@ Home in the World

"Learning to Dance in the Rain"

An online friend of mine died this week.

She was an administrator of a local message board we have both participated in for over a decade, and I have met her in person maybe a dozen times. We had an interesting connection in that we both considered the town I currently live in and the New Haven, CT area to be home.

It's a strange consequence of a life lived online that I'm not exactly sure how to feel about all of this. I will miss her in a way, mourn her certainly, but mostly, my heart breaks for her family.

Evelyn battled cancer for 6 years; remarkably strong and relatively symptom-free until about two months ago. Over the years, in emails to a smaller group of board members, along with bragging about her grandchildren, she shared tales of her treatments; making the indignities of hospital visits and chemotherapy seem like a hilarious romp through the medical establishment. Her descriptions of bodily functions gone horribly awry were not for the squeamish, but they could make you laugh out loud in the right frame of mind. Humor, it seemed, was her way of fighting back. She was so full of life, it seemed that death might never come.

When it became clear, however, that Evelyn's journey was coming to an end, her husband joined our local message board and began posting updates. Sprinkled in between the reports of "resting comfortably" and family visits were the incredible words of love he had for her and pain at the thought of her not being there. It was those words that moved me the most. We should all be so lucky to experience such an uncommon love, connection, partnership.

As the days progressed, more people shared their prayers, remembrances, and condolences. It became clear that Evelyn had had an impact on far more people than just her family. She was a social worker and counselor at heart; more and more posters recalled a time when she had helped them through a difficult phase or reached out to someone who was struggling. Some of these were people she might not have befriended in real life, whether they knew it or not, yet she was generous enough to read their words and offer advice or a virtual shoulder. That Evelyn's obituary included the fanciful names of family pets among those who survived or predeceased her showed a Buddha-like respect for all sentient beings, and gave us all a final laugh.

Over the past six years, I frequently wondered if I could muster the strength and positive outlook in the face of what Evelyn was dealing with. She recently shared with her family her belief that "life isn't about waiting for the storm to be over, but about learning to dance in the rain."

In one of her last posts on the board, Evelyn left a link she knew I'd be interested in. She was always thinking of others, sharing, even to the end. In the past few days, I have come to believe that a lot of what Evelyn stood for were some of the very things I've been struggling with lately - love, courage, humor, patience, generosity of spirit, running headlong into the winds of a challenge, enjoying the life you have.

It may be that her attitude was her last gift to us, to her family, to anyone she crossed paths with. I will try to keep that spirit with me. Even in the rain.

Separated at Birth?

I haven't read Twilight. I haven't seen the movie. I don't really like vampires. The only vampire movie I have ever seen start to finish was The Lost Boys in the 80s with that guy who looked so much like Jim Morrison from The Doors.

I don't really read gossip magazines or sites much, and yet I am still seeing this guy everywhere.

Robert Pattinson

 

It's been bugging me, because he reminded me of someone and I just couldn't place it.

There was something about the hair, and the smug expression.

Finally, it came to me while I was watching Top Chef Masters.

Did that give it away?

Marcel Vigneron

Not from my own kid?

It happened again.

Pumpkin (looking at a picture of Sarah Palin on my laptop screen): Mom, is that you?

Me (choking): No. (long pause) I'm smarter than she is.

This is the second time someone has made this comparison, and this time it was my own kid!

I can't figure out if I just wish she would go away or if I want her to stick around long enough for me to figure out how to take advantage of this.

Like maybe a Halloween costume.

I must be getting old

It's Sunday night and I am watching a musical performance on PBS.

The fact that it's Big Bad Voodoo Daddy makes me feel only slightly better.

At least it's not Lawrence Welk.

Ah 1 and Ah 2 ....

Free-range Chicken

There's a chicken in my neighbor's yard.

Not my immediate neighbor, one down the road a piece. The past couple of times I've driven by there's been a rust-colored hen in pecking away in the front yard. It surprises me every time. It's a bit like seeing a chicken strutting about a "cul de same" in suburbia.

Not that I live in suburbia, though with the population change in the last ten years, it sometimes feels that way. There are other people with chickens in their yards. Heck, the big controversy over the last few years involved the fate of a rooster that did what roosters do and began crowing at crack of dawn. Every morning the rooster would crow, and every morning the police would get a call complaining about the rooster. Seriously. It became a big fight. There are still cars around here with bumperstickers crying "Save the Rooster!"

I live in a town where people have regularly called the police on the rooster, church bells, a windmill, and some guy strolling up the street singing opera at the top of his lungs. Definitely not suburbia.

Back to the chicken.

I keep hearing about how this economy has spurred more people to buy seeds and start gardens of their own to save money on groceries. I am starting to wonder if more people have started to keep chickens to save money on eggs.

I've considered it.

No, really.

I'm rereading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Perhaps I should say I've restarted it. I began reading it last summer but was so depressed that I didn't have a vegetable garden, that I had to put the book down. This year I have the garden and I'm thinking about chickens.

Not that free eggs are going to make that big a dent in our grocery bill. Not like free milk would.

Of course, our yard isn't big enough for a cow. And I have a hard enough time getting the boys to unload the dishwasher and feed the dog, imagine getting them to milk a cow at five in the morning.

Let's see, I took Piper three years to build me a vegetable garden. How long do you think a chicken coop would take?

A "Friendly" Rant.

I'm taking advantage of one of those rare mornings when I am up before the kids. The #)*%&$&(!! crows woke me up at 5:30, and despite being up very late last night, I haven't been able to get back to sleep. So, I am up, writing.

The boys are still sleeping because they were up late last night. We went to the beach with our neighbors, late yesterday afternoon, for the first time all summer. My neighbors' kids are 13 and 11. Having them keeping on top of my 7 and 8 years olds, made for the first time I was able to sit down at the beach in years. Usually, I'm too busy trying to keep Pumpkin out of deeper water, but this time I was actually able to have a conversation.

After the beach we took the kids to Friendly's. Had I been a bit more cognizant of the hour, we probably wouldn't have gone at all. Friendly's has the slowest service on the planet. Really, for 25 years it has been this way. I can remember being in high school, wondering where my food was and that has been a pretty consistent experience ever since. The design of the Guilford Friendly's at the time allowed us to see most of the kitchen, and  I still couldn't figure out what was taking so long. Friends of mine who have worked there say that Friendly's doesn't want to be thought of as a fast food place. Well, okay, but half your clientele is composed of families with squirmy, whiny, fussy, hungry, messy children, and their parents are more likely to tip better than the other half - seniors on a fixed income and teenagers with little to no income.

As far as I can tell, it's usually not the waitstaff, it's the way the kitchen is organized. I often feel bad for the waitstaff who are so often left with a completely trashed table, and a couple of sticky dollar bills for a tip. Friendly's recently removed the napkin dispensers from the tables, a move that may save them money, but does not work for families with small children. I had to ask for extra napkins twice last night because we ran through them.

Fortunately, one of the good things about summer is that no matter how late the kids were out, they can sleep in the next morning.

23

It has rained for 23 days. Not 23 straight days, but 23 out of the last 30. We may get a reprieve on Sunday.

I'm not usually that bothered by the weather, but it's July 2, and I haven't yet been to the beach!

Although I every much dislike how dark my house gets when it is cloudy or rainy out, the sound of the rain on leaves makes me feel like I'm living in a cabin in some exotic location.

I've heard that Seattle is like this -- in the winter.

This rain is seriously sapping my energy.

I hope my vegetable garden survives.

Sticky Notes 8 - The Off the Wall version

Foul Ball!

Baseball is over for the year here, although Tigger would probably play until October if the opportunity presented itself. We have finally (FINALLY!) found something that Tigger is actually interested in obsessed with. He walks around with his mitt at all times, tossing a ball up and down until someone realizes that he's playing with a ball in the house and chases him out of doors. He badgers Piper to play catch with him, and Piper has found it a useful bribe: "Let's get this done and then we can play."

Tigger knows when the Red Sox games start and what channel they are usually on. He is starting to ask intelligent questions about the action on the field. He still comes up with some really off the wall questions, but that's just a part of being Tigger.

He is obsessed enough with baseball to wake up in the middle of the night and yell "Foul ball" before going back to sleep.

Off the Wall

I was a senior in high school when Thriller was released. Some of the people I was becoming friends with around that time are still my best friends today.  I am a little weirded out by Michael Jackson's death, but probably no more so than I am by what he became in the intervening years. If I gave it much thought, I would have said he had one more spectacular comeback in him - different moves, different music, different appearance, for sure. Something that allowed us to remember his talent more than his weirdness. In news articles that have shown the progression of his physical transformation, I'm always stuck on the photos from either the Billy Jean or the Beat it videos, wishing that he had stopped there. I've managed to avoid most of the commercial radio stations' Jackson blasts, because the whole thing is oddly like losing a Beatle. What keeps getting me is the State Farm commercial released several weeks before his death that uses "I'll be there."  Ironic, I think.

"Sometimes you just have to bow to the absurd."*

I have never, ever watched a single episode of American Idol, and probably never will, but every summer America's Got Talent gets us rushing to the couch. This is, of course, the U.S. counterpart to the show that gave us the collective introspection exercise known as Susan Boyle.

Year after year, I find that my favorite acts are not the straight out singers, but the ones with a great story and something unusal to offer, most often the acrobatic/street dancers or people who make music out of something different. Last year, I was rooting for a pair of guys calling themselves Nuttin but Stringz who came in with a unique mix of violins and rap. They lost in favor of a forgettable opera singer, but I was pleased to see an advertisement for a performance of theirs at Mohegan Sun earlier this year. Sometimes I wish the show would do a "where are they now" segment for those who were good enough to become finalists, but didn't get the grand prize. No doubt many of them went on to pursue their crafts lucratively in spite of the loss.

And can I just say that I LOVE Sharon Osbourne, in spite of her strange taste in men.

But most of the fun of this show is the utterly ridiculous, like this act (embed disabled), who kept making it back last season in spite of Piers Morgan's obvious distate for them.

*Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation