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.)