Fun at the Doctor's

I didn't recognize my own name when summoned by the tech in the doctor's waiting room.  "Caroline?” said for the second time but no one has called me that since the day I was baptized. “Oh! that’s me!” I cried, shooting up out of the chair.  A few cents short of a dollar I could all but hear her thinking and sure enough she began repeating all her instructions, to "put my bag HERE and my coat THERE and to step on the scales please with my boots on, yes with your boots on , it doesn’t matter," and a sentence ending 'Not for the likes of you' hung in the air. "141? But I don’t weigh 141" I said but she was on to the next step: "How tall do you think you are?" she demanded as if to calculate how far off I'd be this time. I thought about saying six foot nine.  Instead I said, "I think I'm five five and a half," and I was, exactly.Things took a happier turn from then on. In  less than ten minutes’ time this same tech took my temperature and my blood pressure and administered an EKG. “Wait you’re a phlebotomist too?” I said when she pulled out a hypodermic and began siphoning out a couple of shot glasses' worth of blood from my arm. “No but they train us to do all this stuff now.“It’s efficient” she added. “It saves  money,” said I. We both smiled then. We didn’t run the place. We just underlings, just a couple of jamokes, well down on the old ladder.Once she left, an RN came in to take a history things got even more cheerful. This nice woman praised me to the skies. She liked my vitals. She congratulated me for not being on any medication, for having no illnesses and no disorders. I got to feeling like I'd won felt like I’d won the lottery. "I haven’t had a cold in five years!" I started to brag before remembering how annoyed I get with Old Dave when he tries for a similar boast as we're dressing in the morning say."Well you’re still gonna die one day, ” I tell him every time. “Hey maybe not!” he smiles, stepping into his underpants.“So  do you want a flu shot?” the nurse was now asking me.“Eh” I said in my role as Supergirl.“Get  one” she said.“Seriously” she said, which caused me to repeat my remark about never getting sick.“I bet I know why," she said. "I bet you wash your hands all the time."“I do actually. My time spent as  a massage therapist taught me about that. Also my cousin Bernice who says more disease enters through the nares than anywhere else" the nares being the front part of your nose, those twin portals leading into your nasal passages."You wouldn't believe it. The bathroom here is right across from my office. You wouldn’t believe how many people flush and come right out. They don’t wash!""They don’t wash!" I echoed. Then the two of us also shared a smile, superior human beings that we were.SO all in all t was a very satisfying visit in spite of the two Band-Aids I'm walking around with one from the flu shot and one from the shot glass worth of blood pulled from me as if by leeches. All for health I say and remember the nares, to keep them safe from germs! These are my nares below here. Time to get out the tweezers again it seems! :-) 

Power of the Pen

If the number of people reading these posts about the college essay is any indication it looks like I'm meant to say a little more on the topic of writing. I see that my recent bungled job of caring for a little boy might offer instruction for us all: In spite of his having written me THREE laboriously hand-lettered notes, I still did not know that the child had been standing outside our bedroom door since 4am hoping to get our attention.His first note says "When Can I get up? From Edward to TT" (I'm TT.) You can click on the word 'first' to see some truly inventive spelling. The second note, presumably written some 30 or 45 minutes later, reads "What time is it? To TT from Edward." (This one really made me groan: how could we have forgotten yet again to put a clock in the back room where he was sleeping?) At home with his parents, he is told he can't get up until 6. Good boy that he is, he assumed that rule held here at his grandparents' house.) And the third and final note, above, as anyone can plainly read - ha ha OK not really eh? - says, "I am waiting patiently. Can you pick up the other notes?" again with the piteous ending "To TT from Edward."You must admit: this is some good straightforward writing, framed in three simple 'asks'. No adverbs except the word 'patiently.' No flourishes.Why can't everyone write this way? That's what Plymouth State Professor of Finance and Economics David Talbot wonders who said this two days ago:

Your piece could not be more timely. I am sending it to my 16 students over here in Ireland. They write essays each week for their Critical Thinking class. I am constantly editing their excessive adverbs to provide clarity and strength in their writing. I hope it helps to hear it from a pro.

But pity the poor high school seniors struggling to write that Essay on Anything for their college application! Can they even help it? I'm convinced they go on filling the page with platitudes because they're nervous; because somewhere along the line they got the idea that it's good practice to write in an inflated manner. In fact an actual professional in the field tells me she too feels merciful toward them. "Susie" at collegedirection.org wrote:

As a private college counselor, I couldn’t agree with you more. The college essays are my favorite part of the college admission process. However, I do think that the majority of students will write the best essays they can if they have someone to talk with them about possible topics that they might not even have considered. Too often they are focused on what they think a college admissions committee would like to hear and not what they would like to tell them. I love the essays that students write, especially when they are enthusiastic about what they have to say.

Here's to the merciful Susie, I say. Some people, like young Edward, are willing to go on record as soon as they can hold a pencil and spelling be damned.The rest of us need kindness and encouragement and often many many years before we dare speak in our own true if croaky voices.

Call Me Miss Hannigan

Wow, tough coupla days. Had two hours sleep Saturday night and entertained all day Sunday. Our little grandsons slept over so we could all celebrate a certain landmark birthday of this former boy seen below, who came into our lives back when David’s hair was almost black and mine floated above my head in classic 80s fashion.He and his bride took the whole family out to dinner at a fancy steakhouse Saturday night.I had hired a team of big guys from this pool of fun guys to babysit the little guys while we were gone and that was a great success. Only thing is when we came back at 9pm we saw the children were both in the same tiny bed.“This is unsustainable!” I said. “Leave them be,” David said.  And so into our own bed we got - and lay there wide awake for houes. (I couldn’t sleep so he couldn’t sleep so I couldn’t sleep: you know how that goes.) Then, sure enough, at 3:45 the little one woke with a cry. The quarters were just too close.David had gone to the living room sofa by then so I put the child in bed next to me but it seems the poor older brother remained awake until sun-up. He wrote a series of plaintive notes that made me feel like Miss Hannigan herself from Little Orphan Annie. Poor child! "What time is it TT?" said one in his little-boy spelling. Sweetheart that he is, he didn't feel he should just come wake us. By 6 though I was up with them both, cooking bacon, mailing toast down into the toaster's little letter slot, mixing cocoa... And it was all fine - until the little one said he was cold.Extra clothes didn’t help.Neither did a hot bath, even with my awesome foam blocks that stick to the sides of the tub.  By 11, having given up on the church plan I had long nurtured – it was the much-anticipated day for the Blessing  of the Animals – he and I were leaning feebly against each other coloring a fuzzy poster while his older brother was deep into his sixth hour of the Disney Channel though at his house he can watch only two hour of TV, and that only on weekends.What could we do? One of us had a fever and everyone else was exhausted. The day picked up when the rest of family arrived including the birthday boy  and his parents and the world of great food that they brought.We ate. We watched football. We even played a little baseball out back. It was a fine day, in sum, but I’m STILL paying the price: I actually fell asleep while ironing last night and that is one good trick.  And even now, on this Wednesday morning, I keep looking at the foam blocks the little one tried so feebly to have fun with and wish I had them both back with us to do a better job grandma'ing. Then I go and have another nap.

When in Doubt Cut it Out

The day my piece about how to write the college essay appeared I heard from a young woman in Canada who was wondering if I could take a look at what she had written for her first-person essay. Hers was 80 words longer than the 500-word limit she said. Could I see what I thought of it and maybe help her figure out what to cut?"Sure!" I said. I'm 30 years a columnist! I probably can't write more than five or six hundred words together anymore. I told her I'd love to read her essay, which turned out to be so charming, I almost couldn't see what to cut.So instead I gave her a piece of advice I've never given myself, which was to go through the piece and take out just about every adverb she came across. In fact I went through it and did that, then emailed it back so she could see what she thought.I’m not sure she liked the new version but I sure did. To me it seemed so much stronger and more, I don’t know.. authoritative without the adverbs. It's a paradox: I mean you think these modifiers are really going to light up your writing but instead they make you sound like you’re trying to coerce a certain response from your readers, or put something over on them, or God forbid sell them something.Today I’ve been mentally composing something about this past weekend when our littlest grandchild, under our care for a day and a night, slowly sickened. I could write “He was very cold, he said,” or I could simply write  “He was cold, he said.” Just setting this down helps me see that the second sentence is probbaly the more effective one – and not just because it's shorter. Sooooo what if I apply this rule to my own writing? Flipping through the first book I ever did, I came upon this description of the day my appliances died. Here’s how it looks as published:

Last week the dishwasher, bloated up with its weird fluids, suddenly chuffed dangerously and began bleeding water from every seam; water which flooded, Nile-like, under the island, under the rug, and on 20 feet or more into the living room. Two hours later, the air conditioner groaned by way of a suicide note, leaned back sharply and tried to jump out the second-story window. Strong hands and split-second timing were all that stood between it and shattering death on the sidewalk.

And here it is without most of the modifiers:

Last week, bloated with the usual fluids, our dishwasher suddenly chuffed and began bleeding a stream of water that flooded both floor and rug and snaked all the way to the living room. Two hours later, the air conditioner groaned by way of a suicide note, leaned back and tried jumping out the second-story window. Strong hands and split-second timing were all that stood between it and death on the sidewalk.

The second one really is better! Anyway it's far less wordy.Which means that Strunk & White were right in saying “When In Doubt Cut it Out” and that old Shot Myself-in-the-Face Hemingway knew what he was doing when he took that boning knife out and pared, pared, pared away at his sentences.I read back over this and see that I too have gone over 500 words,  which I hate to do to you guys, suffering already with eyestrain. So hey thanks for wading through this. And thank YOU Emily from Canada for helping me re-learn a valuable lesson. :-)(A page from the chapter of my first book here. God it was fun to publish these collections! )

The Much Dreaded College Essay

What's the most important task for you high school seniors hoping to get into college - after you earning the grades and doing OK on the SATs that is? The writing of a good essay, in which the scratchy voice of the 17-year-old comes through.That phrase belongs to the Director of Admission at Yale who uttered it some ten years ago when my kid was looking at colleges.What he meant, I believe, is that you should write the essay yourself. Don’t let your parents write it, much less some college “coach” your parents might have hired.Don’t let them dream up your topic either. Dream up your own topic.Also, try not to bore your reader to death by stringing together sentences that bore even you as you tap them out on your keyboard.These readers are only human after all, and chances are they’re very weary given the number of folders they must go through in order to assemble this next college Class of 2016. I picture them with eye strain. I picture them with feet that have gone to sleep from curling one and then another under themselves as they try to get comfortable during these marathon reading sessions. They probably need more water than they’re drinking and their minds doubtless keep wandering toward thoughts of dinner.

Show them the courtesy of speaking to them in your own voice about something that interests you. Don’t try writing like a C.E.O or a department head at the Internal Revenue Service or some solemnly intoning guy in an infomercial for cholesterol medication. You’re a high school student! Relax and let yourself be what you are right now, even if your secret hope is to one day find fame and have paparazzi trailing you in pursuit of those stolen-moment candids of you sleeping with your mouth open or yelling at your dog.I had the chance to read two great college essays in the last month. One has in it time travel and 16^th century horses straining at their reins; the other, a peach tree, a bright blue door slapping open and Sunday dinner with Grandma.They're both terrific and they're nothing like the college essay I once wrote telling how I routinely skipped meals and stayed up all night fashioning flash cards and making teensy notes on all my class notes.This was when I applied Early Decision to that fine women’s college called Wellesley.Six weeks later they flat-out rejected me.Thus, when I applied to that other fine women’s college known as Smith I wrote a very different essay, telling what it was like to be charged with the protection and emotional well-being of half-dozen Seventh Graders at summer camp the year a bear with an eerie resemblance to Babe Ruth kept appearing at the clothesline behind the cabins to sniff at all our swimsuits.Smith did accept me, welcomed me in September and got right to work teaching me that study is much more than rote memorization, that balance in life is crucial and that it’s pretty much never a good idea to skip a meal.I still think I got into one college and not the other because I wrote that second essay with pleasure and fondness and even excitement. Therefore, young applicant, speak in your own voice about what has moved or surprised, delighted or terrified you, and let the chips fall where they may – as indeed they always do.Therefore, young person, speak in your own voice about what has moved or surprised, delighted or terrified you, and let the chips fall where they may – as indeed they always do.

We Do Our Best

We all make mistakes. I've been refinishing a coffee table that has endured some punishing treatment. The task is about a six–part process with the stripping, the sanding, the pre-staining, the staining, the wiping down with mineral spirits and finally finally finally: the finish coat. I got all he way to that last step but left the windows open as I worked on that balmy Indian summer day and some kind of 'particulate matter' dust? pollen? settled out of the air and made my new finish, once it had dried, feel like stubble on an unshaven cheek.And this picture at the left? This is  what I routinely do with our foods. Our new microwave is a mighty all right! This lava spill is really oatmeal, made the “quick” way (if you don’t count how long it took to clean up the mess.)We apologize as we go for our mistakes.My column last week was about this subject and in response to it a new friend from Tennessee wrote me.  I had written him to say I knew I was late offering my greetings on the High Holidays but that  had been thinking of him on Yom Kippur, especially, which was the day I wrote this piece on contrition and forgiveness.He wrote right back. “Thank you.," he wrote. " May God bless you and keep you and make His countenance known to you. Thinking of and praying for you as well. Shanah Tovah and Chag Sameach Sukkot."And that reference to Numbers 6:24reminded me of one of the I used to get to sing over the 320 year period when I was part of our awesome church choir. Do you know John Rutter? This is one of his as he sets to music this lovely verse:

The LORD bless you  and keep you;  the LORD make his face shine on you and be gracious unto you; the LORD turn his face toward you  and give you peace."

Here it is now by the Cambridge singers. See if this doesn’t just give you shivers.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO17DIeI7Ec]

Circuit Breaker? or Did I Have a Stroke?

Thank God for the days when life really fizzes for you and you can capture some of the lovely suds of it as it spills over the lip of your glass. If you’re a chronicler like me, you get to capture that foaming excess in words. It’s raining again which is fine but at 5am I went to turn on my bedside table lamp and there was a snapping sounds and a flash and the whole room plus the bathroom lost power. And the power STAYED out, a good 30 minutes.I staggered out to the kitchen thinking What if the whole house is out? I'm alone here today so I sure hoped that wasn't the case.In the kitchen I came upon this little guest towel embroidered for me as a gift by the mother of my wonderful friend Lou Benson, Bodywork guru. Luckily, the kitchen lights still worked but as I stood tried to gather my thoughts I realized I couldn't read the little embroidered words on the towel at all. See?"Good heavens! Have I lost the ability to crack the code of reading? " was all I could think. Maybe it was MY circuitry that got zapped and not just the Ground Fault Interrupt on the other side of the house.It unsettled me for sure - until I saw that the towel was merely wrong side to so that what I was seeing was in fact the backs of the little cross stitches.I have to admit it's not hard for something to unsettle me lately. I think that's true for all of us in these jumpy times. But for me when an unsettling moment turns into a whole unsettled day it’s often because I’m thinking "Lord, lord, what will I write for tomorrow?"Why worry about that though; always there is some small thing.Today it was that little towel talking to me in an unreadable language. Tomorrow maybe it will be something as cool as these seeming ping pong balls that just rolled up against the bottom of the front porch steps. Can you tell what they are really?  They weren't here an hour ago. Aren’t they darling? What are they and who do you think put them there? 

Rainy Day Bath Mats

Even telling all that stuff yesterday I still didn’t tell everything about the day I'd had Tuesday. Didn’t say that I played the part of Lucius in a reading of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (“Call'd you, my lord?”) or that I took our elderly uncle out to sit by the pond, or that I came out of somebody's house at 10:30 at night to find my car utterly gone and towed.... But more on all that later.When I woke at 5 yesterday morning it was to the sound of rain.Nothing makes me happier than rain drumming on the little roof outside our bedroom window, wetting the rocks on the stone wall by the driveway.I was happy too because it meant the painters wouldn’t be coming. (The last time we had this old place painted I was breastfeeding and spent whole weeks ducking from room to room looking for a place where the newborn and I would perhaps NOT  be surprised by the sudden appearance at the window of  a pleasant male stranger on a ladder.) They’re lovely, these new painters, but they do arrive early and there they are too, at the windows at quarter past seven.Not yesterday though and what a break. At 8am I opened the back door contemplating a quick walk around the block but by then it was raining even harder.I thought of Abe and Charlotte, our two nice cats, off in Heaven now hunting for field mice. They looked upon a rainy day as a chance to perfect their impersonation of two bath mats, one black and one gray.Here they are the day our kids gave them to us, as a surprise on our 25th anniversary.It’s a gift cats have, the way they can stretch out anywhere and lick their paws. I once knew a couple of cats who napped in the sink.I’d like to to start being more like them and when I wake up at 5 to learn to  close my eyes, smile that feline smile and drop back into sleep.

a Full Report

What if you told what really happened in the course of your day? That you put on two different shoes at first or that you let the water in the sink almost run over onto the floor while you wandered off to make the coffee? How about the fact that you fell dead asleep while writing a check - while writing a check! or that you felt ridiculously good about getting your car so very close to the curb this time– 'til you came back from your brisk trot to the Post Office to discover you’d left the whole back yawning open like Pac Man’s jaws.I've done all these things in the last day but I don't tell them all. Any account of a day is always a distillation, a thing carefully “crafted” so as not to bore the listeners. It's a report that has been “curated” as they say in fancy circles, as if a day should be like an exhibit in a museum and who knows maybe it should.What I did with some of my day yesterday was to take two guys to a vintage clothing store in search of costumes for an upcoming 80s party. One made do with a comically thick gold chain to be worn with a shiny track suit and a pair of Adidas, while the other scored a silk shirt, a fedora and a full length green leather coat to make Oscar Wilde himself weep - all for under $30.But it seemed to me his outfit ensemble cried out for some really good pants, so we shot over to Macy’s where every day is sale day and there he found a pair that draped beautifully, with pleats at the waist even.We joked around a while with the sales clerk who, as we were winding up our transaction, said “Are you three by any chance the youngest children in your families?”Turns out we were, all three of us, and so was she. How did she sense that particular odd commonality?We said goodbye to her then and walked fast past this store and this store and this store the way we all do at the mall, sharks who swim without ceasing, just for the joy in it; for the steady dose of oxygen, that hard-cider element that makes all our blood sing.

Forgiven

Yom Kippur was a few days ago but here’s the real Part Two to the story I wrote last week, about a long-ago column that made light of support groups, including one for those with head injuries.It brought in a furious letter to the editor by a person who not only demanded I be fired but also called the guy up to make her case.“But it’s humor,” the editor told her. “It’s meant to be funny.” “Funny, my foot,” she basically said, and she was right.All this was back in ‘93. Then, in the fall of ’97, a letter dropped into my own mailbox complimenting me on another satirical piece I had just done. This letter was signed only with initials but I knew the initials. I knew the return address. So when I wrote back to say thanks. I added a spur-of-the-moment P.S. saying that I knew who she was and I was still sorry for what I did back then. And didn’t the woman write me again the very next day:

I used only my initials because I thought you might be bitter about what happened between us. I was furious and I wanted to hit back for the dreadful pain I was feeling at the time. I’ve worked with a number of head-injured young adults who went through their windshields and came back as strangers. Also when I wrote that, my nephew had just recently died of a massive head injury sustained in a road accident.But as time passed I saw that I didn’t despise YOU but only that lapse in judgment. Moreover, you apologized - probably while hurt beyond words by my scathing rebuttal. It took a while, as I would go and stare in radical disbelief at my nephew’s fresh grave, but I finally got to where I could accept your apology. After all, I had no wish to be bound by my grievances; what a dreary proposition in a world where we are all so far short of perfect.

Later, in other letters, she described her old neighborhood, recommended restaurants I might visit in her area and complimented me on another column. She ended that letter by saying one thing more:

You mustn’t worry that I’ll be going over these pieces with a microscope, looking for faults. Also, there’s no need to be nervous if, now and then, one of your loyal readers decides to take you to task. You have to be tough about that, Terry.

You have to be tough about that, Terry: That sentence alone can bring tears to my eyes still, because here was the lady now comforting me; counseling me about developing a thicker skin.We wrote regularly after that. We met only once when, sick with the cancer that would soon claim her life, she insisted on dressing up, taking a train into the city and buying me dinner in one of its fine old hotels. So here’s to, departed friend. You have stayed with me all these years and you guide me even now, each and every time I sit down at my keyboard.

Call Me Martha

  With all these decorating tips I must think I’m Martha Stewart here. I just have to tilt my head in that Aren’t-I-Adorable-and-Harmless way of hers which she does so nobody will guess that she’s this total dragon of a boss.It happens: Power corrupts, as old Lord Acton said and absolutely power corrupts absolutely.And sometime people IN power lie their faces off when there’s any threat that their more fallible side be exposed as with the dough Martha made with inside trading.She didn’t trot out the adorable look when that whole thing went down I noticed.I guess sweet as she looks with her basket of fresh eggs she's just  a mere mortal like the rest of us. And we all have a tendency to ‘work ‘ people, don’t we? I know I was trying to work people as early as First Grade. I remember studying myself in the mirror to perfect  my own special “I’m Harmless-Don’t-Hurt Me" look, which did come in handy when my big sister got a notion to  throw me to the floor,  pin my arms with her knees and practice lowering long strings of spit down onto my face, only to suck it all back up into her mouth at the very last second, which she could actually do – most of the time anyway. This was the look: But what a meanie Nan was doing that as I think back! And stealing my clothes! They fit her though she was older for that one year anyway she was still built like Peter Pan to my Gina Lollobrigida. (Well, Gina with a potato face and out-of-control hair.)  But then what a meanie I was in return as the years went by,  locking myself in the bathroom that one time she was half way through bleaching her hair. There she stood outside the bathroom begging me to open the door to the room where the neutralizer was. There I stood stubbornly refusing to let her in. Her hair stayed eerie grey-green for three days before she could lay hands on a much darker batch of Lady Clairol. That none of us is perfect is the moral of this story I guess. A good thing to keep in mind next time we reach for the National Enquirer, all set to smirk over some poor public figure's  fall from grace.  

Family Centerpiece

We had some 20 people to dinner the other night, many of whom had not seen each other since the 1960s. It was a reunion for David’s side of the family and a pretty important one too. Naturally I wanted to make the house look its best and maybe that’s also why home décor has been so much on my mind this past week: I was anticipating this one great night.Yesterday I talked here about using a cut-up bottle to make a hanging planter and mentioned that for this task you need to get your hands on a bottle-cutting kit of some kind, a device from the 70s that I was pretty sure had come and gone like the Pet Rock. So Imagine my surprise when the very first Google search I did turned up this beauty here.To cut the bottle you scratch a faint line all around the circumference using the little blade that comes with the kit. Then you insert a kind of sturdy metal implement inside and go clink clink clink all along this hairline fracture and the next thing you know the bottle cleaves in two. It’s like magic! The top parts you can use for the many things but I think you’ll agree that the bottoms cry out to be made into….. drinking glasses! You just have to sand the dickens out of the jagged break line so blood doesn’t trickle down into your beverage when you lift the thing to your mouth, but hey that’s easy to do too.I think they’re adorable though I didn’t bring any of them out to add character to last night’s reunion table. For last night’s reunion centerpiece I bought four little vases for 99¢ apiece and filled them with a couple of wildflowers snipped from the neighbor’s flowerbed that abuts our driveway (thank you Fontana family!)Also the blossoms from two three-dollar houseplants scored at the discount store.These I interspersed with some favorite fake pumpkins collected over the years, three real gourds, ivy from the side of our house and dried cranberries scattered about for the people who like to eat a centerpiece. Here's another of those nice fake pumpkins now, this one ceramic -  and a guest brought the flowers, and the candle is from last Christmas :Then, when the sun went down and the reunion dinner was about to commence I nestled a couple of lit candles down among all these objects.... 

¦

¦

¦

¦

¦

 And what a night it was for my husband’s side of the family. What a night of new beginnings for us all!

Cork Decor

Ignore the photo for a minute OK?I have a zillion houseplants because back in the day I was too poor for furniture and so used plants to fill up the spaces.  I couldn't afford any wall decor either and used plants to decorate them.Here’s how it's done for the wall decor:

• Take a wine bottle and drink everything inside it.
• Scour the Internet for a bottle-cutting kit which when it arrives turns out to be this incredibly primitive tool.
• Use it to cut your wine bottle in half, sanding the jagged edges so you don’t open an artery while working with it.
• When cut edge is smooth, take and upend it, forcing the cork back in.
• Fill with potting soil and a small hanging plant.
• Drawing on your memory of childhood games of Cat's Cradle, fashion a free-form sling out of twine, slip bottle inside and suspend whole thing from a bracket on the wall.

You can even water it right in place because of that nicely corked bottom, so there's no peeing of excess water down onto the sofa. It’s like those ads for VESIcare where the funny pipe people walk around with gauges and sphincters inside them in their mid-sections. (Now you can look at the picture.) Same thing, see? No fear of wetting! Same total confidence for your furnishings!Here's how the gizmo looks in this picture from the Internet. The plant is too scrawny and a white-wine bottle with its tapering neck would have been much more graceful than this red-wine one but you get the idea.To show what I really mean I just ran upstairs to the Museum of 70s where all my old clothes and ten thousand photograph albums sleep and enchanted sleep and came up with this picture of a wall of my living room circa 1978.:

Cool plants flanking college roommate’s original drawing, also way cool

Get the idea? That's philodendron, the growingest plant there is. And dirt is free, right? And hey you were going to be drinking wine anyway, right! World's easiest wall-decorating idea, and almost as good as Elvis on black velvet. 

Plants Rule

I keep so many plants in my house because they’re growing whereas I’m definitely kind of wilting ha ha. Plus I feel so for them. I sometimes wish I could toss a few of the homely ones but how can I when they’re so earnestly doing what God asked of them? Plus as decorating elements they’re a total bargain.We have a hydrangea bush outside that makes fat white snowballs every summer. They’re like these big dreamy scoops of vanilla from the Dairy Queen.Then, every fall, all that fluffy white goes a soft dusty rose color and by about now their stems are so brittle you don’t even need a scissors to pick them. You can snap them right off, toss ‘em in a trash bag, then find a sunny corner to sit in while you strip off all their leaves (which would just wilt and wither.)Not the awesome blossoms though! They’ll last you a solid year, carrying on from one October almost all the way to the next. You can arrange them in a bowl or vase mixing them together with a few berry–studded stems and a few snippets of leaves from the plant called the burning bush say and you’ll have this lovely symphony of warm merlots and burgundies which you can lighten up with some of the soft grays of lamb’s ear say. Then come the holidays you discard all but your hydrangeas and offset them with evergreens and maybe some clean white carnations.I used to make wreaths my hydrangea blossoms and sell them to unsuspecting strangers for $40 each.

nice huh?

The possibilities are endless. AND Our hydrangea bushes are huge, they must have 1,000 blossoms right now.So come on by and I’ll give you an armful - but you’d better hurry. First hard frost and they’re crisper and browner than a dead oak leaf. But right now ? when I took this picture not 24 hours ago? Well as the Romans used to say res ipse loquitur, or, the thing speaks for itself. (Like most of Nature's handiwork , eh?) 

In the Nick of Time

My plants came back from summer camp in the nick of time. Since the first of May they have been on the screened-in  porch having fun and providing homes for the many tiny spiders and that was all great - until last week went the painters showed up. I saw then that even if they hadn't gotten unceremoniously lifted and toted inside with the arrival of the ladders and the paint buckets, their days out there were numbered. I mean it was going to be in the 30s last night – too cold for their little membranous parts. And luckily we haven’t turned the heat on yet so they won’t feel shocked by the dry choking air the furnace pumps out.The time was right, and I knew it. People mostly do know when the time has come for an ending.So I sat down with each plant and sorted through its petticoats, cleaning away spider webs and dust. I watered and misted each one and let it tell me what corner of the house it wanted to be in.

Some chose the kitchen.

The peace lilies need a lot of water and will wilt and throw their little green arms over the sides of their pots if they don't get enough - they’re very theatrical that way - so I'm keeping them close. Same with all the Christmas Cactuses which they never do bloom at Christmas but start in a good six or eight week before then, taking their cue from retail sales I guess and whipping up the old mania for holiday shopping. And the violets.......Well the violets keep their own counsel. Sometimes they blossom and sometimes they don’t. They're like kids in Middle School the way they only one to hang with each other and one will only do what the others do.I've had my share of gardenias this year but they’re ready for bed bow I sense.I do buy cut flowers at the store when the price is right and they're pretty while they last but if you want a plant with good foliage that looks like a million bucks year after year go with that tough customer the pothos. Big or little hanging or climbing,  a pothos will gladden your heart on the day rain drums on the windows; and on a sunny day like this? Garden of Eden, baby. Garden of Eden.The sun is just coming up as I write this and it looks to be another gorgeous autumn day for those of us above the grass here. So let's all enjoy it!

Yay for October!

This is just a little Public Service Announcement for a great month. Think about it: When else can you deck the place out with kitschy witches and plump pumpkins even if some of the latter are made of plastic?When else can you string orange lights around the windows or wear a vest with black cats and full moons all over it?You can get away with anything if you give yourself permission to quit worrying over what others might think after all. Maybe this year I’ll get one of those red sweaters for the holidays with like .... sparkles and feathers in the shape of Santa’s beard plastered onto the front, what do I care? I don’t need a date for the prom anymore! These days I hold my own proms.I'm seriously drawn to some of these October decs. Gourds fascinate me . I could play with them all day, tossing them around and examining their lovely bumps! Stacks of hay bundled in the middle stab at my heart. Where is the old family farm?! Real pumpkins remind me of the women in a Rubens painting.

Ah for the days when it was cool to look like that!

I love corn mazes where you can get truly lost without a compass.Doughnuts still warm from the fryer.Cider like my grandfather used to store in its barrel in the dirt-floor cellar that smelled of vinegar and bat wings only his was hard.A year ago now I went to a farm stand where they had all these things in the company of some people who really knew how to have fun. It was just so gorgeous!and energizing! I felt like I could carry BOTH these guys. (It's something in the apples.)I’d write more but it’s almost sun-up and the air looks to be as frosty outside as a windfall apple, speaking of apples. Throw on your a and meet me at the corner for a quick walk to the old elm and back!

Smartypants

It’s humbling, this recalling the dumbest thing you ever did. It's what I was doing yesterday, in telling about the time I targeted a bunch of vulnerable people just to get the laugh god forgive me. That’s how we all were in my family: anything to get the laugh. My cousin Sheil and I practically had a stand-up act at summer camp so funny we were be about people. It was like if you took Robin Williams and divvied him up, pouring his wicked wit into the bodies of two smartypants 15-year-olds. Our whole section of five cabins would gather around to watch us work.Our two moms had done just this kind of thing before us. We all did it in our family: imitate accents, postures, get that slight speech impediment of yours down cold, sum up anybody’s essence with one witty phrase.Witty, maybe but kind of M-E-A-N too.Mostly mean in fact.One college summer we managed to get actual jobs in the city and rent an apartment, sublet to us by four B.U. students who’d gone home for the summer. It was a weird and dingy place but we made it our own; gathered up the Playboys from behind the couch, threw out the bottle of dark-yellow something-or-other in the back of the fridge, took tweezers to the curly human hair lodged in the freezer's three-inch icepack. (Lots of things in that apartment didn’t bear dwelling on.)Sheil was gorgeous with long blonde hair and it wasn’t long before she was getting asked out. One poor lad who took her to the Red Sox game walked her all the way back to the door of our apartment, earnestly grasped her hand and with a puppy dog’s pleading look asked “Can I call you sometime, honey?”“Honey?!" I hooted . “HA HA HA he called you ‘honey’! And he ASKED if he could call you!” we laughed and laughed at the guy, only because, instead of being faintly cruel and offhand like most of the boys you got out there on the dating scene, he was kind and gentlemanly.We didn’t wise up for at least five more years when, out drinking with our two dates after some football game we got called on our behavior. There we were running our mouths in the old way; really getting on a roll. Then my date who later became the husband I call “Old Dave” in these posts, a man who never in all the years I have known him has even uttered a crude word much less a curse said, “You know you guys, nobody likes a smartass.”And didn’t that gave us something to chew on! So now I never do impersonations anymore much less think up funny epithets for people the minute they leave the room. That reminder picked me straight up and set down firmly in the Kingdome of Niceness.Some of my old are disappointed in my dullness and maybe you don’t like me much either but I like you! Honest I do! In fact, um, can I call you sometime.... honey ?

Stupid Stupid Person

Most regrettable thing I ever wrote? Easy. Summer of ‘93, a column about self help meetings. It started this way:“Once, only old guys with thinning hair and pinstripe suits went to meetings,” it said in paragraph two. “Or fat ladies in hats. Or members of Alcoholics Anonymous.”I positively cringe now at the sight of this glib targeting. I mean Old guys with thinning hair? Fat ladies? People in recovery, for Heaven’s sake? Here’s how this gem of a column started:“You know the TV ad where the dressed-up woman says she’s too busy for a yeast infection? Well “What is she so busy WITH?” you might ask. Meetings of course! These days everyone goes to them. Pick up your local paper and turned to the community calenda,r as I am doing now.....”I then went on to list some actual meetings, adding my own supposedly humorous details: For the Mothers and Sons Group, for example I wrote, "Thursday night’s topic: “Should You Still Be Making His Bed” and “How About With Him Still In It?” For the Body Image Group: “This week’s theme: I'm Okay (But Your Head Is Growing.”) And for the Women in Menopause Group I had two topics: “There’s No Flash like a Hot Flash” and “Making Rage Work for You.” I even made light of people with compulsions, as when I had an OCD support Group taking on both the topics (1) “DID I Turn off the Stove? and (2) “Counting Cars”.But my real low point came when I got to the meeting of the Mild Head Injury Group, joking “What meeting?” “Is there a door to this room?” and, almost unbelievably “Duh.” Well THAT DID IT for one reader who having seen the column in her local paper, called the Editor to demand I be fired, and then sent a long denunciation of all my work to the Publisher. She called the piece “toxic tripe” and ridiculed especially the fact that I said “no offense intended” near the beginning: “It takes an irresponsible hypocrite to say ‘no offense’ before dishing out abuse about those suffering loss and crisis, and victims of crippling accidents.”She also she led by calling me "Jabba the Hutt in espadrilles" which really threw me. Still, as stung as I felt, I knew I had to sit down and write a letter of an apology, which I did. Then, "Case closed.” I told myself. “Move on.”Tick tick tick....Then three years passed and one day a letter appeared in my mailbox complimenting me on a column I'd done about Cosmo the fashion magazine. The letter was signed only with the writer’s initials but I recognized them; and the return address; and even the type-face.When I wrote back to say thanks for the kind words I added a spur-of-the-moment postscript: “I know this is you, M.” I said. “And I’m still sorry for what I did.”And then and there this stranger and I began walking down a new road together. I changed and she changed and we became friends.This story served as my column last week. I promised there to tell the rest of the tale in seven days so stop by again on October 11^th for the rest of the story as Paul Harvey used to say,

Rainy Day Fun

I had the care of our little guys the other day, who because it was Rosh Hashanah and they had no school, arrived even before breakfast so their parents could get to work. I was going for a bacon and pancakes thing but the outside of our house is getting painted right now and suddenly I was told to run downtown for more paint. A sudden decision had been made to work inside, what with the rain, on the screened-in porch, which I had understood was not to BE dismantled and painted until 2012. But no? We were doing it now? And that meant we would have to move out the whole dining set and the wicker chairs and all 2,000 of my houseplants? NOW? No worries! replied the paint boss reassurringly. His men  would just shift everything from one half of the porch, paint that part, shift it back, paint the other half etc., which sounded fine to me. Then  Old Dave finally floated down the stairs at 8:30 all freshly showered and shaven and set to go to work and said “Oh no no. We'll empty the whole porch for you right now, no problem."  And in came every single thing out there, straight into the kitchen where my faint bacon-and-pancake project was stuttering along. Then a second painter showed up and set up a giant ladder to paint in the kitchen, another project I hadn't seen coming, so that now all the little tables and the reading lamps and the 2,000 plants brought in from the porch to the kitchen had to be moved again, to the dining room. Suffice to day I could no longer even find the pancake-and-bacon fixings."Let’s go to the Pirate Museum and eat breakfast on the way!” I suggested to these grandsons of ours, a little desperate by now."Eh" they basically said to that idea."Well the zoo then?" I asked. But they didn’t want to go to the zoo either. “Well what would you like to do today?" I asked.“Explore,” they said.And so it happened. They spent the next two hours holed up in our bedroom  going through every last one of our drawers as they examined coins, old pocket watches, mismatched earrings.... "Is this valuable? What is this, TT,  and what is this? And oh I think this is gold!" I explained that none of it was gold but they were fascinated nonetheless. Then, much to my chagrin, they came upon something I'm pretty sure I myself hid back in 1985 under that pile of old sweaters: the cruelly shrill and primitive musical instrument known as "the recorder" which the mother of these two had taken actual lessons on when she was nine.This is the recorder as played the other day by her oldest boy, who is seven:And here it is in the hands of his little brother,  four:In turn they each lifted it to their lips and blew: notes so ear-piercing it made my fillings hurt; sounds so shrill even they found them unendurable.(These are people who appear to enjoy the instrument. They're both deaf. :-)And so back we went to lying on the bed and examining cheap treasures from the 1940s.Along toward noon we brought some nice hot lunch to Uncle Ed who is 90 and looked through all of his old treasures, then worked off some energy at MacDonald’s Play Pace and landed at last back at the boys' house where Exploration is given free rein, parents being WAY more capable than grandparents at dealing with projects like this one, already well begun upon in their driveway by the time I said my goodbyes.  (Ahhhhh... youth!) 

Chill Out

Was I trying to offend people this week, writing about a hot-button political issue AND about sex? Why didn’t I drag religion into it too? I could have described the Ruben Bolling cartoon that shows the Supreme Being out on the hustings. (”God’s Election Campaign,” the caption reads, next to a campaign poster with a shot of the deity Himself, duly robed and bearded, standing against a background of stars and planets. “My 12 billion year term is almost up,” He's  saying, one finger raised in a gesture of public address, “and I need your support for 12 billion more!”  The caption under the photo: “God For Supreme Deity’’ with the persuasive slogan, ”Hey, his name  is GOD!!”)I also showed a picture of a mustached woman that I scored from a Google search and that was not only mean but maybe even illegal what with the new privacy laws. I do feel a little remorseful about that. I should have just shown a picture of my own mustache...All of which has me remembering what happened one day in the midst of my own personal 15 minutes of fame, namely when I got to the Finals in the competition to send a journalist up in the Shuttle.I was in the bathroom 'treating' my unwanted hair when I heard something through the open window. It had been more than a month since the TV reporters had been here and now here I was an obscure private citizen again, in running shorts and a sports bra, razor in hand, one leg angled up like a grasshopper’s to bring it into the sink and a line of mustache-bleaching foam on my upper lip.That’s when  I heard the two lawn-mowing guys who had just pulled up in a truck across the street.“See that house?” one said, pointing to our place. “That’s where the ASTRONAUT lives!”I looked in the mirror at this unsightly stork with the fat white caterpillar of  Jolen under her nose and thought "You? who would ever send you anywhere, except maybe to makeover school?'

It was one of those clarifying moments when you see yourself as you really are and it made me laugh that little worm right off my upper lip. It was a lesson for me, in not believing my own hype and in not taking myself so seriously.

I could beat my breast here and issue my usual mea culpas but instead I think I'll just grab the Sunday funnies and crawl back in bed. I bet even that Hey-his name-is-God guy sometimes steps off the hustings to just let it be.  I'll end with this shot of me, taken around the last year of my life I could get along without  the waxes and the bleach. Happy Sunday y'all~!