Weekend

Halleluiah, the weather has broken. Mamie’s out from under the bed – most of the time – and our porch no longer resembles the punishment box in Cool Hand Luke.

Care Package

Formula                            -        Check

Diapers                             -        Check

Rolls for lunch                   -        Check

Chicken salad for lunch     -        Check

Curried chicken with                              

    olives and artichokes    -        Check

    for dinner

Packaged couscous for      -        Check

    chicken dish

Rhubarb/Peach tart          -        Check

for dessert

Pesto pasta salad for         -        Check

     next day

Blueberry bread for          -        Check

    breakfast

Single serving Prosecco     -        Check

   for daughter-in-law’s

   mental health

I don’t usually write about my efforts in the kitchen, but it’s a good thing I enjoy it. I’ve been cooking for two days. Tomorrow I’m on my weekly mercy mission in a very small attempt to lighten a little of the load for the new parents in our family with some supplies and food they can just grab. My son’s back to work and my intrepid DIL will be squaring her shoulders and dealing with our two brand new twin grandgirls on her own.

          One person helpfully advised them that what they needed to do was, “get those babies on the same schedule.” Uh huh. That’s what’s needed – two tiny people hungry at the exact same time, needing their after-meal cuddling at the same time, having their diapers changed at the same time.

          Since that’s patently impractical, the other option is non-stop feeding, burping, cuddling, and changing. I’ve seen it in action and it really is non-stop.

So I’m packing the car and heading to Baby Central for the day. With any luck, this a hired day-time mother’s helper will soon be installed for the rest of the week.

Those years of my own are so far away, and I’m freshly impressed every time I go at how well son and DIL are managing. 

God, it’s good to be old.

(Grand)Mother's Day Thoughts

I remember my tree – a holly. Last time I saw it, in my twenties, it was taller than me, which now that I think about it, was probably always the case. My grandfather had planted it in his Tulsa backyard when I was born, so the tree already had a head start.

          When each successive grandson was born, we planted a tree in each one’s honor in the yard at our house. A flowering cherry for Gerry, a peach for Gabe (which actually produced peaches, although the squirrels always beat us to them), and a Japanese maple for Eli. Sadly, we left them behind (trees, not grandsons!) when we moved, but at least we planted them in the front of the yard so it will still be possible for us to drive over and check on their progress.

          Now here we are in Condo Land, with brand-new twin grandgirls. We do have a generous backyard and a couple of flowerbeds, but anything as large as a tree would need board approval since all land is really common ground.

What to do? Guerrilla gardening with a midnight raid of shovels and baby trees?

I was thinking that since we’re now on the girly side of things, how about a couple of frilly azaleas up against the woods?

Double the Fun

Life here is cooking along, each day with those small moments in the way life can be.

Puzzles and Poker

Christmas has been packed back into the boxes for another year

Mazel Tov!

This weekend’s Bar Mitzvah for grandson #2 was a roaring success.

Not-so-parallel universes

I knew that being in Florida would feel very different from slogging through the winter in Massachusetts. This weekend, though, I passed through so many alternate dimensions I might as well have been in an old episode of Star Trek.

Post Christmas Epiphanies

1. Who needs a Roomba robot vacuum to deal with the steady rain of dropped food from the grandchildren when you have a tiny dog snuffling across the floor.
2. It sharpens aging reflexes to have kids exploding from closets and behind furniture during ongoing three-day games of hide and seek.
3. Your trash is your friend. No one benefits from finishing up the leftover garlic bread.
4. Latkes (multicultural here) perfectly represent Hanukkah’s eight-day miracle since the smell of the oil they’re cooked in stays in the house for about that length of time.
5. Follow up behind your departing guests as they gather their belongings if you want to avoid an emergency trip to the post office to overnight missing car keys.
6. Dim the lights and fake a clean house before the holiday since after everyone leaves you’ll be getting out the industrial vac and that big new bottle of PineSol.

From cats to dogs

 Never mind that the Chinese calendar says this is the Year of the Monkey.

Two Dinners

          Life feels as though it’s zipping along, although I’ve had large swaths of downtime so I fear my absence here is due more to lethargy than pressing obligations.

          The past week included a visit to the hills of New Jersey to visit grandchildren (and their parents) where we stood on a succession of wet soccer fields in unrelenting mist. Still, it was pleasant – isn’t that what the Irish call “soft” weather ? -  and brought back memories of other fields with my own children galloping up and down.

          We also managed a grown-up dinner at a newly opened local restaurant that, sadly, was so excellent its success will likely move it on to a larger venue.

I mean, pork chops with an expresso hazelnut demi-glaze and mustard spaetzle, heirloom carrots and baby kale? Or my chkoice: wood grilled shrimp with creamy heairloom grits, smokey bourbon butter, braised greens, and jalapeno jelly?

Hackettstown, New Jersey never had it so good.  

          This week I met for dinner with a newly-formed gathering of mystery writers of Western Massachusetts where I found myself becoming uncharacteristically quiet, surrounded as I was by writers much more accomplished than myself. “Unpublished” felt as though it was tattooed across my forehead.

Among those in attendance –

Lisa – cultural and intellectual historian, author of at least six books, subject of

          several interviews on National Public Radio, and absurdly pleasant and

          self-effacing. 

Lee – former television writer and producer (Edgar Award for best television

          teleplay, author of several fiction and non-fiction books.

Glenn –author of 15 mysteries, professor of philosophy

Ray – our organizer and representative from the Boston branch of Mystery

 Writers of America, author of God-knows how many Boston-based

 mysteries, winner of this award and that award. Also absurdly pleasant and self-effacing.

          I just tried not to use double negatives and pick my teeth. My degrees, years of teaching English, and 2 ½ (mediocre) books were mere foothills to their Mt. Everests. Still, it was helpful to be surrounded by writers and be reminded that this was something I enjoyed and should stop neglecting. And my pasta was excellent.

Commerce

          The past two days have been exercises in optimism that didn’t always connect with reality.

The Big Day

     I’ve been checking the weather so obsessively it’s a shame that the Weather Channel app doesn’t provide rewards points. 

Eat Your Veggies!

We’ve always been good vegetable eaters at our house, my husband, kids, and I.

Blonde Determination

We’re being stalked by my husband's grandmother. She may be gone these thirty years, but she still reappears with each generation.

Worlds I'll Never Know

One of the initiations into the world of adulthood is the realization that it's not what we had thought it would be.

Word Power

(Pangloss – a fictional character in the novel Candide by Voltaire)

          A February issue of The New Yorker magazine brought back thoughts of my grandfather, not the likeliest combination. My parents were long-time subscribers, but my grandfather Sam Woods was more of a Time or Saturday Evening Post kind of guy.

XXXs and OOOs

My husband and I had arrived at an acquaintance's home and there was the usual flurry of hugs and kisses.

Out of the Ether

          My mother always kept our loose photographs in a Whitman’s Sampler box. We usually had an empty one available each year, either from Christmas or Valentine’s day. It was a good choice, sturdy with a hinged lid, and with the added bonus of the aroma of past chocolates. 

Wrapping it all up

     We’ve pretty much cleared the house of all that excess food and now I’m wondering if W would notice if I start spiriting Christmas decorations one by one back to the basement.

Festive Front Lines

 

          To my knowledge, no one in my side of the family has owned a gun. Oh, except that relative purported to be the first white woman in the Oklahoma territory, and who was known to tuck a pistol in her garter.