Coronary Bypass Update

Regarding my son's best friend Mikey: I think he may be doing better than his house. Apparently, the hot water heater has been leaking a long time and the damage is significant. He's been advised to leave and recover elsewhere for the time being. He is getting better despite this latest upheaval. On Mikey's behalf, I want to thank you for all the prayers.

I "Heart" Danica McKellar

As long as I'm recommending books, let's talk for a moment about this one.

I have a grandson who last school year hit a serious speed bump on the road to Algebra. We're talking true suffering here, the kind only math non-comprehension can cause, the kind that makes your heart stop when your math teacher suddenly announces, "Get out a sheet of paper."

I happen to hear an interview with Danica McKellar regarding Kiss My Math on the radio (I think it was on NPR). I was very impressed, so much so that I bought this book and her previous one, Math Doesn't Suck. I was even more impressed after I'd read a few pages and realized that they were written in a way even I could understand. A few weeks before school started, my grandson and I did some intensive review -- and let me say here that he looked like I'd shoved him on a tumbrel going to the guillotine and that it didn't hurt that Danica, according to his assessment, is "very hot."


After a few obligatory moments of making sure I understood the degree of his wretchedness, something apparently took hold. This was not your everyday math textbook. He read, he worked the problems, he talked to himself, and by all indications, he finally understood.

He's just recently gotten his progress report for this school year, and so far, so good. He is doing great in math.

As I said. I "Heart" Danica McKellar.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

My agent loaned me The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and I'm very glad she did. It's been a while since I've enjoyed a book this much and on so many levels -- as a reader, a writer, a lover of books and of history. It has a bit of everything -- humor, well-placed historical detail, heart-rending poignancy that evokes, for me, the same kind of feeling that reading The Spoon River Anthology does -- there's even a romance. All of these elements are presented in back and forth letters among exceptionally well-drawn, living and breathing characters, both admirable and unworthy.

Several years ago PBS's Masterpiece Theater aired a series called Island at War, which also dealt with the WW II German occupation of one of the Channel Islands, in this case a fictional one. Having seen that lent a great deal of visual "texture" to the reading of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

I highly recommend that you experience both.

Dancing and Dancing

Yay! The favorite house guest is coming again this weekend. What a bright ray of sunshine on this raw and rain-filled day. We pick him up at school at three-ish, and then the GrandKid Spa is open.

Other news? Nothing comes to mind. Oh, I did get my passport renewed. I'm not sure why -- I never go anywhere. Still, if the opportunity arises, I am ready. (It's a public health nurse thing.)

And I saw two elephants last week. This is noteworthy because I've somehow managed to reach the age I am without ever having seen any elephants at all, mostly because this is not a place known for its pachyderms and because I never hang out at circuses. I think I've worked for a few in my time, but they weren't actually called that. Anyway, it was quite a thrill -- the elephants, not my work history. I looked at them from afar and felt sorry for them, of course. (Which may also be a public health nurse thing.)

Thursday Update

Let's see...

Mikey is at home now. He's dealing with weight loss and post surgical pain, but he's able to stir around some. And, he's looking a lot better.

Also, my nephew is staying well. And studying hard. He's only 400 yards from the ocean, and having grown up in the Midwest, this is a very big compensation for his being so far from home. That, and the kindness of the people there. His mother, his grandmother, and I are most grateful to them -- a thousand thanks.



Preliminary readings of the previously sent proposal are positive, but it needed more pages added. So. I've expanded it to five chapters and re-sent it. (Read: Still in Waiting Heck...)







We're also waiting for an off-shore "nor'easter" to make landfall. We're over 200 miles inland and far more sou' than nor,' but apparently it's going to rain and blow on us anyway. At the moment, it's gloomy and very windy, temps in the 60s (F). The grandboys are supposed to have their first soccer game this afternoon.














I'm "doing lunch" with an old friend -- who happens to be singer Tori Amos's cousin -- in a week or so. Diane always makes me smile. We're old war horse nurses and we manage to get together once or twice a year. I can't wait to see her.


I didn't win the $176 million dollar educational lottery last night. Even so, I'm still on my "birthday high."



That's it for the moment. Bulletins almost as they happen...

The Birthday Girl

Birthday Girl? That would be me. I have been marking the occasion of my birth all day. Nothing big, just many little celebratory gems, starting with absolutely perfect weather and ending with spaghetti at Johnny's Restaurant and handmade cards from the grandchildren. It couldn't have been any better. Unless, of course, my birthday lottery ticket happens to win.

What's Happening...

At the top of the list is Mikey. He and my son have been best friends since they were eleven. Someone asked me once if they were my boys. I said one of them was -- but I forget which one.

Mikey had a very serious heart attack last week and subsequent emergency by-pass surgery. He's doing better, i.e., out of intensive care, breathing on his own, and able to sit up for a time.

He's only 38 years old, but he is a very heavy smoker. And very lucky. This time.

Happy Birthday!

It's my mother's birthday today. I'm not allowed to tell you which one it is. Did I say she's still driving? And not just "driving." She's zipping around in a 5-speed, manual transmission 1989 yellow Mustang.

She gets such a kick out of the way her vehicle wows the young teenage boys. She especially gets a kick out of the way their jaws drop when she gets out of it.

Happy Birthday, Mommy!

Writing Life

It's rained all day today. (No, those aren't ghostly "orbs." Those are raindrops.)

We're still in enough of a drought for raindrops to be welcome -- unless it's 10+ inches worth again. Even so, it's been the writer version of a stressful day, i.e., strewn with upsetting events, but I got some pages written, ergo some of the day was salvaged after all.

"Lucy and Ethel" and More Clothesline How-To's

(Thunderstorm coming and the wash is only half dry...)

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My friend, Jo, who up and retired far, far away, sent me the following after she'd read my earlier "solar drying" and Hanna Report post.

She and I were friends and colleagues for years -- I may have already said that "accomplice" would be a more accurate term where she is concerned. We found ourselves in more than one "Lucy and Ethel" situation not of our own making during our long history, and being the resourceful and bold nurses that we were, we sometimes had no choice but to take matters into our own hands. (Read: I have been known to say a time or two: "You watch the door.") Using an assessment tool I acquired somewhere in my "careers," i.e., in a life or death, sinking ship kind of situation, would you want this person in your lifeboat, the answer regarding Jo is an unconditional "Yes."

(The lifeboat thing is also how I assess women political candidates, and it's not just whether and how well the woman will row. It's whether or not she has her own agenda and is likely to toss a fellow survivor overboard if she doesn't find him or her particularly useful.)

But once again I digress.

Here's what Jo sent:


THE OLD WASHING LINE (Clothes Line)











The Basic Rules:

1. You had to wash the clothesline before hanging any clothes. Walk the length of each line with a damp cloth around the line.

2. You had to hang the clothes in a certain order and always hang whites with whites and hang them first.

3. You never hung a shirt by the shoulders, always by the tail. What would the neighbors think?

4. Wash day was on a Monday...........never hang clothes on the weekend or Sunday for heaven's sake!

5. Hang the sheets and towels on the outside lines so you could hide your 'unmentionables' in the middle.

6. It didn't matter if it was sub zero weather.....clothes would 'freeze dry.'

7. Always gather the clothes pins when taking down dry clothes. Pins left on the line was 'tacky'.

8. If you were efficient, you would line the clothes up so that each item did not need two clothes pins, but shared one of the clothes pins with the next washed item.

9. Clothes off of the line before dinner time, neatly folded in the clothes basket and ready to be ironed.

10. IRONED?????????? Well, that's a whole other subject.


A POEM

A clothes line was a news forecast
To neighbors passing by.
There were no secrets you could keep
When clothes were hung to dry.

It also was a friendly link
For neighbors always knew
If company had stopped on by
To spend a night or two.

For then you'd see the 'fancy sheets'
And towels upon the line;
You'd see the 'company table cloths'
With intricate design.

The line announced a baby's birth
To folks who lived inside
As brand new infant clothes were hung
So carefully with pride.

The ages of the children could
So readily be known
By watching how the sizes changed
You'd know how much they'd grown.

It also told when illness struck,
As extra sheets were hung;
Then nightclothes, and a bathrobe, too,
Haphazardly were strung.

It said, 'Gone on vacation now'
When lines hung limp and bare.
It told, 'We're back!' when full lines sagged
With not an inch to spare.

New folks in town were scorned upon
If wash was dingy gray,
As neighbors carefully raised their brows,
And looked the other way...

But clotheslines now are of the past
For dryers make work less.
Now what goes on inside a home
Is anybody's guess.

I really miss that way of life.
It was a friendly sign
When neighbors knew each other best
By what hung on the line!

(Thanks, Jo)