Timmy's big race yesterday, the only one he does now, because it is free for him....he scores well enough to qualify for the "elite".  He starts training on August 1st, no more beer, two trips to the gym every day, tries to eat less junk food, etc.  It is quite a sacrifice for an effort that lasted exactly one hour, 35 seconds - his time.  Coming in  84th  with over 1900 runners is quite an accomplishment.  The woman standing next to me at the finish line, saw Timmy, and said, "Here comes an old one."  And I told her that it was Timmy.  So he came in first in his age group, 65-69. 

The race to me is kind of like Christmas, all the preparation, all the shopping, the wrapping, the Christmas card list, the stockings to buy for, and then PUFF - it's all over, with just a bag full of ripped wrapping paper to burn.  And a feeling of relief.  And the race does remind me that Thanksgiving, and then Christmas is just around the corner.

We go to the awards ceremony that seems to take forever,. starting with female 15-19, male, 15-19, and on and on until he hits the 60's.  Vince runs the show, and actually got Timmy to run in it when he met Timmy at the Kingston Classic, and was looking for strong runners.  He yelled to Timmy at 7am when we got to Schenectady for the race, "Hello Mr. Haley" - that's the kind of guy he is, knows his runners and can tell a little about each of them.  So there was Timmy standing with the other two finishers, he was in the middle as the first one in, and pictures were being taken.  It looks like a lineup at the police station, and Timmy looks like the guilty one right in the middle.  An older woman (she had just won in the 65-59 age group) was sitting next to me, and I heard her say, "I like that Tim Haley".  Made me smile.  And Vince made a big deal of Timmy's time and saying how he runs every year and that he is from Tivoli. Nice way to finish up the race for the year.

So now on to the real Christmas.

Back again, Halloween has inspired me.  Last night I shared a beer with Maria, Margaret and Patty, all of us used to go into Tivoli, Baileys on the porch one year, and the Black Swan a couple of times. It just isn't the same without them.

I didn't even go up into town this year, but Sabra took Henry and said there was a man dressed like toast, that was standing in the middle of the road.  That gave me a memory of many years ago, when Tivoli became famous on Halloween, but not for any good reason.

Tivoli used to have a clean up day - it was great - you could put out anything, appliances, old furniture, etc, and they took it all to the dump.  But the year I am remembering, it wasn't carefully thought out.  Clean Up day came a few days before Halloween, and the local kids took advantage of it.  On Halloween night, it was a Saturday that year, the kids turned the center of Tivoli into a house.  There was a kitchen with a refrigerator, table, a living room with couches and chairs, and everything else that had picked up before the Village.  There was a picture in the newspaper of the mess, and as I remember, Laura and others were sitting on the couch, big smiles on their faces. 

Monsignor Kane was vivid the next day at Mass.  Driving to church, the town was in disrepair, an outhouse remained at the four corners, and toilet paper was hanging from every telephone line.  There was no sermon that morning, just how terrible our kids were, why weren't they supervised, how could a firetruck or ambulance get through that mess, on and on.  But actually, I was thinking about Halloween in Beacon when I was a kid.  We threw eggs, soaped windows, and tied threads across the road, tree to tree.  A car going through the threads made a terrible noise, and the drivers would stop and get out and look at their tires, while we hid behind the bushes.  Phone pranks were another thing we did:  "Is your street light on?" and after they came back to the phone and said "yes" , we would say, "Then blow it out."  That's when trick or treat really meant something.

I had to get my car inspected this week.  I said I'd wait for it since I burned out my knees last week at the fair.   (I used to walk into Red Hook and look around for an hour.)  So for an hour and twenty minutes I sat in Vin's auto window listening to country music playing loud on the radio.  Now anyone who knows me, knows I hate country music.  When I had my MRI, they asked what kind of music would you like piped in? and I answered, "Anything, but country."  And here I was, literally a prisoner of country music.

Timmy once said he was brought up on two kinds of music - his uncles and mother liked country and his father liked polka music, all polka music.  This made me think what we had as music growing up.  My first thought was Spike Jones...his music was classic - horns, hoots, bangs, whistles, all between jokes like:  a bear sleeps in his bear skin, he sleeps very well I am told, last night I slept in my little bear skin, and I got a heck of a cold. I just looked up Spike Jones on youtube and if you watch Cocktails for 2 with the City Slickers in a 1945 movie clip - I dare you not to laugh. 

Anyway, I was listening to the music, and trying to do SUDOKO - and then I heard the song about a man on a plane, it was to be his honeymoon plane trip, but he was alone and the refrain was "getting drunk on a plane",  Well, I started tapping my toe and you know, it wasn't that bad.  I looked that up too on youtube and it is done by Dierks Bently and the video is also worth looking at. I think I am being reborn at the age of 72.

Grandma Burky's birthday. Two pictures received from Beacon for the occasion - one of an old Grandma in front of a birthday cake and one dated 1942 of a young Grandma next to Poppy, holding a shovel.  1942 - Already one son Joe off to war and in the next year, when I was not even one, her other son Eddy at eighteen years to go to war.  I lived upstairs over Grandma, with Bucky, Daddy and Barbara and Bucky's letters to her brother during my first year of life make that time very real to me.  For my first birthday I got a pair of socks and a dollar from Grandma.  But I got a lot more than that.

My first memory is of laying in my carriage, in Grandma's downstairs, and she was reading her prayer book and would pass me pictures of Saints, probably Mass cards.  My first sentence was to Grandma - "Gaga (her) Nana (me) brrrr (cold).  I remember her dancing around the dining room table with an embarrassed Charles Miller at my sister's birthday.  I remember her ironing clothes with an ironing board leaning against that same table.  She taught me how to iron a man's shirt, back first, then both sides of the front and then the sleeves, which she would fold over the front of the shirt, making a flat invisible man.  I remember her home made chili sauce that would send a smell of tomatoes, cinnamon and spices all around the house.  I watched her can, and was amazed when she pulled out a canning jar from boiling water with her bare hands.  She could make a meal out of anything, would come up to 17 Falconer and clean out the refrigerator leftovers for her own meals.  And I remember going to Mass on Good Friday with her, as the wind whipped and she knowingly said "it is 3 0 clock, and Jesus just died". 

I think of Grandma a lot.  I too, have a prayer book next to the bed, stuffed with Mass cards of my family, friends, even people I barely knew.  I look at the picture, turn it over and read the name and the prayer and think a little of the person, their life and their death.  I think of Grandma when I go to church....she would look at my fingernails and if they were dirty, would shake her head in disappointment.  I think of Grandma when I make stuffed cabbage or pick tomatoes out of the garden.  I think of that 14 year old girl, all alone in a steerage boat, coming to America.  I think of Grandma in 1918 with the inflenza that killed millions of people, sick with Bucky in the crib next to her.  She lived over a saloon and sent Poppy down for whiskey, which she said saved her life.  (My fundador might do the same thing).  I think of Grandma when I see those hard Christmas candies, she always had some in a bowl in the dining room.  And I think of Grandma when she used to call to Bucky, "Lillush" time to go shopping.  Wonderful memories of a fantastic wonderful Grandma. 
Happy Birthday Grandma.

Let's talk about the vacation first.  And there were many firsts this vacation.  I will list them:
(1) 1st time we had a dog at Wellfleet.  What a smile to see him come out of the guest house in the morning.
(2) 1st time I rode out alone with just Ava.  Nice conversations.
(3) 1st time we had an animal living with us in the attic...noisy during a thunderstorm and Regina taped him making noise at night. 
(4) 1st time to go to a concert, heard Judy Collins, had tears as she talked about Pete Seeger while singing "Where have all the flowers gone?"
(5) 1st time Ria's bench was right in front of the Preservation Hall, facing Main Street, with a flower garden in front, and a statue of a mother and child to her left.  Nice to sit there every morning with the Cape Cod Times.
(6) 1st time Rachael and Miles and girls had a MANSION with a million dollar view of the gut.  Took my breath away.
(7) 1st time sharing fundador with Chrissy, but like Maureen, the laughs flew.
(8)1st time Zander spend a week with us.  Watching him down clam chowder was like watching a hot dog eating contest.

The rest was pretty much as usual, kids building sand castles, visit from O'Leary family, with an assortment of beers in a cooler, church on Sunday, but again, memories of Maria as the priest said we should "Practice random acts of kindness", the bumper sticker she had on her car for years.  The Wellfleet years blend together, all the same and always different. 

Just back from the Red Hook pool -nothing much seems to have changed since we went there with the little kids or more recently with the grandchildren.  Regina has said that she feels closest to Maria in Wellfleet, I think I would have to say, for me, it's the pool.  After Maria had moved back to Red hook, she had enrolled Regina in swim lessons there.  They ended just about the time the pool opened for the public, so she already had a spot waiting for her family, under a tent, chairs all arranged in a circle.  If it wasn't a swim lesson day, you would see her coming through the orange door that led from the outdoors to the pool.  She always had a big beach bag with her.

The beach bag held books for her, books for the kids, swim toys, towels and food - popcorn, candy bars, all kind of snacks.  Of course the kids wanted to buy food at the snack bar, I think I remember French fries, smothered in cheese, or maybe it was nachos.

The man running the pool is the same, the lifeguards call him "coach" - he looks the same, blows the same whistle and loudly screams at the kids.  Today it was "Who's yelling?  Stop that yelling.  That's a hurt yell.  Do it again and you're out."  He blames the camp kids for leaving a mess, the babies for putting excrement in the pool, the big kids for playing too rough....he has his work cut out for him.  Today he blew the whistle and said he had heard thunder - nobody else did.  That means 20 minutes out of the water for everybody.  The kids hate when that happens, but the snack bar makes a fortune.

In the pool, I just float around in the deep part, looking at peoples' tattoos, hairdos, bathing suits- who is with who, that kind of thing,   But every so often, my eyes go to that orange door, looking for that familiar face, that big beach bag.

Hospitals are trying be more user friendly today, or so it seems.  When I visited Laura earlier this year in Rhinebeck, every time a baby was born they would play a lullaby throughout the hospital.  (I asked what did they play when someone died.)  Anyway, yesterday in the hospital in Poughkeepsie, the baby unit was full of adorable baby pictures hanging on the walls in the hall.  An inviting section overlooking the Hudson was café like, with small tables and chairs, coffee and tea available at all times for use by visitors and patients. Liz's room was larger than most rooms, even equipped with a refrigerator and a sign on the door reading "don't enter until 7am", reminding me of a hotel "do not disturb" sign on a door knob.  I didn't look in the bathroom, but I heard it was spectacular.

Several bottles of water and soda were available on the counter, as well as a pitcher of water which to our surprise was wrapped in a tiny diaper.  A nurse making the bed explained that the diaper was on the pitcher so it wouldn't form condensation and get the counter wet.  When the nurse saw that was of interest to us, she told about a surgeon in the hospital who wears a sanitary napkin on his forehead to keep perspiration out of his eyes.  Now this was even better than the diaper wrapped pitcher.  Laura looked disgusted and said, "If I was going into surgery and the doctor had a Maxipad stuck to his head, I would be upset."  We thought about this for a while, did he use a rubber band to keep it in place or tie it on ?  Liz wanted to know why he didn't wear a head band like tennis players do.  Maybe he just thought it was a way to get a laugh out of the patient.  Like I said "user friendly" - a stand up comic for a doctor.

Mother turkeys are starting to come for corn with their babies.  Yesterday, it was a mother with nine babies, today one with thirteen.  They are adorable chicks and remind me of years ago when my mother brought home a dozen baby chicks.

She had seen an advertisement in the paper advertising "buy a pound of feed, get a dozen free chicks".  Bucky could never resist anything free.  (A&P used to give the first volume of encyclopedias free - we had several A's - we knew everything about Aardvarks, Alaska, and aviation, but that was it.)  Anyway, our father was in the hospital recovering from a heart attack, and Bucky brought home the baby chicks and the feed.  We made a corral in the living room, put down newspapers, and there they were. - peeping and hopping, delighting my younger sisters and brother.

When they got a little bigger, Grandma took them to a farm, all but two of them, Little Tim and Big Tim.  Little Tim was stupid - we found out they were males, roosters, who crowed at the early light.  Little Tim could only crow "Cock a " never could finish the doddle.  Of course our neighbors didn't like the noise, and Grandma and Poppy didn't like them scratching in their hedges.  So, when we went away for a week to Milford and the beach, we came home to no Little Tim or Big Tim.  Grandma said they joined the others at the farm, but we had a suspicion that she handled them in her own way. 

Cute little turkeys, cute little chicks, everything is cute when it's little .  Timmy says that's so we don't kill them.

I read in the New York Times today that in Italy a nun, Sister Cristina, had beat out the competition and won in Italy's Voice TV show.  I went on the internet and saw her doing "what a Feeling" from the movie Flashdance and Girls Just Want to Have Fun, Cyndi Lauper's song with another contestant.  What a voice and to see her dancing around on the stage in those clunky nun shoes, habit flying, plain little glasses, I had to laugh out loud and even clap my hands.  Between her and Pope Francis, I think there is hope for the Catholic religion.

Well, it's been a while.  Spring has arrived, kind of.  The juncos are gone, my way of telling if it's spring, but the forsythia is not yet out all the way.  Spring is about 2-4 weeks late.  We went to the Cape for Laura's 50th birthday, and we were surprised by snow.  Yes, it snowed, enough for me to make a snowball to ham it up for a photo.  Even with less than ideal weather, Wellfleet is beautiful.  We visited every ocean beach, lots of damage and erosion to the dunes from the bad winter.

The highlight for Laura was our stop at Catherine's chocolates in Great Barrington for Easter candies.  The smell alone is worth the trip. 

Other thoughts:  (my mind is spinning)  Shredded wheat.  Sabra and I were reminiscing about shredded what, we didn't even think they sold it anymore.  But then there it was - and I happily threw it into the grocery cart.  Yesterday I opened it for breakfast -  individually wrapped two large pieces of wheat.  Two were just right - filling the bowl, I poured milk over the two cakes, and watched it quickly disappear.  More milk, and then a taste - not quite the way I remembered it, more like the animal food they used to sell you at the Catskill Game Farm.  Tivoli Recreation would make a trip there every summer and I would be a chaperon.  There was always one kid that would taste the animal food, sometimes eating the whole thing.  Anyway, that's what came to mind when I took my first taste.  Adding more milk, (maybe it's the milk that used to taste better), I finished the two cakes, realizing how full I felt.  You could go a whole day on shredded wheat.  Then I began to sing a song from Girl Scouts, a song I had not thought of for sixty years at least.  "Grandma chews them in her sleep, she thinks she's chewing shredded wheat" - a song about Grandpa's whiskers.  Today I took Sabra a packet of shredded wheat - let's hear what she thinks of it.  

All winter we have had one lone turkey come to the bird feeders everyday.  I called him Hopalong, because he had a hurt foot, missing toe, and he hopped .  It was amazing to me that he survived not only a frigid winter, but lots of snow, and all by himself.  Was he a loner by choice or did the rest of the turkeys avoid him because of his hop?  At our Cabin Fever party, my neighbors saw Hopalong in the front yard and remarked "there's George - Lonesome George", their name for the bird.  Anyway, last Friday when I came home from School, Hopalong had a visitor, a big tom turkey that kept strutting around him, looking at his reflection in my living room window, and even attacking the porch window.  He must have thought it was another amorous male turkey.

So it turns out that maybe Hopalong, or George is really Georgie Girl.  Today another tom turkey, not quite mature was following her around.  It takes four weeks for the eggs to develop so if George or Georgie Girl starts bringing a family to the feeder, that mystery will be solved.

Another sign of Spring, the Carolina wren is building a nest in our grill again.  She did this two years ago, and is back in the same spot.  She goes into the grill through the hole in the bottom where there used to be a grease can to catch the falling grease.  The grill hasn't worked for years, so it's no problem.  We just don't know how to get rid of a big broken grill, so it stands guard near the propane tank in the back yard.

I've gotten past the "no burning" ordinance in our village.  I picked up lots of broken branches and sticks - all signs of a bad winter and the cicada invasion of last summer.  Anyway, I make a big pile of burning material, start my little Weber grill up, and burn in pieces all the yard refuge. " Just  having a little camp fire, no sir, I am not burning brush, " I imagine my response to the fire truck in the front of the house.  Spring and burning wood is in the air.

And today, I hung up clothes outside for the first time.  The big pile of snow under the clothes line has finally melted.  It felt wonderful to hang those clothes, and to smell them as I took then down, completely dried in the wind today.  Spring - good to finally have you.

My brother Bob and sisters Diane and Barbara gave me an HD TV for Christmas and this evolved into getting a new box from cable, adding more channels than ever and now for three months a free movie channel.  On it I finally got to see The Hunger Game and I was not disappointed - they did a really good job of bringing the story to the screen. 

I've always loved movies.  When I was a kid, our school was condemned, so we only had to go on half days in fifth grade.  Mornings were the best because then you got to go to the movies EVERY afternoon.  It cost only a dime, and so it was not unusual to see a movie more than one time.  Barbara and Jack were dating then, and in the 50's, the movies was the place to go on a date.  One night they came home, laughing their heads off at a cowboy, girl wants boy movie, called "Many Rivers to Cross".  It was apparently on a cheap budget, although it did have two good stars, Robert Taylor and Eleanor Parker.  She was a terrible tomboy, but flipped over Bushrod Gentry, and would say his name, really slow, like a purr, Buusshhrod.  There were only three Indians in the movie, and Jack pointed out that the same three Indian were killed over and over. Another good and memorable thing about this movie is the song, "the higher up the berry tree, the sweeter grows the berries, the more you hug and kiss a girl, the more she wants to marry" (I can remember the words from the 50's better than what you call those buns that you eat at Lent that have a cross on them.)  This was one of those movies I probably saw three or four times.  Anyway, my whole class would sometimes show up at the matinee.  I remember John V bringing binoculars to the theater when it was a Jane Russell movie, wanting a close up of her bosom.

Having so many channels can be a problem though.  I started to watch Buried Alive about hoarders and if you sit through one or two of them, I dare you not to jump up and start to clean our a closet or a drawer.  Well, the new TV is a real God send in this longer than long winter and not so great so far Spring.  But Happy Spring Cleaning cake sniffers (cake sniffers from Lemony Snicket.)

 

Happy spring, although it doesn't look or feel like it.  I have seen red winged blackbirds (but not today), a dead worm on the road, and one chipmunk on a pile of snow high enough that he was looking into the kitchen window.  No sign or sounds of the geese going north, a usual part of March or green mist in the woods, as the blooms start to appear.   So where is Spring?

Saint Patrick's Day, actually the Sunday before, we met at the grave, not to fly kites, or blow bubbles, or to hear When the Saints Come Marching In by Solomon on the trumpet, it was too cold for any thing like that.  So, we kind of stood around, Laura had a bouquet of sunflowers in a jar filled with snow, and I put down too daffodil plants, that if they could talk, would have said, "Are you nuts leaving us here?  It's not even 30 degrees, with a cold north wind."  So we left and came back to my house.  The boys did play croquet in the snow, which was interesting.  The croquet markers have little happy faces that are still stuck in the snow.  Then there was a loud bang on the house and we saw what they were doing - using the clothesline like a sling shot to shoot the mallets. I had to laugh thinking that that would have made Maria laugh.

School starts for me tomorrow at Bard, another sign of Spring.  I am taking three of Shakespeare's  
plays and a class on religion. We have seven sessions, so by the time I'm done with Shakespeare, it should really be spring.  Let's hope so.

One thing this rotten winter has given me back is the desire to read again.  For weeks about the only reading I could do was the Kingston paper and the weekend New York Times - the Times took me all week.  Anyway, the other day I picked up a book because of a review I had read in NY Times on it.  The review was on a book of short stories and referenced an earlier edition of short stories Birds of America and I thought I have that book somewhere.  I remembered taking it to Cape Cod with a whole pile of books that I just never got to.  Anyway, I found it and am enjoying the stories and her writing.  I just finished one about a woman taking a trip to Ireland with her mother to kiss the Blarney Stone - something Chrissy and I did 30 years ago.  What a risky thing to do, climb spooky, curving stones stairs up to the top of the castle, all opened, no roof, then lean backwards, clinging to two iron rods and kissing a stone, after hundreds of others before us.  The local boys told Chrissy  and me "don't worry, we clean it off every night for the tourists" and we knew they didn't use water.

I stopped reading at night quite a while ago, and as I have told you Timmy and I listen to audio books  at night.  Something about being read to is very relaxing and takes one back to childhood memories of snuggling close to Bucky while she read to me about Curious George.  We are currently listening to Lemony Snicket's stories  of the Baudelaire orphans.  Before this we had listened to the Hunger Games and the last one gave me bad dreams.  So we went back to something more innocent and although the orphans go from bad to worse, it makes me laugh out loud sometimes.  The Wide Window had Aunt Josephine in it, and she was afraid of everything.  Don't touch the door knob, it might shatter and cut you, Don't stand near the refrigerator, it might fall over and crush you.  Bucky was like this too, nothing was safe, everything had a hidden danger, so I would nod in agreement, giggle, and take another sip of fundador. 

So that's the way the days have been passing, back with my nose in a book, and the sorrowful, wretched life of the orphans to put me asleep.

Bucky called February "death Month", but I am thinking of a lot of bad words to put in front of February besides death.  The other day the weather man said that 20 degrees is the "new 40 degrees" - this because our thermometer goes from below zero to ten, or in the teens, never above the beautiful 32 degree mark.  And more snow coming tomorrow.

Not that snowy Februarys are new to me.  In 1969 when Paul was in the hospital with a broken leg, it snowed so much our road was closed off.  They had to bring in a back loader and dig it out, little by little.  And then there was the year it snowed so much, I went nuts and put up a sign on the porch window, next to the Valentine decoration, saying "We need more snow".  My neighbor Mary Alice still talks about that.  Or the February it snowed so much I booked a four day cruise for myself and girls.  We had a great time, got back to Miami and were told that it had snowed for four straight days in New York and all the airports were closed.  The airport finally opened, but as we landed in Stewart it was lit up with plows clearing the runway.  Maria mistook this for ambulances and yelled "we're gonna crash", but we made it home all right.

Snow rage is the new term - people yelling at the plows as they go by and push snow into their newly shoveled driveway.  One man actually attacked the plow with his shovel.  Another brought out a rifle and ordered the plow to go away.  I'm not that bad, not yet, anyway.

I remember hearing of an incident in Texas where a wife killed her husband by throwing a watermelon out of the window onto his head.  She was cleared of any punishment because the weather had been over 100 degrees for several weeks, and she used that as her justification.  "I couldn't take the weather or him any longer."  Well, I think days and days of near zero weather can do the same thing.

Timmy is a picky eater.  I don't mean he's hard to please, I mean he picks out the best things in the dinner so that the leftovers are always missing some essential item.  For example:  meatball soup without any meatballs, kielbasa and sauerkraut with no kielbasa.  The other day I made eggplant appetizer with eggplant, celery, onions, tomatoes and best of all - chopped up black olives.  The black olives are my favorite part of the dish.  Sure enough, the leftovers looked different - no black olives left.

Next Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday, the day when more home violence occurs than any other day of the year. This they blame on a combination of alcohol, heightened feelings about the teams, and the violence seen and approved of on television by millions of people.    I have a feeling, unless it warms up significantly, the hot lines will be full of calls this year. 

I fell yesterday in our driveway, slipped on the ice and went down hard on my left side.  I got up and seemed ok, but it sent a lot of memories of 17 years ago spinning in my head.  I had been in a car accident on January 8 broken pelvis in three places, big contusion on the top of my head, and bruised all over.  I ended up in Albany Medical, and three vivid memories flooded me.

Mean Nurse:  It was a rough night, I had an intestinal problem and had probably rung for the nurse at least 4 times.  I couldn't move, so that meant a call for a nurse with a bed pan.  After the last request she put away the bed pan, went to the window and threw it wide open.  I was high up, 5 or 7 stories anyway, and for a moment I thought she was going to throw me out.  But she tucked the blankets all around me tightly, and said "Now go to sleep".  I wasn't upset, it was quite pleasant to feel the cold air on my face and be so warm and snug.  And I fell asleep,

The Hospital is on Fire:  One night I awoke to the loud sound of a fire alarm, and the smell of smoke.  Then someone quietly shut my bedroom door snugly.  What was this?  I was wide awake when I heard the sirens and saw, one, then two, then three fire trucks  roar under my window.  Oh, God, I thought, we're on fire.  I reached for the phone, my first impulse was to call home and tell them I loved them and goodbye.  I dialed Ria's number and it rang, busy, busy.  Who could she be talking to at this hour?  Then I remembered the computer, when the computer was on, the phone was busy.  Anyway, the alarm silenced, there was no uproar, no panic voices, so I again reached for the buzzer and rang the nurse's station.  "Are we ok?" I asked.  Why? - the nurse seemed surprised,  "Oh, the alarm, someone burnt toast in the kitchen and the fire company has to come and check it out if the smoke alarm goes off".  So that was that - and thank God I didn't get Ria, she would have been as nuts as me.

Dead Bodies and Scooch:  One night after midnight they woke me up and said I had to go to X-ray.  Why I asked, the doctor had never mentioned this.  Anyway, I had to go, it took two nurses to lift the sheet I was on and at the count of three, oompa me to the stretcher.  An aide pushed me into an elevator and we went down, down into a dark hall.  There were two other stretchers in the dimly lit hall, both holding body bags and I begged to know where I was.  The x-ray technician said "in the cellar, next to the morgue.  Anyway, he rolled me next to the table and told me to get on.  I can't move I told him, and he looked at me and tiredly said "scooch".  I don't know how to scooch, I said, and he wiggled his body to show me how to do it.  It took a lot of scooching to get on the table, but I was motivated to get the hell out of there and back into my bed, so I did it, and after a few minutes I scooched back on the stretcher.  By that time, the aide had come back for me, and I closed my eyes so not to see my friends in the hallway.

So today, I am very careful - not more falls for me, no hospital beds, no scooching.  Is there such a word?

When I wrapped the mustard seed necklace that Sabra had pointed out to me as a Christmas wish, I put it in what I thought was an empty jewelry box, with a thin later of cotton in the bottom.  Christmas morning in her house she said, "I don't think you meant to give me the necklace in that box" and she showed me what I had missed.  Written on the inside top was "Regina Lillia", and the date and time of her birth, and tucked under the cotton was her dried, tiny belly button.

Over the years, I have been collecting my grandchildren's belly buttons when possible.  Sometimes they were lost or fell off in the hospital, but I still have managed to save some, thus the strange occurrence at Christmas morning.  Ava's belly button is well marked, and in a plastic bag.  One is in a beautiful wooden box, but no name - I think that is one of Paul's boys.  Helene had sent me an article in the Smithsonian that it is a Japanese custom to save the belly button in a wooden box.  This is thought to bring good luck to the mother-child relationship.  The box though was too air tight, and the belly button is the strangest one.  Then there is one in a Magnesium vitamin bottle - no name, and some in plain small cardboard boxes.. I know they are all one of the grandchildren, I just don't know who goes to who.  Leave it to Maria to do it right.

I am not sure why I started this - I think it had something to do with Bucky's keeping Maria's 50 cent piece that I had taped over her belly button to make it go in.  Bucky found it in her house and kept it for good luck.  I had learned this trick of taping a 50 cent piece from Bucky.  It was commonly done  in her day to aid in getting a nice insie button.  When my mother had the twins the doctor told her to tape a quarter to each of the twin's belly buttons - half the price for two. 

I just looked up the custom on the internet (you can find anything on the internet) and sure enough, saving the umbilical cord piece was done in African cultures, Native American and most notably, the Japanese.  Now it's a Clay Hill Road tradition - and who knows, maybe I will be getting some more of these relics this year. 

Too cold to venture outside, blasts of artic air, so I sit in the window, pretending I am in Florida, watching the birds - I call them "my birds" because I feed them.  A red bellied woodpecker is on the deck, finding uneaten sunflower seeds that are stuck in the cracks of the deck.  He finds one, then flies to the deck, to open it and eat it.  In the summer I clean out these cracks with a dull kitchen knife, so it makes me smile to see him doing the job for me.  The kitchen timer goes off and I am reminded of probably the weirdest thing that happened last summer.

Every morning Timmy and I do the crossword puzzle, I make a copy so we each have our own to work on.  I started to notice every morning at 8:30 a quiet beep beep that went off.  "Do you hear that beep?" I asked Timmy.  "What beep?"  He couldn't hear it.  The next day I heard it again.  Again, he didn't hear it, claiming "you're losing it" and maybe I was.  I thought it came from the kitchen so I checked the cabinets for something, anything that would beep every morning at the same time.  I found an old calculator that was suspect, but nothing there.  The next morning I heard it again...ran into the kitchen and this time took everything out of the sewing cabinet and even Timmy checked his gym bag for anything with a timer set for 8:30am.  He still didn't hear it, but I was so adamant that he kind of believed me.  That night I told Sabra about the mysterious beep and she promised to come down the next morning and help us get to the bottom of this beep.

The next morning, there we sat, the three of us waiting for 8:30 and then---the beep.  She heard it too, and we all ran into the kitchen.  I opened the drawer with the meat thermometer in it - was that it?  But Sabra was staring at Timmy, and said "Tim, the beep is on you - what do you have in your pocket?", But he just pulled out his old wallet, that 25 years ago a co-worker had thrown into the garbage.  "Not that", said Sabra, and started to laugh.  "It's your watch".  He held it to his ear, and finally heard the beep, beep.  Mystery solved.

That afternoon he figured out how to unset the watch - a watch he had gotten from the free table at the gym, and the object that had baffled me for days.