@ Home in the World

Diner

 
There's nothing like the smell of bacon and coffee when you come inside from the cold just after sun up. Though it's early, it seems as if half the town is already there, tucking into their eggs and toast.

The waitress, and old Al behind the counter, know you by name and probably know what you'll have, though they may try to sell you on a different kind of omelet or a new muffin they're trying out this week.

You sit at the worn, Formica, counter, give your order and spread the newspaper out before you, grabbing a headline or two as the coffee is poured. When you leave, you'll drop the paper in the basket by the door, left there so the next guy will get the news for free. It's tradition.

You nod and exchange a few words with the others at the counter. You know them, they are loggers, or lobstermen, or they have shop in town. They're headed to work after breakfast, so the meal must be filling.

If it's later in the morning, the patrons coming in will be couples, and groups of older women catching up. You'll know most people in the room by sight and some may stop to greet you as they head over to their tables.

The food is coming, placed in front of you with a satisfying plunk, and a gentle warning about the temperature of the plate. The waitress tours the room, coffee pot in hand, looking for a mug in need.

The din is louder now. Silverware clatters as it's cleared and set. Seats emptied, table wiped, then filled again. The papers in the basket have been broken up into sections, and one article or another has started conversation; taxes, or the town manager, or someone's grandchild in the school play. There may be two or four at your table, but you are really a party of forty-five. It's hard not to overhear, turn around, check in, ask a question, share a joke or condolence.

In spite of the warmth of the room, women hunch, fingers curled around the heavy, white, stoneware, sweater sleeves pulled up to their thumbs, clutching their mugs as a reliable source of heat. The coffee keeps flowing.

Breakfast never takes long. Patrons come and go; in and out like a life force pumping through the heart of town. Check paid, tip left, you're out the door and ready to start the day.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I wrote this because the image of the diner mug popped into my head and wouldn't leave. The scene is an amalgam of two diners in New Hampshire (one has people arriving via snowmobile in the winter), and a breakfast place here in town. Going out to breakfast is one of my favorite simple pleasures. For breakfast, I find that small town diners are better than regular restaurants or pancake chains. They may be the happiest places on Earth.

Zoom, Zoom!

It was race weekend in Louden last weekend. Yep, NASCAR came to New Hampshire. So we packed up the car and headed up North to

Oh, HELL NO!

Though the Pumpkin would be perfectly content to watch cars go around in a circle for hours and hours, the rest of us really don't get it.

We did go to New Hampshire, but this was more our speed.

Those little things in the background? Those are go karts. They are little motorized cars not much bigger than a wheelbarrow, and not quite as high off the ground. This was the highlight of the boys' trip to see their grandparents this weekend. We drove for 45 minutes to get there, paid $5 each for two 15 minute trips around a roughly 8-shaped track. Then we left.

Really, that was it. It wasn't part of a park where there were other things to do. Their whole business was this track, maybe two dozen go karts, and some vending machines. It was amazing to me that they made money off of that, but perhaps they do. They may also have owned the building next door. Decidely NOT family oriented.

New Hampshire is littered with Tattoo shops, especially near the border with Massachusetts. Tattooing was illegal in Massachusetts until a few years ago.

Pumpkin told me I wasn't a very good driver in the go karts, and he was right. These things were way too low to the ground for my tastes and I couldn't hug the curves, couldn't even stay in my lane in the turns, they way I expected. I kept feeling like the kart was going to tip even though it was wide and low to the ground. Piper and Tigger wound up lapping us before the end of our session.

As much as I love the look of those Smart cars that have finally made their way to the US, I'm really a big car girl. I don't like being that low to the ground. I told Piper that driving those go karts was like being back in the Tercel he drove when we first met. Was that mean? I hated that car.

From the race track, we moved on to this cute little place.

 

Mmmm. Waffles and ice cream! Actually, all we had was the "make your own" sundaes. Waffles were a separate thing. But a Belgian waffle with warm apple slices on top - my favorite thing in the world! We'll have to go back for those.

The go karts weren't the only encounter we had with strange transportation. On the way home, we encountered this contraption. Can you see it up there?

 

At first we thought it was just parasailing, but it really looked like it was self-propelled.  It also sported a blinking light - to warn the passing airplanes, perhaps?

Of course we got into the raceway traffic on our way home, but even that had a side benefit. Just as all the spectators were leaving Louden, so were the race cars themselves. We must have passed a dozen of those race teams on the highway. We didn't see the cars because they were riding in their own souped up trailer transport - like Lightning McQueen rides inside of Mac. The trailers themselves were enough to keep Pumpkin interested for miles.

Piper speculated that Pumpkin might want to work on those kinds of cars when he grows up. To which I responded  - "if by working on you mean designing, well then I'm all for it."

No, Really, I Swear!

We don't have guns in our house.

Well, once the kids had a pair of Nerf dart guns, and Pumpkin far preferred chewing on the foam darts than shooting them. The boys played with them for a while, but if I threw them out tomorrow, they wouldn't be missed.

I wonder where they are, anyway.

For a family with two boys, we see surprisingly little gun activity. Swords, occasionally, but no guns. I've never been all that opposed to toy guns, I just never bought any (and if I did, they would be those Western-style silver cap guns, not the real-looking gangster guns). It's just one of those things I've chosen not to make a big deal about. Neither child went through that phase where they made every stick and hairbrush they encountered into a gun. No cops and robbers, no cowboys and Indians, no army games, nothing.

That's not to say they don't fight. They do. Constantly. Reason number 464 for the therapy they just started a couple of weeks ago.

The therapist seems like a nice guy; his office is full of games and some Legos. The Legos got Pumpkin's attention right away; they are his favorite thing in the world. He grabbed some and started building something.

So we haven't been in the therapist's office for 10 minutes, and what does Pumpkin build?

A gun-wielding robot.

Analyze that.

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

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

Back in the pool again

Over a year ago we took the Pumpkin out of swimming lessons because the overstimulation was causing him to be disruptive to the rest of the class. It wasn't the ideal situation to begin with. We were in a Saturday class and with the bazillion children of the other working parents in the area. The classes were pretty big and there were several classes going on at once. Add to that the noise bouncing and echoing of the pool room walls and we have a pretty much guaranteed silliness and safety issue.

And so we reluctantly pulled him out despairing of yet another thing he wasn't able to do like other kids.

This morning we returned to the pool after over a year away. We've talked to him endlessly about following the rules but it helps that it's summer and everyone else is at the beach.

We're paying for group lessons but he's the only one here. He's got the pool and the instructor all to himself.

He's thrilled!

Green Day

Green Day brought me my first friend in this little town.

I was on the commuter rail headed home from my publishing job when this guy sat down next to me. When he took out his train pass, I realized he lived in the same town as I did and would be accompanying me for much of the ride. Bummer. I liked having my own space.  The train was still in the station so we spent the next few minutes in silence watching a different train unload cars full of punk kids.

I thought that not for their behavior, but because they were all dressed badly and many of them had green or other colored hair which I hadn't seen since the mid-80s and which I tend to associate with punk music even if that's not entirely accurate.

My seat mate leaned over and said "Do you have any idea what's going on?"  (Oh, no, was he going to talk to me too?) No. I did not know what was going on but I had seen lots of other kids like this on my way over to the station from work and I thought maybe it was some college event, because it was September and the kids all seemed to be about college-aged.

"Let's see if the Globe has any idea," he suggested. In fact the Globe did mention a Green Day concert, but neither of us had ever heard of them. One of us, I forget who, speculated that Green Day must be something like Earth Day.

Once we pulled out of the station Green Day was quickly forgotten because he was off and running talking about other things. He didn't move even as the train emptied and other seats became available. I later discovered that he and his wife lived within walking distance of Piper and me. Our families are still friends today, though neither of us still takes the train.

From the TV news that night in 1994, I'd learn that Green Day was in fact a band whose Boston concert had been broken up by the police because the kids were moshing. Moshing! Back then, I still remembered what it was like to be a teenager, and thought the whole thing was ridiculous. The incident piqued my interest in the band and I started to like them even though they probably wouldn't fit in with many of the rest of my tastes.

It's nearly 15 years later and I am now reading about Green Day in the New York Times. I'm surprised to find that the band members are not that much younger than I am and amused that because of the NYT style guidelines, the paper refers to them as Mr. Dirndt, Mr. Armstrong, and Tré Cool. I'm happy that there are a few bands out there still doing social commentary in their writing, because I think we'll always need it and I don't hear enough of it these days. If it's there, it's lost in the pop nausea of American Idol and corporate radio.

Or maybe I'm missing it, because I am older but my kids are not yet teenagers with tastes of their own, and there are means other than the radio to grow and audience.

What about it? Are there other bands out there with a message worth listening to today? Are they on the radio or did you find them some other way?

Revels and Meditations 2

Continued from Part 1

The thing about my Guilford friends is that, now that I don't live down there anymore, I tend to see them only for the big events and, oddly, around times of transition in my life. I've long said that they made me who I am today, but I see now that's not entirely accurate. Rather, they accepted who I was then, and it was with them that I developed and honed my quirky sense of humor, my tendency to want to do things outside the mainstream. They encouraged a sense of adventure that I may have had before, but had never been properly channeled.

We didn't manage to get everyone together this time around, but I met up with two of the original group for dinner. It had been a good five years since I had seen one of them and almost as long for the other. Out with them, with no children, I felt almost young again, with the added benefit of years of hindsight and wisdom.

Dinner and dessert complete, we were not ready to part ways, for three of us, the evening without kids was a rare treat. Where to go in Connecticut at 10:00 at night? Mohegan Sun! (See! A sense of adventure.)

Um, yeah. I'm not much the gambling type. Foxwoods had not been built when I lived in CT and I didn't much like the sound of the project, but living in Massachusetts, I had no vote. Mohegan Sun came after Foxwoods and was reputed to be a bit higher in quality.

Perhaps I've been watching a bit too much Danny Ocean, I always thought that casinos were a place you dressed up to go to. I was disabused of that notion within the first few minutes of walking in the place. It's like entering an airport, when you first drive in. On this particular evening, completely packed, there was not a suit in the place save those on the employees. The lasting image is one I will always associate with gambling. A 300 pound person of indeterminable gender garbed in sweatpants and oxygen tubing plugging away at a slot machine in a smoke filled room. I did not see if s/he was smoking, but a wheelchair waited next to the slots. You had to know the player was on disability, probably gambling away a government check.

Beyond that, the place was interesting. Faux Native American decor that fluctuated between beautiful and tacky; a performance space in the middle of the gaming halls that on this evening featured Starship - or what was left of it; a shopping area featuring everything from Tiffany's to Yankee Candle; and a real concert hall that was letting out about the same time we showed up and was, on that evening, featuring someone named Chris Brown, of whom I've never heard but who is apparently a favorite among teenyboppers. Oh, and mechanical wolves, who pricked up their ears and stared at you as you walked by.

The bar was fun, the walls were modeled after crystal formations and the ceiling featured a starry sky. I had a Tiramisu martini, which was very good and at $12, should have been. If it were not for the smoke, I could have gotten quite a bit of exercise just walking around people watching, though frankly, many of them gave me the creeps.

I haven't stayed out until 2 AM in many, many, years. When we got back to my mother's (she was still up - I was afraid she was waiting up for me like the old days, but she swears she got sucked in to the original Sabrina on TV). My hair smelled so badly of smoke that I had to take a shower and really didn't make it to bed until about 3 AM. Yikes!

Sunday's entertainment was an afternoon at the Peabody Museum at Yale. Small, but interesting. Had the boys been a bit older, and Pumpkin more in control of himself,  I think I would have enjoyed it more. That's a story for another day.

I'm back home now and feeling more energized and less stressed than I have in a long time, maybe a few months.  I'm sure that part of it is that Christmas is over. Much of it, actually. I'm equally certain that some of it can be attributed to seeing my friends, and being regrounded (if that's a word) in some of our mutual outlooks and experiences. Both of my friends seemed less edgy than they normally do, maybe because we are all in our 40s and they are fairly comfortable with their paths.

I wish I could say the same for myself, but I'm trying. I like where I am, but not how I'm handling it. The only year I can think of that was more stressful was the first year I had both boys. I've been so stressed out at times that I've lain awake obsessing over how the stress was going to shorten my life. That's helpful. When I get this anxious, things don't stay in my head, and I forget crucial tasks and things that would normally be no problem to remember. I go into OCD mode, and constantly second guess whether I've turned off the toaster, or the stove. I leave my phone at home or my wallet in a shopping cart (someone, elf or angel, turned it in, cash and credit cards intact - thank you and Merry Christmas).

All of this, and the 10 pounds I have gained from stress eating and a lack of time to exercise, is scaring me and making me uncomfortable. I don't want my life to constantly be a race to get there, a rush to just get things done, with no time to enjoy either the process or the product. I'm worried about my health.

I don't, generally, make resolutions, but I often set goals or themes for the year. For 2009, I know I must reduce my stress level. I must have a better functioning work and home life; I need to somehow be less overwhelmed. I need to get more sleep.

I'll have to work on that.

So, how do we handle this?

I think I need some help from the parent universe out there. 

This Saturday morning, I had the first-time experience of going with the rest of the family to T-ball. I wasn't able to go the previous three or four weeks, because there was always something else that needed doing - getting one or the other of the cars serviced, something for work, some other volunteer project in town. Last week the Pumpkin had such a meltdown that he didn't even go to T-ball, but stayed home with me.

I knew from Piper that getting Pumpkin to stay with his group and not run into the woods or on to another playing field was a challenge. For the past several weeks Piper has handled this challenge alone, shuttling between two kids on two different teams, one who did very well at this sort of thing, but needed an audience. The other, who was not really with the program, and already had an audience of the pointing and whispering kind.

I also knew, that in spite of his inability to say much about it, that T-ball had made an impression on the Pumpkin - he'd drawn himself playing T-ball in two separate "journal entries" in his Kindergarten classroom.

So Saturday morning when we went to play, his team practiced fielding first. He stood in his "stance" out  in the field, knees bent, eyes intent on the batter, chasing after every ball whether it came his way or not, always ending in a pile of kids anxious to retrieve the ball and sometimes remembering to throw to first. He had no patience waiting in line for his turn to bat. When his team returned to the field, he stood out there, this time in left field. Soon it became clear that no balls were being hit anywhere near him, he wandered off to the sidelines, found a tractor to study, and wound up playing catcher for some older kid who was pitching to his plastic bat-wielding, not-quite-two year-old brother. The little guy was hitting far more than you'd expect from a toddler, prompting Pumpkin to say  "That's an awesome baby!"

My efforts to get Pumpkin back out on the field with his teammates were met with "I'm too tired, I'm done playing T-ball. I'm done." Judging by his actions though, what this means is "I'm bored, waiting in line is stupid, I can play the way I want to and not have to follow some stranger/coach who expects me to follow directions."

In this, as in our experience with swimming last fall, I was reminded of Bode Miller, a kid with great skill, but little form, who hated following directions and being a team player. On the one hand, not thrilled with authority myself, I admire this kind of attitude and wish I personally had more of it. On the other hand, since neither child is likely to go into professional sports of any kind, I'm not sure how far this calling of his own shots can be taken.

As much like night and day as my two boys are, I had this exact same problem with Tigger. In any activity but swimming, he was always running to the sidelines to sit with me instead of being with the other kids, waiting for a turn. It made me crazy. All the other 3-4 year olds seemed to be able to follow directions, why not mine? I finally gave up and we quit whatever it was we were trying to do back then. Last fall with soccer, Tigger literally sat in the goal net and rolled around while the other kids played the game.  Finally, during the last game of the season, he blocked a shot from the other team and got an assist toward the end to win the game. Like it all finally clicked for him.

I struggle with my patience in these situations, waffling between wanting to let the boys do it their way and trying to teach a "sticktoitiveness" that all the other kids seem to already have mastered. I don't want to seem like some overbearing sportsparent when I keep urging Pumpkin to get in and play with the rest of the kids. It would be one thing if he were three or four. He's six.

So which is it? Should I be happy that he's recognizing a personal limit and self-regulating? Or should I be concerned that this is fitting into his pattern of doing things on his own schedule and only when he feels like doing it. And if the latter, what do I do about it? How far do I push?

Make it stop!!!

Hmm, what could I possibly be fussing about now?

Indiana Jones and the Plasticrap Universe

The incredibly annoying Kate Capshaw character notwithstanding, the Indiana Jones series has long been one of my guilty pleasures. I was born a few decades too late, because I can immerse myself into his time frame like I had actually lived through it. I love the camp, the impossible stunts, the ridiculous face-melting special effects, the cultural charicatures, the hat (I have one), and well, we won't get into the rest of his accessories. I am a Karen Allen purist and I am thrilled she will be returning for the next movie.

BUT

OMG, the endless advertising for the other three videos, the movie itself, the Burger King contest, licensed character toys! Will it ever end? Seriously, the Indiana Jones theme used to make me goofily (is that a word?) happy, but now it is on every. single. commercial. break. And I want to jump off a cliff.  Tigger is entralled with the Indiana Jones series. Yes, I am aware that he is too young to be watching it, but compared to a lot of other crap out there, this is pretty harmless. Unlike Star Wars, which he loves and I kind of like in a nostalgic sort of way (which means Parts 1-3 interest me not at all), we can really bond over Indiana Jones. If I promise to see it, will you make it go away?