven't used once since we moved into this house. Things like that.

Our "Lightening the Load," our "Great Leap Forward," was side-tracked a bit while we were dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. A microburst went through our neighborhood and several extremely large and old trees met their maker because of it. Also because of it we spent four days with very limited power. No power to the main parts of our house meant that I spent a lot of time crafting. I finally made my new curtain for the kitchen:

Matching placemats:

A stupid sock creature:

What's ironic is that all of these things add weight to my backpack and so counteract what I am actually trying to do by getting rid of stuff. Because all of this is just more stuff. Now I have a spare set of curtains in storage, more placemats to store for use when the company I never invite over comes over, and a stuffed sock with button eyes that sits on the dining room table and collects cat hair. But all of it was fun to make, and I think the window looks much better with the new curtain. So maybe it's worth it to add to my backpack? Or maybe it's a balance. I can add to my backpack as long as I take more out than I am adding to it. Isn't that what life is about? Balancing the good with the bad? Yes, I think it is. And so the trial for me continues.

And the boss of the year award goes to...

2011-08-17T23:51:00.010-04:00

So, picture this. I'm on the couch, head slumped down on my chest, hair hanging across my face, while The New World is blaring in front of me. The movie is two hours and fifteen minutes long and I manage to sleep through about two-thirds of it. I wake for the last few minutes. Doug, seeing that I am conscious, comes over to the couch and tries to settle in for a late night of watching the latest episode of Ghost Hunters International. In my just-awakened state, which often finds me in a wretched mood, I want no part of it and go upstairs to put myself properly to bed. As Sasha is hovering over the water faucet trying to drink and I am putting the toothpaste onto my toothbrush, it hits me - I'm supposed to have gotten a cake for one of my staff's birthday tomorrow! I stand there in the mirror staring at myself with toothbrush halfway to my mouth. What do I do? It's 10:55pm. Said staff-person wants yellow cake with chocolate frosting; she told me this last week so I have no excuse not to have remembered to get her this cake. I am on the train at 6:45 each morning, so there's no time in the morning to go to the store (stores don't open around here until 7). I have no choice but to make her a cake from scratch! I run downstairs to find a recipe, and all recipes I find call for ingredients that I don't have. Milk, butter, cake flour... how come I don't have these things on hand? Gah!

After Doug determines that all grocery stores near us are closed, most of which closed at 11pm but some earlier (earlier?), I determine that I have no choice but to get in my car and drive around, trying to find a late-night 7-Eleven or something like that. The local Tedeschi is closed. I know of no other convenience store in the immediate area. Do I have to drive to Boston? On my way to the highway, I pass a CVS. Lights still on. I pull into the parking lot and see a person entering the building. Score! CVS must have cake mix and frosting, right? Forget this cake from scratch. Tonight calls for a box cake.

Yes, CVS does have cake mix, and even frosting. Yes, this CVS had yellow cake mix and chocolate frosting. I don't need milk or cake flour or butter for this. I make my purchase. Cake is now in the oven. Once the cake is baked and cooled I can sleep for a few hours before getting up extra early to frost it. And then the attempt to bring it to work with me (on the train) without any mishap. If this all works out, I hope she is happy, my staff-person. I hope she appreciates the cake. And I hope to god she really said that it's yellow cake with chocolate frosting that she wanted.

The positive in this situation is that I now have time to catch up on my blogging. So let's post photos of our annual trip to the Mystic Outdoor Art Festival. Every year for the past five years we have gone to this show, and every year we have come home with some kind of art. This year we came home with two things.

Doug's choice was the yellow painting on the top, which is of the Maine coast, which compliments the pink painting on the bottom of a street scene in Providence. Both are by the same artist, from Rhode Island, who has such great use of colors like yellow and pink that other artists, at least other artists that we see at the Mystic Art Show, do not use enough of (or well enough). My choice was a little more conventional:

But still a local scene. The artist is from Orleans, MA, and much of his inspiration comes from Cape Cod. This is a scene of a marsh in Provincetown. Again, the yellow struck me, as did the tactile nature of the paint. The artist uses some kind of knife technique to apply the paint, meaning that most of it comes out in big globs. I like that. I like art that you can touch.

When we are at the art show, which seems to consist of most of the same artists year after year, we always try to balance cost with appeal. Do we like a piece enough to pay that much for it? Much of what we see is very expensive, and it's not like I can really judge how much a piece of artwork should cost. I'm no artist, but I know that the labor going into some of these pieces is intense - and so much of it! Could an oil painting (oils always being more expensive than acrylics or watercolors or photographs it seems) really be worth $3500? Maybe. But those are the paintings we have to leave behind. We set a budget and don't go over that. We've amassed a nice collection of art in this house. People tend to outgrow houses because they have children. For us, we may outgrow this house because of our art.

There could be worse things, though. Worse things like brain-eating amoeba killing you after a nice swim in some nice warm water. I'm always telling Doug that if the water were warmer at the beach I'd go in and swim. But now maybe not. Can you believe that there is such a thing as brain-eating amoeba? Of course, there's flesh-eating bacteria, for real, so why not brain-eating amoeba. It's when I read things like this that I am convinced that the only way that I am going to survive this life, getting through all the anxiety of living - the risks and the dangers - is by some kind of Valium patch that delivers and maintains a constant dose of drug into my bloodstream. Some days I just can't handle all the uncertainties.

My cakes are done. Now for them to cool. This week has seemed endless. I'm definitely ready for this one to end.

Catching up.

2011-08-15T20:26:00.015-04:00

The problem with writing a blog post once every week or more is that the posts I do write seem to be marathon posts. I will try not to make this a marathon post, being mindful that my faithful readers have other, much more interesting things to do with their lives.

In reverse chronological order:

Cat Update:

The cats were at Grandma's house while Doug and I were in Maine. Two cats love it there; one does not. I'll give you one guess for the cat who doesn't love it there. That's right - Sasha! The one who at the moment doesn't love anything but catnip and sucking on Doug's armpit. We retrieved Meg from East Hartford this weekend, completing the feline triumvirate in Dedham, and Sasha, who for a week was getting used to being the only cat in the bedroom at night, now had to deal with her sister again. This threw her into all kinds of disarray. Doug threw her out of the bedroom on Saturday night because she was being nasty to even him, and locked her in the office. In the morning when I went to let her out I discovered that she doesn't like being in jail and told me by letting me discover the wonderful gifts she left me overnight. Yes, she decided to use the office as her litter box. And someone else decided to use the bathroom rug as his/her litter box, too. So Sunday morning was all kinds of wonderful with me threatening Doug to drive one of the cats - I didn't care which one - to the shelter because if there is one thing - the one thing! - that I will not tolerate it is pee and poop outside the litter box. I then fled the disaster zone to go to the gym to blow off steam, only to see this as I was backing out of the driveway:

No one went to the shelter, and Sasha seemed to be making progress by the end of the day (maybe that's because her attempt to run away from her miserable existence, which got her stuck on the roof and caused Doug to do his fireman impression and rescue her via ladder, was a complete failure and left her knowing once and for all that she is the kind of cat who requires food and shelter and clean cotton t-shirts to suck on). We are giving them two weeks. If there are no more accidents outside the box and if I hear less screeching coming from the smallest one, then they can all stay with us.

Maine Update:

There's no update, really, about Maine, other than we miss Maine and those we know who live in that state. It seems like forever ago that we were there, gazing at the Belfast shore

kayaking while the sun was setting over the lake

watching this cutie-pie explore new foods and fall in love with questionable tag-sale cast-aways

and challenging our taste buds with foods like these from the Maine Lobster Festival.

More Moody's trips with Ruby and her two gay dads!

More hiking in the Camden Hills!

And more biking in Acadia.

Please? Don't know if we can wait for another year to pass before we feel that kind of contentment again. Anyone up for a week at the lake for some ice-fishing?

The next step.

2011-08-07T21:26:00.008-04:00

We're back from our annual trip to Maine. If you want a review of our fabulous trip, please see the wonderfully concise post from Summer Sweater, or the introspective post from Cotton. I'll blog about the trip soon, but I have other things on my mind (doesn't take long for my mind to start to work (or overwork) again, let me tell you).

Other Thing on My Mind #1: The house.

The house is now painted! Yay! Remember when I asked you to vote for your preferred color? Well, I received no votes, which is just as well, since Doug and I picked out our preferred color and would have gone with that one regardless. We went with the light greenish/gray color, called Roycroft Mist Gray, with Roycroft Bottle Green for the accents and Creamy for the trim.

Doug and I really like it and can't wait to get a new, dark green awning to really show off the green accent color. I also can't wait to plant flowers in my window boxes, which thankfully I did not have to paint myself.

Coming back to our newly painted house was very satisfying. We pulled up to the little place and I was glad to be there. I was reflecting on all of the work that we have put into the place - the painting on the inside, the landscaping, and now the repainting on the outside. While in Maine, Doug and I were dreaming of living there, in some kind of old farmhouse not too far from the rocky coast. But when I came home to our little house with its fresh coat of paint, those dreams fade a little. (A little.)

Other Things on My Mind #2: Career Change.

This next topic will thrill my mother, who I fear is convinced that I am wandering aimlessly and unhappily through life (which is not true, really not true at all). Vacation always gets me to thinking about how I am living my life when I am not on vacation (if you have read Cotton's post mentioned above, you'll get a glimpse of why), and now that I'm back from it and we are basically back to our old routine (though not fully, since we are down one cat (still at Grandma's Meg is) and I'm still allowing myself to eat as many sweets as I want) I'm dreaming of ways to prolong those vacation feelings. Those feelings of freedom, of light-heartedness, of possibility and excitement. I do believe that finding the right career path is key to having that kind of satisfying vacation-feeling even when I'm not on vacation.

Let's just face it - I'm not a librarian at heart. I love books. Love, love, love books. Love their covers, their smell, their contents. There's not much about them that I do not like, and even confess to loving electronic books and their electronic devices. But that doesn't mean that I love librarianship, or am meant to be a librarian. The minute details of librarianship I find trying. What difference does it make if I stamp the due-date in the back of the book before I de-sensitize it? Why does everyone have to do these tasks in a particular order, and why do we have to have meetings to discuss what the best order is? To quote myself when I was talking to Doug today, I'm just not jazzed about librarianship. I know some very good, very passionate librarians and I am so glad, so glad, that they exist. But I don't consider myself one of them and I may very well never be. I thought things would be different when I left corporate librarianship for academic librarianship, and believe me, they are, but I still haven't found my "thing."

For me, more than moving to a new location or finding a new hobby, I need to start down that journey of changing my career. I need to start doing that thing that I can feel better about, or at least more interested in, each morning when I wake up. I've narrowed it down to a few options, and now I just have to take that plunge. I feel a lot of pressure to make the right choice. I feel that the time is now, and that the spotlight is on this decision. I feel like I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself, but I also am encouraged by the possibilities and the bright light of the future. These are good things, and I thank vacation for this.

I also thank vacation for another week of my life spend with three of my favorite people. Ruby is such a little delight, and her parents are just about the best people to go on vacation with. Ever. Doug and I are always so relaxed and comfortable on our trips to Liberty. We thank you, C, C, and R, for your hands in that!

You be the judge.

2011-07-24T18:09:00.008-04:00

Doug and I are having the house painted in a couple of weeks. We are going to change the color of the house. Today we put on the house the two color choices that we narrowed all of our seemingly infinite color choices down to. Which one do you vote for?

We have a favorite, and it may not be the one that you think it is. You'll have to wait until the house is painted that color to know which one it is, though - I'm not giving up our secret just yet.

When I was uploading the photos of the color choices to the computer, I discovered that I hadn't uploaded the photos of our most recent beach trip. Last Saturday we were at Ogunquit and had a wonderful day there. We wish we had gotten to see Summer Sweater and her family, but maybe next time. This trip we just lay on the beach reading, Doug splashed about in the water a lot (and with my phone, which meant that I had to get a new phone because salt water and electronics do not mix), and then we took a long walk once the tide went out. Ogunquit at low tide late in the afternoon is a wonderful place to be. Most of the day-trippers and families with millions of little kids are gone and only those people who want to enjoy the tranquility of the beach are left. You get to see great scenes like this at that time of day:

Of course, if you look closely you can see that the guy flying the kites is doing so in what looks like his underwear. He was with two other guys, both also in what looked like their underwear, and our neighbors on the blanket next to us were calling them "The Underwear Guys." I wonder if this guy below was given a cool nickname by fellow beachgoers:

Me, I just call him "Hotstuff." Not very original, I realize, but totally accurate. It's the sandals that do it for me, and also the amazingly, almost alabaster-white skin. I don't know how he does it, but I feel lucky to know that it's all mine.

Weekly update.

2011-07-23T08:46:00.009-04:00

So here's the weekly update (warning - I don't have any new photos).

We took Sherman to the emergency vet last Sunday morning. I won't go into the details of why, but let's just say that I noticed something about him that was abnormal and concerning. So, we pack him up and drive him to Walpole to the Tufts emergency vet clinic. It's odd being there just about a year after we brought Wyatt there, but hey. That's the way the cookie crumbles. So the vet sees Sherman and determines that while he doesn't seem to have an emergency per se, he does seem to have some medical problems, none of them stemming from his neck surgery. (By the way, there was a vet on duty there that day, Dr. Paul, who performed Sherman's neck surgery the day the Animal Rescue League brought him in and she was absolutely over the moon to see Sherman doing so well. She showed me photos of his wound pre-, during-, and post-surgery. I'm telling you, it's a miracle this cat is alive. Dr. Paul feels he was burned by the tailpipe of a car, and was convinced that he either wouldn't survive the surgery or that he would be deformed post-surgery. No to both. So Sherman is one lucky cat.) Anyway, we are currently trying to treat his itchy ears and the issue for which we brought him to the vet, and if these treatments do not work then we need to take Sherman to a dermatologist for his ears and an internist for his other issue.

So. That's the deal with Sherman. We have been giving him his ear drops still and also his new oral medicine, and he hates both, and I end up wearing more of both medicines than actually get into his ears or mouth because he thrashes about when we are administering them, but we're still trying. And we're still trying to get Sasha and Meg to coexist with Sherman. I feel that Meg is now used to him. She walks around him and stays in the same room as him, and she'll give the most inoccuous growls in his direction only when he is within maybe 5 feet of her. So I consider her integrated. Sasha... well, she's still another story, but who knows. Some days she can be within five feet of him and not pull a Linda Blair-Exorcist move. Other times she can't. Overall there's progress, but still. My nerves are pretty much shot from this whole thing and I cannot wait (let me reiterate - I CANNOT WAIT!) for our week's vacation away from the house, away from the commute, from work, and, most importantly these days, away from the cats.

On Thursday night I went to see The Names of Love, which was playing as part of the Boston French Film Festival. (What a fun film, by the way. It took on some pretty weighty issues, like the deportation of Jews in France in WWII and the French hostilities and open prejudices against Muslims and North Africans, but really didn't have a dark tone at all. If you want to see Sara Forestrier in all her glory, too, please see this movie.) I got to hang out with a very fun friend who I really do not see often enough, and all I did was blab the whole time about the cats, late-quarter life crises, and a lot of other boring stuff. Next time we hang out it's her turn to vent. But I also got myself a ticket to the MFA, which I plan to use to see the new American wing of the museum either today or one night this week. Can't think of a better place to go to beat the heat.

And, on a final note, we're in the middle of a heat wave. Apparently there's a heat dome over the entire United States (and probably the world, and we'll be enclosed in this dome for eternity, until we shrivel like raisins or run out of water and die. At least that's the sense I'm getting from all the news reports, which really put me in a great mood and make me look oh-so-forward to the future.) and yesterday the temperatures in Boston cracked 100 degrees. I do not believe I ever remember the temperatures - in the shade, no less - ever cracking 100 around here. So yes, it was mighty hot. Still is. We put the air conditioner in the window last night and actually turned it on. I will honestly say that I am not complaining. I would much rather take a few days of this kind of heat than take months of this:

At least I can walk outside without turning into an icicle. And if I sweat and smell, so be it. I can always go inside somewhere to cool off, but in the winter I feel like I can never get warm enough. But I won't have to think about that for at least another four months, so for now I'm just going to focus on enjoying the summer. Here's to 100 degrees!

Still truckin'.

2011-07-15T20:17:00.009-04:00

I'm sitting here in long pants, a long sleeve shirt, and a sweatshirt. I am slightly warm, but you'd think I'd be unbearably warm. It's the middle of July! I should be thankful for the one or two cool days that we get in-between the sweltering, humid days of deep summer, but still. This throws a wrench in my plans to spend my Friday night hot and sweaty as I watch a movie on the couch with a fan turned up to high speed blowing directly on me (and keeping the cats away).

Speaking of cats, the cat integration is going. Inch by inch, row by row, we're gonna make these cats get along. But my god this particular integration is slow going. Maybe I am misremembering the previous integrations, but this one feels particularly painful. Sasha is relentless in her hissing and screaming. Meg is relentless in her hiding. Sherman is relentless in eating us out of house and home, scratching at his cone, rubbing his face all over our feet and shoes, and leaving us the largest, most malodorous deposits in his litter box that we have ever experienced. Other than these things, the integration is going well :) Of course, things are better than they were, but we are still faithfully sticking to our "No cats in the bedroom" policy each night so that we can actually sleep in peace. It's no fun to be woken up at 3am to the sounds of the devil coming from deep in Sasha's being.

I don't have any more photos of Sherman, either. He's very difficult to photograph, this cat. He will not sit still. Plus, it's hard to get a good photo of him with his lampshade. We'll have more photos of him at some point, but I'm thinking it won't be until we can take off his lampshade and he stops being itchy and fidgety. Which reminds me... he needs his drops. We are trying ear drops and prednisone to alleviate (and confirm) his allergies. His itching has lessened, but he's still uncomfortable. I hope we can find a solution that works for him, because then Doug and I will be able to sleep better at night. Literally.

Doug's watching soccer on TV right now, while the fish and potatoes are on the grill and my strawberry-blueberry muffins are in the oven.* Wolves v. Chelsea. Doug's enthusiasm for soccer has been rekindled after having see the Revs v. Man United game on Wednesday night.

It was a good game, despite the rain and the long lines at Five Guys with Fries beforehand. The Revs held their own against Man U for the first half, but once Matt Reis was taken out of goal and Park and Giggs were put in. The Revs lost, 4-1, but it was fun to see Gillette practically full and the fans really pumped up. Of course, most of the fans were really pumped up to see Man United. I had no idea that there were so many Man U fans in this area. The stadium was a sea of red and yellow Giggs and Rooney jerseys on men and women alike. Once again I felt like I was missing out on a huge cultural trend the likes of Glee and iPads. How come I didn't have any Man U gear? How come I had never heard of Ryan Giggs before? And how come all 55,000 of those fans had? I think I need to get out more.

Timer for the oven is going off - time to get the muffins out. Think I'll join Doug on the couch and see if I can learn something about soccer and feel more part of the world.

* Lest you think that we eat like this all the time, let me quickly correct you. I had cereal one night this week, and then a taco salad from Qdoba. And we eat hot dogs more than we comfortable admitting.

Tonight is an exception, and hopefully a tasty one.

A New Hampshire Fourth

2011-07-06T21:48:00.014-04:00

If you blink, life passes you by. That's how it seems to me, anyway. So one must take full advantage of all opportunities. Like enjoying long weekends as much as possible.

Doug and I spent this long Fourth of July weekend in New Hampshire at the family compound. Despite there being some rain, no running water in my uncle's cabin, and my mother's dog biting my cousin (twice!) and other family antics, it was a great weekend and definitely an enjoyable way to spend the 4th.

We got to see my sister and her family, and we honored the occasion of all of the family being together in one place by taking a group photo. I don't recall another photo with all of us in it like this. And it's a really good photo. I may have this one framed.

We paid a visit to the King Arthur Flour store in Norwich, VT. Have you been there? It's a must if you like to bake - they sell anything that you might need or want for baking. I got three boxes of the King Arthur Belgian waffle mix, so we'll be having waffles around here for a while. Yay!

We tubed, as in me, my mother, and Doug. Tubing, if you've never done it, is when you sit or lay on a big donut-like tube connected to a speedboat by a rope and you are pulled around the lake/ocean at high speed. Now, this is a great feat for Doug, who does not swim and is terrified of having his head go underwater and not being able to touch the bottom of the pool/lake/ocean/etc. So the fact that he tubed is very impressive. Very, very impressive. I was so proud of him! I was also very proud of my mother, who tubed with me once Doug had had enough. My mother is sixty-six, but she held on tight and had more stamina than I did throughout our (very fast and very rough) ride. My mother is also very impressive. For someone who actively asserts her senior status at places like the movies and anywhere where she can get a senior discount, she certainly doesn't act like a senior. The energy she has amazes me (and, truth be told, makes me a little jealous. How come I didn't get that energy?).

Let's see, what else did we do in New Hampshire. We boated. We kayaked some, but we also rode in the little fishing boat in the Crystal Lake Boat Parade. We were the last boat in the parade, and our boat wasn't decorated, but at least we joined in the fun. Doug drove the boat in the parade, and Brian tried to keep up with us in the kayak. Brian eventually went his own way and left us with the pontoon and party boats, waving to the people on shore as we puttered by. (Maybe we should have tubed while being pulled by this little john-boat!).

Of course, what we didn't do over the weekend was spend much quality time with our cats. We left all three cats out in the house alone this past weekend while we were gone. We are still very much in the throes of integrating the two girl cats with their new feline brother, and this process is going to be a slow one. Much slower than when we integrated Wyatt with Meg, or when we integrated Sasha with Meg and Wyatt. Why? Because of Sasha. She's Satan's spawn at times, and this is one of those times. So, while we had hoped that over the weekend they would get the fighting and hissing out of their system, since they would have no choice but to live together while Doug and I were away, we are now back to having them in separate rooms overnight and throughout the day, and are only together in the house when we come home from work. The new cat, Sherman (we've been calling him this, and it's stuck. He head-butts like a Sherman tank.), loves being out and roaming the house, so we feel badly for him that he is locked up in the office all night and day, but if we ever want Sasha to stop hissing, growling, spitting, and making these god-awful screams, then this is probably what we have to do for quite a bit longer.

But look at him! He's such a good and handsome kitty, who has a bottomless pit for a stomach. He's already gained weight since he's been here, and his coat feels so much more healthy. The one thing is that we have to keep his lampshade on his head. We tried for a few days to leave it off, but he scratched way too much at his ears and neck, so now it's back on and he has himself an appointment at the vet tomorrow to get some ointment to help with the itching. He's doing well, though, despite everything, and he's settling right in. If only I could say the same for his sisters...

Cat people.

2011-06-26T19:02:00.015-04:00

I hosted a book club at my house this week. We read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, and then my friend Karen, from high school, and her book club came here for dinner and discussion. It went well. It was only my second book club experience, and I had a good time. I was amazed at how much we actually talked about the book. In my previous book club experience we talked about the book for about twenty minutes before we moved on to other subjects. This time, we talked about the book for about an hour. Wow! That was a hard thing for me, all that talking about the book. Not because I hadn't read it, because I had (and I had a few things to say about it, namely that it was too long and too many loose ends were not tied up), but because I wanted to eat all the food that we had there! I made a tossed salad, a chick pea salad (that reminds me, Summer-Sweater, I owe you that recipe), and roasted banana cupcakes, and it was the banana cupcakes that I really wanted to dig in to. They were SO GOOD.

The recipe was not that complicated, but it was time-consuming. They took about three hours to make. First you had to roast the bananas (and I do not recommend using over-ripe bananas, as they just turn to a sugary mess) then sift all the dry ingredients together, and then you were ready to add in the cooled roasted bananas. Looks appetizing, no? (One of the reasons why I am even recounting the tale of these roasted banana cupcakes is so that I can showcase the above photo, which is about the most disgusting display I've ever seen.) They turn out very well, though, and they taste even better. I highly recommend them.

One of the things I learned at book club was that most people I know are dog people and not cat people. No one except me out of the whole group have cats. They all have dogs. Doug and I have been on a dog kick lately; we've been so many places of late where dogs are prominent, and that just makes us want to get one all the more. So today, instead of going to the second day of the Design 4 Drupal conference that Doug's company is co-sponsoring, Doug and I headed off to our local shelters to see about adopting a dog.

In our post-Wyatt world, we have often visited shelters to look at the animals, and a couple of times we have been close to pulling that adoption trigger. We never did, though. Either we weren't in the mood, or one of us liked the animal more than the other, or we felt that we would be disrupting our little feline duo that bonded more than ever before now that Wyatt was no longer around. But I've always said that we'd adopt another animal when we found one that we really wanted, that we really connected with, and that we just couldn't leave behind. And today was that day, only not with a dog. Yes, with a cat.

We went to the Animal Rescue League of Boston's Dedham location, mostly on a whim. It was the last shelter that we visited. When we got into the shelter we walked by this friendly orange cat that was in a cage right outside the dog room. The poor guy was wearing a lampshade. The sign on his cage said that he was a sweet and lovable boy, and was he. I am drawn to the underdog, to the down-trodden, so I stopped to stick my hand in the cage, and he put his body into such a contortion to reach my hand that he fell off of the ledge he was perched on. I felt badly about causing him that fall, so I quickly went into the dog room. The dog room was filled with pit bull mixes, none of which could live with cats, so we left that room. Once back out, we stopped and said hi to our lampshade friend again. He was trying desperately to rub his head against the cage to say hello, but the lampshade made it pretty impossible. Doug and I nicknamed him "Conehead." We petted and loved Russo (his actual shelter name) for a little while, but then we headed into the cat room, just for yucks, where Doug became instantly smitten with Daisy Wick, a 9-month old long-haired black and white girl. She had a pretty face, and she was sweet enough through her cage, so Doug and I started talking about taking her home. But Conehead was on my mind. I had never met a friendlier, more sweet cat, and I have such a thing for orange cats. I told Doug that if we were considering Daisy Wick then we had to consider Russo. So, propelled by the momentum of the moment, we went to the desk and told the girls working there that we wanted to play with both Daisy Wick and Russo.

We played with Russo first, and wow. He was even better out of his cage than in it. He was bright, inquisitive, and super sweet. He let me brush him, he ate the treats we fed him, and he cared not one bit that all the other cats were hissing at him. He just went about exploring. When I picked him up and he was purring I knew that I wouldn't be able to leave without him. We played with Daisy Wick, just to do our due diligence, but there really was no question. Russo had won us over. We filled out the paperwork and packed him up and he's now ours.

He was found by a couple of people in West Roxbury, who noticed him wandering the neighborhood. This was in early April. They picked him up and saw that he had a huge gash going from the top of his neck between his shoulders to around the underside of his neck. Who knows how the poor boy got it. When they brought him to the shelter in Dedham the people there didn't think he'd make it. They bypassed their normal vet and brought him straight to the Tufts Emergency Vet clinic, the very same place we brought Wyatt to just about one year ago. The amazing vets there gave Russo great, great care and he is alive and well and as happy as can be now. In the past few months he's been through major surgery, spaying (he was not spayed when found), and an ear-mite treatment. He's on the mend, just about 100%, except that his scar on his neck itches him, so he wears the cone to keep from scratching at it. He's a wondercat.

Meggie and Sasha have not yet met him, though they know he's here. We will introduce them tonight, but will have more integration each night this week. My great wish is that this kind and sweet boy gives Meggie all the love and affection that she needs and used to get from Wyatt, and that Sasha ignores them both and lets them be. That's what I want. But for now Doug and I are content hanging with him and getting acquainted.

He's already burned a hole into our hearts, and we don't even have a real name for him yet. It feels nice having three cats again, especially when one is as sweet as this guy. Will we ever get a dog? Maybe. It's pretty clear, though, that for right now we are cat people, and that's just fine with us.

Weekend Edition.

2011-06-19T18:05:00.012-04:00

I think that should be the new name of my blog. Or maybe "The Weekly Update." I seem to blog only once a week now, and it's mostly just a recap of what we've done (usually what we've done on the weekend).

Anyway, just a few things to catch you up on. I have a new addiction - to the WBUR app on my phone. I can listen to WBUR anytime now, and I do. While at the gym, while jogging, while on the train (until the signal cuts out), walking to and from the train... it's wonderful! I was listening in the mornings to a great recurring story on evaluating teachers (there is more than a little bit of me that is interested in being a teacher, even after listening to that series). And Weekend Edition on Sunday morning is perhaps my new favorite show to listen to. This is a case where I am happy to own a bit of modern technology. I think my phone does enhance my life.

Doug and I went to the Bruins parade yesterday (FYI - they won the Stanley Cup). It was a good time. It was also a very hot day, and thanks to the inaccurate weather forecast I brought with me my raincoat and umbrella, only to wish that I was wearing a sundress and had my sunhat. Doug was very happy to be there and so were the thousands of other revelers who stood out in the bright sun to cheer the Bruins on. We took the train into South Station and walked over to City Hall Plaza. It was a good place to watch from, but it's not like we could see much. We were about thirty people back from the road and the Duck Boats. BUT... we did get a glimpse of the team as they rolled by, and even of the Stanley Cup. It was fun to see all the black and gold confetti floating in the air. I'm so glad this parade wasn't for the Red Sox or the Patriots. I am tired of both teams, and tired of everyone wearing their red and blue. It's nice that another team has their moment of glory.

I saw two movies this weekend, too. First was Midnight in Paris, which was very good. Owen Wilson did a very good Woody Allen-lite character, and I enjoyed seeing Marion Cotillard and Lea Seydoux. French women are more than a bit beguiling. I also saw Bridesmaids, which was also very good, and actually quite funny. It was The Hangover, but for women. Same kinds of jokes, exact same idea, just with women. And like The Hangover, this movie somehow worked. Would I recommend it to men? Probably. The food-poisoning-pooping-in-the-street scene is something everyone can laugh about. Right?

What is perhaps most monumental and in need of relating, though, is that THE BIKE RACK IS NOW ON THE CAR! Doug, inspired by seeing Chara ride away from the Bruins parade on his bicycle, finally decided to grant my birthday wish of both last year and this year and got the bike rack on the car. So now we can bike. I'd love to bring the bikes to our vacation in Maine. Don't ask me where we'd ride to, and if we'd be in any kind of condition to ride around those hills (that's putting it mildly), but still. I can dream. It's good to dream.

Candyfreak

2011-06-14T21:52:00.008-04:00

It's probably fitting that as I type I am feeding myself Necco Wafers, once a favorite candy of mine. I bought two sleeves of these treats on my drive over to Ithaca last week; the first I ate on my way to Ithaca and the second I was saving for a special moment. That moment is now, because I am reading Candyfreak, a story of a man and his love of candy (and his quest for candies of his youth that have gone the way of the dinosaur). This is the second book that I have read on candy; the first being Emperors of Chocolate, which was more of a history of chocolate manufacturing than one man's love affair with corn syrup. I remember that after I read Emperors I treated myself to a bag of Hershey's Kisses. Now I'm treating myself to a whole lot of Necco Wafers. I really need to stop reading books about candy.

But how else would I fill my spare time? Maybe by hanging out with family and GETTING THINGS DONE. I love to get things done. What did I get done on Saturday? I got a trip to the American Girl store checked off my list. Won't have to go back there until Miss Maria's birthday, because, thankfully, she got her AG fix for now. I also got a new faucet installed, thanks to my dad and Doug, and scratched "kick old, broken kitchen faucet to the curb and spit on it as it goes" off of the to-do list. I hated that old faucet. The new one is much better in a functional kind of way (though it's a bit shiny. It's like having a mirror in front of me as I'm washing dishes. Very odd.) My mother and I also reupholstered the cushion to the rocking chair that we bought in Brimfield last month. My mother took an upholstery class years ago and she was finally able to put her skills to use once again. After purchasing a staple gun Sunday morning we set about attaching the new fabric (which felt so HGTV). I stapled and my mother stretched the fabric. Here's to a little bit of hard work, creativity, and teamwork: Because of her efforts, I gave my mother a short break before making her go outside with me, in the mist, to weed my side garden. I can actually be kind when I want to be.

But why all of this family time? Doug was away, so I thought it would be a good time to bond with them. Doug was in NYC with Hot Molasses playing a show at the Ding Dong Lounge. I wish I had gone, since Doug said that it was a really good show and a cool venue, but I thought that the band was going to do a roadtrip thing where they all pile into a van, travel to New York, and sleep on someone's floor post-show. I didn't want to be a third wheel. However, all band members drove separately to New York and went their separate ways after the show. What kind of band camaraderie is that? When I get my bluegrass band up and running there will be none of that going on, I promise. (I also promise that I won't start up a bluegrass band anytime soon. Audiences would never pay to hear the sounds that come out of my violin at this point, and, given that I haven't picked up my instrument in over a month, they may never have the chance.)

Ithaca is gorges.*

2011-06-08T20:31:00.008-04:00

I spent a little time in Ithaca earlier this week at the Ivies+ conference held at Cornell. What a good time. First of all, the drive there was just wonderful. The sky was bright and sunny and the temperature warm. The hills were rolling and the country was perfectly agrarian. I saw cows and horses and fresh hay bales. It was like a little bit of Vermont in upstate New York.

And then there was Ithaca. I don't have much experience with upstate New York other than a night spent in Liverpool, a few drives across state on my way to Canada, and a weekend in Cooperstown, but Ithaca was a lot livelier than I expected. I wish I had more time to spend there, but what I saw of it was nice, including the Courtyard Marriott, which had a remarkably equipped fitness room for the size of the hotel. The city is at the base of one of the Finger Lakes, Cayuga Lake, and is all hills and streams and gorges, like this one that runs right through the Cornell campus. There are wineries and walking trails and all kinds of great stuff to do and see. I wish I had had more time to spend there, but I know it's a place I'll go back to.

And what about Cornell? I was mightily impressed with the campus and the buildings and the views, as you may have by now suspected. It reminded me so much of the UConn campus, but a Storrs on steroids. I found myself wondering what it would have been like to learn there, to spend some formative years there, but then found myself wondering what it would be like to work there, to spend some of my working life there. It's such a self-contained little world, but with ties to the wider world. There are partnerships between the Cornell libraries and those of Columbia, and buses run frequently from Ithaca to NYC. The winters there would probably do me in, but if the summers are anything like the days that I spent there then sign me up. The air was clean and cool and the greenery! It was almost too much for me. That part of me that craves wide-open space and rolling hills was throbbing with desire.

But yes, yes - as you know, this does tend to happen to me. This location-envy. Every time I go somewhere new I find myself imagining myself living there, thriving there, prospering in ways that I am not (or don't think that I am) prospering at home. I always have to remind myself that real life would catch up to me no matter where I lived. That I'd love working at Mann Library or Olin for a year, but then the novelty would probably wear off and it would become a job, work, just like everything else. It's fun to imagine, though, and it's fun to escape the realities of life for a while and imagine something new. It's also fun, though, to come home from those places and be greeted by my rose bush, or my cats or the quilt on my bed, because all of that reminds me that I am prospering at home, that I do have a home, that my home is here and my life is good now, and that I can go and visit Ithaca anytime I want and soak in all of its natural splendor and then come home to what's comfortable. Maybe someday I'll make a move, when Doug and I feel the time is right, but for now I am content going to these neat little places and dreaming of a different life, only to come home to a reality that really is quite good after all.

*I apologize for re-using that well-used slogan, but I can't help it. It's so apt.

Ah, the house.

2011-06-02T22:41:00.010-04:00

I have a love/dislike relationship with our house. Some days I love it. I walk up the street on my way home from work and I look at the big windows in the sunroom and the flamingos in the garden and I cannot wait to get inside to be inside my house. I walk into the kitchen and I feel comfortable. I feel at home. This house feels right.

I had one of the "I love this house" moments this weekend; actually, several of these moments. Doug and I spent A LOT of time working in the front yard to weed and improve. So much improvement, don't you think? This is what the front of the house looked like before we got to it: And this is what the front of the house looked like after we got to it: Doug took out that big, prickery bush and I had my way with another of the nasty plants up front. And while I was very tempted to cut down the overwhelming rose bush on the side of the house along the driveway, I didn't because it's covered with these rosebuds and it will be a beautiful bush once those buds blossom.

But today I'm having some of those dislike moments about the house, because I finally called the handyman (not Doug for this one) to get our upstairs shower fixed, and while I was baking cookies in my kitchen that's the size of a postage stamp I turned on the faucet in the kitchen to get a glass of water and whoosh! A geyser of water sprayed out the stop of it. The thing is cooked. Broken. Dead. Done. So now we need a new faucet. Which will involve a plumber. All of this just after I put the deposit on the housepainting project that we have coming in August. So yes, I'm having some of those dislike moments about the house.

I remind myself, though, that there are good things. There are good things about my house, and also just good things about life in general. Blue Ribbon for dinner, Doug playing guitar in the basement, going to the beach and enjoying the warm sun on my (well-sunscreened) skin, wonderful and beautiful beach roses, and the fact that our house, the house into which we pour our time, our wallets, and our love, was not destroyed by a freakish tornado. As I go to bed tonight, it's those good things that I'm going to think about. And I'm going to avoid the kitchen faucet for a while.

Pomp and Circumstance.

2011-05-26T08:16:00.009-04:00

This was definitely not a normal morning commute - there were too many suit coats and shiny shoes getting off the train at Harvard Square, and too many families. Usually it's just me and the other Harvard employees getting off the train, but, because today is Commencement Day at Harvard, things are changed. My library is open essentially as a bathroom for the crowds of people who are already swarming the Yard. See?
Maybe I'm okay with us being the campus bathroom for the day (or at least until noon, when the morning exercises are over and the circ desk opens and we are a functioning library again). It gives me an excuse to be here, witnessing the first (of many?) Harvard graduations. It will likely be a quiet day, at least in here, so I can get some work done. And I can also reflect, fondly and perhaps not-so-fondly, on my own college commencements.

I had written "college commencement" above, but then I remembered that I have two degrees, went to two commencement ceremonies, and went through those rituals twice. I always forget about my Simmons experience. It's somewhat fitting that the Simmons College t-shirt that I put into my quilt didn't fit, and that I had to truncate it down to say simply "Simmon." That's kind of fitting for my memories of the place; truncated and incomplete. That's a part of my life that has not really been branded into my mind. Was it a difficult time? Hard? Confusing? I'm not sure. In many ways I think I really liked that time of my life. I felt like an adult, whatever that means. But whatever I was thinking or feeling or experiencing during that time of my life (which is now seven years ago) it was not the schooling that left an impression.

Which leads me to wonder what these graduates are thinking and feeling today as they march to their seats that fill the Yard. Do they have jobs? Do they have career paths? Do they think that they do but then will discover that what they thought they were all about really isn't true, and will change their mind sometime in their late twenties when they realize that life really isn't what they thought it was after all? Perhaps that last question was a little too insightful, a little too telling about what my own experience was post-college. When I graduated from UCONN, now ten years ago almost to the day, I could not have told you what I wanted to do with my life. Job? Career? Had no clue, and I knew I had no clue. But I could have told you what I wanted to feel in my life. I wanted a worry-free future. Something exciting, yet also very stable. I would have told you that I was going to travel to Europe each year, find a job that would allow me to incorporate my interest in and ability wth French, and I would move far away from my hometown. I would be a cosmopolitan jetsetter. I would live the life of a Lonely Planet author, exploring fun places and writing about then for all to read. I would be like Anna Wintour, amazingly chic and sure of myself. Business-like. I would wear great clothes to work, take care of my appearance, have the career and the family and the hobbies and the life that women dream of, and do something that everyone - everyone - would know about. That's what I would have told you then.

If I were graduating now, what would I tell you about my hopes and dreams? Isn't that what graduations are for? For thinking about the future? You're done with one part of your life, and now move on to the next. Can life be segmented like that? Am I different than the person I was when I wore my cap and gown in Gampel Pavillion those ten years ago, or when I marched alongside my fellow librarians at the Boston Convention Center five years ago? Who knows. Maybe. In ways, yes. But not in other ways. I still can't tell you what I want to do for a career, but I am closer to being able to tell you that. And I know that I can have that Lonely Planet lifestyle, but I have to have some kind of means to support that lifestyle and it can't be my parents. Anna Wintour's life is still very intriguing, but so is coming home to my little house and my little yard and seeing Doug and petting the cats and sitting at the table in my dining room to eat my dinner and read my book. So there are things that I know now that I did not know then, at either graduation day.

So I guess you don't learn it all in college. I guess school doesn't teach you everything. When these graduates leave the Yard and go out into the real world they will still be learning. They will still be exploring their life. Maybe Harvard has set them up for great success in that. I hope so. But for now, today, they can come into my library and use our bathrooms and think about that thing called the future after the ceremonies and fanfare. Let them enjoy their day.

Redecorating.

2011-05-24T20:54:00.009-04:00

Almost more than I love getting new (to me) pieces of furniture, I love to move existing furniture around. I find that simply by moving a piece from one location to another you can completely recreate the feel of a room. Case in point: when we went to Brimfield last Saturday, we got a bunch of chairs. Five were for the dining room table, but two were rocking chairs that we really had no idea where we'd put, and we knew that we'd have to move something in order to get them to go someplace. Here's what we've decided to do with them:

The one that Doug picked out, a very modern kind of chair that reminds me very much of IKEA (but more grown-up IKEA), is now in the sunroom/library, where the green cabinet used to be. This means that we have moved the green cabinet, and so far we have put it in the dining room, to act as a mini buffet kind of thing, to hold kitchen-y kind of things that we don't have room for in our tiny kitchen. So far it's holding nothing but our fake sunflower and the vase that we got from a cousin for our wedding, but I'll think of something to put there soon. Maybe it can be our wine cabinet. You know, for all the wine that we drink.

Anyway, but then that left us with the second rocking chair that we got, the one that we plan to refinish sometime this summer or fall but that so far looks just fine the way it is (though I do plan to have my mother reupholster the cushion, to put that reupholstering class that she took to good use). We decided to put it where the plaid armchair used to be before we moved it out into the sunroom to create our library. And now we don't have any more room for additional furniture. This is bad, bad news for people who are addicted to collecting cool stuff from Brimfield.

But, maybe we can content ourselves with taking drives to really fun places, like Storrs, Connecticut, to visit with the cows and take in the scenery. Look at this: Tell me what there is not to love about that scene. Certainly not the green grass, the rolling hill, or all the cows. Say what you want about Storrs being sleepy and a tad boring, but I loved being there for college. Any place that has animals with this much personality is a place for me.

This happens every month.

2011-05-21T02:32:00.008-04:00

Once a month I have a bout of insomnia. One night where I can't fall asleep, and then the next day I'm completely useless. Guess what. That's tonight, and that will be tomorrow. Lucky Doug and his mother and father. We're visiting the Siskos tomorrow and I'll be in fine form for them.

But, the good thing about insomnia is that I get a lot of Internetting done. I spent, oh, I don't know, three hours redesigning a blog from the past and thinking what its new theme could be (the old theme, complaining about work and how I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, seems somehow tiresome. I feel like I've been there and done that. Please remind me not to do it anymore.) I also have URLs at two new blog sites, Wordpress and Tumblr, in case I ever want to develop blogs there, too. One can never have too many blogs, I guess.

Except for me, who can't even keep up with one. I haven't posted in about ten days. Guess that means I'm having a really great time, right? Well, actually, yes. If I have time to blog that means I'm not spending my time doing other things. If I don't have time to blog, that means I'm spending my time doing other (hopefully more productive things). So let's recount how I've been spending my time.

Reading
As usual, I am reading. Reading lots of things. My magazines and a book. I have a book club to go to on June 3rd, and our book club read is The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. All 613 pages of it. I'm on page 249. It's not a quick read, and there are parts that I am having trouble getting through (anything to do with war), but overall it's been a very productive and valuable use of my time.

As has Brimfield.
Doug, my mother, my brother, and I met up at Brimfield this past Saturday. Doug and I were in the market for some replacement dining room chairs. We figured that it was time to get rid of the IKEA ones. My mother and brother joined us for advice and also for the use of their mini-van so that we could transport anything we purchased back to our house. After we loaded the van with all of our finds we put the chairs around the table and moved the old IKEA ones up to the attic. All except the one that you see in the above photo. That's the last of the IKEA chairs. We looked at so many chairs at Brimfield, but we didn't find a 6th for the table. And that's fine, because this gives us an excuse to go back in September. We'll look for at least one more chair and whatever else strikes us. There's always something to find there. We are quickly becoming Brimfield addicts.

Exterior Work
Doug and I have decided on a company to paint our house. They will do the job in August. Now we have to figure out if we want to keep the same color scheme or change things up a bit. Maybe more of a greenish gray with off-white trim and red accents? Or maybe we do something warmer, like a soft green, with a gray trim and natural wood accents. I'm voting for changing things up a bit, but I'm also not good at making these kinds of decisions. How many times did I repaint my bedroom before I landed on the current color? I've painted the kitchen twice since living here (that's twice in three years) and have paint swatches all over the dining room walls because we're thinking about getting rid of the purple. If we don't like the color of the house after it's painted, we can't just change it. It will be like that for (I hope) eight years. I can't think in eight-year increments. This is too much pressure. I wish our house were sided and I didn't have to think about it.

Meg has joined me at the table here. She's purring. She's needing me. And, of course, it's right when this happens that I'm ready to go to bed. Poor Meg. I'll post this photo of her, taken from Doug's most recent cat photo essay, so that everyone can see what a lovable kitty she is. She's especially lovable at 3am when she's clawing at my head, so needy for attention. She can't ask for love at any other time of day, it seems. I guess that's her special charm, just like mine is neglecting my blog.

Finding that calling.

2011-05-10T21:38:00.005-04:00

It's no secret to those of you who regularly read this little blog that I have been somewhat dissatisfied with and directionless in my career. I think that maybe I missed the boat when I didn't go to Boston College for a Masters in French because I didn't know what I'd do with it, and didn't think that I wanted to teach. Oh, Hindsight, how cruel you are! At this point I would give my right arm to immerse myself in French, even if it meant simply helping private school kids conjugate their irregular verbs. Instead, I turned Boston College down, worked for another year in two little public libraries in Connecticut, and applied to library schools to get a degree in archives, so that I could pursue another interest of mine (history and historical stuff) in a practical way (you know, because archives are so practical). And now here I am, starting my library career over in an academic library in access services, and while I try to psych myself out every day to get enthusiastic about the job I find myself dreaming of being somewhere (sometimes anywhere) else. I find myself fantasizing about cleaning teeth as a dental hygienist. I find myself dreaming about taking blood pressures and weights and giving shots as a nurse in a doctor office. I find myself wishing that I had followed through with either of my fleeting, more scientific goals, and become either that pharmacist or that speech pathologist that I once thought I would be. Anything. Anything but what I am doing now, because I left one gray and dreary job for this job, which I had hoped would be sunny and yellow, but instead the clouds have collected and are hovering above me. Maybe today's particularly bad. But maybe not.

On Monday I worked the 12-8am shift. I got to watch the dawn break outside the window of my office. I felt like I was doing something interesting and worthwhile, working for a library that had overnight hours and that was an important spot on campus for the students to come and learn. But today, after being told that one of my best staff is going to be taken from me and my team and put to work in another library and I have no say in the matter, well, I'm feeling a lot less positive.

Is this what working is all about? Being told what to do without being consulted? Working for a place that has so many layers of management that there is clear confusion about who does what, what is expected of whom, and how communication should happen between all necessary parties? Really, I really feel like I'd rather be cleaning teeth. There would be no one to answer to except the dentist and the patient. I'd be clocking in, scraping off plaque, cleaning instruments, asking about flavor preferences, poking at loose fillings... all of that sounds so very appealing. I'm struggling now with where I fit in my work environment, and where I see myself making my way. I was looking for a community of people from whom I could learn, and instead I find myself facing a wall of people whom at times I wonder if I can trust. I feel like this wasn't what I signed up for, but maybe it was and I just signed up for the wrong thing way back when I took out all those loans to combine my passions with my practicality. I loved to read. I loved history. I saw my logical, employed path as that of a librarian. Little did I know then that I could have read just as much as I do now if I had been a dental hygienist. I'd have had much less debt and I'd be helping people in a much more practical way than I do now. And gingivitis doesn't give me bad dreams the way people management does. Maybe dental hygiene is my calling. Maybe I have no calling. But I can tell you that these days I have not been feeling that I'm working my calling and it's really, really, really disappointing.

Spring is springing.

2011-05-05T21:26:00.014-04:00

It's Cinco de Mayo. To celebrate, I went to the dermatologist (who looked like a 12 year-old boy and kept telling me how much he loved his iPad, but of course still loved the "idea" of the library). Better than a margarita?

Anyway, it's spring. It's officially real spring, with green grass, magnolia trees that you can smell from a block away, daffodils and tulips, the sounds of lawnmowers in the distance, and drastic temperature shifts. Spring is the season of dressing in layers, and also the season of bright and colorful flowers. Look at what we saw on Nantucket: I have never seen window boxes as beautiful as those that I saw in Nantucket. Nantucket was rife with flowers, mostly daffodils planted in random locations, but such color against the gray! One couldn't help but stop and get off one's scooter and take a photo. And one couldn't help but be inspired by the color, so when we got home from Nantucket we took a trip to Mahoney's and started to get our planting on. This is as far as we got: A good start, indeed, but more, please! I'm waiting for the house to be painted before I plant the window boxes, but we are actively thinking about plantings in the many bare spots around the yard. Nantucket and the smell of spring in the air inspired us.

Spring is also the season of first communions, and our niece, Miss Maria, had her first communion on Saturday. Doug and I spent the day with the latest little bride of Christ. Doesn't she look so happy to finally get to eat the wafer and be absolved of her sins? She told my sister that the "wafer didn't taste good," and I concur! Apparently, when Catholics take communion they are not eating a paper-thin wafer of water and flour and absolutely no flavor, but instead the body and blood and very essence of Jesus himself. It's the myth (belief?) of transubstantiation at work. I think I knew this, I must have once known this, but hearing about it on Saturday blew me away. Why do we have to eat the actual blood, body and essence of Jesus? Why can't we simply eat something that symbolizes the blood, body and essence of Jesus? To me, if we were really eating Jesus it would taste a whole lot better. Jesus was a special kind of guy. The church should perform communion with peanut butter cups. They're sweet and salty and completely wonderful, and isn't that what Jesus is supposed to be?

Who knows. Who knows what Jesus is supposed to be. I'm realizing that I'm a pretty bad Christian, because I have such a hard time wrapping my mind around the concept of Jesus. There is just so much that I have to take as truth and fact that the church cannot define or explain, and I need explanation, definition, and concrete evidence. My mind is a little more scientific than I think the church would like. And that's why I gravitate towards crafts like sewing and quilting and needlepoint and those kinds of concrete crafts where I can touch and hold things and shape them and put them together to create something tangible and real. My quilt, which I have finished, by the way (yesterday! It's done and on the bed!), is something that I can think about and touch and understand. I cut pieces of material, sew them together, sew larger pieces of material together, bind it, and call it a day. Done.

And, like I said, done it is. It has taken me about two months to bind the quilt. I started working on the binding back in February. First I cut the pieces of binding and then sewed them all together into one big strip. Then I pinned the binding to the quilt and sewed it onto the front of the quilt. Once the front part was sewn on, I folded the binding around the rough edge of the quilt and sewed it onto the back. I have no photos of sewing the binding to the back of the quilt, because it involved me hand-sewing, which is a lot less interesting than me using the sewing machine. But, the end result was this: The binding sewn onto the front and the binding sewn onto the back. And now the quilt is washed (and did not fall apart in the washing machine! I consider that a great achievement) and on our bed. This quilt is no professional job, that's for sure, but that is the whole point. It's homemade, looks homemade, and serves its purpose well. I already have several t-shirts waiting to be put to good use in another quilt. Seems I'm a glutton for punishment!

Nantucket.

2011-04-26T18:16:00.008-04:00

I’m not sure what it is about Nantucket that I love so much. I just identify myself with it. I identify my past with it. I associate fond memories with the island, with the landscape, the look and feel of the island, and with the history. I associate the good parts of my childhood with Nantucket. But in truth, very little of my childhood was actually spent there, and my identity as one who vacationed there as a child is really based more on my sister’s memories, and my mother’s memories, than of my own.

My sister and mother talk often of Nantucket and of their memories there. They stayed at 2 Ash Street, and they would go back with my uncle Barry on extended visits during my sister’s youth. I myself recall being there only two or three times as a young person, meaning pre-college, and I have been back only three times post-college. While that may seem like quite a few times to go to the same vacation spot, it’s not, really, not if you compare it to how many times I have been to Crystal Lake in New Hampshire, or how many times I have been to Cape Cod. Yet somehow I feel like Nantucket is a piece of me, or that I am a piece of it, and I hold my own vague and foggy memories of the island, along with the stories that my sister and mother tell, close to me. Doug asked me what my family does when we are on Nantucket, as he wanted to relive the family experience, and I answered him with things that my family has done, but not necessarily things that I have done, and so these things are not necessarily my traditions. It’s my sister who raves about the cheese soup and curly fries at the Brotherhood, yet we went here in search of those foods (only the fries are still on the menu) in order to recreate this supposed family tradition. It’s my mother who talks of the house at 2 Ash Street, and of the memories there; I never was inside, was not even born when there was any tangible connection to the house. Yet I stood outside it this weekend and Doug took my photo, capturing for us this family tradition, this link to the family past, that I was never a part of.

I was eager to take Doug out to ‘Sconset, to roam that more remote part of the island, but I have no real memories of being there, not until that one early January day in 1998 when my mother, brother, uncle, and I flew to Nantucket, just for the day, and stood on the windy ‘Sconset beach, staring out at the winter ocean. I think we stayed out near ‘Sconset once when I was young, in a house rented by my uncle, the whole brood of us, cousins and all. All that I remember of that trip was someone wearing a jersey nightgown with blue piping around the hems, blue whales on a white background blowing red waterspouts. And of eating popcorn before dinner, my first real introduction to appetizers. And of there being a pond near the rented house, and of there being a path we would walk down, lined with prickly sea grass and beach roses, to get to the ocean, which was bitterly, bitterly cold. Of course, I could be confusing this path with the path that we would walk to get to the beach at my aunt’s Connecticut cottage on the Long Island Sound; there were roses along that path, too. But these memories I associate with Nantucket, so to me they are the Island. And now, I have to somehow fit Doug into these memories.

This time on Nantucket Doug and I saw the Sankaty lighthouse, which was never part of the Nantucket of my memory. We rode Vinos along Milestone Drive and Polpis Road, two roads that meant nothing to me before this trip. Two mornings I woke up early and jogged out to Brant Point and walked along the small beach there, watching the fog veil the harbor; jogging and Brant Point were never parts of my Nantucket history. Neither was staying at the Sherburne Inn. Neither was dining at American Seasons. Not renting scooters, the Old Mill, the Quaker Burial Ground, or going to Easter service at the Congregational Church, either. These were new experiences, adult experiences, that now I have to somehow mix with the picture of Nantucket that I have had in my mind, that of my youth, my family’s past, my life without Doug. What does Nantucket mean now? How do I now relate to this place? I’m still not sure what to think, or, more importantly, what to feel. But at least these memories are all mine now. Whatever experiences I have now I share with Doug, and I won't be able to confuse them with stories from my mother or stories from my sister. They are our experiences and our memories, and Nantucket can be our place now, too.

Pale Avacado.

2011-04-23T06:32:00.008-04:00

Dear Blog,

It's not you, it's me. I've strayed from you for the violin. What free time I had before to take photos and write insipid posts I now spend screeching away at the violin. But I have only three more lessons left, and once I am only practicing for myself and not for the show of my teacher I will neglect this new interest and will come back to you again. This phase will pass, but with time.

In the meantime, let me catch you up on some of the things going on around here. Like our newly stained window. And our newly painted kitchen. And our newly painted hallway.

Because we had to stain the new window in the kitchen, I thought this might be a good opportunity to trade in the strawberry-pink walls for something a little more vegetable. Less sugar, more fat. So goodbye pink kitchen, hello green kicthen (and hello stained window).

Before (or during):

After:

Note the window in those two photos. Let me tell you how dangerous stain is. It gets everywhere. And it stains stuff. It's a horrid product to use - effective, but effective in the way that petroleum is effective to power our cars or heat our houses. My poor mother had window-staining duty, and she was like Flipper flipping about in the water, splashing everything with brown fingerprints. It was not her fault; I did it, too, when I arrogantly thought that I could be neater. Stain is just not your friend, even if the end result looks pretty darn good.

And then there was the hallway. My mother cannot tell the difference in the colors, the before and after, but I can. It's a subtle difference, very subtle, but such an important difference.

Look closely at the before photo. If you focus around the light switch, you may be able to better see the shading on the wall. The brighter color is the before. The calmer color is the after.

When done, the walls looked so creamy. The new look inspired me to switch up our art, so now the harbor scene from my uncle Peter is in the hall, the ocean scene from my parents (by way of Uncle Barry) is in the guest room, and the Guinness girl, who was once in the hall, is sitting on the floor in the guest room (sorry, no photo!). We haven't dealt with her yet. Give us time. We'll figure out a good home for her. I'm thinking the basement. Beer and girls and basements go together somehow.

But, lest you think that the only thing that my industrious family and I did that weekend was prime and paint the kitchen and vestibule, paint the hallway, and stain the kitchen window, let me set you straight. My brother, Brother Bunyan, did me and Doug an enormous favor by cutting down the shrubs that were growing along the side of the house along the driveway. Goodbye shrubs. Hello fresh start and painted house. Soon. We still have to figure out what we are going to plant in place of those shrubs (and the shrubs that we took down last summer in the front of the house), and we also have to still come up with a color to paint the house (or maybe just keep it the same?), but we'll get there. Soon. Things just take time around here. We're like the giant tortoise exhibit at the zoo. We get to where we want to go eventually, but it sure does take us a while.

Until next time, my neglected friend.

Sincerely,
Roadielocks

More to Philly than cheesesteak.

2011-04-07T21:39:00.008-04:00

I went to Philadephia last week to attend the ACRL 2011 conference. I have been to library conferences before, but never to this one. Never to one that catered specifically to academic libraries. It was different, but it was also the same. Most of the same vendors were there in the exhibit hall (thankfully Euromonitor was there, which means that I got a replacement for my favorite pen that I picked up at the SLA conference last year) and many of the topics were the same - What does it mean to be a next generation librarian? How can you integrate social media best into your library? What kind of mobile site are you developing? How are you showing your institution and community at large that you are valuable? You know, the same-old same-old. I'm telling you, what librarians need is someone to come to these conferences and present a talk on how not to be collegial and easy-going, on how not to spend your days gathering data to show your community that you provide value. Show me a librarian who is persistent, aggressive, direct, and who runs a lean, mean organization that gets consistently high funding and that's the person I want to learn from. This person would be truly revolutionary and I might even pay my own money to attend the conference at which she speaks, because the rest of us are too interested in group-think, in trying to convince people that we are worthwhile, that we provide services that are needed to the community, that we should have meeting after meeting to make sure that people like what they do, aren't too overworked, and that we gather every last person's opinion and feedback before we write a first draft of a procedure (only to go back at least two more times to the group for every last opinion before presenting a final draft to the group that will get shot down at the last minute for violating some kind of ancient policy that should have been changed a long time ago), to say much of anything that hasn't been heard before.

But, cynicism aside, I actually learned stuff at ACRL. I learned that there are so many librarians out there today who are passionate about what they do, and who are implementing some pretty innovative ideas at their libraries. I learned that there are thousands of colleges and universities out there in every little town imaginable, and it's from some of these smaller, more nimble kinds of institutions that I'm seeing some of the most creative solutions to problems. I learned that Access Services is like the Cinderalla of the academic library community, in that it's the dept that does the vast majority of the labor and reaps hardly any of the rewards. (My manager's manager, with whom I was traveling, kept likening Access Services to a logistics operation, and I was somewhat offended by that, since I don't see myself as working for UPS (not that there's anything wrong with UPS, of course). I learned that given a bit of an energy and confidence boost, and a lack of desire to spend my outside-of-work time devoted to non-work-related activities, I might actually try to do some in-depth reading on topics that are unknown to me and to get more involved in the organization. At one point I was thinking about starting a professional blog about the days in the life of a new Access Services librarian, and had visions of people following my content, retweeting my tweets, and of me becoming a Library Journal Mover & Shaker.

I'm home from the conference now, though, and the real world has sunk back in, so that desire to become involved has faded (somewhat). But, at least ACRL gave me the chance to see a bit of Philadelphia, like City Hall and the National Constitution Center. What I may remember most about my trip to Philly, though, is the ACRL Closing Keynote speaker. Recognize him? That's Clinton Kelly, looking as snappy as ever and doling out his fashion advice to all of us eager and needy librarian-types. Yes, he told us to be ourselves, to love ourselves for who we are, to have confidence in ourselves, but he also told us that the shoe makes the outfit, so whatever you do, always wear great shoes. Those are words I can live by.

BioWillie?

2011-04-05T21:17:00.004-04:00

I could write about my trip to Philadephia and my ACRL 2011 experience, but instead I'm going to write about other things. I've been thinking a lot about work lately (in fact, I have been waking up each morning thinking of work, either of how to deal with the people with whom I work or thinking about all the things that I want to get done that day... it's like Bain Capital all over again, though slightly less stressful) and tonight I'm tired of thinking about work and about libraries. I'm going to think about something else. Something like...

BioWillie. Do you know that Willie Nelson had his own branded biodiesel? The company tanked when the industry stopped promoting the use of biodiesel (which was claimed to be worse for the environment as a whole than petroleum-based fuels), but still. If my Mini had a diesel engine, if BioWillie were still being sold, and if any of the gas stations around here had a biodiesel pump, I'd buy it.

Cadbury Mini-Eggs. I love these little sweet things with the crisp candy shell. Really, they are my favorite holiday candy, hands down. What I don't love is the feeling I get after I eat, oh, I don't know - thirty? Forty little eggs? Who knows. I just eat and eat and eat them, even though I know that I am simply giving in to my body's reward system in a way that a drug-addict gives in, and that I don't need them or even really want them. It's shameful, it makes me literally sick to my stomach, but that's the way it is. Thank the lord that these candies are not around all year long. I wouldn't be able to stand it.

Banana bread. Tonight I baked a loaf of banana bread instead of practicing my violin. I had two nearly rotten bananas that I didn't have the heart to throw out, so I decided to make a bread. Which means that after I stop inhaling my Cadbury Mini-Eggs I will go butter up a slice of this bread (I put chocolate chips in it, too). Yeah, I'm really the picture of nutrition these days. I'm also regressing in terms of progress on my violin, but that's a subject for another post.

Jimmy Carter. Was he really all that bad? No president is without his flaws, and while Carter's term is not highly praised, he did push the country ahead in terms of energy consumption. He had solar panels installed on the White House! Any guy that does that cannot be all that bad. I don't see Obama putting solar panels on the White House (though, to be fair, he has made progess in healthcare policy, which Carter did not). Let's give Carter some credit.

Sneakers. I bought a new pair of sneakers this past weekend because my sneakers were no longer giving me the best support at the balls of my feet. I bought running shoes, which is funny, because I'm not a runner. I run less than half the time that I exercise, and I recently heard that to have the best foot health you should use cross-trainers when cross-training (which means what, exactly?) and running shoes only to run. So did I buy the wrong kind of sneakers? Will this motivate me to run more? All that I want is better support at the balls of my feet, not all of this added anxiety.

So, okay. Those are some random thoughts for the night. This is the kind of stuff that I think about when I am not thinking about work. Maybe I should have written that post about my conference after all - might have been more insightful and more interesting to read (and it would have had a picture or two!).

Birthday blog.

2011-03-28T20:47:00.006-04:00

Here - tonight I'll let the photos do most of the talking.

Spring flower (but, actually, it blossomed before spring started, so it's really a winter flower, but still, a flower! Color! Warmth! Growth!)

Birthday friends

Birthday cake

Birthday hike

Birthday girls

Birthday party (with more birthday cake!)

So, that's the pictorial update. The other update is that I am growing tired and weary of my blog. It's the same old stuff. I use a lot of exclamation points, I use a lot of colloquialisms and turns of phrase and a lot of run-on sentences, I throw in a deep and meaningful, thoughtful post every once in a while, and I paint the picture that this is me and this is my life. Well, I suppose it is, in a way. This is part of me. Some of me. What you see and read in this blog. But it's not enough to satisfy me these days. Based on those photos above you'd think that this past week/weekend my life was great. And much of it was; the part that's portrayed on the blog. But then there were the two nights that I was tossing and turning and thinking about curling up in a little ball in the corner of my bedroom, over near the coat rack with the mounds of fuzz and dust-bunnies, because my stomach was so uncomfortable. And then there were the fights that I was having with Doug, both out loud and in my head. And then there was the funeral for Doug's grandfather. And then there were all the messages of Happy Birthday! for me on facebook, the vast majority from people I haven't actually spoken to in about fourteen years. So, you know. There's all of that stuff that doesn't make it onto my blog. It could, and sometimes it does, but when it does I feel so boring and old and washed up, and I feel like the look of those two deep lines in my forehead that you can so plainly see in the birthday girls photo above. I guess I feel wrinkled. I don't want to feel wrinkled, so most times I post about the good stuff, and thankfully there's enough good stuff to post about, to keep this blog going. But today I wonder if I even want to keep the blog going. I do because of posterity. I do because of the historical record it keeps. But I also don't because of the historical record it keeps, the record of that slice of me that I frequently tire of. Maybe I'm just tired from all my birthday celebrating, and maybe I'm just too full from all the cake I've been eating, but I certainly don't feel much motivation these days to keep this thing going. I'm ready for a really big dose of sunshine and fresh air; I'm hoping that will revive me, because it's going to be a long, long year if it doesn't.

First day of spring.

2011-03-21T19:11:00.014-04:00

It's the first day of spring! Who cares that it's snowing and wet and gross outside and that I'm wrapped in a wool blanket inside. It's spring and I'm happy about that. So happy that I've decided to break my (unintentional) blogging silence and catch you up on a few things.

First: This is how not to spend time with your friend Julie who comes down from Maine for a much-needed visit. Of course, she's doing it, too, because we're all of us addicted to those little electronic devices, aren't we, but still. We should have been talking or something. Or watching the belly dancer who was gyrating and wiggling directly in front of us. She was inspiring. Her hips made moves that most only dream about. Perhaps jealousy drove me to bury my head in my phone.

Second: We can see clearly now, the ropes are gone. All of the bad feelings have disappeared... at least in our bedroom. And in the kitchen (so take your mind out of the gutter!). WE HAVE NEW WINDOWS! Man, oh man, oh man, do I love those new windows. I can raise them! I can lower them! They will stay open without needing a little piece of wood or some kind of prop for support! Oh, they are such things of beauty. And they soundproof so well. Who cares about all the cold air that's not rushing in from those old drafty windows - it's like we're living in a sound proof chamber. It's wonderful. We haven't heard the 11pm or 12am trains go by at all since we've had these windows. If we weren't so responsible in our old age, we'd finance new windows for the whole house. But we are, so I'll just rave about my three new ones. Have I mentioned yet how much I love them?

Three: If you are going to make one new meal this spring, try this Tomato Ricotta Tart. I'm sure it would be even better to make it in the summer with tomatoes from your own garden, but if you're like me and don't grow your own tomatoes or can't wait for summer for eating this kind of dinner, then try this. It's really, really good, and actually quite easy (obviously, since you don't see any photos of kitchen mishaps here).

Four: Finally, my bibs. My third bib project. Done! Sewed, snapped, washed, and sent on their way. It's a good thing that I am still working on my quilt. I need these kinds of crafty projects to occupy my mind and my hands. I can't just sit around with nothing to do (not that I ever really get that chance, so maybe I could just sit around with nothing to do. It might actually be nice to try that, now that I think about it...); I get antsy and I need something to entertain me, and not enough people I know are having babies. But once my quilt is done (which will be very soon... that's going to be the subject of my next post, I can feel it), I'll be left with what? Reading? More recipe-copying? Spring cleaning? Yes, it's time for spring cleaning again, and my yard, with all those sticks and twigs and clumps of leaves and schmutz, is calling to me. Screaming is more like it.

Five: My kitties! Look at them. Don't you just love them? My poor, beautiful brown bear, desperate for a place to sleep, and my fat, little Buddha bear, not lacking for any place to plop down. They are keeping me going these days. And to think, just a few days ago Doug and I were on the verge of adding a third to our nice, even-numbered collection. What were we thinking? Meg and Sasha, be glad that your mom and dad were distracted by chores and fighting and homework and work-work. Otherwise you would be terrorized right now by a cute tuxedo with green eyes and a boxy face. For once, all of us should be glad that life got in the way.

Fill me up.

2011-03-08T21:26:00.009-05:00

Tonight was my last violin class. Eight weeks of violin and already I can play Mary Had a Little Lamb and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. And a few scales, but just don't ask me to play without squeaking or without going outrageously out of tune. I look pretty good when holding the violin, though, so maybe that's all that I need to succeed.

But, I'm not through with the violin yet (sorry, kitties!). I'm taking four private lessons with my instructor, and I'm doing so for a couple of reasons. The first is because I'm not quite at the point yet in my violin career (ha!) where I feel like I can teach myself. I feel like I need a little one-on-one guidance on how to move the bow from string to string, how best to hold the violin, how to have good posture, and also how to get the best tone out of the instrument. But the second reason is a little less practical. I'm just not ready to stop getting out of the house once a week. Other than my weekly appointment with Doug, I go to work or I go to the gym. Those are my outings into the world. Going to violin class at least gave me something to do these past eight weeks, and gave me some other way to pass my time at home (you know, practicing (ha!)). I'm not ready to give that up, not now when I am feeling a very strong need to fill myself up a little fuller.

I was thinking about a way to describe this feeling while on the T tonight, riding to where my car was parked and where I would get in it and blast the heat for the drive home. I have this incredible need for warmth. I do not like being cold. (Note that I said that I do not like being cold, not that I don't like the cold. I'm fine with whatever temperature it is outside, as long as I am not affected by that temperature. As long as my body temperature is warm and my hands and feet are not numb. This is why I long for new windows, because the winter drafts really get to me when I'm shut up inside this house.) I am like a helium balloon when it's in the cold - I contract, and I feel shriveled and empty. Take me into a warm room and I immediately fill up. So maybe what I am looking for, or longing for, is warmth. Heat. Spring. Summer. Growth. Regrowth. Blooming and blossoming. Maybe I won't need violin to get me out into the world once I can actually be out in the world again, warm and alive. I'll be around people and I'll remember that I'm not alone and don't have to shut myself in, and the sun will be shining and the grass will need mowing and my world will be big again.

Why I read.

2011-03-02T19:50:00.006-05:00

I've been compelled of late to blog about the books that I have been reading, which is slightly unusual for me, since most of what I think or feel about what I read I keep to myself. I feel the need to share, though, because the things I have been reading lately, especially of late, have made me think and feel quite a lot. Have made a connection with me, have hit close to home. The book I just finished (The Lost: The Search for Six of Six Million) is no exception, though you may wonder how this book could really hit all that close to home. I am, after all, not Jewish. I had no relatives killed in the Holocaust, I know of no family members of mine who were living in Europe through any of the troubles and tragedies that took place there (though I did have relatives who served in World War II, who were in combat and who saw, I am sure, unspeakable things of their own), and I had no grandfather or older relative who was especially talkative about the past. What made me react this way to this story?

I suppose this reaction has its origins in my lifelong pull towards persecuted and marginalized peoples. I sympathize with them, and, somehow, empathize with them. When I first started to learn of Native Americans and black peoples in our national past I felt drawn to them. I wanted to learn more about people, but particularly people who went through hardships. I wished I had been born black, or born Chinese, or somehow "other." I wanted to be Jewish. I immersed myself in African-American history classes in college, doing my senior honors thesis on miscegenation and passing. I had no idea at the time why I was drawn to these stories, these histories, these lives, but when I was reading The Lost it sort-of just hit me. The tragic and dramatic elements of these pasts and these peoples reminded me of my own life. I was not a care-free kid. I had a lot on my mind, a lot to think about, and a lot to feel, and all of that is really an understatement. It is the emotion that comes from learning the stories of these people that I felt and still feel, that kind of sad and tragic feeling that I think was such a large part of my own life (though it was a sadness and tragedy that was on a much different scale; I cannot in good faith compare my life to that of a slave or that of a Holocaust victim), and this is where I feel the connection. Through the feelings of hopelessness and despair that I get out of the stories. It mirrored the intense emotions that I was feeling in my own life, and gave me a way of realizing those emotions, of acknowledging them, of expressing them. Through reading these books and histories, feeling equally outraged and sorrowful at what I learned, I was able to release what I was feeling myself, what I was experiencing myself, in a way that I couldn't through other methods. I wouldn't talk about my feelings or anything linked to emotion to friends (never really had a whole lot of friends that I would have talked about this kind of stuff with, anyway, even if I had talked about it), not with family either, and really had no god way of dealing with any of the pretty profound thoughts and feelings that I was having. These kinds of books were a release, and they served in their own way as friends or family would - or should - have.

So when I was reading this book, all of this struck me. I thought about all of this as I was finding myself so eager to get back into reading about the Bolechowers and Mendelsohn's family, and was dreaming of what it would be like to be Jewish, wishing that I was Jewish, too. Because I realized that I want a connection to something. A feeling of community, a sense of belonging. The African-American experience, the Jewish experience, the experience of these minority groups - there is a shared sense of history, of experience, that is, perhaps by coincidence, linked by the unjust and immoral, shameful, treatment of these peoples, but it is shared. All Jewish people, whether they have a direct, nuclear link to something like the Holocaust, have some kind of link to the Holocaust by their mere Jewishness. They have a shared past. They have a shared history. They have a set group of people with whom they belong, and with whom they can share their feelings and their emotions, the feelings and emotions that inevitably come out of these tragedies. I never thought that I had anyone to share my feelings with, or my thoughts (whether that was because I really didn't have anyone or because I didn't feel comfortable sharing with whatever community I did have around me is another story), and I wanted this. I suppose I still want this. And maybe that's why I so readily pick up books, still, like The Lost.

It's so strange to think of me as a little girl, or me as a teen, or even me as a college senior, unconsciously shaping my academic life, and, to some degree, my future and career, around the stories of persecuted peoples because it is through these stories that I felt connected to someone, to something, to the world, and it's strange to be just now realizing that this is why I was doing it. I will, therefore, point to this realization, this light-bulb moment, as a reason why I read, perhaps the primary reason. Yes, it's to feel the connections to the characters that I am reading about, but it is also to expand my world. To learn more about the world around me, to connect me with the world around me, and to connect me with myself. If I didn't read and didn't have my stories, these connections, I would have very little indeed.

More bibs and bobs.

2011-02-27T17:11:00.019-05:00

Doug is in the basement recording what is sure to be the next American hit single for his final push towards the completion of the RPM Challenge, and I am up here wasting (er... spending?) time on my blog. I was going to play my violin, but it's hard to play and hear myself over the sounds coming from downstairs. So Internet, I give in to you, finally.

I get up early for work (up and brushing the teeth, etc., by 5:45am), and have conditioned my body to get up early. If I am lucky, I can sleep to 7, maybe 7:30 on the weekends (sometimes until 8 if I am super tired or feeling under the weather), but I find myself waking up before 7 most weekend days. Today I woke up at 6:10am. No cats, no alarm to rouse me; just my overactive mind (and bladder) thinking about trips to the Badlands. We saw Marieke and Curt last night, and between Curt's sales pitch and Marieke's nearly-professional photos, I'm ready to book a flight and see them for myself. I've added South Dakota to my overwhelmingly long list of places to go. I had better start booking some of these trips or else I'll never get through my list.

I was able to scratch some things off of my to-do list this weekend, though, which is an advantage to getting up so early. I cut all the material for my quilt binding and made some great progress on this round of bib-making. These are the first two that I made today and I was pleased with how they came out, considering that I haven't made any bibs since last February (for my cousin's baby shower. Has it really been that long? I guess so!). I got ten done today, so only have six more (and all the snaps) to go. Should be able to finish next weekend, which will allow me to focus again on the quilt. It's my new goal to get the quilt done by the end of April, in time for the unearthing of the bed from the heavy wool blanket and down comforter. Having the quilt on the bed will be a great way to say good-bye to winter.

But, will winter ever end, really? It seems not this year. I was so thrilled on Saturday morning to see grass, actual grass, actual grass that had a slight green tint to it, that I had to take a picture. I had a feeling that it wouldn't last long, and I was right. This morning when I woke up we had four inches of fresh, heavy snow! Yay, shoveling! Doug looks thrilled, doesn't he? I decided to approach this snow with a different attitude, though. I could have, so easily, trudged outside to shovel off the driveway and clear off the cars with a very heavy heart and a very bad attitude, because, really, how much more can I take of this winter? Instead I decided to enjoy myself a little bit and I made myself a little snowperson. The snow was great for this, and who knows what kind of nasty weather we'll get next. I may not have another chance this winter to make a snowman. So, my little snowman watched me shovel from atop the recycling bin, and was soon joined by Doug's snowthing.

We had another visitor today, too - Max. Max lives next door. He stops by every once in a while and begs us to come out and play with him. We always put on our coats and go out to play with him, but he's never actually looking to play, that tricky Max. He's just looking for dog treats. The people who lived here before us used to feed Max cookies whenever he got out of his yard and wandered over into this yard, and we have kept up the tradition. Max must love getting loose, because I give him about ten doggie cookies at a time. He's such a bad begger, and I'm such a sucker. He does paw! I love paw. If the cats could do paw with me they'd be a lot more portly than they are now, that's for sure.

Okay, what else. Oh yeah. So after Max got his doggie treats I decided that it was time for me and Doug to have our human treats, and I made us some Belgian waffles. This was the first time that I ever made anything with yeast, and I was amazed by the stuff. The dry yeast looks like little worms, and what it does to the dough (makes it expand to about twice its original size) is pretty impressive. In true Rosanne fashion, the kitchen was a bit of a disaster zone while I was cooking the waffles but the end result was definitely worth it. I ate about eight of them. King Arthur makes a good Belgian waffle mix, that's for sure!

But I want you to notice in that last photo my hands. My red, scaly, scary looking hands. I have been having some real issues with my hands lately, or, more specifically, my fingers. They are either bright red or a strange purplish color, and my pinky and index finger on my right hand are swollen, with hard deposits under the skin at the tops. I tell you this because I've had this issue for a while (I'm becoming more and more convinced that I have Raynaud's, but the swollen, tender, hard deposits I can't account for.). I don't want to go to the doctor, because every time I go to the doctor I'm told to drink more water, eat more vegetables and get more sleep, and then I'll be as good as new, but I want someone to know in case I pass out from fever and infection what could be the problem. Maybe if I use lotion my scaly skin would be improved. Or maybe I just need spring to cure me. I think I prefer the latter.

Bibs and bobs.

2011-02-21T08:48:00.016-05:00

Today's the kind of day for lists. I'm making lists. This one can be my list of notable, blog-worthy mentionables from the recent past. I won't publish my other lists. They'd bore you to tears.

* American Girl. As mentioned, we took another trip to American Girl, my sister, niece, mother, and I. Maria has been begging to go since November, so it was time to finally give in and go. She had birthday and Christmas (and grandma and mommy) money to burn! I got there about five minutes or so before the doors to the store opened, and you would not have believed the line to get inside. Girls from ages 4 through 12, either in groups or alone, with their parents, grandparents, or family, some dressed to the nines in their party best (likely to go to a birthday party inside in one of the party rooms), and some looking like they just rolled out of bed, but all so, so, so excited to be at American Girl. Many were being asked, "Can you believe you are actually here?" And many answering, "It's a dream come true!" All were in awe of the window display of Kanani, the 2011 girl of the year, who is Hawaiian and surfs with the dolphins, or some other such talent. Maria, who arrived with my mother and her mother a few minutes after the doors opened, did not have time to stop and stare at Kanani's window display; the excitement of getting in the store and getting her own Kanani in her own hands were just too much to bear. Maria had her Kanani fever satiated early into the visit with her bee-line to the Kanani display, but Lani, the one of Maria's American Girl dolls that she decided to bring with her that day, had her own needs to satisfy. Lani joined us because she had to get a pair of glasses (she's been having vision problems of late), and had to have her hair combed and styled (Maria can't get her to do anything with her hair). Plus, Lani had been begging, just begging, for her ears to be pierced like her mother's and her sister Kit's. And all of Lani's wishes came true - glasses to correct her vision, lovely hair, and a pair of earrings. American girl is truly a magical place.

* Quilt. I'm on the final phase of my quilt! My aunt and mother came up one Sunday to help me get more of my quilting done, but turns out that I had made more progress on quilting the squares than any of us had thought. Which meant that in no time my mother and aunt had quilted the final few of the squares and we were left to prep the quilt to be bound. Prepping it involved cutting off the excess material from the edges of the quilt and removing all 8,000 of the pins that we had used to keep it together. I bought the material I need for the binding, and now I just have to cut that, sew all of that together into one, long strip, and somehow figure out how to sew the strip on. In truth, the binding is the part of the quilt that I am looking forward to the least. I have this book that tells me how I should bind my quilt, but I had in my head a different way of doing it, something much less complicated, but also much less proper. I am currently debating (with myself) which way to do it, and I'm leaning towards the proper way, but that way involves more measuring, more advanced sewing techniques, and it makes me a little nervous. Which means I may procrastinate on this. Which means I may not get this done before summer like I had thought I could!

* Bibs. I'll be making more bibs soon. One of these days. I've got the material ready to be cut, so now I just have to sit down and cut it and sew it. Who are these bibs for, you may be wondering? Two girls I used to work with at Bain Capital. One is due the first week of April and the other is due the first week in June. I had planned to make them bibs when I first learned that they were pregnant, so I decided to not let something like me not working with them stop me from making them baby gifts. Plus, it gives me more practice. It's like riding a bike - if you haven't done it in a while you won't forget how to do it, necessarily, but you will certainly be rusty.

* Working overnight. I did it. I did my first overnight shift at Lamont, and I survived. I really had very little problem with staying awake while I was actually at work (only started to have the eyes get heavy around 7:20am, coincidentally while I was trying to work on an Excel spreadsheet), but the drive home was tough. I was fine until about Needham, about ten-fifteen minutes from home, but at that point I just started to fall asleep. Like, really fall asleep. Eyes closing, driving the car into the other lane or towards the curb... you know, those kinds of things. So that wasn't good. But the night itself was not bad at all. I got to watch the sunrise from the window in my office, and I was amazed at a) the number of people in the building, and b) how fast the time went by. I was able to sleep for about 5 hours after I finally got home, but definitely went to bed early that night. So even though it took me about a full day to recover, it was doable, and I might even do it again, voluntarily, before the end of the semester. It breaks up the routine, you know?

* Maine. Doug and I went to Maine on Saturday to celebrate our three-year anniversary (our actual anniversary day, the 16th, was pretty uneventful, as weekday anniversaries tend to be, it seems). We drove around some, and then stopped to get out of the car to enjoy the crisp, Maine winter scenery. We stopped at Back Cove in Portland to try to do the Back Cove Trail, but the trail was alternately a sheet of ice and a mud puddle, so we gave up after a short way around. But, I got a photo of Doug with a smile on his face, so that was a plus. (Yes, that was a smile.) After we gave up on Back Cove, we headed over to the Gilsland Farm in Falmouth, of the Main Audubon Society, which was more difficult walking conditions - again, either completely frozen over and a sheet of ice, or snow about a foot and a half deep. We were a little more successful here, but only marginally so, so we gave up after getting another photo of Doug with a smile. This time his smile is a little more recognizable.

After Gilsland Farm, we grabbed some food in downtown Portland and then just sort of meandered about. We found our way to the top of Portland, overlooking the airport, and I captured a nice shot of the Portland sunset. That would have been a great way to end our anniversary day, except that we had the privilege of eating Haggarty's with Chris, Chris and Ruby (and Lu and Stu), and realized, yet again, that there is nothing more satisfying than good company and good conversation. Not even beautiful sunsets.

I like this Hallmark holiday.

2011-02-15T21:24:00.010-05:00

I was planning to write a post that caught you up on all the things that have been going on since I last wrote a post (such as our trip to American Girl, my addiction to Cap'n Crunch's Peanut Butter Crunch (but only in the retro packaging), my smarty-pants sister's momentous passing of her NCLEX, my first overnight shift at Lamont, etc., etc., etc.), but instead I'll write about Valentine's Day.

I don't know if I ever really cared for Valentine's Day before I was married. I think Doug and I gave each other cards each year, or maybe he got me flowers and chocolate and I gave him something meaningful and touching, like socks, or new Fruit of the Looms, or something like that. But because we married so close to Valentine's Day, I feel like Valentine's Day is a great way to get in some early celebrating of us. It's a great lead-in to our anniversary-celebrating, and plus I like the excuse to give cards. I don't think we give enough cards anymore. Real cards. With real hand-written messages and stamps and stuff. We as a society. I could be generalizing, but I rarely get cards in my mailbox; just solicitations from charities or credit card companies. Hallmark must not be pleased.

But Doug and I try to do our part for Hallmark on Valentine's Day, this year included. We started our celebrating on Saturday night, when we went to Modern Apizza on our way back from visiting Doug's grandfather at Bridgeport Hospital. Look at this thing: It's a gift from the gods, really.

On Sunday, Doug and I spent our morning at the grocery store, where I was faced with this as soon as I walked into the store: I am proud to say that I resisted all of those mesmerizing treats, because I planned to stuff myself silly at dinner later that day. We had a Valentine's meal with my mother and aunt planned, who were up helping me quilt (more on that to come - such progress has been made!). That's my mother's borsh-casserole (really borscht, but on her recipe it's called borsch, and I keep that spelling consistent because it's not true borscht; it's definitely modified) that's in my bowl, and I made it myself! How festive it is, with its hot-pink hue (it's from the beets, not from anything I did wrong, at least this time).

This brings us to actual Valentine's Day, which was yesterday. Doug and I celebrated by giving our usual Valentine's treats - flowers, chocolate, and greeting cards - and skipping the gym to watch Watson go head-to-head with Jeopardy's two all-time greatest champions. I admit to finding this competition fascinating, but also a little scary. Watson, so far, is a tough competitor, and Ken and Brad have to put a little more effort in if they are going to do we humans proud. I am waiting for Doug to get home from band practice so that we can watch the second round of competition that happened earlier tonight. And tomorrow, on our anniversary, we will watch the final round, when we learn the winner of this tournament, and learn just where man stands up versus the machine. I tell you, I'm a little nervous about this. Watson is a smart cookie. If I weren't still under the control of a chocolate-induced coma, I might blog more about what this could mean for mankind, but instead I'll just go have more chocolate. I have to get rid of yesterday's candy before I can make room for tomorrow's.

Hitting a little too close to home.

2011-02-05T20:04:00.007-05:00

I just finished reading Lydia Davis's new translation of Madame Bovary. I had read the piece before; I think I read it, or at least in parts, in high school English class, and then I read it in one of my French classes in college (in French). Neither time did the book leave much of an impression on me. (I remember watching the film more than reading the book; I have images of Isabelle Huppert, as Emma, languishing on her deathbed, coughing up black bile. That doesn't happen in the book, as least in this latest translation.) Yet this time, with this reading, I am scarred by the book, or at least wounded. No, shamed. Shamed may be a better descriptor. Because I see a bit of me in Emma Bovary, and I'm distressed by this.

Maybe my link to Emma Bovary is tenuous, but, like her, I formed my vision of the world through books, not actual life experiences. She read the works of Sir Walter Scott and the tales of Arthur and his knights, and I read Sweet Valley High and Anne of Green Gables, but I think the effect was the same. We created these fabled and almost mythical images of what our futures - our grown-up worlds - would be like, and when they didn't turn out that way we became disappointed. Emma Bovary reacts quite forcefully and indulges in materialism and passions, and I have created a numbing, defensive barrier that protects myself and these childhood notions from the outer world. Emma is not successful in her coping, and I wonder how successful I am. When I sit with furrowed brow, silently fuming at yet again having to be the one to cook dinner even though I'm just as engaged in my activities as Doug, I think I'm not very successful at all.

Oh, good lord. This post risks becoming one of those introspective melodramas that I at times unleash on the poor, unsuspecting Internet. I guess all that I'm trying to say is that I realize that there is a difference between what I thought my adult life would be like when I was young and what it is actually like. My life is not terrible; on the contrary, there are many good things about my life. But there is a contrast in what I had envisioned and what is reality, and it would seem that I still have a difficult time coming to grips with this contrast.

Lest anyone think that as young Rosie I was wishing that a knight in shining armor would come to sweep me away, that my Prince would give me that fateful kiss or that glass slipper and I would be whisked away to a castle, horse-drawn carriages, dresses of silk and muslin with hoop skirts and poofed sleeves, let me set you straight. My one wish, my most pronounced and memorable wish, was to be old (old to me was somewhere between 35 and 40, by the way; I guess that was old to a 10 year-old). I wanted to be instantly old so that I could bypass adolescence, pimples, dating, college, finding a career, applying for jobs, finding a husband... all of those things that come along with what I thought of as "growing up." I wanted to bypass all of it, all of its decisions and uncertainty, and I wanted to simply be "grown up" - have a job, have a husband, have a house, have a car, and live that very suburban vision of happily ever after. My castle was one of the large colonial homes on Main Street in South Windsor, with maybe a sheep or a horse or two out back (not for my carriage, though), and my prince was nameless and faceless but someone who was stable and steady and always around. What's ironic is that I suppose I am in that place now, that place of my 10 year-old fantasy, and yet I still find myself wishing to be "grown up." To bypass my thirties and forties and to suddenly find myself retired, selling my house here to buy a condo somewhere near the water, downsizing and getting rid of all the worries and decisions that come with being where I am right now (mentally and geographically where I am). But because I am a "grown up," I know that I cannot bypass the next thirty-plus years of my life, I cannot be instantly retired, I cannot shed the anxieties and concerns of my life, not now and not really ever. So in a way I feel stuck. I shouldn't feel stuck but I do feel stuck. I've grown to think that being stuck is what being an adult is all about, and I am beginning to wish that I didn't spend my time as a kind wanting to be old. I wish I had enjoyed being a kid, when I wasn't stuck. At the time, though, I didn't know that I wasn't stuck, and I didn't know what being a kid really meant. That kind of carefree childhood wasn't in the cards for me.

So what's in the cards for me now? I hope acceptance. Understanding. And, if I'm lucky, at some point contentment. Because my grown-up life isn't so bad - isn't bad at all, actually - and before I know it I'll be 62, looking retirement and, if they haven't yet hit me, major health problems in the eye, and I'll be wishing that I hadn't spent my thirties wishing I were sixty and that I instead enjoyed the great things that I had before me. And I'm trying. Most days I do a good job of trying. But some days I don't, and the winter certainly doesn't help. If only I could see the grass... if only I could see a daffodil push up from the dirt. Maybe that's my new wish. Instead of wishing for the passing of life, I wish for the start of it. I wish for spring.

There's no domestic bliss here this weekend.

2011-01-30T16:57:00.019-05:00

So, I had all kinds of plans for myself this weekend and I got none of them done. Well, very few of them, anyway, and those that I did get done I can't say that I got done well. Let me give you a few examples.

Example One: I had planned on shoveling the driveway on Friday night, so that I wouldn't have to do it on Saturday, but I ended up staying later at work than planned, Doug picked me up and talked me in to sticking around in Harvard Square for dinner, and by the time we got home neither one of us felt like suiting up to go out into the cold and dark to finish the shoveling that Doug started on Thursday morning. So, we ended up doing it Saturday morning. And I ended up getting into a really foul mood while shoveling because I was simply amazed at how much snow we have and unless we have some serious melting in the near future we will be piling this stuff in the street because our piles have reached their maximum capacity. (Don't even tell me about an impending snowstorm for this week because I just can't hear that right now.) The piles we have made from shoveling are already about my height and then some, and I can't lift the snow any higher. See here? We used to have a fence, but now we just have snow. I was trying here to make a space for our garbage cans to go, and I succeeded, but only for a few hours, because when I went out later that morning to go to the grocery store I noticed that an avalanche slid into my nice, clean spot. Too bad, garbage cans. You'll have to go in the street.

Example Two: After calling much of Saturday a wash, given the hours spent in the yard shoveling and contemplating my potential death should one of these beauties fall on me as I'm walking in the driveway (yes, I know that I should knock them down, and I tried, but, in yet another example of jobs done poorly, I'm too short to reach them even with my shovel stretched at full length, so the most damage I was able to do to them was break off their pointy tips. A small win, I guess. Now instead of piercing my skull should one fall on my head it may simply knock me unconscious for a few minutes.), I decided to watch Fantastic Mr. Fox before bed. I almost achieved this goal, almost succeeded, until I fell asleep with my chin on my chest about two-thirds of the way through. That's no reflection on the movie, of course, since I loved all that I did see. It's simply another indication that this weekend was pretty much a waste of my time.

Example Three: And a waste of my money. I spent quite a hefty sum at the grocery store on Saturday buying ingredients for my planned meals today, and yet somehow two did not turn out at all like planned so I have scratched the third and will attempt it another day. So there goes that money, down the drain, flushed away like, well, I won't say.

I first attempted aebleskiver, in my new aebleskiver pan, and had such high hopes. See? Don't they look like they had such potential for looking like this? (Thank you to Secrets of a Kitchen Wizard for the photo (and for showing me up).) But in the end, my aebleskiver looked like this: I suppose my consolation on the aebleskiver (which tasted great, even if they looked like a cross between clams and footballs) is that Marge, in her letter to me, said that it took her about three tries to make hers come out well, too. Of course, if it took her three tries that means I may be making these forever before I get them to be the little carbohydrate beach balls that I was hoping they'd be.

I probably should have taken my breakfast-cooking experience as a sign of things to come for the rest of the day, but I ignored all warnings and set out to make an eggplant ricotta bake for dinner. I tried this recipe before, without much success (please read on for more info on that failure), but thought I'd give it another go because I like eggplant and the recipe seems like it should be easy enough for me to handle. But, no! Rosanne, why would you think that a recipe with only three straight-forward steps would be easy enough for you to handle, especially when you didn't get it right the first time? I made the exact same mistake today that I made the first time I tried this recipe. I cut the eggplant slices too thin, and, consequently, when I roasted them they turned out like this: Eggplant briquettes, anyone? Gah! I mean, I even told myself when cutting the eggplant to cut the slices thicker than I did last time, so that I could avoid the whole charred eggplant thing. Whatever. I threw away the most charred pieces and used the severely-roasted ones, and I can only hope that when we finally eat this tonight the sauce and cheese will overpower any of the eggplant flavor. And then I will file this recipe in the back of my recipe box to try again (third time's a charm, right?) someday a long time from now when I'm having a little better luck than I have been having this weekend.

Oh well. What to do now? I wanted to practice my violin, but at this rate I'd probably snap some strings or drop it on the floor and crack the neck. I might have to stick to reading, but I guarantee that I'll be asleep in fifteen minutes, so what's the point? Maybe a nap. Or maybe I should clean. Sigh. What a perfectly good weekend, and what a way to spend it!

Snow headache.

2011-01-26T20:46:00.009-05:00

I have a headache and I blame the weather. Well, really the MBTA, but they wouldn't have had their issues if it weren't for the wretched snow and cold. Monday morning when I left the house the indoor/outdoor thermometer read an outdoor temperature of -2 degrees F. I left my house at 6:55am to walk to the train, and didn't get on a train until 8:02am. And it takes only 15 minutes to walk to the train. Wouldn't you know it - the train had mechanical issues that morning and was about an hour late. I was absolutely frozen standing there at the train stop. Frozen. It took all day for my fingers and toes to stop throbbing and to warm up (I swear I have Raynaud's). And now I sit here at the computer and watch the snowflakes outside, which started small and are now getting bigger and bigger, just like my headache. I'm not looking forward to shoveling.

But enough of that venting. I suppose the winter hasn't been all that bad. I took a really crisp hike at Gay City on Sunday with my mother, brother and Tyrone, which reminded me that snow can actually be quite beautiful, especially when it's still pristine and when the sun is shining on it. And if it weren't so cold out and dark so early I probably wouldn't be getting as much quilting or reading done, because I'd be spending more time outside and would be more active. So my quilt and my bookshelf thank you, dear Winter.

Can you tell that I'm grasping for things to write about? You know, we're just living life over here under all these layers of snow. The library is back to its 24 hour schedule, so I am back to leaving really early in the morning to get to Cambridge before the overnight staff leave their shift. My brain is overloaded each day with things that I have to learn, things that I should already know (I did go to school for this thing called librarianship, but most days you'd never really be able to tell), and things that I put on my very, very, very long list of goals. My evenings consist of dinner, reading, TV, violin, chores, and bed; not all in one night, but that's what I do. Weekends tend to be either really low-key or completely packed with activity. So yeah. Not much excitement to convey on the old blog. But maybe I'll have more to share tomorrow, or this weekend. More shots of me and Doug shoveling, more shots of my little street covered in show. Actually, that's another thing that the snow is good for - blog material. If I didn't have to shovel and didn't take photos of the shoveling experience, what would I put on the blog January through March? So keep reading. I have a feeling there will be more snow to carry us through the next few months.

Wording.

2011-01-17T16:35:00.009-05:00

Doug has been wording, which is what I call his complete and total devouring of vocabulary words. He consults word books, is keeping flash cards of words, and he's looking up all words he doesn't know from the books he reads in the dictionary. He's wording for fun, to continue on that righteous path of learning that seems to stop when one leaves school. I wholeheartedly encourage his wording, because through him and his inability to keep his words to himself I am expanding my vocabulary, too. And, surprisingly for someone who reads as much as I do, I really need help with my vocabulary. If I'm sitting and writing or reading, and have all the words in the world at my disposal in my Merriam-Webster, then I am as much a wordsmith as Samuel Johnson, or so I'd like to think. But when I open my mouth to speak, all those words escape me. Weird.

So I have learned (and retained) five words from Doug so far. Repine, used previously, and florid. Also dilatory and vituperative and soporific. It is my goal to incorporate these words that I learn into my every day thought and speech, so beware if you see them creeping into my otherwise colloquial blog posts (I knew that word already!).

Lest this post become too soporific, how about a photo? When I'm not learning words with Doug, I'm now playing my violin. I started a beginning violin class last week and I've practiced three times so far! I am so impressed with myself; for signing up for and actually going to my class and also for practicing at home. These kinds of activities take motivation, and I've lacked a lot of that in the past. But hopefully I'm on the road to recovery, recovering that old interest that I had in music way back when, when I considered myself a clarinet and piano player, and when I was actually somewhat musically talented. Doug has been the musical one throughout this relationship, with my musicality suppressed within a phase of uncertainty. But now that I'm encouraged by the turn my life is taking, with this new job and new direction and all, and am encouraged that I am emerging from that years-long phase, I'm trying things out again, and rediscovering. Doug can have the spotlight, like he did at the Great Molasses Flood anniversary show this weekend, and I will be content with sitting in front of my music stand, squeaking out notes on my (really, really cheap) violin. For now, at least.

And what of that new direction of mine? That change in career path that has lifted some kind of heavy, heavy weight from my shoulders? Well, it's going well. Every day I'm learning, trying to both remember and learn anew what being a librarian actually means, and I'm really enjoying myself. Sure, my new office isn't nearly as plush as my old one, but it feels so much more like me. Look at it! So much less stately, so much more down-to-earth. I have my own barcode reader (because I actually have to read barcodes - on real books and DVDs and such!). And I have my own window still. No name on the door, and no Director in my title, but my life is so much more me these days that none of that really matters.

One great perk of this new situation is that I get more time to read each day. I could have been upset or annoyed by my longer commute, but instead I'm turning it into a positive because it gives me more time with my magazines and books. I've read two so far this new year, and now I'm back to reading A Passage to India, which I started before I went to India but couldn't get into it and didn't want to spend what precious little time I had to read on something that I wasn't all that interested in. Now, though, I feel that I can take the time to read more slowly, to invest a little of myself into the book, and so far this investment is paying off.

Aebelskiver... say what?

2011-01-15T17:58:00.015-05:00

I normally don't eat food with names that I cannot pronounce, so it's a good thing that Trader Joe's calls these little tiny balls of doughy tastiness "Danish Pancakes;" otherwise I would have skipped right over them while looking for something delicious (and premade) to serve at Marieke's shower. These aebelskiver were the hit of the whole spread at the shower (well, maybe other than the mimosas), and they deserved their place in the spotlight. They were delicious. Slightly crispy on the outside, warm and spongy on the inside, and not sweet at all. Not fried in a vat of grease like fried dough, and not rubbery like a traditional pancake (maybe I'm the only one who makes rubbery pancakes?). I sprinkled some powdered sugar on the top, but also served them with some raspberry jam, and either topping was a fine accompaniment.

Well, Marieke's now mother-in-law was at the shower, and she noticed these little Danish pancakes right off the bat. She wanted to know if I made these aebelskiver myself, and I kindly handed all the credit over to Trader Joe's, after asking her if that's what they were actually called (what do I know?). This got us to discussing the ways you can make them, and that she has a special aebelskiver pan at home that she hadn't used in ages, and that they're pretty easy to make. And then, when we were at Marieke and Curt's wedding - in the receiving line, actually - and we saw Marge again, she remarked to her husband about the aebelskiver I served. Craig was pleased that I served such food out East (is this regional fare?), and he and Marge decided to send me Marge's aebelskiver recipe. I told her that I'd love to have it, and thanked her, but I admit to not expecting anything out of it. I'm cynical, I suppose. I'm a New Englander. We say things that we don't deliver on, but with the best intentions, of course, so I suppose I expected the same from Craig and Marge. I was happy enough to have had such a nice conversation with them; they truly are such pleasant people.

But wait - what's that? It's my new aebelskiver pan! I found it in a box on my doorstep on Thursday, and it was a complete and total surprise. Doug thought it was one of the pedals he had ordered, but when he saw that it was an Amazon box and addressed to me, his curiosity was piqued, as was mine. Once I got through all the bubble packaging and saw the little holes in the pan, my mind instantly went back to Marieke's wedding, the receiving line, and Marge and Craig's comments about sending me the recipe. But they said nothing about a pan - and where was the recipe? That came in the mail the next day, complete with Marge's alterations to make it come out just a little bit better. I have to say that I am so impressed - and pleased and excited. Marge and Craig's kindness has touched me. A big thank you to them! Are all people as nice as them out in the West?

I do New Englanders some injustice, though, when accusing all of us of being unfriendly and a bit cantankerous. We do have our own kind of niceness here, a quiet, unspoken neighborly niceness, and Doug and I experienced it earlier this week. This was the scene on our street on Wednesday, during the big winter storm (was it a blizzard? Maybe just a Nor'easter? I watched the news virtually all day on Wednesday and am still not sure about what this storm was, exactly. In Connecticut it had a name - Benedict. Here in Massachusetts, it seemed to be just a storm.). Doug and I spent a good two and a half hours shoveling out our driveway, steps, and walkway, and uncovering the cars, in the mid-morning while it was still snowing pretty hard. We witnessed one of our trees falling down, but thankfully were not under it when it fell: Our street didn't really get plowed that day, and even by the time I left for work the next morning the street sat under a good six or more inches of snow. I knew that by the time we would come home that night the street would likely have been plowed, and that would mean that the opening to our driveway (that we had spent so much time shoveling!) would be plowed in. And then we wouldn't be able to get into our driveway. So all day on Thursday I had a vision of Doug and I driving onto our street that night, trying to ram the car into our driveway, and getting stuck. And me getting out and shoveling around the car while Doug rocked it back and forth, burning out the clutch, to get it unstuck.

But we didn't have to do that. Anxious visions be gone! Because our neighbor, the one who I don't think I've ever said even one word to in all the time that I have lived here (he's not a talker, and really neither am I) snowblowed our driveway after the snowplow came by while we were at work. And he widened the path that the plow made on our street, too, giving all of us more room to put our garbage cans. That was another touching moment, knowing that our neighbor had done something so kind and thoughtful, even though he probably doesn't even know our names. So maybe we New Englanders aren't so unkind and unpleasant after all. Maybe we just express ourselves differently. Regardless, this week was definitely the week for kindness, the kindness of virtual strangers, and that made it a really good week.

Fire trucks are pretty cool.

2011-01-09T16:53:00.008-05:00

Continuing with my rule of three...

First: The Klinger family Christmas party was this weekend, and this time we had a special visitor. No, not Santa, but a shiny, red sleigh of a different sort - a fire truck! My late-cousin Ann's husband (who so graciously hosted all of us this year) is a volunteer fireman with his town's fire department and he was able to get one of the fire trucks to stop by the house. What pleasure this brought to the kids (those young but also old, like me). Look at the face on my cousin Jeremy! You'd think we were all four again, living out our greatest fantasies. I bet these kids will have great fun telling their friends at school/daycare on Monday that they spent some time on a firetruck. I guarantee you one of those kids will want to be a fireman for the next week, at least until the excitement wears off.

Second: Christmas is officially put away at our house (though I thought about leaving the tree like this until next year, just for fun): It's always a sad affair for me to wave goodbye to the holidays for another year. The season is so short, and I feel like just when I start to get into my Christmas groove it's all over. We only listened to a couple of Christmas records, and only saw a few (really bad) Lifetime holiday movies. No Rudolph or Frosty, no Christmas Story or A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott. I'm not ready to start thinking about spring and about all the outdoor projects I have lined up. I was hoping to hibernate in my house smelling the pine candles burning and basking in the glow of the white tree just a little bit longer. Ah well. At least it was a good holiday season; I really can't complain. We had fun and stayed healthy (unlike poor Summer Sweater and Mr. Summer Sweater - how awful!), so no repining* for me.

Third: I'm getting better at navigating a Mac and today I figured out how to directly upload photos from iPhoto to flickr. To see some of my recent uploads, go to my flicker photostream; you'll see all kinds of goodies from Marieke and Curt's wedding, and also a few of the cats. This one might be my new favorite photo of Sasha: Besides the fact that she looks like a squishy ball of queenly cuteness sitting on top of that husband pillow, she's doing something that Wyatt used to do. This further reinforces the notion that she's picking up some of Wyatt's habits, so it's less like he's actually gone and more like he's just transformed a bit into a sassy, fat thing. But before I get too sentimental about all of this, let me remind myself that Sasha is picking up more of Wyatt's bad habits than his good ones, which means that I may have to start trying to give that sassy, fat thing away again. Anyone want a cat?

* That's a shout-out to you, Stinks! You're teaching me well.

2011 is the year of the rule of three.

2011-01-01T19:14:00.008-05:00

I can't let a New Year's pass without writing a little about what I have to look forward to in the coming year. So here's my requisite New Year's post, and I want to direct your attention to the title. 2011 is the year of the rule of three. I've been blogging intermittently with my "three things" theme, and I recently had a discussion about focusing on three things and only three things in order to make one's life more manageable (a variation on the "jack of all trades, master of none" idea). I follow the time-management three things rule, too. So, in an effort to live a consistent life, I've decided to carry over my rule of three to the new year, and instead of making resolutions or declarations on this New Year's Day I'll simply talk about the three golden rules I will strive to follow this year.

Rule 1: Practice a commitment to physical and mental health.
This rule is something I try to do each and every day, but, as with lots of things, sometimes I fall off the wagon. And I've accepted that I'm going to fall off the wagon. And, I'll admit, sometimes I even plan in advance to fall off the wagon if I know a special day or event is coming up, such as last night when Doug and I had Five Guys for our New Year's Eve dinner. Classy, right? But the point is that even with these little deviations from my first golden rule my ultimate goal is to stay healthy. Eat well and get plenty of physical exercise. Not necessarily hours at the gym, but just an active lifestyle. Walking, biking, hiking, yoga, the gym... all of that. Because all of that helps me stay calm and balanced, alert and able to focus. And able to be on the path to follow my other two golden rules for 2011, the second of which is:

Rule 2: Live my values. Do I sound like Real Simple or Self yet? Bear with me if I sound a little new age-y. This rule has much to do with me having confidence in myself, in what I believe, in what I want, in what I know, in what makes me comfortable, in what makes me happy and content, and in doing it. If I think it's important to spend more time with my family, or to remain connected to friends, then I'm going to do it. If I think that sitting on my couch and quilting my way into the New Year is a viable activity for a thirty-one (good god, almost thirty-two!) year-old woman, then I'm going to do it. Because I want to, because I can, and because it's okay for me to live how I want to live.

All of this brings me to my third and final golden rule for the year, which is my Rule 3: Less thinking, more doing. The more I sit and think about being healthy and active, the less I'm actually out there being healthy and active. The more I sit and wonder what my values actually are, and if they are actually viable and realistic and accepted/acceptable values, the less I'm actually living them, or even knowing what they are. So... less of that. Less of that stuck in my head and more of going out there and doing. Like this morning, when I woke up on this fine and relatively warm first day of the new year and told Doug that I wanted to stop off at Minute Man State Park to walk on one of the trails there on our way back from selling a couple of his speakers to this guy Doug met on Craigslist. I could have (and probably would have) debated this idea with myself in my head before asking Doug what he thought we should do, because I would have been concerned about having enough time to do all the things that I wanted to do that day, but instead of all of that headgame I just said, "Let's do it." So we did it. And I felt good because I was practicing rules number one and two - and rule number three. I started the new year off on the right foot. And spent some time with Doug, who got to practice rule number three with me today. I think I might get him to practice my rules this year, too. Or might get him to make three rules of his own. Or, more appropriately, might inspire him to make three rules of his own. Because 2011 will be a year of good things, just as 2010 was, and being able to inspire each other to live these lives that we know will lead to good things will just lead to more good things.

Okay, I've gotten a bit too John Tesh-y for my own liking. Time for dinner, for more Netflix, and for more quilting. Time for living my three rules. I could really get used to this, and I hope I do.

Single no more.

2010-12-30T20:30:00.009-05:00

Before I write a post about the end of 2010, the things I did and didn't do this year, and the things I want to do in 2011, I'm going to share some photos of Marieke and Curt's wedding. These photos will remind me of what's good in the world. Friends, family, love, and hope. These things are important to have in one's life each and every year, and are important to remember and experience not just at weddings or at times of New Year's resolutions, but always. Thanks for the reminder of this, Marieke and Curt! Your wedding was a great event - beautiful, meaningful, full of each of your personalities, and full of fun. A great time and a perfect way to bring you into this next phase of life. Thanks for having us there! Now for the photos.

The ceremony was great - the perfect amount of God/spirituality and humor. I shed a tear (I always shed a tear at weddings), but it was hard not to when you could see how happy the bride and groom were to be getting married. Here's Marieke getting her ring from Curt:

Here's a shot of the table centerpieces (the red and cream made for classy decor!):

And now let's move on to the dancing. There was dancing thanks to Doug, the wedding DJ. He did a great job. Perhaps a side career?

The bride sure knew how to get down - here she shows off her moves:

At first Curt was not really present on the dance floor, but Sarah got him out there:

And then, once he was out there, Marieke got him to stay:

Perhaps a metaphor for their relationship? Once Marieke got Curt hooked, there was no looking back. Good-bye single life, hello married life. Trust me - you didn't make a bad choice!

Another successful Christmas.

2010-12-28T15:00:00.015-05:00

I'm not exactly sure what a successful Christmas is (one in which we get lots of presents that we don't have to immediately return? One in which we survive with all of our wits intact? One in which we don't eat so much we have to roll back home?), but I think we had another one this year. We gave each other gifts both practical and fun. We sat around Christmas trees and enjoyed the company of others. We ate a lot. And we survived both the busy-ness and the weather.

Let's talk about the weather first, since I'm sitting here under a blanket and in my robe and yet still feel a draft creeping in from somewhere. It's cold out. Very cold. I believe the outdoor temperature is somewhere between 15 and 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Yay. To go along with that lovely coldness is about 16 inches of snow, with more in places. We had a blizzard the day after Christmas. This was the scene when Doug and I were driving back home from Connecticut: You can see that it made for really fun driving. When we woke up the next morning it was still snowing, but once it stopped we made our way outside to shovel. Doug was thrilled. Really. Seems that he likes shoveling. Well, good for him. The next time that we get a blizzard he can do all the shoveling and I'll stay inside and drink hot chocolate and read a book. I wouldn't want to get a snowblower and take away all his fun.

So okay, we survived the blizzard. We are shoveled out, Doug's still amped up about being alive and shoveling, and I'm trying to come down from my sugar high. I consumed more sugary sweets these past few days than I have in a long time; well, at least since Halloween. It all started with a few days before Christmas when I turned our house into Roz's Bakery and decided to bake all night. Here are the results, most of which are now in my belly (or, more appropriately, on my thighs): I know that those cookies and pie and cakes and peanut M&M's and whatever else I ate will cause me endless hours at the gym, but I can't say no. Not around Christmas when everything smells so good. Besides, I think my body tries to store fat at this time of year. It's a nature thing. I'm like a bear, preparing for hibernation.

Now that I have my healthy cookbook, though, I don't have to worry about getting too fat. The Bow-Tie and his team have finally made a healthy cookbook - there's even a section on vegetarian recipes! - and I cannot wait to try it out. I was so excited to see it in the store that I called up Doug immediately and told him to tell Santa to put it under my tree. I'm glad Doug listened to me on that one. Thanks, Doug and Santa! Now I can be healthy.

And Doug can be healthy, too. He got a yoga mat, which means he has no reason not to take up yoga this coming year. The true test of his excitement level will come when I try to get him into the basement to do some Yoga Body Burn with me. This has not gone over well in the past, but maybe if he has his own special mat he'll be more amenable to downward dog.

Let's see. What else. I got some very cool onion goggles that should block out all the nasty fumes from burning my eyes (but if nothing else they will make me look like Bono while wearing them, so maybe I'll belt out some Irish rock ballads while cooking), and Doug got himself a couple of really nice books, the one below about Les Paul. Doug has been a Fender man, but reading about Les Paul has made him consider adding one of those to his musical tool box. This may mean another post with him holding a guitar in pieces - the results of another year-long quest for the perfect axe to hang on the wall next to all the others that rarely get played.

The family seemed happy with their Christmas, too. Doug's parents seemed to really like the cat scratching post that we got for their cat colony and I'm sure my sister can't wait to put her witty nurse calendar on the wall. She's a nurse now, you know. She just had her pinning ceremony a couple of weeks ago, and once she takes her big test she's all set to get out there and start nursing. Her three beautiful children are very excited about that (or could it be that they are excited about the chocolate cream pie they just ate?), and I for one cannot wait to start asking my sister for medical advice. Just wait until she has to start inspecting my scabs and moles. She'll wish she had stuck to librarianship!

Anyway, I think I've run out of steam. I'm tired, I'm cold, and I have to get ready for the pre-wedding party that we're going to for our friends Marieke and Curt. They're getting married tomorrow. Yay! I'm happy for them. Doug and I like being married. As long as you overlook the piles of dirty socks and underwear that seem to spontaneously generate and the half-filled glasses of juice left on every available surface (and I'm sure Doug would have a word or two of married wisdom, too), married life is great. I hope you read this, Marieke and Curt! Those are sound words of advice.

And we're off!

2010-12-20T19:47:00.012-05:00

This past weekend marked the beginning of the whirlwind that's become the holiday season. It begins each year with Doug's birthday celebration (though it's unfortunate that his birthday has become lumped in with the holidays) and it ends with the trip back from Connecticut and the unpacking of all the stuff that we acquire while there.

To kick things off, Doug celebrated his 34th birthday in true adult style - working and eating take-out from PF Chang's. He had to work on a release until about 10pm (you'll see that in the background in the photo below), but we managed to squeeze in some excitement with a quirky animal card. This year it was squirrels (the cat cards took a break this year). Squirrels scream excitement.

Then I continued the celebration with a chocolate bachelorette brunch on Saturday in honor of the very near end of Marieke's single status. In only nine days Marieke and Curt will be married, and we marked this occasion in style at Cafe Fleuri, stuffing ourselves silly with chocolate. This was my (first) plate of sweetness. Isn't it just beautiful? Marieke topped hers off with a giant cotton candy drumstick, and as the bride she was allowed to do that, but I stuck with the chocolate. I told Marieke that we should celebrate the anniversary of her bachelorette each year at the chocolate brunch - I'd just need a week's notice so that I could fast appropriately before all that indulging.

So, sweetness on Saturday and then sweetness on Sunday, but of a different variety. On Sunday we went up to Maine to celebrate birthdays and Christmas with all of our favorite Mainers. We saw our new Falmouth contingent, Julie and Brian, and got to see their great house (I can definitely see why they chose to rent there). We also saw our Portland contingent. Ruby was a jolly little elf that day, full of smiles and babbles. She enjoyed the blocks that Santa Doug and Rosanne brought to her, at first giving them careful study but then quickly realizing that it's more fun to eat them. If that block were chocolate I would have been right there with you, Miss Ruby!

And now all we have to do is get through this week. Tonight I'm sewing Christmas presents, and then tomorrow I'm wrapping, Wednesday I'm wrapping, Thursday I'm packing and baking cookies, and then early Friday morning we're off for forty-eight hours of Connecticut Christmas. Ah, the holidays - the most crazy (but wonderful) time of year.