The last day of 2013, where does the time go?  As usual I want to wrap up the year relating some of my best memories.  (1)  Going to Henry's 1st grade class and talking about my "thread art". The kids were so cute, and so interested and I was thrilled that Henry picked me to be the spokesperson on his birthday week.  (2) The cicadas - from the first hint of them, the clay formations under the deck, until the exciting day they first started to appear on my neighbor's tree, I was hooked.  Sabra took a million pictures and made me a book for Christmas of them and of the tattoos that she and Laura got of the cute noisy bug now gone for a 17 year nap.  (3) Going to Niagara Falls with Paul and his family.  Being in the car with them for hours.  Zach lost his technical gadgets for bad behavior and he and I resorted to passing notes back and forth between the seats.  "Texting the old fashion way", he called it.  (4)  Cape Cod again, one of my favorite times.  This year a new cottage, small but cute and the owner Ron gave me a significant refund for not having a hot water heater for two days.  Getting money back while on a vacation is a rarity.  Maureen also taught me my new favorite bad word, a word she learned from a three year old.  (5)  Street painting with Laura, Sabra and family, Atticus and Regina, and Regina's painting on the front page of the local news.  Joel G, while making the usual announcements, made a point of saying that I was to be thanked for starting the festival....a nice recognition that made me feel good.  (6) Watching the Crazy Family Part II that Sabra made for all of us at Christmas.  Rachael as a baby, and then a little tipsy talking about Ariel, the Little Mermaid  in Cape Cod.  Glimpses of Maria and hearing her voice, all the family, wonderful.  (7) I'll just say FAMILY...they can drive you nuts, but where would you be without them?  Happy and Healthy New Year.

My favorite Christmas commercial this year is for Audi, Santa is ringing a bell, his elf assistant, standing next to him, as one man sees the Audi, he walks over to them and throws his current car keys into the pail.  Then a woman sees the car and does the same thing.  Then comes my favorite part.  The elf, a woman that looks a little dumpy, wearing an elf outfit, with tights and false ears, looks at Santa and says "We're gonna need a bigger bucket."  She says this with a sneaky little smile, like she knows she is making a joke...maybe even knows that it's a take off from the famous line from Jaws "We're gonna need a bigger boat."  Anyway, she makes the commercial and I love it.  Some do not, some say it is taking a poke at the Salvation Army's work that is important, but I think it is just cute.

There is a Salvation Army bell ringer outside of Adams' every day, since Thanksgiving.  He has a very nice face and was written up in the local paper a few years back, as having done this for many, many years.  I can't resist him or his bucket or his bell, and always pull out a dollar.  Christmas is the season for giving, and I was reminded today of something Maria did years ago.

Her bank in Red Hook had a Christmas Tree in the lobby, with cut out stars, each bearing the name of a child, the age and sex.  The idea was to pick a star, get a gift and bring it back to the bank before Christmas.  Maria took one, I think a girl, and the next time she went to the bank, took another one.  Then she asked me if I could do it, and she picked a star for me and another for herself.  Well, a week before Christmas, Maria went to the bank, and was horrified at the number of stars remaining on the tree.  She picked every one off, determined that no kid would be left out.  We laughed at it at the time, we still smile at the thought of her picking off  every star on the tree...but what a lovely thought to have at this time of year. 

Last Sunday was the 46th anniversary of our move to Tivoli.  My grandfather Poppy gave me a shoot from their Christmas cactus for our new home, and it is covered with buds for the season. Grandma and Poppy had the two windows in their dining room filled with these cacti .  I think my brother might still have the originals in the cellar.  Very easy plant, hardly needs water, doesn't mind sitting on the north side with no direct sunlight.  I used to put it out in the summer, in the shade, near the house, but it is too big to carry now.   Always is a little amazing to me that the plant knows when to put out blooms, and at its old age.  I hope plants don't go senile.  One year it did put out a few blooms at Easter, but I just figured that was Maria at work.

Anyway, it is now the official countdown to Christmas.  The family was here for a Saturday Thanksgiving and we selected catalog items that we liked, put our name on the picture and added it to a bowl from which we drew names.  It's a fun thing to do, and even Kevin got into the mood and put in his name.  I was just glad to get rid of all the catalogs, probably over fifty of them, in the recyclables today.  I tried a little cybershopping yesterday, but it got complicated, and some of the sites must have been too busy to handle the shoppers, a la Obamacare.  So today I put in a few phone orders and one the old way, filling out a form, and enclosing a check.

When the kids were little, we would get a Montgomery Wards catalog and a Sears catalog that they poured over for hours.  They were instructed to put their initials on items they wanted, and to keep the cost under $50.  Try doing that today.  After a few days the catalogs would be in poor shape, and someone in a snit had put Paul initials on girly toys.  But it gave me a place to start from, and I don't remember shopping like you have to do today.  Probably because we just didn't have all the stores to chose from, and there were no malls.  In Beacon we had Grants and Schoonmakers, Nicki's luggage and Fishman's as a last choice.  All within two blocks of each other.  Now it's a car trip, find a parking spot, buy a few things, go to another store, find a parking spot, etc., etc.  Well tis the season, and a short 22 days to go.

Back from the Oysterfest; we had great weather, sat on the beach, saw the seals at Newton Hollow, ate at the Lobster Pot - we did everything on my list.  But the best part of Wellfleet is people watching.  And the one I was most interested in was the boy on the boat. 

In August I had noticed a light on in a boat moored in front of the Seashells, the cottages where I stayed then, and the past week.  I was told that he lived on the boat, had a girlfriend and a dog.  And, sure enough, I saw them coming and going with the high tides.  Well, he is still there with his dog, but the girlfriend has moved on.  I knew he was in the boat when the small rowboat was attached.  One morning I saw the boy rise from the small shelter - this is not a large boat, a small sailboat- .  He had a large backpack and pulled the rowboat to him, climbed in and then the dog appeared.  As the boy rowed to shore, the dog stood upright, front paws on the edge of the boat, looking like the captain of the ship. I wanted to get a picture of this, but it was not meant to be.  I'd see the rowboat there, know they were aboard, look away for a moment, and the rowboat was gone.  Just as quick as that.

One night we saw the boy and the dog watching the sunset and I just imagined what kind of life that must be - sleeping in a rocking boat, dependent on the tides to get in and out...And what did he do all day?  Yes, I obsessed over the boy and the dog and the boat, but that is Wellfleet, you have so much time and quiet, it gives you a chance to think about things you normally wouldn't have any interest in.

The same at the beach, you hear a piece of conversation, as people pass, and you build it up into your imagination.  I heard this at Duck Harbor, a man in a group of four, two couples, said this as he passed, "If I wasn't watching that kite, I would never had seen the UFO."  Now that is something to think about.

And leaving Duck Harbor, there was a new bench, near the parking lot with this inscription "For Anne the woman who loved this place, from Tom the man who loved her."  Beautiful.  Like Maria's bench at Preservation Hall - "my heart belongs in Wellfleet"- I can imagine a stranger reading that and wondering about Maria and her love for a small town on the Cape.  Well, back to reality.  I haven't even thought about the boy and the dog for three days,

Last Saturday was the street painting, a lot of fun, and best of all, Regina's street painting made the front page of the local paper.  She did the Little Mermaid, Atticus did Alice in Wonderland, I did the Grasshopper from the Grasshopper and the ants, Henry and Sabra's friend Sue did a dinosaur, Sabra did a colorful crow, and Laura did the Owl and the Pussycat.  We were all in a row, and got a lot of attention, especially Sue with the dinosaur for little boys and Regina with Ariel for the little girls.  Everyone called my grasshopper a cricket, and by the end, I was even calling him a cricket.  A really good family day, and Regina is already talking about doing little red riding hood and the wolf for next year.  This was a favorite one of Maria's painting.

Now we are getting ready to go to oysterfest.  Timmy has packed three different colored jackets, so when he goes oyster hunting the shellfish warden doesn't recognize him....No, the guy this morning was wearing a black jacket, this one has on a white jacket.  We're only gone a week, and already we've packed almost everything we own.  That's the excitement of vacation...and you know you are going to forget something. 

Went to Maria's grave today and it was gorgeous.  It is a beautiful fall day to begin with, and Ria and Patty's flowers, zinnias,  marigolds, large and small, are still putting out blooms, and have more buds to come.  The flowers were full of bees, all kinds, and butterflies, small yellow and white ones.  It was so peaceful to sit there, watching the flutterby's (as Timmy says they once were called) and listening to the buzz of the bees.  I have bulbs to plant on Mr. Brown's grave in Wellfleet, something we do every year, and a pumpkin from Tony's garden.  Mr. Brown has the original stone that is now on Maria's, so that's the connection.  It's an old, old graveyard, and although we never get to see the spring bulbs, I bet they're something else.  Just to see a pumpkin on one of those old forgotten graves is worthy of the effort. 

So that's it - street painting over, Wellfleet and oysters and Mr. Brown coming up.

I was only 38 when I became a grandmother, but looking back, I think that is the perfect age.  At that time, I had no knee problems, could keep us with any kid and had enough energy to push a carriage into Tivoli.  Maria and family lived with me, upstairs in the Bird's Nest, so I was able to spend lots of time with them.  And those first grandchildren of mine were entertaining...I remember one time pushing  Rachael in the carriage into town, Jer beside me.  We hadn't even reached the bridge crossing the creek into Tivoli, when Rachael starting screaming her head off.  I kept pushing the carriage, hoping the movement would calm her down, but no luck.  Jer stopped and stared at me, incredulous that I hadn't thought of it..."Nurse her Loggy," he said, "just nurse her".  He knew how to shut her up.  Maria nursed Rachael for years, finally stopping, to the kid's surprise.  "Just let me look at them," she said to Maria, sadly, "just let me look at them" like a dieting person might want to see one more ice cream sundae.

Timmy and I took the kids everywhere, driving to Purchase to visit Sabra at college, and trips to all the local festivals.  I remember this time of year going to an Octoberfest in Rhinebeck.  These were the days before drunk driving became an obstacle to alcohol related activities.  Anyway, we were sitting at a big table, in the warm autumn sun, Rachael eating some German treat, and singing "In heaven there is no beer, that's why we drink it here".  The polka band started another song, and the leader yelled, "Everybody yodel" which nobody did, except Timmy, in a loud, loud voice, "Yodel e day e dee" or however anyone can yodel.  Rachael's  eyes were as big as those pints of beers everybody was drinking, horrified that she was with these people that everybody was staring at.  The people around us all laughed, and she relaxed.  I remember she sang all the way home, "in heaven there is no beer" so I guess she had already forgotten the yodeling event.

Autumn makes me sentimental, brings back a lot of memories, good memories of a young grandmother up for anything.

End of September, Timmy's birthday, he likes to recount that he was conceived on New Year's Eve, that his parents kept the champagne cork!  Anyway, I was remembering a September 30 back about 24 or even 25 years ago. 

Maria and her family and Timmy and I went to the Cape for a weekend.  We stayed at an old house, right on the Ocean Side, in Cohoon Hollow, on the road and steps away from the Beachcomber's Bar...the only ocean side bar in Wellfleet.  As I said, the house was old, has since been torn down and a bigger, one stands in its place.  It had a weird added on deck that you crawled out a window to get on, tiny steep steps that led to the bedrooms.  Rachael was less than five years old, Jer must have been nine or ten.  The house must have been used mostly by college kids, liking the location near the ocean and the bar.  I remember Maria opened the couch, a sleeper, and said, "Ma, don't open the couch...someone threw up in it".  Well that was the house, but the big remembrance of that weekend is Timmy's birthday, and to celebrate, he and Kevin planned a whole night of fishing.

Now fishing was never a sport that Timmy had enjoyed, whereas Kevin every year, got a fishing license and headed to Provincetown.  For this excursion, Kevin had organized a fishing tour for the two of them, and as it happened, Jer went along too.  The guide, a skinny man with a worn face showed up in his truck, his name was Pete L. and Timmy remembered that he had  told them that he had worked in Max's Kansas City in New York,  meeting a lot of hot newcoming performers.  I think Timmy said he played Opera music in the truck.

Anyway, Timmy and Kevin left, each with a supply of beer, Timmy had a case of Yuengling, and I don't remember why, but Jer, just a kid, went with them.  It was a long night for Maria and I, both worried about what was happening in that truck, on the beach and everything else, but mostly what was Jer doing.  Well, when they returned, it turned out that Jer had fallen asleep, so they left him in the truck, locking the doors.  But when they returned to try another location, they couldn't wake him up and were banging on the windows for what seemed forever.  They fishermen returned in bad shape, a night of drinking, no sleep, Timmy had his shoes off, and his feet were raw, probably from fish hooks, but who knows. The guys went right to bed, but Jer disappeared.  Maria and I searched the house, then ran outdoors.  I will never forget the sight of Maria running on the high dune, red hair flying in the wind, screaming frantically for Jer.  Just like the Maria of old, searching for her lost lover, the pirate Black Sam.  Anyway, I soon found Jer, huddled in a small corner of the dune.  I guess the whole experience had just been too much for him, and he had sought a peaceful spot to figure it all out.

I drove home that afternoon, Timmy laying down in the backseat of the car.  A strange birthday, a strange end to September.

I bought winter squash this week, first time it has gone "down" to $.99.  I used to buy it by the bushel from Mr. Rockefeller, when a bushel cost $5.00 and you had enough acorn and butternut squash to last a whole winter.  Mr. Rockefeller was a local farmer, an old guy that stopped his truck in front of our house the first summer we were living here.  He sold his vegetables freshly picked and at prices you would kill for today. 

I was used to this kind of sales, in Beacon we had Mr. Stanton, who drove a red truck with a loud horn.  He would park his truck, blow the horn, and the ladies of the neighborhood would come out to see what he had in his truck.  This was especially good for me when we lived at Beacon Street.  I had three little kids, and I didn't drive.  Mr. Stanton was a good businessman and kept candy and candy bars in the front seat to sell to children, so they would look out the window with joy when they heard his horn.  He also was kind to my downstairs neighbor, Helen, who suffered from a disease not yet named then....she couldn't leave the house.  He would even have a six pack of beer for her in the front seat.  Talk about convenience.  One year Helen and I bought a whole bushel of tomatoes from him to can....most of them were good, but the few bad ones made us leery when the jars exploded.  We complained to Mr. Stanton who just said, "You ladies must have done something wrong."

Anyway, I was glad to see a farmer at our new address and he told me I was one of his best customers.  I not only bought the two bushels of squash, but five bushels of potatoes for us, a bushel for Aunt Lillian and I always gave my sister Barbara a bushel of potatoes for her anniversary in October.  All winter long I would send one of the kids down to the cellar to get five potatoes and to pick out the squash I would cook for supper.

Time passed and Mr. Rockefeller began to show his age and then his weekly visits stopped.  When he died my kids were afraid to tell me, they thought it would be too depressing for me, and I did miss him.  Years have changed how we live, the store Adams is the closest thing I can place next to Mr. Stanton and Mr. Rockefeller.  But, it's not half, not a quarter as good as facing the man who grew the vegetables that you were buying to feed your family.  Farmer Markets are fun, but not as exciting as hearing that horn, looking out the window, and seeing the back of the truck loaded with freshly picked vegetables.

Labor Day weekend, the end of summer, how does it happen so fast?  Back from Cape Cod, the wisteria on the Bird's Nest has grown tendrils three feet long, Maria's grave is a mixture of flowers, sunflowers that are tall as I am, cosmos, pink and white, also tall, zinnias -large and small, marigolds, the same, large and small.  The plants are so thick that today a rabbit was hiding among the flowers and I didn't see him until he ran out when I watered.

Cape Cod's two weeks flew by - the first week with Sabra and family, Maureen there until Wednesday.  O'Leary's yearly visit, the girls prettier than ever, John and Debbie carrying cases of beer for us.  This year Samuel Adams, Maureen favored the blueberry summer mixture and both Maureen and I enjoyed the fundador in bed so much that the bottle was emptied way too soon.  The second week Diane, Kathy, Sarah and year old Orson filled the cabin - Orson exploring every corner but my bedroom.  Considering that he might feel the presence of a ghost, I tried to coax him in, and after I did, it became his favorite spot to explore, finding the Anisette [fundador replacement], opening it and spilling it on his shirt.  Just like licorice.  Like every kid he loved the beach, sand and waves.  We all did.

The water was wonderful, warm and very swimmable, we had a full moon, and the first night there we had fireworks as Wellfleet celebrated its 250 birthday.  Beautiful fireworks sitting on the beach, right in front of the cabin.  Lots of seafood from Hatches, lobsters, clams, steamers, smoked bluefish and the big scallop surrounded with roe.  Also, Sushi and really good pizzas, and clam chowder from the Lighthouse that got an A+ from Diane, Kathy and me.  But back to reality.  People three days this weekend as Bard's students return, another sign of the passing of summer.  In less than a week I'll be on Sabra's porch watching Henry get on the school bus.  Well, I do have Oysterfest to look forward to in October.  The way things are going, it will be here before I know it.

Just back from a trip to the Tivoli thrift shop.  Stressful, completely different from what it used to be, even a few months back.  Years ago, the thrift shop was a fun place to go - most of the people in Tivoli were on tight budgets so it was a great place to find kids' clothes, a really nice, cheap dress for a wedding, tablecloths, and more than once, Christmas gifts.  We all knew each other, and would hold up an unusually ugly item, or a sexy item, and everyone would laugh and comment on it.  It was leisurely, you took time, going through the clothes, books and toys.  No more.  Now it is filled with dealers, frantically making piles to resell, examining labels, not worried about size, it's not for them, it's all for how little can I pay for this, and then, how much can I resell it for.  It doesn't matter that the thrift shop is run by the church, it's all money, money, money.  The ladies that used to work the desk knew everyone by name, and if you held up a shirt with missing buttons, or a stain, it could be repriced.  No more, shirts and blouses are identified in some unknown way to me.  I thought it was a shirt I held in my hand, she called it a blouse, and the price doubled.  However, the dealers are welcomed warmly and they can get the prices down.  Sabra says bag day is worth while, but I think the greed would overwhelm me, people cramming things tightly in overstuffed bags.

It's like what happened at the yard sale we had last week.  Every year Tivoli has a yard sale day, the whole town fills their yard with everything imaginable.  Our piles were like everyone else, clothes no longer fitting, toys out grown, dishes from the cellar, you name it.  Most of the people wandered through, picking up some things.  And then three men came into the yard.  They went through a box of books, one pulling out a device that he checked each of the books with.  Then they went to the toys, again checking the hand held device.  "What are they doing?",  I asked Sabra, and she explained that that device was telling them the value of the book, or the toy.  "You see them all the time at book sales, Ma", she said.  "They're dealers and they're looking for buys."  One game had them really excited and it was on the free table.  One looked a little embarrassed when he picked it up and said, "Now I will have to buy something".  They were most interested in the games and I heard one say, that is was missing only three pieces and they could find another game that had those three pieces and it would be worth....try as I could I couldn't hear the amount.

Later that night I was thinking about the device, technology, how in a yard in Tivoli you were connected with the internet and could find a resale value on E-Bay. Years ago Maria had found a Beatles game at the Red Hook thrift shop.  It was a colorform, you remember, they would stick on a page, and could be rearranged over and over again.  Well, after she bought it, she looked on Ebay and one like it was selling for hundreds of dollars.  She did sell it at a nice profit (I  think it cost her a dollar) but she donated money to the thrift shop after she was paid.  That was the joy of it.  You didn't really know what was the worth of what you were buying, so you bought it and then looked it up.  What a shame we've lost it.  What a shame the thrift shop changed.

The Murphy's lost their last uncle, Uncle Joe, on Monday.  No obituary yet, but you could fill a whole newspaper with Uncle Joe's life and stories.  I first remember Uncle Joe (or it could have been Uncle Eddy) coming home from war.  I was a little kid, and Grandma scared me as she screamed with joy and ran up and embraced her son.  Joe married Rosie, and we would sing a song, "Rose, Rose, I love you, with an aching heart, glory is the future, now we have to part..." as we walked up Falconer Street toward our house, under their upstairs window.  Rose and Joe and her family, would take Barbara and me to Sylvan Lake with them, early in the day, and the grown ups sat around the picnic tables, eating all kinds of delicious Italian food, while the kids would swim, just going back to get lunch.  Then Joe and Rose moved out of Grandma's house to their own place, a few miles away, but they visited often.

I remember one Christmas morning, when they came to see us, the house was a mess, six kids opening presents, wrapping paper all over the place.  Uncle Joe sat down, took out a cigar, unwrapped it, looked around and threw the wrapper on the floor with the rest of the mess, without a second delay.  That was Uncle Joe.  In later years he would enter saying, "It's Uncle Dum here", would give the finger to the O'Leary kids (they loved that), called my son, Paul, "Peter, Paul and Mary".  He would make some off color remark, and Aunt Rose would just say, "Oh, Joe".  They were a cute couple and had a son Brian that agewise was the same as the older O'Leary's.

When Sabra was born I asked Joe and Rose to be her God parents, and they agreed, and came to Tivoli to St. Sylvia's for the baptism.  After that, each Christmas, Sabra got a special gift from them, always one of her favorites and the other kids would watch just as excited to see what it was.

When Sabra got married, I rented a limo to drive the Judge, his wife, Uncle Joe, and Rose and Aunt Lillian and Bucky up to Germantown for the wedding.  It was a long ride and I didn't want those old folks driving so far.  Bucky cancelled, so she missed the fun.  I had told the bartender at the wedding, "Don't serve any drinks until after the ceremony", but I didn't realize the limo was equipped with a bar.  I did as soon as I heard Uncle Joe yell to Bucky, "Buck, you shitted out".  Uncle Joe and the Judge were ripped.  The Judge slurring his words, Uncle Joe standing in front of them, swaying back and forth, in his Uncle Joe dance - a dance he did upon completing a race.

That's another thing, Uncle Joe's running.  Apparently, years back, he was doing the Bridge Run, but walking it, and as people ran past him, he started to run.  And then he was hooked.  Race after race, he would run in, arms over his head, yelling something like "I'm not dead yet".  He ran with another older guy, and they would hold hands, coming in at the same time.  Sweet to see.  The Rhinebeck race was one of his favorites, and Timmy and I and Aunt Rose would go for breakfast, right after the race started.  "We have an hour before he comes in", Aunt Rose would say, and off we would go. Joe was a race favorite, winning trophy after trophy, sometimes the only one running in his age group.

Uncle Joe loved Bucky and even after her death, would address the couch as if she were sitting in her favorite place.  Sometimes he would ask for a hug, and once Maria gave him a good one and he commented "There's a lot of woman there", which made us all laugh.

Laugh we did, Uncle Joe was a comic, we're lucky to have had him.  Rest in Peace Uncle Joe.

Back from a vacation with Paul's family to Niagara Falls, Canada and five days at the cabin in Black Lake.  What a difference when I got home - no cicadas, no noise, and the blue jays and cardinals who have been dining on a cicada buffet are back at the feeders.  This morning there were two mother turkeys eating the corn, one with four babies, pretty small, and the other had three bigger babies. 

Niagara Falls is amazing, a real international destination, as there were people from all over the world there.  Not much English being spoken.  To ride a boat right into the falls, you board an elevator and go down several hundred feet.  Then you put on a blue raincoat  complete with hood, and you realize soon that you really needed to wear this as you head into the mist of the falls.  The steep banks are lined with seabirds, they looked like gulls and you can see people wearing yellow raincoats walking on a trail that actually takes them behind the falls. We didn't do this.  As you get closer to the falls, the boat, that is loaded with people, starts to roll and shift and everyone has out cameras that are getting wet.  I had my usual throw away camera, and the Japanese were very interested in it - pointing at it and speaking to each other in their language, so I don't know if they were impressed or laughing at me.  Anyway, it was fun, exciting and something to see.  The next day we went over the Rainbow bridge to Canada's side of the falls, which was in some ways even more visibly exciting, as you were on the top of the falls. 

Anyway, I am back to reality, B&B business, and a month away from my next destination vacation, Cape Cod.

An update on the cicadas:  the brighter the sun, the louder the noise.  Today is bright and the noise is terrific, hard to even be outdoors in.  And it is affecting the other animals.  Last week we had a squirrel that got in the garage and refused to leave.  For two days we left the garage door wide open, and nothing doing.  Usually, a trapped animal will make a beeline for any opening, especially a car garage door. You can't miss that.  Finally, he left, or he is just hiding better.

Then, this morning, a chipmunk came into our bedroom.  Timmy, still in bed yelled, "Squirrel, squirrel in the bedroom".  But it was only a chipmunk.  He had found a screen that I had not secured tightly yesterday.  That's another story- I was ironing the Bird's Nest tablecloth, had it doubled up on the ironing board, when I hit a bump, and at the same second, heard the cicada's scream.  Yes, I had ironed one of my friends that I have been saving lives of for the last two weeks.  Anyway, I opened the screen to throw out the dead bug, and couldn't close it right.  So that's how Mr. Munkchip (that's what Atticus used to call them) got into the bedroom.

We opened the windows, took out the screen, shut the bedroom door, and thought he would just jump back out.  But no, he stayed in the open window, watching Timmy mowing the lawn for two hours.  He was calm and collected, just like the squirrel in the garage, he liked it inside...the noise was a lot lower.

I don't know if he is still in there or not, but my theory is the local animals can't take the noise anymore than we can.  Rain tomorrow, so it will be quieter, but then when the sun returns, there will be more noise than ever.  I think we have a billion cicadas on Clay Hill Road alone.

2013 welcomes the cicadas.  They started to come out last week in small bunches, then the cold stretch of weather, but now in the heat they are coming out in groves.  Sabra has been taking pictures of them in  every stage - coming out of the shell, hanging upside down all white except for two black dots like eyes, and then the red eyes.  Yes, the little girl that used to capture wooly bears in her big purse, now captures them on film.  The Kingston Freeman printed two of her pictures of the cicadas right on the front page "photo by Sabra Ciancanelli".

But she doesn't stop there - when ants were attacking one still in the shell, she threw her coffee on them and moved him to safety.  When she read that they need high grass or something to climb up to rid themselves of the shell, she put sticks in the grass for them to climb up.  She even helps some of the struggling ones get out of their shells - a regular cicada midwife.

They ARE amazing - I myself can't get enough of them or am tired of seeing them hanging upside down in the early morning - that's when they emerge.  The trees are full of them at seven or eight in the morning, and then in a few hours, they are the black cicadas, starting to fly.  Birds are having a field day, especially cedar waxwings, waiting in the trees, and when they see one fluttering by, as if in a drunk stupor, swoop down and easily pick them off. 

So it's a regular jungle out there  - as in the song that starts the Monk show....I myself think of them as religious symbols - rebirth, souls leaving their old shell of a body, to go to a better place, mate, die, eggs go underground for SEVENTEEN years, and then the cycle repeats. Why don't I remember this from the past 5 times this has happened since I have been with them on earth?

Memorial Day used to be held on May 30th, that was until they changed all the holidays to a Monday for a three day weekend.  Memorial Day, May 30, 1915 was when my grandparents were married, so I still think of that day as special. 

I have a clipping from the newspaper when they had their 50th Anniversary.  It says they were married in Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church, the ceremony performed by Rev. B. Mateye.
The article goes on to tell about their 50th celebration in the Knights of Columbus.  "Some 90 friends and relatives attended the fete.  Congratulations were sent by President and Mrs. Johnson and Sen. Robert Kennedy."  I remember when Poppy got the mail and saw a letter with the President's seal on it.  He yelled to Grandma, "Bad news, I think I just got drafted."  The article went on to say that on Jan. 10 they were among the 50-year wedded couples presented awards by Francis Cardinal Spellman.  Attending with them were their children and two granddaughters.  The two grandchildren were Barbara and me.

It was cold, the dead of winter and St. Patrick's was packed with couples and families of the couples married for 50 years.  Afterwards we went to a church, St. Vincent de Paul (I thought that was where they were married, but it must have been their local church.)  I was pregnant, and after two girls, asked for my wish that Grandma said you do when you go into a new church that you have never been in before.  So I wished that I would have a boy and if I did I would call him Vincent Paul.  When Paul was born, I weakened and reversed the names.  Anyway, after that we went to Poppy's sister's house for lunch.  And it was delicious.  I especially remember the rice, a golden yellow, with such flavor.  How do you make it so yellow? I asked and Mrs. Peepa (that was kind of her name) answered simply "Goose Fat".  Barbara and I looked at each other, our eyes large. 

Anyway, I remember the Anniversary Party too- I was large with Vincent Paul not-to-be and the place was packed.  I happened to sit near the Resicks, family friends of my mother's family for years.  Their son had been killed in World War II, a handsome young man, I think his name was Billy.  Anyway his brother told us this story that has stayed with me for all these years.  They had sent home the body of his brother, in a locked coffin, and it was set up in the living room, as it was done in those days.  Anyway, he said he heard a noise that night, after everyone was asleep and he came downstairs and found his mother with tools, trying to open the coffin.  She just wanted to see him, make sure it was her son.  A touching story, and appropriate for Memorial Day, whenever you celebrate it.  Happy Anniversary Grandma and Poppy. 

My neighbor was cutting his grass just as my soap opera was starting.  I glared at him for interrupting my show and noticed he was drinking a beer.  His wife had told me he bought this lawnmower because it had a beer holder on it.  Anyway, it reminded me of something else, a time at Cape Cod, maybe almost twenty years ago.  We were at Newcomb Hollow, and Maria and I had just opened a beer...something the sign said was not allowed.  Rachael yelled "Lifeguard, lifeguard, my mother's drinking a beer" and Maria grabbed her, putting a hand over her mouth and dragged her up the dune to the car.  That was when you could put a kid not obeying in a hot car for punishment.  And Ria wanted to punish her for saying that.  But that's the way Maria's kid were - unpredictable.

This bought me to another time.  Chrissie and I were on an IBM bus tip to Bronx Zoo with Jer and Lizzy.  We sat way in the back of the bus, we knew there could be trouble.  There was some, we were right next to the bathroom and at one point Jer pushed one of the kid's books I had bought along to amuse them under the bathroom door.   But that was nothing compared to what happened next.  Jer suddenly jumped up, ran down the aisle and screamed "the bus driver's not driving the bus, the bus driver's not driving the bus".  Everyone turned.  The bus driver looked in the rear view mirror, I could see his eyes as I grabbed Jer.  No one would make eye contact with us after that, and we tried to remain in control until we got to the zoo.

Later, at the zoo, Chrissie and I relaxed, each ordering not a pint but the really large beers.  We were sitting on a bench with maybe four other people near the bison exhibit.  We looked up.  Jer was watching the bisons, and imitating their actions.  He tossed his head, one foot went back, one foot went front, and then he charged.  Chrissy and I had no time to save ourselves, and he attacked and threw our beers flying in the air, all over the over bench sitters.

But that brought me to Lizzie and one morning in Spring, when her father dropped her off at Clay Hill Road, and she was sitting on the porch with me while I enjoyed a cup of coffee.  Suddenly, she jumped up and stood on the sunlight that was on the porch floor and started to sing "I'm walking on sunshine, oh yeah, walking on sunshine".  She was maybe three years old and I was amazed - one that she knew the words, two - she could apply them.  Thank you - Jer, Rachael and Lizzy for all the wonderful and exciting moments you have given me.

Mother's Day - when Bucky died, Anne B. of Bailey's in Tivoli told me "not a day goes by I don't think of my mother" and I find that this is very true.  Our Mother, Bucky, is not an easy person to forget, even for a day.

I took a class on siblings this Spring, mostly about rivalry in the family, and a lot of this trouble was caused by a parent liking one sibling more than another, and being stupid enough to say it.  Once in a while, one of us would ask Bucky, "Who do you love most?" and her answer was always the same - "I hate you all equally."  Quite a good answer I thought while I listened to my classmates complaining about their sisters and brothers. 

But then there was the gentle, motherly side of Bucky, who would say (I think from an old Latin story) "These are my jewels" meaning us six kids.  Bucky didn't have much jewelry, other than us kids.  She did have golden earrings, a gift from our father, who would sing a song about giving golden earrings to his love - I think a Nat King Cole song.  She never wore a necklace or anything around her neck.  She used to say, "I must have been hanged in another life, I can't stand anything tight on my neck."  That was another thing about Bucky, she would come up with those sayings and somehow we believed her.  So Bucky didn't care about jewelry, or clothes, she was happy in an old loose house dress.  In the sixties I made her pant's suits and she started to wear pants then.  Bucky wasn't one for makeup either, she used to have a tiny compact filled with rouge and maybe a lipstick tucked in her purse.  When I was little she used to always  carry a bottle of salts, "in case I faint" but I never remember her fainting.  She would uncap the bottle to let me smell and the smell was strong enough to wake the dead.

I remember when she died, Maria and I went to the house.  Plans were being made for her funeral and Bob and Diane were looking for clothes.  Two blouses were out but they weren't sure which would fit her.  Maria grabbed the shirts and took them into the bathroom to try them on.  She said, "If one of them fits me, it will fit Grandma."  And that's how it was decided.  The funeral home gave her the makeup she had never used.  Her brother Ed thought she looked beautiful and remarked she looked like a "young Ma", their mother.  But I will always think of Bucky as wearing the loose house dress, safety pins attached for any emergency, throwing a comb through her hair, racing to join Grandma who was in the car, tooting impatiently for her to come out the door.   Happy Mother's Day Buck.

Today I was snipping grass around the front yard when I spotted a clay clump, almost an inch high, too high to be made by a worm.  Then I saw more, hundreds of them in the soft dirt under the bird feeders.  When I picked one up, I saw a perfectly round hole formed in the clay, empty.  What could have made these?  I picked up one and took it to Timmy who was mending the deer fence - he had scared a turkey in the garden, and the turkey flew right through the netting.  He examined it, then followed me to the tiny village of lumps.  The first one he picked up was NOT empty.  There was a squirming cicada nymph in it.  UGH.

This is it - it's been 17 years since the cicadas have come up.  The last time I remember my nephew Patrick's son was here, probably 3 or 4 years old, and held his hands over his ears.  "Stop that noise", he demanded.  Yes, cicadas are very noisy.  I just looked them up in Wickipi (or whatever that internet dictionary is called).  Cicadas are the loudest of all the insect sounds.  They can cause permanent hearing loss if directly out side the eardrum.  (Bucky would have loved that.)  They are eaten by birds, sometimes squirrels and people in China.  They have to come out of the ground after all those years, a distance which varies from one to eight feet deep.  So what Timmy and I saw this morning was their exit tunnels. 

Apparently, when they come out, they climb a tree, and shed that skin and emerge as a full size cicada.  So be warned - they are coming.

Well, it finally feels like spring.  Juncos are gone and the turkeys are trotting all around the house.  We started work on the gardens, Timmy in the vegetable, me in the St. Francis' flower garden.  I can't garden like I used to.  I hoe a little then sit down on the ground and break up the clods of clay that have formed over the winter with my bare hands.   They don't call it Clay Hill Road for nothing.

Sitting on the warm ground, breaking up the clay with my fingers, I remember when as a kid I would help Poppy in the garden.  We lived on Falconer Street, a hill, so the garden was on a tier higher than the house, but not as high as 17 Falconer, next door where I lived.  Poppy had made a dirt strainer, an old screen mounted on a frame and I would help him sift the garden dirt until it was as fine as sand.  "Ready for planting now, " he would determine and put in a row of green beans.  Some different from this soil.  My kids used to make clay balls, form the balls with wet clay and let them dry in the sun.  A weapon of mass destruction when flung at someone.  Anyway, gardening is a meditation that takes you many place, from grandfathers to school kids.

Red Hook Elementary has a garden and Sabra and Tony volunteer there on Friday afternoons.  Sabra says the kids love, love the garden and get a lot out of seeing the flowers and vegetables grow.  Funny when you think about it, when I grew up everybody had a garden.  Probably a throw over from the war and the Victory Gardens.  No matter the size of the yard, there was always a part set aside for tomatoes. When we lived on Beacon Street where many Italian families were, they would bring out a fig tree that they had kept in the house all winter.  Hot peppers were in their gardens, with hundreds of tomato plants, growing to be canned for a winter meal. My sister Barbara told me about her neighbor who would hang geraniums upside down in the cellar, not even in dirt, and in the spring plant them and they would come to life.  Talk about reincarnation!  I never had much luck keeping plants over the winter, except for my Passion Flower that Mickey and Sue gave me years ago.  About two weeks ago, it started growing like crazy, sending out tendrils that reached for the window and light.  Yesterday, I told Timmy to put it on the deck, hopefully it can stand the cool nights.  I had too.  It was like watching a caged animal trying to escape. Hopefully, the Juncos were right and spring is here.  

Well, we got a new computer this week.  The last one I bought was in 2004 and I can't believe how much they have changed.  When Sabra hooked it up (or tried to hook it up), we got error messages and it was about 3 hours later after talking to India to a technician that wouldn't give up, he gave up and sent us something (this little penlike object) that had to be installed so that it would work.  Another 3-4 hours on the phone again across the waters with both Microsoft and Dell (Sabra said he told her it was summer there and she looked it up and it IS summer there now), and we got onto the internet.  Now the printer is no good, not compatible with this version of Microsoft, so I have to go deeper into my pockets for a new computer.

Makes me think of that Marx brother movie about the horse race.  Chico is selling aids to the horse race and everytime Groucho would get one, he would need another one to use with it.  But that is life today.  Nothing lasts long, like it used to.  Refrigerators, ovens, etc, all have a life expectancy of four to five years.  Not like the refrigerator my grandmother bought me for a wedding gift.  I was long divorced (25 years) and it was still going.  Well let's see if I can post this.   Another test. 

Just last week Laura and I were talking about the Boston Marathon.  We first went there in April of 1979, Laura took a lot of pictures and wrote on the backs so I am sure of that date.  She got pictures of Bill Rodgers, the winner of the Marathon that year (maybe the last time an American won) and Frank Shorter, who was kind enough to read Timmy's book on running.  My nephew John ran, and the back of his photo shows his time at 2:27:13, place:135, quite a showing at age 20.  Anyway, what Laura and I were talking about was the feeling of the Marathon, the joy at seeing that many runners go by, and the excitement and comradity of that day.

We stood on Heartbreak Hill in Newton, about the 20 mile section of the race.  When the wheel chair people came, we first heard the helicopter that preceded them.  What a sight, those men and women in chairs, concentrating on pushing, pushing and that hill had earned it's name.  Then the runners, just the sheer number of them, thousands.  It was reported that more than 20,000 runners were running this week.

The next year Bucky and Daddy came too.  Again we were posted on the same hill, but this time Daddy had his camera out and Bucky had a big cow bell to ring.  It was a warm day, people were grilling on the street, coolers were filled with drinks and food, and chairs were everywhere as people waited for the racers.  Laura's friend Danielle was with us and again the feeling of joy, excitement and pure pleasure of a spring outing, together with so many people sharing the same feelings, cheering the runners on was everywhere.

So there you are.  That's what I am thinking about this week...and praying for all those poor people, like us, just out for a good, family fun day.

 

Happy Easter everyone.  It's a cold one, 20 degrees when I woke this morning, we are having a cold, late spring.  When you get to be 70, you have quite a few Easters under your belt, and memories galore, going back to Falconer Street as a kid, where we dyed about two dozen eggs or more.  When there are six kids dying eggs, you have to do more than two each.  I have a picture of my friend Jackie dying eggs with us, something her family didn't do so we probably had four dozen that year.  I also remember Paul's friend Stan, dying eggs with us on Clay Hill.  He was about sixteen, but there was a big difference in age from his older brother, and his family just never thought to have him dye eggs, so it was a first for him.  He seemed to enjoy it immensely.

Then there was the Easter in Beacon, the kids were little, I had made yellow capes for the girls, and they had just little spring outfits and it snowed.  Contrast that to the year before Jer was born, when we dyed eggs outside on the picnic table wearing summer outfits. 

Ria died on St. Patty's Day, also the first day of Holy Week and her wake and funeral all seem to be tied into this occasion.  Five years later, in some ways a long time...when you see how grown up the kids have become in five years, it seems that way -five years makes a big difference.  And in other thoughts, it seems like yesterday.  Maria loved all holidays, and at Easter she went all out.  Cookies galore and for the egg hunt she would get all dolled up, long spring dress with a hat especially made for the occasion.  A la Martha Stewart, Ria would cover the hat with chicks and bunnies.  Makes me smile to think about it. 


 

Don't you just hate Daylight Savings Time?  First of all, there are the clocks to reset.  In the kitchen there is the stove clock, the clock on the coffee maker, the clock on the micorwave and then - the easist - the kitchen clock, which is battery run so you just move the hands an hour ahead.  The TV and the computer somehow change themselves, this always amazes me, especially because our computer is so old, and now the change occurs at an earlier date than ever.

There are 3 clocks in the bedroom, one on either side of the bed, and then the clock on the radio.  And there is a clock in the hallway upstairs, another battery one.  One of the hardest to change is the clock in the car.  I have to dig out the manual twice a year to see how to do it.  And then there are the clocks, three of them in the Bird's Nest.  It seems like you have them all, and then there it is, another one to reset.  I resolved not to ever wear a watch when I left my last job.  As a secretary, you always had to note the exact time of each phone call, visitor, etc.  Your watch was part of the job.  So, like high heels, the watch is gone.  Timmy has a watch and it took about 15 mnutes for him to get it to the right time today.

Then there are the meals - Is is too early for lunch?  Is is 11 o'clock or 1 o'clock?  Spring ahead, clocks ahead - its repeated a hundred times a day.  Nighttime has its own problems.  I go to bed early, usually at 7:30, listen to a story for an hour, then off to dreamland.  Going to bed and then waking up, a whole new game with Daylight Savings Time.  Who was the airhole that thought this one up?

In July of 1984 Chrissy and I went to Ireland on a week guided tour of Ireland that was spent three days in Limerick and then to Dublin for three days and back to Limerick and the Shannon airport.  In July of the next year we returned, but this time on our own, no bus, no guided tour.  But with both visits we had the experience of visiting a real Irish home - not just being a B&B guest, but a guest to the Irish.

The first time we met a guy named Tom (Chrissy said all the Irish guys are either Tom of John) and when we told him we had rented a car and were going to go to Blarney castle, he suggested that he drive us there, and we could also visit his "Mum" who lived nearby in Bantry Bay.  In Ireland they drive on the other side of the road, and our rented car was a shift stick that Chrissy had never used.  When the rental agent brought the car to our hotel he offered to give Chrissy a lesson on shifting.  I was having a cup of tea and thought best to not be a part of it.  I was right because in half an hour, they returned - both their faces were bright red, but I think the rental car agent was brightest and he could barely speak as he rushed out.  "What happened?" I asked Chrissy, who had ordered a pint, and was downing it quickly.  "Oh, " she said, "I was doing good, until I had to put it into fourth gear, and I accidently went into reverse.  The car jumped straight up into the air and that was the end of my lesson."  So, when we had an offer to be driven to the castle, we thought it a good idea.

We set out early the next morning.  We started to realize that Tom (or John) was a little unusual when he stopped to have us pick strawberries in a field to bring to his mother.  We got to the castle, climbed the dangerously small stairs, kissed the stone, and were off to meet Mum.  The house was beautiful - like somthing out of the movie The Quiet Man.  It was right on the ocean, their dogs, two collies, were frolicing near the edge of the water.  In the house, the TV was on, a game show from American, and Mum greeted us warmly, although it was hard to understand a word she said.  Two bachelor uncles appeared in the kitchen, looking at Chrissy and myself as if we had dropped in from heaven.  After a short visit, he left to return to our hotel, but the Irish visit outshone kissing the Blarney Stone by a mile.

The next year we visited the home of John ( maybe Chrissy was right) Quaid.  I had met him in Tivoli when he was working on the horse farm.  After his visa ran out, he had returned to Ireland and graciously invited us to his home.  We drove up, hestitantly, was this it?  The hedges were covered with laundry drying, no clothesline in sight.  Chickens roamed about the yard, and then the door opened and John came out, followed by his parents, both adorable, with white, white hair, and blue, blue eyes.  "Come in, come in" they ushered us into a small sitting room.  Newspapers were in piles all over the floor, the chairs we sat on were missing legs, held up by a brick instead.  They offered us large bottles of beer (Chrissy and I could never find bottled beer in Ireland) and then to a "tea" that was everything but tea.  Piles of smoked salmon, a platter of delicious potato salad with dill and peas, the bread so good, that we couldn't stop eating it and then a cake made, as John's mother said, with a dozen eggs.  What a feast.  We took pictures of them and they took pictures of us.  John and his brother looked sad as they said goodbye...sad that they weren't going home to America.  We said, "We'll be back" and they said, "See you soon', but we never did get back to see them.  I wonder now if I ever will get back.

The snow this week reminded me of a trip 29 years ago this month that my friend Crissy and I took to the Quebec Winter Festival.  It was an IBM trip, the bus picked us up in Kingston at 5:30 am on a Thursday and we were to return late Sunday night after attending the 30th anniversary of the BonHomme winter holiday.  We arrived in Quebec early afternoon and quickly changed our money, a trick we had learned the hard way in Ireland.  The snow was amazing - up over the first floor windows, piled high in the streets with just narrow little pathways to walk on.  We noticed that the Quebec residents were very thin, a fact Crissy thought was directly related to the narrow paths.  We had been warned upon our arrival of the festival drink called "Caribou" that was especially deadly and especially well liked by the locals.  We quickly bought souvenir plastic red canes with a removal BonHomme head (a snowman wearing a tasseled hat).  The head could be removed so that vendors who were selling the drink, could pour it directly into your cane.  People on the streets everywhere were lifting headless BonHomme canes to their mouth.  We decided to take a tour on a horse driven carriage with a woman driver, who unfortunately did not speak English.  We were amazed to see snow higher than the goal posts in the local school yard, snow everywhere piled high.  I tried to question her: "Quelle mon la beige est away?"  she looked puzzled and then smiled and said, "Oh, Mai" - think of that - snow until May.

We saw an ice castle, a real castle with two floors that you could walk into, and a parade at night, complete with fireworks shot right over the heads of the onlookers.  Ambulances were riding up and down the streets to pick up the people who had failed to heed the caribou warnings and were down in the snow.  Crissy and I walked the street, and hearing music, entered a building where they took our coats, and $10 dollars or the equivalent, and we entered a large gym,  furnished with picnic tables and bands, four of them, in each corner.  Molson's beer was being sold everywhere, and we sat down at a table.  After a few drinks we had the great idea of taking a swim.  The brochure at our hotel had advertised a swimming pool and we had come prepared with our suits.  We put on our suits, grabbed a couple of towels, and got on the elevator.  One of the buttons was labeled pool, so we hit it.  People got on the elevator at the next stop and looked at us in surprise.  The pool button took us to the bottom floor, and we followed the signs for "pool".  Turning a corner, we came to an empty hall, with a door at the end.  There was a window, covered with snow, but we could just make out an outline of the outside pool, completely filled in with snow.  "No wonder they looked at us like we were nuts", we thought laughing and tried to reach our room without anyone seeing two grown women in February wearing bathing suits.  Probably perfectly normal during the festival.

Crissy and I traveled well together, Boston, Venezuela, two trips to Ireland, but that trip to Quebec, the snowiest place in the winter, is right up there near the top of the list.

Let's continue with the theme of Death Month.  A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the living room front window, a large bay window that overlooks the front yard, the birdfeeders, Clay Hill Road, and anyone or anything going on outside my house.  I love to sit in that window, especially when the sun is bright on a cold winter's day, it is almost like being at the beach.  Anyway, I was sitting there, when I got this idea that I would like to be laid out in front of that window, in my own house, with my own things all around me.  No need to make a photo poster, family pictures hang all over the walls.  No cold hard folding seats, there is my wonderful couch of 25 years to relax on.  I shared this idea later that day with Sabra and Laura and they quickly latched on to the idea.  "It would be so nice, so comfortable to be in our own home, for the funeral.  The kids could go outside and run around, you could make a cup of tea in the kitchen, so much better than the coldness of the local funeral home."  At Mayor Koch's funeral on Monday, which I watched with great interest, his assistant remembered that the Mayor had strarted to plan his funeral in the 80's and was constantly updating it.  Can't start too early, better make an appointment with the funeral director to see if he can handle this, I thought.

Then today at Mass, the priest got into "dust to dust" with Ash Wednesday coming up in a few days.  My ears perked up when he mentioned wooden coffins hand made by Trappist Monks as part of their works for God.  Looking the coffins up on the internet, their simplicity, their low price starting at $1,000, sold me.  They even bless the coffins and offer a free Mass for anyone using one.  What a bargain.  I think I am on to something.

The first of February, a month that Bucky termed "death month" years ago because so many people died in February one year.  This first day of this month Mayor Koch died.  I met Mayor Koch several years ago while on an IBM bus trip to the city.  Well, I didn't actually meet him, he spit on me.  We were at a food festival that we just happened upon in one of the parks, very busy atmosphere, everyone enjoying ethic type foods.  A group of men passed by, one eating and spitting all over the place, and Timmy pointed him out as Mayor Koch.  "Yeah," I said as I wiped off my shirt, "he just slopped all over me."  So much for the Mayor.

Timmy has been sick all week, an inner ear ailment maybe, dizziness and nausea on standing so he spent three days laying flat in bed, the only way he felt ok, laying flat. Sabra looked up his ailment on the internet and deemed it an inner ear problem, or a brain tumor, take your pick.  Apparently, there is a new kind of phobia going around, people using the internet to look up their symptoms and coming down and going to their doctors with hypocondriatic illnesses learned on line.  I can see where that might be a problem.  I only used the internet once.  It was years ago and my belly button was inflamed and sore.  Looking up the symptoms I gasped as I read of three different possible cancers, feminine type concerns and intestinal juices being emitted through the naval.  Nervously, I examined myself for more symptoms and saw that it was too tight pants in too hot weather.  Loose pants, and the cancers all went away. 

Timmy uses the nature programs on TV to diagnose his illnesses.  For this one, he used a wolf that had a broken leg and laid in an entrance to a small cave for two weeks, semi protected from coyotes, until his leg healed, and he headed for a stream, drank water and was fine from then on.  So Timmy stayed in bed (his cave), didn't eat for days, and today he is on his feet, his voice still shaky from whatever he had.  Maybe on the nature channel he can learn what to do about that. One day of death month down, twenty seven more to go.

There have been several articles in the paper lately on teens, even preteens, and technology and how parents can handle it, even control it.  I guess this is a result of Christmas presents of iPhones, smartphones and video technology.  Limiting the use of such devices has become a hot topic of parenting today.  And things have become drastic, between the kids and the adults.  Parents in California were acutally drugged with sleeping medication by their daughters after the parents forbid texting after 10 pm.  Desperate measures but digital addiction has been identified as a real problem.    

Our parents didn't have this worry, we didn't even have a TV until almost everyone on the block did.  Even our grandparents, who lived next door, had one before us.  It stood downstairs, in the dining room, and we sat around the dining room table and watched Jackie Gleason, one of Poppy's favorites.  Poppy even adopted one of his famous phrases "what's that slop you're eating?  when he saw the plates in front of us that Grandma had filled for us.

My best friends Barbara and Charlene had TV's before us, and I watched The Big Top circus show at Barbara's house every Saturday and I Love Lucy at Charlene's house.  When we finally did get a TV there was no concern of watching it too much.  Mostly, because there was only 2 channels and a limited amount of viewing you could do.  Ernie Kovacs was on in the morning, with a little witch puppet that we loved.  There were puppets then on tv, Kukla Fran and Ollie, Sherri's little lamb, every kid show had at least one puppet.  I don't think kids even know what puppet are today.  Anyway, as more shows came on, tv became an issue.  Not so much as how many hours were spent in front of it, as to how close you were sitting to it, with fears of sterilization, ruined eyesight, and worse in the future. 

Technology has surely come a long ways in my lifetime, but I can't say anything is any better.  Today the channels number into the thousands, on every subject and cablevision now costs us more than electric and heat total for the year.  Any there is never anything on that you want to watch.  I don't own a cell phone, and probably never will.  I would like to get rid of our one phone on the kitchen wall, for that matter.  With the Bird's Nest closed for winter most of my calls are about my credit, do I want my chimney cleaned and what do I think of single sex marriage.  Technology my foot. 

Timmy and I have been engaged for over 25 years.  We met 26 years ago and have lived together for the past 25 years.  In Sunday's NY Times they had an article on how people, unmarried, living together refer to each other.  There are the usual ones:  boyfriend, way too silly for someone who is 70.  Then there is special friend or friend, that is just stupid.  Partner is too cold, lover is too sexy, and significant other has been outdated for years, although you still do see it in obituaries.  Anyway, the Times had some suggestions.  Fusband, for future husband (not likely) or fake husband (I like that).  One woman called him "mi hombre" which is kind of nice.  My man.  And the census bureau penned a title, Person of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters, or POSSLQ pronounced "Possiecue". Statisitically, there are a lot of us.

All this came to bare two weeks ago when I was admitted to the hospital.  The first question was easy, Are you married?  "No," I replied quickly.  Later, I was asked "Do you live alone?"  Apparently, a routine question upon dismissing a patient, meaning is there anyone there to help you.  This one slowed me down.  How do I refer to Timmy?  Then, I gave my usual comment, "No I live with Mr. Haley."  The nurse just put the information into the computer.  Thank God she didn't say Who is Mr. Haley?  I guess now I can say my "Possiecue", sounds kind of like a type of dog.  But Mr. Haley kind of sounds like a dog too.