mother's day......

ok, so on mother's day we had a motely crew of mothers at our table......there was me, the mm in residence....and my mother....and cayle's mimi...who was her foster mother for 5 years until the adoption......and cara,the birth mother called during lunch...........we spoke of mimi's two daughters......who cayle also regards as mama boo and mama chris.......we could have included pappy's new wife, but we have already had the pleasure of this experience at cayle's baptismal celebration, when mimi and the new wife showed up to celebrate cayle's free will baptisim........(we are southern baptist..........)i was relieved that the mothers ended at 3 rather than 5 or 6.........this summer......when scw goes to governors' scholars.....for 5 weeks, and acw is in lexington.....it will be just the three of us........1 mother, 1 father, and 1 daughter....no extra mothers............we have never had such close quarters...............this will be a telling summer...........

the fletch factor....................

ok, so this entry will be a personal obiturary for larry fletcher, who passed away blessedly saturday night..........larry was the kind of guy whose second happier marriage made one pleased...he never had to say he was miserable in his first marriage....you just knew......so when he met the love-of-his-life.......you could not help but know it for certain, and be estatic with him........i never ran with him....but then...i do not run......rumor goes that the sun shown bright on any run that larry showed up for......the fletch factor.......if fletch came, the rain held off until he left.........my memories of larry have to do with the time between runs.......like the pound-and-peddle event.....when the 20 mile event was between farmer's bank drivethru and the morgan's then driveway............traditionally, i would drive all of the little ones down to the morgan's.....and organize the food for the potluck, and then maybe take a nap in their hammock until a bike or a runner showed up..........in the year in question.......the potluck was over, and ecw went to open the bike shop, and several of us just stayed on...on their deck....drinking beer and having a good talk about life......by the time ecw showed back up....with pizzas.... our collective children were run-amuck...and larry and i (and others.....maybe the trents...the morgans......the serres....) were sunburned on the deck.....and happy as little clams........... that was a very good day........when i think of it...now that the pound and peddle leaves from my own house, i understand that the event is not what it was.............i was honored to be invited to his second wedding.......and honored still that he remembered my daughter's major life events.........but i was perplexed when he chose treatments that were known up-front to be doomed..........gentle readers......were i told at christmas that i had 3-4 months to live......i would be on the plane to new zealand......cruising both the north and south islands, then hiking the lotr sites.........he died from the complications of treatment, not from his cancer.......i shall not knowingly go in that way.......my prayers are with his wife.....who waited until she was over 40 for the right man to come along.....he did, and now he is dead......how can i reconcile this with my personal faith.......

ready to burst.......

ok, so my roses are ready to burst........so many roses......even new ones that i have never seen bloom before.........by this time next week this place should be a showplace.......and so early......in years past, the mainshow was not until memorial day weekend or later....is this a clear sign of global warming........

domestic miracle worker........

ok, so i was recently referred to as a domestic miracle worker.......which days later i now take as a jibe.....because the original miracle worker....anne whatshername...the one who taught helen keller sign language was, by all accounts.......unattractive and wearing thick glasses...and unmmarriagable.......i prefer the term domestic goddess............and will use the initials d.g. from here on out in this blog...........

snakes.............

ok, so today was a gardening day at rose hill cottage (not my name.....my mother had a lovely sign painted years ago on a slate, and it still hangs where she put it on my porch).....i have filled part of my numerous planting pots with my mother's day flats of annuals........i fill pots with annuals because my big planting beds contain mature growth of perennials.....which need weeding and taming, but have no room for annuals........the pots sit at interesting junctions of corners, porches, steps....etc.......some still have a few perennials in them that survived the mild winter.........so i have chosen red slavia for height, yellow marigolds, and varigated snapdragons for interest, and white petunias to drape.........i carried many of these pots out of miss lulu's cabin....the cabin that retains the same features as our front room...yet remains a cabin.....gentle readers....i live in a house that has evolved systematically from a cabin built to house workers when the dam was built...the dam that created the lake....in 1928....or so says the date above the nonworking fireplace in the front room...which retains the beams of the cabin....the thick plastered walls hide the logs.......anyway.....miss lulu's cabin is in our yard, but was at one time a separate property, willed to grandpa ernst's 3rd wife by miss lulu herself.......i hear from people occassionally who remember drinking and playing cards in that building......we use it for storage........summer furniture mostly........and the snakes and raccoons also use it as a wintering hole........i have a hard time going in at all on warm days, because that is when we are most likely to see snakes sunning bewteen the logs.....like a snake hotel....today i only saw one snake, beneath constance spry.....the lovely english rose that may be in the path of the yet-to-be-built septic system.......it was probably harmless....but you never know...........one could say that snake is a good sign of a healthy ecosystem........maybe i could sell them to churches that handle such things.......there ar several in this area......frankly i think that is foolishness, no matter what 'the bible says'.......the bible warns against gluttony, and that seems to stop none of these crazy christian types..............

family update....

ok, so my mother treated us to chinese takeout for mother's day lunch...and we received a detailed update of family news.......my dad's youngest brother is celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary........in texas...my mother has never liked the sister-in-law...and will not be making the trip...and the son of my dad's next oldest brother is no longer employed by hp (i do notknow how long it has been since he worked there...but he for sure does not now....)......and this cousin of mine...1 month younger....supports himself from rent from his cell-phone tower 'farm'........his parents farm had the name airy view......as it was atop the highest place near dresden,ohio......the home of longaberger baskets........anyway...he bought his mother's property, then built 3 cell phone towers, and now sits back and lives off the rent money..........he may or may not marry the mother of his son.............apparently the doing-nothing part bothers his mother, not the fact that he is making a decent income.......mother just spent a week with my aunt on a church 'mission' trip, and is up to date on all of these things.......too bad we don't own property on a high-up place......the cell-phone reception out our way is horrible........

change is hard.........

ok, so the blogger site has changed overnight.........and i am somewhat confused on how to proceed..........there are many more pulldown menus, options, etc........when i get a moment i will explore......for now, i am dealing poorly with change.....now that my eldest will not be back home for the summer....which essentially means that he no longer lives at home.....he lives in lexington........he will reside in the current house, with the current roommates for the next school year......and who knows from there......his current housemates at least seem decent folks......and he seems happy as a clam........ah well....i have tidied up the room he vacated...and moved out the plants that wintered over in the plant window in that room.......it was probably time for him to make this move........i am just not ready for it...........

sandra day-o'conner

ok, so i read with amusement the piece in the lexington herald leader about sd-o coming to centre's commencement.....the piece was actually off the ap wire.......which means it ran nationally, and not just instate.........centre's president was quoted as saying that the supreme was coming at the personal request of a local retired judge and some fortune 500 ceo and that a centre trustee would fly her down to danville in his private plane.......the retired judge in question eats at trc at least 3 days a week.......he hates cucumbers......so our running joke is that i will garnish his plate with cucumbers just to be naughty......as i understand it, he went to law school with ms day-o'conner.........she may not use a hyphen, but i have added it because it seems to look good to me......when the judge's wife died, we catered her funeral, and were disapointed that this family friend didn't show up.......ah well.....too bad i don't know anybody graduating from centre this year........

perfect morning......

ok, so one of my definitions of perfection involves sunday morning.........when i get up early enough to read both papers, on the back deck, overlooking the lake, with good coffee with real cream..and the temperature is not too cold.....and i have plenty of time before i have to work on my sunday school lesson....the blue heron was on our dock when i got outside, and i must have startled him because he took flight immediately........in a glide across the creek to a ragged tree just opposite.......this morning i even have a brace of dogs underfoot........not quite beneath my feet, but close enough that i will trip over them if i forget they are there......the yellow dog has become big enough to be a footrest, by the way......they are out here despite the fact that i have no food to beg for.........they just like to be 'with' their human, is suppose........today's bonus was the roses.....at least 6 bushes have blooms, though none with a frangrance can be detected from this vantage point.....the trellis rose is the best for aroma....but it's zillion blooms number only about 5-6 right now.........it should burst forth anyday................also in bloom are wild phlox in varying shades of lavender, wild columbine as well as the heritage columbine grown from seeds purchased at monticello.......and the blue columbine from my grnadmother's house in cleveland.....and bath pinks, and blooming chives and sage........and iris in varying shades and species.......and red poppies..and lily of the valley.....my little world is just lovely .........and so peaceful......and perfect

ted williams......

ok, so this weekend i have been listening to a mystery on tape......the burglar who traded ted williams......gentle readers, i have little historical backround when it comes to america's pasttime......but i do know that ted williams played for boston................. so i was surprised to find that some mustard company may have put out a series of 40 ted williams cards, which could be obtained with the purchase of mustard........and somehow this mystery involved the theft of this series......except that the theft happened in nyc........which throws a wrench into this mysterious lovefeast of a novel........why would someone in nyc care about the theft of ted williams cards............for my money, this has been a pretty savvy mystery....as the author has played about with kinsey milhone, who is sue grafton's heroine..........which means that he is intelligently playful......but the boston baseball cards/nyc setting of his novel makes no sense................ah well.....i am quite critical of mystery novels......they are MY pasttime..................

what is wrong with this picture...........

ok, so i drove the truck to work today, while my eldest used my van to move his stuff from the uk apartment to the off-campus one......why didn't he use the truck?.........because we have never taught he nor his brother to drive a stick-shift vehicle.......to be fair, neither have asked to learn to drive a stick....driving a stick is not my favorite pasttime........and though i drove to work and back againeasily enough, i did not park the thing in the driveway the same way that i found it.......ecw likes to BACK it down the hill and into it's special spot......gentle readers, the mm does not voluntarily BACK a stick shift vehicle anywhere with success..............those who were with me when i tried to park the stickshift rental car by backing into a downhill spot will remember the awful sound as the side scraped the wall.........ouch.........better just pull the truck into the driveway as best i can rather than risk taking out the fence.............

the funeral

ok, so i had a woman call today to order food for a funeral gathering. (monday at 3:00 pm).......in the course of the conversation it became clear that the woman's husband had not yet died.........when asked how a funeral could be scheduled for a person who had not yet died, she replied that the doctor told her it could happen anytime.......oh my....this is not like scheduling a c-section delivery...you cannot schedule someone to die unless the government authorizes it after a sentence and many years of appeals......... or unless she is planning to help him meet his maker by some other means............she is supposed to call back today to confirm....we really hope she doesn't call back........in case she is helping this man to die....then we don't want to be involved............

writing award

ok, so i happened upon the following while doing a last-name google search to see if my blog has finally uncached itself............this entry was from the uk writing center, part of the uk english department

23rd Annual English Department Awards Day
28 April, 2004
2:00 pm in Center Theater, Old Student Center
Reception to follow.


Dantzler (fiction) / Farquhar (poetry) Writing Contests, 2004
Congratulations to our winners and finalists in each category. There were quite a lot of oustanding submissions. A big thanks to everyone who entered, and please enter again next year. The winners will receive their awards at Awards Day, which is next Wednesday at 2 pm in Center Theater, Old Student Center. All students, faculty, staff, family, and friends are encouraged to come and congratulate the award winners and enjoy an informal reception immediately following the ceremony.

Dantzler Fiction Contest:

Winner: Christine Tran "Sanctuary"

Finalists:

2. MacKenzie M. Outlund "Blood Oranges"
3. Andrew C-W "Glory, Super-Sized"
4. Penelope Wesley "The Visitor"
5. Matt Rodgers "Seamus McHeandry"

of course, this entry/third place win has not been mentioned, at least not to me.....but i am proud anyway........

the beggar's signboard......

ok, so before my #1 child leaves with this newly framed sign, i want a public record of what it says......the sign of which i speak is made of cardboard, and was found just outside the musee unterlinden in colmar on a sunday in january......after we had visited the carved lion in belfort and the chapel in ronchamp designed by le corbusier........anyway, this sign was just lying in the street, and andrew decided it was too cool to leave....but he didn't want to take it into the restaurant for dinner......so he hid it outside.......the rasmussens were with us, along with scw and the loyal opposition (l.o.)...helen r. later found the perfect frame for it.......it has been sitting atop the perfect frame for 2+ years, and tonight we went the final step before he drove off with it................for his new place in lexington.....the wording is as follows:

je vais metres ton chien dans le micro-onde donne moi des sous ou je met sur (5) et an (+) je vois le faire pour manger pour vivre.(svp)......if the spelling/grammer is off, it is only because the french beggar couldn't spell........

we have always referred to it as the microwaved dog sign.....i carried it back in the bottom of my suitcase because it is such a find...we also put together quite a collection of found stuff in barcelona to frame for acw.....maybe oneday i will get that put together in a presentable fahsion as well.........for the record, it was the elder rasmussen child who hosted scw for 2 days in princeton.........it was good to see him again......he is such a brilliant and engaging person

random acts of kindness.......

ok, so i cleaned out the refrigerators this morning, and came up with 4 forgotten lasagnas that needed to be baked/used today...........my family cannot look at lasagna for awhile......so i put together impromptu carryouts with salad, bread, and dessert to send to my lawyer's office and my doctor's office............both are full of personal friends.....husband/wife teams who seem to work together well.....and both sets are in my bookclub and run with my spouse...........think back gentle readers....to my marathon..............all except 1 did the marathon the same day, in faster times of course.......so i sent them lunch..........and i feel so good about doing it.....doesn't doing kind things make one's soul leap for joy............i felt so good that i baked a quiche and put together a little supper for my son's french teacher...the one who has tutored him for the ap french and ap french lit tests..........maybe before the day is out i can think of at least 1 more nice thing to do..........i am on a roll..........

friends

ok, so i watched the last episode of friends..........which was o.k., but not stellar programming......and this buisness about it being gone.........and that we should say goodbye...now this is laughable....because this show appears to on all the time on numerous channels in reruns.....and this rerun thing should last for years...................and then i will say goodbye............

weekend roundup.......

ok, so here in no particular order is a rundown the week's many 'tales of woe'............the lunchtime dishwasher hospitalized in lexington/wife says he is too ill to ever work again.......the nighttime dishwasher walks out because he has to babysit his older girlfriend's child while she works...........the electricity went out........the convection oven burns out a fuse.........the food delivery truck is late on the day we have 3 carryout orders............my kitchen help was late to work on critical days........the handwashing sink got backed up on the same day that the faucet decided to leak, causing flooding............the grill was left on all night(luckily the place did not burn down........).......the local doyenne caused a minor scene during a busy lunch.........employee bickering reached new lows of pettiness..............i have said this before....it is no wonder that chefs/restaurant owners turn to the bottle...................

writing down dreams......

ok, so last night had i had this vivid dream about serving a supper in my parents basement in the house they lived for for 35 years in northern ohio........there were lots of salads, and no shrimp, the reality of which was exclaimed by more than one guest.....and when asked to bring down the wine (also silly as my parents don't embibe, a word that each has used before.......) i picked out our house white (faux frog) and a red that looked like a coppola label, but which turned out to named spice......and whose label stated that germander had been added to complement it's spicy quality...........gentle readers...this little detail is quite humerous to me this morning, having ranted mere hours ago about how i do not like reds, that they are now popping up in my dreams like those pesky ads...............i was once told by locals who are bonafide wine enthusiasts that i would enjoy reds when my palate grew up.......folks, i plan never to grow up....my palate notwithstanding...........

breakfast

ok, so i am going to come clean about breakfast this morning...................we, at trc, are not morning people and have said more than once that actually being open for breakfast will be over our dead bodies......HOWEVER, one of our best corporate clients schedules meeting with it's third shift folks at 6:00 am, which means breakfast must be catered in by somebody.........so, this morning i rolled out of bed at 4:30 am, and decided on the spur of the moment to just throw on a fleece pullover atop my flannel p.j.s.....and head on into town........flannel pajama bottoms are the college-prep look of choice, aren't they?................and i would be back home and in bed by 5:45 am................anyway, i whipped up scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits, hash browns....and sausage gravy (which i find personally disgusting................) and then waited for my partner to come and make the delivery...............this has always been our arrangement...................at some point it occured to me that we had not exactly spoken of this plan yesterday................and it also occurred to me that if he failed to show up (a possibility given that wednesday is martini night and the crowd stays late.....) that i would have to make the delivery to this factory in my pajamas.................... luckily, he showed up just in time.....................

liberals............

ok, so the trc accountant ate at the restaurant yesterday, in the midst of the craziness..............she asked about how the college touring had gone, and had my boy narrowed down his choices...............'well, he sent his sat II scores to princeton, middlebury, reed, and oberlin.......' i replied...............'oberlin', she gasped, almost choking............how can you let your child go there...........i had friends who went to oberlin...they are way-out liberal up there in ohio.......you surely don't want your child to go a liberal school?'.............................hello........surely somebody out there suspects that a family of hyphenated names might be a tad liberal, if not full-frontal leftwing..........well, i won't go so far as to say left wing.......because even i am not that extreme.............but still, to have someone i have know for awhile not make that connection was surprising.............maybe because we lack tatoos...........

ad.......

ok, so there was a curious ad in a free 'newspaper' that my night chef brought in.....the banner circulates in the crab orchard/brodhead/mt. vernon area...........

Are You A survivalist? Want to keep food on hand in case of an emergency? I have $1000 worth of neo-life dehydrated food that I will trade for the following: wicker deck set or queen-size inflatable bed (phone #)

gentle readers, if you have a wicker deck set, or a queen-size inflatable bed......i will supply the phone number..............

a better song.....

ok, so i have a better song in my head today

MYSTERIOUS WOMAN


(lyrics by Christine Lavin, from her album "Good Thing He Can't Read My Mind,"

I want to be a mysterious woman
I want to write mysterious songs
I want everyone to wonder
what is she thinking about?

Existentialism? Nihilism?
Wrong
I am thinking about
defrosting my refrigerator
but I could get into a mysterious mood
watch me ask the bartender
for a drink he cannot make
watch me order mysterious food
foods even Julia Child
cannot pronounce right
from cookbooks that time has forgot
then maybe I will read
Crime and Punishment for fun
then again, maybe not

I want to be a mysterious woman
tantalize you with my come-hither stare
maybe it will work a little better
if you pretend I'm not wearing underwear
pretend I was never a Girl Scout
and I never learned how to twirl baton
ahhhhhhhhhhhh
I feel a mysterious song coming on
I think I hear I scream
I think I hear ice cream
melting all over
like rock hard bread
which is stuck to
the chicken parts
long since dead
they're in a cold box
within a cold box
within a warm box
(which is my room)
there's a ceiling
there's a floor
there's a wall
there's a window
look at the moon
it's a marble, it's a button
it's a sequin, its a polkadot
stitched into the velvet sky
the pocket of Sir Lancelot
who is riding on Pegasus
who is fighting the Pleides
who is fighting Cassiiopeia
who is fighting with Hercules
who is fighting with Betelgeux
who is fighting with the Milky Way
that is stuck to the Bird's Eye Peas
that is stuck to the ice cube tray
that is stuck to the chicken parts
that is stuck to the rock-hard bread
hey, what am I doing here?
I should be home
defrosting my refrigerator instead


But I want to be a mysterious woman
I hate being so easy to read
hey, bartender, give me a light
yeah, a Bud light
and a plate of pomme frites
is all I need

amen........

whites............

ok, so i am a slave to white wine..................which is something infinitely more interesting to being a slave to public television (a quote from sex, lies and videotape........) anyway, i digress...............i enjoy whites, all whites.....and abhor reds....all reds.......well, not all whites all of the time....i have left behind my germanic whites period........sometime after i visited the family homestead in lambsheim.....or maybe after our playful luncheon looking for spies in cologne.....i have several bottles in the garage(reislings and gewurz.) and they are too sweet to make it into the house............these days i like dry, but not too dry, and tangy but not too fruity.......none of those wines that taste like they have pureed raspberries hidden somehow in the recipe................i have had this before.....at my own wedding.....................when my family made a 'punch' out of pureed red raspberries......it was festive........but not what i want now.........then there is the buttery aspect.....i like the buttery quality of glen ellen chardonnay, but we cannot buy glen ellen from our suppliers......there is no reason to drink wines that one cannot buy at wholesale prices.......so what wine really hits the spot.......my friend gail and i shared a bottle of mondavi fume blanc earlier this week.....it was superb.........crisp, happy.......... i have visited mondavi in napa......with my friends who still live in the oakland area.......mostly i remember the tremendous fight they had (20 years ago.......) in the parking lot of conn creek.............i have seen them several time since......and never mention this event......in fact, my friend beth and i have the same everyday china.......wedgewood midwinter white.....and the same cookware..........which was surreal to discover when i cooked them breakfast in the house they sold in s.f. for nearly double what they paid.......enough of this........i have visited numerous wineries.......moselles, pouillys, loires, alsatians....chateneaux-du-papes.....(sp) .......epernay..................and i still prefer whites........................when i visited bordeaux i tasted the reds, but preferred the whites.......i have also tasted ky whites..................they are laughable, even those produced in danville.................but then these are right-wing brews, and out of my spectrum.............................

all's well that ends well..............

ok, so i am home from catering my church's wednesday night supper......with leftover lasagnas from sunday............and the rest of the evening is mine.....such as it is.......i am off to walk a few miles with my book-on-tape........and then i will thoroughly melt in the bathtub with a glass or two of sauvignon blanc.........the whirlpool bathtub is on the first floor, in the bedroom 'suite' that we use now as a guest room, and which we will use ultimately when we are too feeble to climb stairs...........because i am the one who uses it most, i decorated it in a way that pleased only me........walllpaper with a french feel, prints purchased from les bookinistes, and a large framed poster of an intricately embroidered waistcoat from musee historique des tissus de lyon........this poster makes me smile, not only because it reminds me of a day spent in lyon long ago, but also because the embroidered flowers sometimes seem to have hidden faces........the seamstress must have had a sense of humor........after a miserable day, there is nothing like a hot swirling bath.....not 'calgon take me away' because i especially like perlier sage and honey bath salts.................

the song that i could not get out of my mind today...

ok, so fo all of the songs that could have stuck in my brain today of all days.....these are the lyrics,,,,,,,

I'm My Own Grandpa
( Lonzo & Oscar )

It sounds funny, I know,
But it really is so,
Oh, I'm my own grandpa.

I'm my own grandpa.
I'm my own grandpa.
It sounds funny, I know,
But it really is so,
Oh, I'm my own grandpa.

Now many, many years ago, when I was twenty-three,
I was married to a widow who was pretty as could be.
This widow had a grown-up daughter who had hair of red.
My father fell in love with her, and soon they, too, were wed.

This made my dad my son-in-law and changed my very life,
My daughter was my mother, cause she was my father's wife.
To complicate the matter, even though it brought me joy,
I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy.

My little baby then became a brother-in-law to Dad,
And so became my uncle, though it made me very sad.
For if he was my uncle, then that also made him brother
Of the widow's grown-up daughter, who, of course, was my stepmother.

Father's wife then had a son who kept him on the run,
And he became my grandchild, for he was my daughter's son.
My wife is now my mother's mother, and it makes me blue,
Because, although she is my wife, she's my grandmother, too.

Now if my wife is my grandmother, then I'm her grandchild,
And everytime I think of it, it nearly drives me wild,
For now I have become the strangest case you ever saw
As husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa!

I'm my own grandpa.
I'm my own grandpa.
It sounds funny, I know, but it really is so,
Oh, I'm my own grandpa.

day from hell......

ok, so what kind of wine goes well with a day from hell?......none of the guidebooks describe a wine that fits just this particular calamity..........a flirty pinot grigio......a nice fume blanc........not chardonnay................certainly not champagne............if i live through this day............i will commiserate with something cold.............

interesting conversation.........

ok so with all of my interest in my 2nd child's college career, one would think that i only had one child..........there is my brilliant first born, of course, whose name came up in conversation with my friend betty p. who is in admissions at centre.......now i have known betty p. for years, and it is always a good day when i get to talk to her........she was in eating lunch with someone leaving centre admissions for greener pastures......she asked about my first born, then related about the dismal state that his former soccer cronies are in, including her boy....................one former classmate has dropped out of a prestigious university and will go to u.k. this fall.........others are languishing with poor grades..................and then betty said.....it looks like (acw) is the only one doing well....................i would agree, since he has a stellar gpa, and a born-again passion for writing/good grades/work ethic/tidiness.............he once told me that i shoud not worry about him.......i guess he was right................

new music

ok, so mm heard 2 new pieces yesterday.....one by modest mouse...........an interesting mix of horns, and a beatles-like sound.....i liked what i heard so much i visited their web site........which is quite interesting for a rock band...... something asian like the l.o. could have designed.................also heard yesterday an interview with loretta lynn, whose new album has been mixed and produced by jack white of the white stripes........it is quitunusual..........even for the white stripes............and the addition of lynn's country twang is curious..........

misery...........

ok, so have i mentioned that my eyes are swollen nearly shut, and i cannot keep from sneezing, and my faceis conjested to the point that my jaw teeth hurt.........all this when taking prescription allergy medication.............when will this misery end?

roses........

ok, so stanwell perpetual has one pale pink bloom......the real surprise is city of york, the monster rose bushes that cover the trellis/gate and at least 6-7 feet in directions on the fence.........there is one bloom on this rose.......too early for city of york....so i do not expect the other 1000 potential blooms to appear anytime soon...............

more sweet memories.......

ok,so i am reminded that once in paris my traveling style of likened to the batann (sp.) death march................maybe i was just in training for the marathon.................

more on mother's day.....

ok, so for the record, this mean mamma would be thrilled withthe following: 1 flat red salvia, 1 flat yellow marigolds, and 1 flat white petunias......and maybe a flat of mixed snapdragons.............and if you throw in a truckfull of mulch, i will even cook breakfast............

mom's midlife marathon.....

Ok, so this is a reprint of my mother’s day marathon, circa May 9, 1999……….as printed in the Danville Advocate Messenger (sports section......on May 12, 1999), along with pictures……

Subtitle: Kathy C-W spends her Mother’s Day finishing Cincinnati’s first Flying Pig Marathon


What kind of idiot spends a perfectly lovely Mother’s Day on a 26.2 mile walking/running tour of Cincinnati?

The answer: 6100 well-meaning idiots, including me, made the trip to Cincinnati for the Flying Pig Marathon Sunday.

Runners who opt for the ultimate challenge do so for reasons that seem perfectly reasonable to the runner and perfectly insane to everybody else. For a non-runner like myself, the decision to enter this race was met with utter shock and dismay.

‘Kathy, how far have you run before this? Only 3 miles?’ they would say as they silently questioned my sanity. “I thought you didn’t run.”

That much is true. I prefer walking to running, but that does not exclude me from completing a 26-mile event. I often walk 6-7 miles at a sub-15 minute pace on my treadmill and on weekends I have been known to load and unload rocks in the building of walks and walls for longer than the 7 hours allotted for completion of the Cincinnati event. I have the stamina and the resolve to finish what I have started when it comes to grueling home gardening projects. Why can’t I transfer these attributes to a 26 mile tour of Cincinnati. I may not be a classic runner, but I am certainly an athlete in search of her event.

Race Day 7:00 am Fountain Square. I am, overwhelmed. I try to remember all the reasons why I am here. I had once commented that I would run a marathon when pigs flew. They are flying today in Cincinnati. All my friends have done a marathon, and I feel left out. Oprah has done a marathon. I have trained enough to lose 7 pounds and 1 dress size. Mostly, I am here because at 43, life is too short not to take risks in challenging the who I am and what I can be. Yes, this is Mom’s Midlife Marathon.

Mile 1. Somewhere on Ezzard Charles Drive. My watch says 12 minutes and a few seconds. Too fast. I will have to slow down. There are scores of runners wearing purple shirts, signifying that they are have raised money for leukemia research. They wear hospital bracelets bearing the name of their ‘training partner’ who has leukemia. I am not running for anyone except myself. I resolve to make a donation to the leukemia society. I start walking with Debbie, a grandmother from Newport. She, too, plans to walk some and run some.

“I did the math. If I walk a mile, and run a while, I can do this thing in less than 7 hours.” She insisted. I am relieved to hear that someone else has come up with the same plan. I am both relieved and validated. I am not thirsty, but I drink a cup of water anyway.

Mile 5. I am in Newport, heading across an Ohio River Bridge. I look at my watch. It is just after 8:00 am. I am on track with my plan. I have walked some, but run more. The route so far has been lined with well-wishers who shout encouragement. Each water stop is like a carnival, with volunteers dressed up in zany costumes. Everybody is upbeat. On the bridge, a barbershop-like group is singing God Bless America, with the Cincinnati skyline in the background. I take their picture with my disposable camera. I am too choked up to breathe for a few moments. I walk again to conserve energy.

Mile 9. Eden Park. 9am. Still on track with walking up hills and running downhills. I am familiar with this area of Cincinnati, as I lived near here for 2 years. I know that there are some long down-hills coming up. I feel really good. I jog for awhile with Joan, from Anderson Township in Cincinnati, who is running today in memory of her mother who died last fall.

She tears up. I tear up. Again, I am so choked up that I cannot breathe. I didn’t plan on this being such an emotional journey. At the water stop, a man from a local TV station hands me a carnation in honor Mother’s Day. I decide to use one of my tissues to wipe away the tears.

Mile 13. Somewhere on Erie Avenue. Not yet 10:00 am. I am elated, because I know that I am halfway through, and I am on target to finish before the 2:00 pm when the finish line will be dismantled. I have met up with some old friends of my husband’s that live on the route. I stopped to take their picture, and they in turn take mine. The water stop has been done up with a pink Cadillac and girls in black felt skirts with pink pigs instead of pink poodles……….

I marvel at the creativity on the part of volunteers. Along the way I have seen people dressed up as pigs, as masked crusaders, as cartoon characters. There has been music, too. I tossed $1 in the donation cup of a teen band playing ‘Free Bird’ somewhere along Madison Road. In O’Brienville, the mood was reggae, with the beat of steel drums to move us along.

Mile 16. Not yet 11:00 am. I give up on running. I have 10 miles to go. I resolve to walk the rest of the way. I feel hydrated, as I have drank one or two cups at each water station. I have fueled up on Skittles periodically, my sport food of choice.

I am concerned about my feet. I feel hot spots. Blisters never crossed my mind until now. I try to put them out of my mind. I am walking now with a woman from California, who has flown in to do the run with her daughter who lives in Cincinnati. She is concerned that her daughter is somewhere behind us and may have given up. I try to reassure her, and in doing do, reassure myself that I could finish.

Mile 20. Noon. I have 2 hours to walk the final 6 miles. I do the math. I can still do this. My hips are numb, and my legs are sore, but I still feel good from the waist up. I have taken off my left shoe to get out a pebble. My sock is bloody. I thought that I must be getting a blister. I resist the temptation to check the other foot. I get up and start walking again. I meet up with a mother-daughter team from Chicago. Thet are supported by a second daughter riding a mountain bike.

The biker offers to get me some water. I am grateful, as the water stations are being dismantled and the water bottle I am carrying is getting low. I see an EMS crew helping a fallen runner into a rescue van. I try not to think about the possibility of injury or medical emergency. I run through my checklist: hydration, fuel, legs, feet. I don’t feel bad enough to quit.

Mile 24. There is no longer anyone manning the mile markers. I see the mileage spray painted on the pavement. 1:00 pm. I can still finish with 30-minute miles. I am absolutely miserable. I cannot ever recall ever being this miserable. Except during childbirth. Now that was an ordeal.

Nothing that has happened today can compare with the physical and emotional toil of labor and delivery. I think about the encouraging notes that my children including in my Mother’s Day card. I tear up, and plod on.

Mile 25. 1:30 pm. There is a cheerful man running an impromptu water stop. He has tapped into the fire hydrant, and apologizes for the taste of the cool water. I see in him the face of God, for still being out on the course at this late hour. I begin to walk with a woman who has at least 20 years and 100 pounds on me. I foolishly ask if this is her first marathon, too. She is quick to point out that this is her 56th marathon, and that she always finishes this slow. I am humbled, and grateful to be finishing at all at my size. Fitness does come in all shapes and sizes. That was one fit woman. I am reminded of Pheidipiddes, the Greek who ran from the Plains of Marathon to Athens to proclaim the good news of the Greek victory over the Persians. The first marathoner dropped dead after he delivered his message. I put aside this thought and move on.

Mile 26.2. The Finish. I look for Ernst. I know that he will be there, somewhere. He gently takes the camera clutched in my hand to take my picture. It is over in something shy of 6 hours and 48 minutes. Someone hands me a medal: a bronze flying pig. It is something to hold onto whenever I want to remember this day. I know that the memory of today will be glossed over in a few short days, just like the memory of childbirth dims next to the glow of parenthood. A Mother’s Day well spent. But next year, I may opt for breakfast in bed.

Box- Other local finishers in Sunday’s Flying Pig Marathon:

Ernst C-W 3:24
Rick Hempel 3:27
Jamey Gay 4:12
Joni Morgan 4:40
Sarah Hempel 4:41

the sun shines bright on my old kentucky home...........

ok, so the rain and the cold weather has moved on, leaving my house bathed in sunshine.........i had a chance to sit on the deck and read for a bit......which was most pleasant, even though the chair pad was still a bit damp..........i was much too lazy to step inside the house and exchange it for a dry one..........quite the perfect way to top off an afternoon of no accomplishments whatsoever.....just indulgences..........i did take a few turns around the garden beds.......contemplating just where the tanks may sit and pipes may run when the septic system contractor tears up my yard......and imagining where beds could be refigured, and plants moved...............frankly, i like it all just the way it is.......i will be like scarlett ohara....and worry about that tomorrow.............but back to my little bit of sunshine, and my book, and the lake below........and a glimpse of a blue bird on the feeder.......not a real bluebird......an indigo bunting.....they like the cedar trees around here........i guess indigo buntings must be as lucky as bluebirds.....................

the nap.........

ok, so after the church lunch.......i came home and read the papers over a glass of wine then promptly fell asleep on the couch.................there are few pleasures on this earth more delicious than a sunday afternoon nap........let alone one that starts out singular, and ends up with a cat wedged just so against your belly...............i could have tidied up, done some laundry.........written some notes, called my mother..............but i chose the ultimate pleasure of a snooze in broad daylight..........

church ladies............

ok, so today i baked 28 lasagnas for a luncheon/fundraiser after church............which turned out to be 8 too many.....i will rework them with extra sauce/cheese for wednesday night prayer meeting.............gentle readers, please note that when i say baked, i meant only that......i bought them wholesale from my supplier, and carted them hot from my business to the church sometime between 7:00 AM this morning and noon.........i am happy to do this, not only because logistics for this task comes easily, but also because it gives me a chance to cavort with a select group of octogenarian church ladies..........the ladies who 'run' the kitchen during church meals..........not necessarily based on talent in this endeavor, but on outlasting the church lady wannabees.....i suppose.........there are at least three caterers who attend my 'moderate' southern baptist church (we say moderate in this bible belt conservative area where no church would ever call itself liberal even it has female deacons..........) anyway, these ladies are a hoot...........in the course of setting everything up, replenishing the lasagnas, salad, dressing, rolls, etc.......i heard all about their cats, their kin (i have lived in this area and i am just finding out that two of these ladies are paternal aunts to the husband of a drug rep who gives us significant doctor's office lunch business............) and about harmless gossip..............i learned that an active family who sits near us in the balcony is moving to glasgow (ky, not scotland....) because of a work transfer...............and all about another member's broken hip and the nurse hired to 'sit' with her during the day..........and then they got to talking about mistaken relationships..........liek the person who asked the younger sister if she was the daughter of the eldest......and the other woman, who was visiting a hospitalized church member, and was asked if she were a daughter.........so i mentioned that i am often taken for my partner's mother.......which makes me feel quite old in that he is over 30..............and these gracious ladies exclaimed that there was no way that i could be mistaken for the parent of a 32 year-old..............such a blessing to get to know these women.........i should look so good when i am above the age of 80.................

best laid plans.................

ok, so i missed the derby, because our soon-to-be-ex dishwasher failed to show up....and it was lincoln county prom night, and we had 70 reservations all fairly early......but not so early that i could make it home before 6:04 pm...............ah well..........the prom kids looked so young, and some quite silly.....like the girl who had a rhinestone 'tatoo' of ying/yang applied to her upper arm, and the girl with the tiara..............oh my.................what was she thinking............

maybe gail and i should start with short stories......

ok, so today is the birthday of bobbie ann mason.........fitting for derby day....this is from mpr.....born in Mayfield, Kentucky (1940). She grew up in rural Kentucky, the daughter of dairy farmers. When she got to high school she realized just how different she was from the city kids. She became the first member of her family to go to college, and she eventually got a PhD from the University of Connecticut. She wrote her dissertation about the novelist Vladimir Nabokov. By the time she was done, she said, "I was so sick of reading about the alienated hero of superior sensibility that I thought I would write about just the opposite."

She began to write short stories about people in her home state of Kentucky, people who grow up in Southern suburban housing developments, drive trucks for a living, listen to Bruce Springsteen, and spend all their time watching TV and going to Wal-Mart. She got an encouraging rejection letter from The New Yorker magazine when she sent them the second short story she'd ever written. Over the next two years, they rejected nineteen more stories, but they finally published the twentieth. Her first collection, Shiloh and Other Stories (1982) got great reviews, and made her one of the most prominent writers of the so-called New South.

The title story from her collection Shiloh and Other Stories begins, "Leroy Moffittss wife, Norma Jean, is working on her pectorals. She lifts three-pound dumbbells to warm up, then progresses to a twenty-pound barbell. Standing with her legs apart, she reminds Leroy of Wonder Woman."

Mason has gone on to write many more books of fiction about her native western Kentucky, including Love Life: Stories (1989) and the novel Feather Crowns (1993). Her most recent collection of short stories is Zigzagging Down a Wild Trail (2002).

Bobbie Ann Mason said, "I have always found it difficult to start [writing] with a definite idea about a character, or even a definite emotion. . . . But if I start with a pond that is being drained because of a diesel fuel leak, and a cow named Hortense, and some blackbirds flying over, and a woman in the distance waving, then I might get somewhere."

flattery..............

ok, so this morning. one of our 70-ish customers stopped by to ask me what 2 things i would do in paris on a rainy day................he and his new wife were leaving this afternoon for 2 weeks in an apartment on the quai grenelle....which is between musee d'orsay and tour eiffel................i first suggested lunch at musee jaquemart-andre...in the lovely dining room with the frescoed ceiling.......or lunch at musee d'orsay in the ballroom.............i was so flattered that this person sought me out for francofile tips.......................of course.....my january encounter with rick steves at st. sulpice has already been reported in the paper....so even those who have no idea that i have been to paris 11 times at least knew i had recently traveled to my favorite place................

barbara walters...............

ok, so nobody in this household will be watching barbara's special tonight....the one that makes it seem like a baby is up for grabs in a reality show......where some 16 year-old will decide, or not decide to give her baby up to the bestest couple..............for starts...this would be an open adoption......of which i have regular proof of flaws...................the less mean side of me tells me that this is for the best, but the rest says that openness has only led to unnecessary confusion and misplaced allegiance................and misplaced idolatry......................

the comment......

ok,so i have been freaked out about the comment on my blog pertaining to the rnc..........as best that i can tell, this guy's email is from foo.com. which is a subsidiary of digimedia.com out of oklahoma somewhere........he must have been trolling the web for rnc comments.......although when i went to blog search sites, i could not find my own blog using rnc as a key word.........surely he lacks the gumption to slog through my blog on a regular basis..............for the record, i blog for my own personal enjoyment....and occasionally for the annoyance of others...............and i fear no one when it comes to my personal right to free speech..............

curtains for bob

ok, so i decided to bring my portable tape player/radio to work this morning so i could listen to bob edwards final story, at 8:50 am......but i neglected to change out the batteries, so by 8:15 my reception was sketchy........luckily, my fruit and vegetable guy joe davis delivered not only my produce order but also 2 fresh batteries...so that i could listen with unwavering attention............bob interviewed the same guy this morning as he signed off that he did 24.5 years ago on hios first broadcast.........i personally respect closure in all things...........

no rose today.......

ok, so it is the last day of april, and traditionally i have had at least 1 rose in bloom.....maybe just one bloom, but a bloom nevertheless........i have been watching two prospects.........therese bugnet (the one in the back) and stanwell perpetual..........but this morning it was cold and rainy, and not the sort of day on which a rosebud bursts forth..........ah well.....there is always next year...........

bob edwards.......

ok,s o tomorrow morning i will wake up to bob for the very last time........friday will be his last day achoring morning edition, after nearly 25 years in this time slot.......i emailed my discontent to npr.....i signed the petition.......i did not stage a sit-in at npr..........but then i am getting too old for these things.........i am saddened that age has become a factor...he certainly doesnot sound old to me............

rnc............

ok, so the newest joke at trc is the rnc, which sent my partner an 'autographed' photo of gwb, along with an invitation to join at the $50 through $2000 level.............gentle readers, my partner is many things, but a republican is not one of them........especially since the photo of gwb makes him look like he is plotting something.................

beyond dangerously blonde..............

ok, so there is something to be said for women who have not brains enough to have scruples...................from cnn.com.......

Jessica's Political Favors
They say politics makes strange bedfellows, but when does "strange" veer off into "wacky"? Here's the answer: Preternaturally perky starlet Jessica Simpson is pals with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, one of the least perky government officials ever, reports Us Weekly. And the "Newlyweds" star plans to exploit their friendship for all it's worth (value still to be determined).

Joe Simpson, Jessica's exceedingly involved dad and manager, tells the mag that he's asked Rumsfeld to cameo as himself on his daughter's still-untitled ABC sitcom pilot ('cause when we think comedy, we think Rumsfeld). Another Republican asked to appear: California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. "We're friends with Donald Rumsfeld and with Schwarzenegger," Joe explains, adding that he hopes they'll agree to "tongue-in-cheek" interviews with Mrs. Nick Lachey's TV reporter character. The Simpsons are also pursuing Donald Trump, who owes them a sit-down as payback for subjecting Jessica to Omarosa's antics on "The Apprentice."

ok, so i forgot.......

ok, so i forgot how small danville is......i picked up cayle after wednesday night activities at lexington avenue baptist.....only to run into a chi omega alumnie (sp) who was helping to pick up after the pot-luck.........she knew all about our visit to cambridge because her son dates chris's oldest sister. (chris is the fellow from danville who showed us around harvard last month....) .......also a chi omega......and she suspected that we were not in love with cambridge...not like chris, who is a true marvel......or at least according to his family.............and so she asked what scw's plans are.....which i do not know......beyond governor's scholar's this summer...............though i mentioned princeton in passing....as a way top deflect from any other assumptions..........who knows where he will be accepted.................

even more about will shakespeare...................

ok,so will once wrote, in romeo and juilet..............'in a minute there are many hours................'.....................this is so true when one is waiting for a message, or a score, or a check,or a complement/censure.................or a kind word...........or for a lottery payoff.........................so many things wait these days..................

to kill a mockingbird............

ok, so this book is the basis of my friendship with gail.........we spent the day talking about who-said-what........and abouthow harper lee's parent's bankrolled a solid year after she graduated college for her to write her book..................which makes me think of acw......who is so talented a writer.....i wish that i could personally bankroll an entire year somewhere for him to write short stories.............maybe when i win the lottery..................

harper lee

ok, so i copied this from mpr......harper lee was a chi omega, by the way...........

It's the birthday of the woman who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Harper Lee, (books by this author) born Nelle Harper in Monroeville, Alabama (1926). She grew up in Monroeville, which had a population of about 7,000, and it was the model for the town of Maycomb in To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee wrote, "It was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum."

Her father was a lawyer, and she spent much of her free time hanging around the courthouse and playing golf with the children of other lawyers. She thought it seemed like a pretty good way to live, and for a long time she wanted to be a lawyer when she grew up. She went to law school at the University of Alabama, and after she graduated she worked as a reservation clerk for an airline in New York City. She spent all day at work, and then came home to write for four hours every evening. In the mid '50s, Lee started working on a novel about the trial of a black man in a small town in Alabama.

In December of 1956, she wasn't able to get back to Alabama to celebrate Christmas with her family, so instead she celebrated with a family she knew in Manhattan. On Christmas morning, Lee and the family gathered around the tree to open gifts. Most of them were for the children of the family, but when everything under the tree had been unwrapped, the parents asked Lee to open an envelope that was resting on the branches. Inside was a note that said, "You have one year off from your job to write whatever you please. Merry Christmas." The couple gave her a loan to devote an entire year to nothing but writing, and it was during that year that Lee wrote most of the first draft of To Kill a Mockingbird.

She sent the manuscript to a publisher in New York, and they told her that it had potential but that it was too much like a collection of short stories and not enough like a novel. She spent the next two and a half years rewriting it, and To Kill A Mockingbird was published in July of 1960. It was priced at $3.95, and it sold more than two and a half million copies in less than a year. It was selected by the Reader's Digest book club, the Literary Guild book club, and the Book-of-the-Month Club; and it was immediately published in more than a dozen languages. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961.

To Kill a Mockingbird tells the story of Atticus Finch, a lawyer who defends a black man named Tom Robinson, who is accused of raping a white girl. The title of the novel comes from something Finch says to his daughter: "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

To Kill a Mockingbird sells about a million copies every year, and it's sold over thirty million copies since its publication. In 1963, just three years after its publication, it was taught in eight percent of U.S. public middle schools and high schools, and today that figure is closer to eighty percent. Only Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and Huckleberry Finn are assigned more often.

tour of georgia............

ok,s o some of my spouse's bike-riding cronies drove to georgia over the weekend to try to see lance and his postal team compete in this first ever t-de-g.........they have great pictures.....of lance climbing an unclassified hill within arm's length...of sheryl crow leaning out of the team car......of bob roll of oln/trek.....they were quite stoked to see lance up close........makes us all back home look forward to the t-de-f..........................

more about my millionaire friend gail.........

ok, so my friend gail presented me with a key to her car this morning as soon as she walked into work......which would seem like an unusual move, unless you had been at work with gail for the past week.........when her keys were locked in her car, either here at at her house....off and on for 7 days...........monday morning, the midst of a full-throttle thunder storm, she called me at work....kathy, come get me......i locked my keys in my car again..............she found a ride home on monday, and another ride to work on tuesday......finally shw convinced the father of her children to come over from harrodsburg and open her door (she bought her car from him........) ..........then by thursday she had locked the keys inside again, at work....in our lot......and she got the father of her children to come over again to get them out.........so by sunday, when we were serving a baby shower.......and she came in to me and said.....you'll never believe what i have done................well, i knew exactly what she had done......................she finally got a locksmith to come and pop her lock............bless her heart..............

window tinting.......

ok, so this young guy is standing in my darkened lobby this morning at 8:00 am.........when i asked how i could help him, he replied....'I am here to get my windows tinted......you do that here, don't you?'...................there must have been a long pause on my end...because he asked me again...............'No, this is a restaurant..........'......well, where can i get my windows tinted?'......................oh, my.............i have been mistaken for many things before in my life, but not for someone who tints windows..........

two 'road cafes'

ok, so this morning a guy called asking for my partner.......he's not here i replied........well, is he at the other cafe? the caller inquired................what other cafe? i asked.......well, i thought he owned 2 road cafes..............i guess i misunderstood...............nyuck, nyuck........

i should have been there.....

ok, so there was a pro-abortion-rights rally on the national mall today...estimated at between 600,000 and 800,000 people.......and i should have been there.....to lend my support for this just cause........i say this as a mother........no woman should be forced to have children until she is ready and able..........and no government should hold last say on a woman's reproductive choices...................

more about my new baseball obsession

ok, so the last time the mm took an interest in baseball, it was in the early 80's, and it was about the indians....so i could have something to talk about when i called my grandpa broughton in cleveland......i have fond memories of my grandpa, out on the screened-in porch, listening to indians games in the dark while he smoked cigars..........whenever the indians are in the playoffs or the world series, we still drag out his picture and set it on the tv for good luck......it hasn't brought the indians any luck thus far, but you never know.............anyway, the redsox beat the yankees 2-0 today...for a 3-0 sweep in nyc.......and now the yankees are trailing badly in the overall standings.......the best team that money can buy, in the toilet, or almost...............i guess you get what you pay for.................

le jardin

ok, so mm's garden, usually a source of solace has been a disappointment this season.........not for the current show of phlox, poppies, iris, money plant, iberis, etc, but for the cloud of doom that hangs over it and dampens my enthusiasm for improvements........the septic system contractor has not yet drawn the definitive plans for pipes, etc.....and so i do not know just which sections of established perennial beds will be utterly destroyed..........and thusly i just sit back and do nothing....no weeding, no mulching, no dreaming of plant movements that will enhance the color scheme. etc.........will i have to dig up rosa constance spry, or grandma broughton's old pink rose (my brother-in-law the rosarian thinks it might be called belladonna......) and if i do have to dip up constance's bed, there are 5 other roses in that bed that will also have to moved......and to where?.............not every part of my yard has enough soil depth to grow roses..............nor enough sunlight, etc.............the plans include running the lateral lines into the 'wood' lot that blocks our view of the neighbors..........there is not much soil depth there either....which means that fill dirt will have to be trucked in..............hopefully the wildflowers are numerous enough to prevent extinction if the lines and dirt end up on top of a few.........it is just the principle of the thing at this point......so much flora, so much potential for a moonscape at this address.....i am depressed...............

the beloved disciple......

ok, so today's sunday school lesson dealt with john chapter 21 verses 1-19....a passage that includes the following 'that disciple whom jesus loved said to peter, it is the lord...' we had quite a discussion about the disciple that jesus loved.......john is the only gospel writer that mentions this unnamed person.......most notably in chapter 21 when peter asks jesus about his relationship with the beloved disciple and jesus tells him to mind his own business........on-line references were varied........there is a gay christian website named the beloved disciple.....this option had already occured to me........how do we know that jesus was heterosexual.........we don't..............there was a web mention of the beloved being john the guy who wrote the gospel......kind of like......jesus loved me best.........and then there was the mary magdeline theory.....some guy from egypt identified mary as the beloved in the second century.......of course, i like the mary magdeline theory.....why couldn't jesus' beloved be a woman?...........this really makes sense in davinci code terms.......peter took over the church, and peter black-washed mary as a prostitute or worse.......some jealousies run deeper than faith...........anyway, there was a person in my sunday school class, raised catholic but now southern baptist, who took great umbrage at this notion...............she even admitted that she was having a hard time finishing the davinci code because she could not get by the 'fiction' ............at the very least, the gospels are themselves fictions..........personally edited accounts that leave in and leave out details based on an agenda of some sort..........for us to say that the gospels are the truth, without taking this reality into account is simple-minded............does that mean that i lack faith.....not at all, in the same way that martin luther did not lack faith when he had the courage to go up against the catholic church over ethical issues.............oh my......at this late date i am so amazed to find that there are people who take everybit of information that comes along as 'gospel' and do not feel empowered to question any of it...........

tour de france.....oh yeah.....

ok, so when mm noted in the previous blog that she was not much of a sports fan, she completely forgot about bicycle racing...............every july i sit with my spouse and watch taped coverage of each stage (the only reason we would ever get cable would be to have open access to oln, which airs bicycle racing........but as long as my mother has a sattelite dish and is willing to tape these programs.........)anyway, last night we watched coverage of the tour of georgia, where part of the us postal team is racing........and highlights of other european classics (paris-rubaix, etc.)..........lance is not the only american that races.....there is also george hincappie, bobby julich, levi leipheimer to name a few........though none except george race with lance......they race with other teams in hopes of being the top dog and supported in bids for stage wins........lance's #2 guy from last year, roberto heras, is now with his own team, and will surely give lance a run for his money this year........the other nice thing about watching taped segments?...we can ff through the commercials..........

boston 3 yankees 2

ok, so mm has never been much of a sports fan, except for when osu plays michigan......or during wimbledon......but i am reinventing myself as a redsox fan.........i am enjoying their winning season...thus far...their wins over the evil yankees, and the possibility that this year's team may just break the curse.............not that i have watched more than 1 game....but i do follow along on-line as the games progress.......

more about will.......

ok, so mm has a few words to say about will s...............i watched shakespeare in love......again.....on vhs......in the whirlpool bathtub.....again.......and i have decided that it is one of the finest films made..............so much passion......so much love denied........so much love expressed in beautiful words....both in the play romeo and juliet that the back story about will and viola............on another note.....................i am so proud of scw's national merit letter.....................he is still in the running for at least a commendation............with at least 3 at dhs............who knows about boyle county high school.......maybe nobody considering grade inflation.....................waiting for scw, i talked with his sr. year english teacher.....they will read j. austin's pride and predjudice.........a book that i have read yearly since my middle child was born, and have watched yearly since it came out from a&e................it is a story he knows well..........................

words from will........

ok, so today is supposedly will shakespeares birthday.......harder to tell these things when people were born at home.........i enjoyed reading the following on mpr's daily blog.........He used one of the largest vocabularies of any English writer, almost 30,000 words, and he gave us many of our most common turns of phrase, including "foul play," "as luck would have it," "your own flesh and blood," "too much of a good thing," "good riddance," "in one fell swoop," "cruel to be kind," "play fast and loose," "vanish into thin air," "the game is up," "truth will out," and "in the twinkling of an eye."

some people just have a way with words................

maurice clarett and his mamma

ok, so the supreme court denied a request from maurice clarett, and presumedly from his mamma as well.....to allow him to participate in the nfl draft this weekend.............gentle readers who may not be OSU fans.....maurice clarett led the OSU BUCKEYES to their recent national championship...as a freshman....and then his career when down the tubes from there...........he and his mamma were involved in some sort of financial scandal...which got him kicked out of osu because such things are verboten with the ncaa.................he then started into litigation with the nfl with regards to the draft 'early'.............like 2 years early................this fellow is a tad older than acw............who is a true sophomore in college as opposed to someone who may not actually know the way to class on OSU's campus...........no matter what they say.........OSU football players do not attend class.............I was in a psychology class with Archie Griffin's younger brother...and he never showed up..............I would bet the farm that he got a passing grade..........anyway, back to maurice clarett..............who was 'lent' money by a football booster....and the money was spent by his mamma on who know's what......one oculd argue that OSU corrupted him, with promises of riches despite the ncaa rules............but it looks like he and his mamma got greedy, and now they may have lost all that they counted on........................ha! so many young black athletes have this fantasy that they will strike it rich in the pros....and so they neglect their lessons......and go downhill from there..........i saw about 6 of dhs's finest football players walking to school yesterday, after dropping off scw..........not one had a backpack...which means not one found the time to do any homework...........or felt inclined to read the lessons.............ironic, as scw had a backpack filled to the point that his french ap novel and the accompanying french dictionary were in hand because there was no other room in the zippered compartments..............so I say...too bad, maurice clarett..................you blew it....the scholarship...the classes you likely did not attend.....the team you thought were too good to play with......and now you are lucky to find a job in columbus saying............'do you want fries with that?'...................

princess diana

ok, so the mm has her limits, and princess diana is at the top of her list...............cbs is set to reveal photos of princess diana taken at the wreck scene...........even access hollywood was about to 'reveal' these photos as i shut down the tv set....................this is a level of curiosity/nosiness to which i will not stoop..............i rose before dawn to watch her get married (just 1 month after my own wedding, which was a bit less formal....)...i bought every magazine in which she was featured.................. i wept when i heard that she died.....i watched the entire broadcast of her funeral...i have the single cd of elton john's remake of candle in the wind..........i light candles for her whenever i visit paris cathedrals..............but i will not gawk at her mangled body just because this image can be produced for me.............the dead have their ultimate right to privacy..................

slow children at play

ok, so i really like this poem by cecilia woloch

Slow Children at Play

All the quick children have gone inside, called
by their mothers to hurry-up-wash-your-hands
honey-dinner's-getting-cold, just-wait-till-your-father-gets-home--
and only the slow children out on the lawns, marking off
paths between fireflies, making soft little sounds with their mouths, ohs
that glow and go out and glow. And their slow mothers flickering,
pale in the dusk, watching them turn in the gentle air, watching them
twirling, their arms spread wide, thinking, These are my children, thinking,
Where is their dinner? Where has their father gone?

there is a sign on our circle that says slow children at play............which is only slightly true, as the only cayle and lena are at the age of play....the others are under age 2 and don't get out much..............as for whether they are slow children is anybody's guess .....and as for me being a slow mother...................

meanness is as meanness does............

ok, so the mm is feeling especially mean today..........possibly because i worked inside all day when the weather was lovely.......maybe because i am just plain mean............

a brief treatise on aging

ok, so the plethora of new grey hairs that plagued my spring break trip seem to have receded (no pun intended)....and i appear to back to the usual hair color...who knew that driving 2000 miles would turn a few hairs grey? since this episode i have been more attune to hair color/growing out of hair color............and frankly, it does not appear to be useful in the long run to color grey............so many women i have noticed do not quite keep up with this covering of grey, and therefore look worse than they might have looked...........i am amused to read on line that there is a group offering a 'voice' lift to those who feel that the aging process has somehow affected voice quality..............hahahaha........should my voice sound too old to certain listeners..........there are many hand gestures that speak volumes with a meaning that remains ageless.............

sunburn

ok, so between cayle's soccer game, and a few moments spent on the deck reading the newspaper, i have come up with a nasty sunburn on my face, lower arms, and neck...........oh, my......i did not see this coming on a day that wasn't all that hot.........my face is so red it even hurts when i look at myself in the mirror.............

closure......

ok, so last night the mm took advantage of an opportunity to find closure and peace with her brother-in-law........the one she has not seen in 2 solid years....not since the unfortunate probating of her mother-in-law's will 2 years ago.................i was really pleased to see him at my sister-in-law's house.....and my first words to him were genuine................i told him that i was most sad when osu won the national football championship, and i did not feel welcome to call him to relish in the success..............he gave me a big hug, and told me that he celebrated for both of us..............and that he also celebrated when xavier made it to the round of 8...........................family distress is more than distressing...............it is downright disabling.....................even when it is not quite your family..................

tom bombadil.......

ok, so on the way back from cincinnati this morning, we listened to nickel creek, a bluegrass trio produced my alison krauss............they are quite good, with fiddle, mandolin, and guitar...........anyway...they played a song about tom bombadil..................which may seem natural to those literati who have actually read the tolkein trilogy...............sadly, neither my spouse nor my daughter had read the books...and therefore had no idea about tom bombadil.......................i can recall...the first time i got wind that someone was filming the trilogy.................i looked online to see who was to play tom bombadil............i am still dismayed that this character was left out......................he and his lovely companion represent all that is good and earthy about this life we lead..............and peter jackson decided that he would rather spend hisd on-screen time on orcs and falling wizard flashbacks................ah well.................

governor's scholars

ok, so the mm is proud of her child who was accepted for the annual ky governor's scholar's program, that will take place for 5 wweks this summer at either centre college, eku, or bellermine.............there has been much press about our republican governor's failure to pass a budget in this session, and that there may not be funding for governor's scholars.......scw's acceptance letter even mentions the possibility of no money..................this acceptance also carries with it the reality of a 4-year full-ride to u.k.................should scw want a full-ride at u.k............frankly, I don't see u.k. as the premier school for romance languages.................... therefore my child has my permission to pursue other options...............

isak dinesen

ok, so today is isak dinesen's birthday......and her life was so tragic.......she fell in love with the son of a count, but he refused to marry her, so she married his twin brother as a way to get revenge..........and from him she caught a std.........and left her on her own in their african coffee plantation...............where she wrote the stories that would become out of africa.................when hemingway won the nobel prize for literature, he commented that the prize should have gone to her...........a quote i appreciate..........Dinesen said, "All sorrows can be borne, if you put them into a story."

book on tape..............

ok, so mm so enjoyed listening to books on tape during the trip up east, that she has gone out and gotten yet another one to listen to whilst walking/working.............this one is a sequel of sorts to the talented mr ripley, by patricia highsmith...........i had not realized that she wrote several books using my ripley as her imperfect hero......so far, this book is quite good, especially since i have seen the movie and know what preceded this book, both the good and the bad...............

www.savebobedwards.com

ok, so i have gone to the web site noted in the paper tonight, even though i have already emailed npr about the disappointing switch in early morning host.................i cannot imagine waking up to anybody except bob edwards...............on npr, that is................

slavery revisited........

ok, so the mm just got back from catering a 'casual' event at the home of a local 'doyenne', whose pre-civil war home has slave quarters in the backyard.........we arrived 1 hour early to set up.........and were greeted with dismay that we brought no appetizers.......gentle readers....be aware that no appetizers, nor coffee, nor any else other than 2 casseroles, salad, bread, soft drinks, and cookies were requested................anyway........when we were set up and waiting for guests, the hostess starting in talking about the slave quarters out back, and reminisced 'chauncey(her late spouse) used to say that he was the last slave on this plantation'....................she then turned to gail, my friend and coworder, and said.....'i imagine you know all about that'...................there was a long pause...........as gail is black...and whether or not she knows all about that is her business.......i could not believe that our hostess would say such a thing..............well, yes i can believe it, because she gets by saying worse to so many people..............anyway, at 8:00 pm, the only people there were her paid housecleaners (working overtime) and us.....we waited until 9:00.....in case someone might come late.......finally, the hostess asked me why i was so anxious to leave.....i replied that i was concerned that gail was ill, and i wanted to get her home.........................actually, gail had mentioned in passing that she has an upset stomach, and i just ran with it.................i will remember this ploy in future, gentle readers..............

alias withdrawal............

ok, so mm is more than an alias fan.....she is an alias fanatic..................i have already looked up the next week's scenario on both the abc website, and the fan site........and i cannot wait...................my family struggles to watch with me....as i talk to the television about how vaughan must surely know that his wife is a double agent......and now jack is withholding valuable evidence that could free the man who may just be the real father of his daughter....got it?......it is like soaps for adults.....but on sunday night when they can settle in with a cold one for their weekly fix...................

wsj......

ok, so trc got a pretty decent mention in the wsj on thursday april 8....in the personal journal section, in a small piece about wine and liqueur pairing dinners........very nice publicty, though most of our clientele do not take the wsj....however, we have already received a lovely framed copy of our piece from a patron who lives in stanford..............

nick and jessica....

ok, so the mm took time out today to email abc to complain that 1) alias was pre-empted by nick and jessica's comedy hour and 2) nick and jessica's comedy hour was a tragic rehash of sonny and cher, which was pretty stupid the first time around.........at one point i was certain that poor jessica was lip-synching her love ballad/tribute to her spouse........and i was also afraid that her breasts would explode from so much pumping up..........yes.....i will admit that the mm is quite the little alias fan...........but really.......nick and jessica?

iraq as the new viet nam...

ok, so last night we got together with some book club people and watched the quiet american, starring michael cain and brendan fraiser.......a chilling tale of american duplicity in the years leading up to the viet nam war......one of our group mentioned a quote that npr had recently featured....by ho chi min (sp)........he was asked how he thought that he could beat the best army on earth....he replied.......they will kill many of us....we will kill some of them......and they will tire of it first.............i have pondered this quote today as i read of still more u.s. casualities.....yes, we will tire of it first when the cause is not just.......at princeton, yale, and harvard, we saw entire rooms filled with the names of war dead...cicvil war....wwI and wwII....korea.........the lists of names got really lean when the viet nam war was remembered........an unjust war that few were willing to die for....................the politics of iraq, the factions are so intractable that we were complete fools to think that we could just bring in democracy and think it would 'take', like fabric takes dye................we need gwbush to fade into the sunset this november............

top 5 lists...#1

ok, so here are the best and worst things about middlebury college...in no particular order...

Best things 1. language program is tops......campus has a french 'house' called the chateau for french majors 2. two thirds of students study abroad...language majors are expected to study abroad 3. the student body is especially left-leaning politically........4. students/campus administration is dedicated to recycling......even unsorted trash is sorted after pickup to remove recyclables .....5. students clearly love this place...when we arrived too late for the tour...we kind of hung around reading literature.....and a tour guide who had finished with her group saw us looking forlorn...and offered to take us around herself...she even picked up a family of three she saw looking around on campus.......that kind of hospitality/loyalty is telling of the way students must be treated by staff/faculty/administration

Worst things 1. this college is at best 19 hours from car, and not only is it not near any cut-rate southwest hub, it is at least 45 minutes from any airport in an area where there are no public transportation options.....2. this college is located in an area that still had traces of snow in early april........my child tends to lose things like coats, gloves, etc....he will surely freeze to death......3. security seemed lax.......our guide took us into her dorm and into her room........and there were no locked doors of any kind...no key pads.....no infra-red sensors......no codes.......though there are security guards that know the student body, there seemed to be an openness that appeared too trusting in these troubled times.....4. cell phones are out of range until you get closer to the new york state line.......5. some dorms don't offer upper classman housing, even though students are expected to live in their dorms 4 years.......i may have misunderstood, but that is what i think i heard.......

a resurrection poem

ok, so in our easter sunday school literature, the following poem was synopsized.............

Manifesto:
The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

"Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" from The Country of Marriage, copyright ® 1973 by Wendell Berry, reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.


just thought you would enjoy this take on easter.............

tabouli....

ok, so i indulged my cravings yesterday, and made a special trip to the kroger's for tabouli ingredients......bulgur, lemon, parsley, green onions, cherry tomatoes......etc.........we had it for supper along with lemon-roast chicken........and now i have the priviledge of several days of tabouli leftovers.....tabouli for breakfast, tabouli for a little snack when i get home from work........bulgur bliss.........life is good..............

back home......

ok, so we are back home, after a marathon drive from upstate new york......we had a leisurely breakfast with my husband's sister....then set off toward home on the new york thru-way.........thankfully we had company for the trip........dan brown's angels and demons...on 15 cd's.........quite compelling piece of fiction............enough to keep up alert and intrigued for 15 hours.........i had heard that this book was better than davinci code........i cannot go that far with my praise.....but it is an excellent mystery/thriller with lots of really interesting historical elements, conspiracy theories, cutting edge technology, and a virtual tour of the eternal city, rome.........the climax lasted from cleveland to cincinnati, or so it seemed........we pulled into the garage sometime after 1:00 am......

too many colleges to choose from......

ok, we have officially toured 4 colleges in 4 days.......for the record, i loved princeton and middlebury, and basically disliked harvard because of the crowds, noise level, etc.....and have no real opinion on yale.....

east coast culture shock

ok, so.......toto, we aren't in kentucky anymore......for starts....there are no left turns off of route 1.......just u-turns in designated areas.......and it is illegal to self-serve gas......and the restaurants in princeton seem to be byob......and the sun rises earlier here that at home...i should have known that one....and i seem to be allergic to something...i woke up with my eyes swollen................

final two...

ok, so mm is so glad that duke is out..........anybody but duke can be national champ......ever since duke beat uconn....the year i had a perfect bracket bet in a multi-state pool......with uconn to win, and duke won instead....i have no use for duke...til the end of tme....

moonlight over hogwarts

ok, so the hotel in princeton has internet...on the tv, or a price dearer than cybercafes in paris and barcelona combined.....but no worries....iam on vacation.....we drove through snow today in west virginia.....and through incredible crosswinds.....thankfully we had jane with us.....jane eyre, in numerous tape cassettes.......we are on chapter 27.......and the house has not yet caught on fire......don' tell scw......he is unfamiliar with story line.....we should be finished by the time we hit new haven on tuesday.....anyway.......we arrived in princeton in time to have a quick thai meal before meeting ivan.......princeton really looks like hogwarts, with all of the buildings looking gothic with stone arches, and stained glass......especially tnight under a full moon.......with the wind howling cold.......scw will stay on ivans couch tonight, and go to class with him in the morning.....i will meet scw for the tour, and then will see the art museum in the afternoon.......

character names

ok, so in my novel/screenplay someone must be named lucky hoskins and/or waddy peytona......................both are memorable exits off major interstates, and both struck me as clever names for colorful characters................maybe the filmmaker fron downunder can be waddy......i think i will make this guy part-aborigine......and maybe have him fall for my friend gail..........

blogless in boston?

ok, so mm may be out of blogging range for the next few days.....unless she can locate a cybercafe in these quaint college towns.....my instincts tell me that there will be none, as students have their own pcs/laptops/handhelds.................it will be frustrating to know that i could blog home from bilbao, but not from boston............

not writer's block at all......

ok, so mm has determined that her lack of progress on writing down all of the images in her head are due solely to lack of adequate materials.........what i really need is a roll of paper.....a continuous roll like that which was used to write 'on the road'..................which will later sell for millions at auction................that is all i appear to require.......................

the baby is safe............

ok, so the news at trc was about the baby, abducted from the little hospital down the road by a woman wearing scrubs...........and found somewhere by bowling green.....however did that woman think she could get away with this.....it appears that she was pretending to be pregnant, and just needed a live infant to complete the scenario.............the stolen baby's parents are 'honor' students at another high school just down the road.............the photos of them are just as pitiful as the pictures of the alledged abductor..........'so po-dunk kentucky' was the term used by my lunch time waitress meg...........so very sad...................

packing for paris...........

ok, so as much as i love alliteration.......i am so much better at packing for paris than i am for any other locale.........this is so obvious when one sees photos of my trips to paris........as i am usually wearing similar outfits...............my legendary photo with rick steves.....i am wearing the same outfit i am wearing now..................go figure.....................i like khakis, white turtlenecks and black sweaters..............i have looked at the forecast.....the up-east coast will have highs of 45 and lows of 33..............which might as well be paris weather..............but i do not feel like wearing black and white. and tan.....because it is spring break.......i should be wearing pink....................most people that we know are driving south to the beach..............gentle readers......the c-w's did just one beach vacation....when scw was but 6 months old.................it was hot, it was muggy, and we vowed that we would never do that again.................so our vacations are either to visit kin , or to gain enrichment of some sort.....................therefore, we have been to d.c. on numerous spring breaks.........i regret, by the way, that i will not be visiting my own brother this spring break, but he is rarely available, and he is stewing over my ingratitude that the p.c. he sent us for xmas lacked a dvd burner.....................i will leave our movie camera at home on this trip because i cannot download the images...........that was a mean, low blow....but then i am the mm.......make no mistake..............or maybe i am just cold, and in need of some warmer clothing...............

along those same lines......

ok, so gail and i win the lottery, and within a year we have spent it all, mostly on good projects like scholarships and church mission works, and we are asked to do an interview for an australian documentery on gambling......which allows russell crowe to be the introduced character...........who seems perplexed how we could have had all of this money, and yet remain at trc......working 8-3:30......................

road rage

ok, so the mm has experienced road rage before ever making it out of boyle county.......there is something about friday afternoon in little downtown danville...............first, there is no turning either left or right onto main from church street...........and when the opportunity arises, the quick left into the lot that ecw shares with save-a-lot is ripe with danger........at this point, scw has already walked from the high school, but there is cayle to pick up........scw called on the cell phone, from the moment we left trc.....and by the time we arrived at danville bike and fitness, we had learned that she had walked to the library.................on through the save-a-lot lot.....we could not turn left, as the dumpster in front of the new subway blovks the view....so we turned right, and had to double back to the library....which had no open spots out front....so we had to cut through the hospice lot, and back around......and parked in front of stith funeral home...................i ran into the library while scw kept a look-out in case she came out after i went in...........she was in the basement......as pointed out by katherine backer's little sister........no one is incognito in danville............but she wanted to check-out a book....which meant that she had to wait in line......we drove up to the door to pick her up, but had to wait yet again at the light for the rescue squad to pass........and wait again at the third and lexington light.......gridlock...........by the time i made it onto gwinn island road, i felt like i had been driving all day, rather than for 20 minutes.............however will i handle real traffic up-east.........................

a better mousetrap.......

ok, so the mm has readers of exquisite taste.......the following was part of an email.....

Hi Kathy,
I was thinking about your plot problem if you lose the Oprah idea...(who knows why one's mind latches onto things?). Anyway, I was thinking that if your protagonist wins the lottery (or do two people win the lottery together or does the whole cafe staff split the pot...) that it allows the introduction of a writer character who wants to interview them to do either a movie script or a sit-com/drama pilot This allows stories to be told in sequence through multiple meetings, offers your characters opportunities to mull over what is made public vs. what is part of private life and keeps you from having to tell the whole thing within a one-time interview.

Has anyone written an e-mail correspondence novel yet? (Like the epistolary form, but short and ungrammatical.) Anyway, I have no ambitions to write anything more than an occasional note or letter, so more power to you.


I really wish that i had thought of that story line myself..............

the money pit..............

ok, so remember years ago when the movie called 'the money pit' out came out...i cannot recall who starred, but i can recall the concept of a house draining you of all worldly goods............well, our sleeping dog of a dream home is looking to drain usof our worldly goods............the new septic system will likely cause us to dig up our entire front yard, including the planting beds, brick walks, miniature boxwood edgings...old roses, that have stood these many years.........my spouse has promised that they will spray paint on the grass just where the digging will take place, to give me time to move things.............likely in the way is the redbud we planted in honor of his deceased sister.........i do not know just how we will move a tree...............

out of the woodwork.........

ok, so the half of danville that did not eat at trc on martini madness night...showed up for lunch today.......and my octogenarian host started seating people at tables that had neither been cleared nor wiped off.......mm would like to raise sincere thanks to the father of the l.o. and his dining companion for not 'seeing' the mess...quite gracious of you both...my friend gail thanks you, too.............