Archive for November, 2007

Another Tradition Missed

Published 8 Months, 3 Weeks ago in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

We got our Christmas Tree yesterday, but not in our traditional way: taking the ferry to Virginia and cutting the tree down at a tree farm near Leesburg. Clare had too much homework and none of us really felt up to an all-day tree gathering ordeal. We first checked out the trees at the church. They would have been fine, but seemed a little pricey. Then we thought we’d go to a tree farm in Maryland, about a half hour away. When we got there, its sign said it would not be open until December. Oh well, back to the church? Dean thought he’d try a Christmas Tree stand he saw on the side of the road. We stopped there and found a tree that would do. I like sparce slender trees while Dean and Andrew like them fatter.

We bought the tree and allowed the tree salesman to tie it to our roof. We got about half a mile down the road before the tree started falling off. Luckily we could quickly stop and toss it into the truck.

We put it up in the living room but have not put any decorations on it yet. I suppose I will do that tonight.

I feel kind of bad, not doing the Virgina trek, but I’ll get over it.

Phyllis Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

Published 8 Months, 4 Weeks ago in writing. 1 Comment

Disclaimer: I really don’t think I am a stalker although I may fit the definition. I just found it fascinating that an author whose work I read lived within walking distance of church.

I’ve already written, elsewhere, about discovering where Phyllis Naylor lived by doing a simple Internet search and my confusion about why she would publicize her address.

For the past few years, whenever I drove past the house I believed she lived in, I’d glance to see if anyone was out and about.

Imagine my dismay at seeing a for sale sign in front of the house on Holmhurst. I thought, at first, I was mistaken and it was the house next door. But I noted the address and time of the open house (that Sunday) and went on with my business.

When the day of the open house came around, I thought I would pass. Why did I need to look at a house that an author I liked was selling? My husband convinced me to check it out, so we went. I actually hoped I was mistaken and the house was just another house on a suburban block.

The address was the address I’d hoped it wouldn’t be. We walked in and were greeted by a real estate agent who let us wander around the house at our leisure. She pointed out the desk in the kitchen where the previous owner “worked” and I knew, without a doubt, this was where Ms. Naylor wrote some of her many books.

We went through the house quickly, thinking that it was a typical split level. Nothing really profound, unless you counted the multitude of labeled bookshelves in the basement or the large poster of Newberry Award winners on one basement room wall.

I still was not sure that Ms Naylor lived here until I picked up the literature about the home. There, on the line for seller was the name: Phyllis R. Naylor. OH MY GOD. This was really her house. The packet of literature also contained information about the pool and fans and rooms and bathrooms. But the most important was the fact that one of the people that lived in this house was the author of hundreds of books for children and teens. Someone who I’d hoped to run into at the grocery store (walking distance from her house). Someone who made me feel ok about reading teen literature. Someone who gave me hope that someday I might write something worthwhile.

Unproductive Day

Published 8 Months, 4 Weeks ago in procrastination. 0 Comments

I’ve not gotten much of anything done today. I worked a little, then played the rest of the day. It’s cold outside, and cold in all parts of the house except here in the attic where Clare and I holed up all day.

She’s working on her research paper in which she gets to use the F-word a few times. It is a paper on censored books  and she read The Handmaid’s Tale. I read it years ago and don’t recall the F-word in it at all. But I was not a 16 year old at the time.

Dean was a grump much of the day - the bank messed up and we now have to pay a few late payments on bills that were not paid on time.

Andrew had wrestling.

I’m the only slacker of the bunch!

Past Thanksgivings

Published 9 Months ago in holiday and memories. 0 Comments

We spent Thanksgiving visiting and eating a delicious vegetable filled dinner with our good friends, Alison and David and their children Laura and Peter. As I dropped off to sleep last night I thought about past memorable Thanksgivings.

I suppose that when my Grandparents lived in Elgin we used to gather there for Thanksgiving dinner. I don’t remember Thanksgiving at my Grandparents’ house in Elgin, but I’ve seen enough photos of my Grandfather carving turkey that I’m pretty sure my supposition is correct.

One year my parents had other plans, and it seems that all of my aunts and uncles did as well, because no one remembered to invite my Grandparents for Thanksgiving dinner. I guess they stayed home and had hot dogs. It was a bit if a joke for a while, and my mother even made them a decoupage box with “Hot Dog for Thanksgiving” and various images of Turkeys and hot dogs attached to it.  I recently saw that box at my parent’s cabin in Wisconsin.

When my grandparents moved to Chetek we visited them for Thanksgiving at least once. That was year before my grandfather had his leg amputated, and the last time I saw him before his surgery. He was complaining of pain in his leg and foot and was going to visit the chiropractor the next week. He thought it was from moving something heavy. It turned out he had a blood clot in his leg, which the chiropractor didn’t catch until it was too late.

Once my parents built their house in Wisconsin, we spent several Thanksgivings there. On those occasions we would drive up on Thanksgiving day and then eat Thanksgiving dinner the day after Thanksgiving. One year we brought Dean’s friends Glenn and Steve and Steve’s girlfriend, Chris.

One memorable Thanksgiving was spent with Dean’s family. They’d eat at his Aunt and Uncle’s house. His Uncle was an opinionated person who had nothing good to say about teachers. Because I was a teacher at the time, his words stung so much I never felt comfortable around him again. He had that effect on all the teachers in the family.

I think my favorite Thanksgivings were the ones we spent in Pittsburgh, sharing the meal with fellow students from all over the country and globe. I think we did that twice, but perhaps it was only once. One year we’d just recently been burglarized and had planned on having the dinner at our apartment, but instead took the turkey over to one of Dean’s office-mate’s home.  I recall feeling a little annoyed - knowing I did the cooking, but the hosts got all the thank yous.

Once we moved to the DC area we quit going back to Illinois for Thanksgiving, for the most part. We probably shared Thanksgiving with our friends Paul and Kelly at least once. In 1990 we were invited to Long Island, NY to spend Thanksgiving with Kelly’s parents in a house they were renovating. Because the house was in disarray Kelly’s mom thought it would be fun to dress up - as a contrast to the house. Kelly, who was always thinking of ways to play practaical jokes on her family, thought it would be fun to dress up in funny clothes - like formal wear from the 1970’s. We found delicously ugly prom dresses at Salvation Army and wore them to dinner. It was a lot of fun and everyone had a great time. That year was my first time in NYC where we saw a play, rode in a taxi, ate cheesecake in the village, got locked out of the parking garage and had to take the subway (where a police incident was happening in front of us)  back to Long Island. That was also the year I met Cindy.

We shared many Thanksgiving meals with Dean’s sister and her family. One time was in 1998, I think, when I’d just begun to hang out on the Internet. I’d installed ICQ and had made a few chat buddies. One was a young man who was stationed in Virginia Beach as a naval enlistee. I asked what he and his young family were doing for Thanksgiving and he said they had no plans. I asked if he’d like to come to Bethesda for dinner. He asked his wife and they accepted the invitation. I told them dinner would be in the early afternoon and they could arrive as early as noon. He seemed to understand. The next morning at 9:00 am the doorbell rang and Richard, his pregnant wife and their young daughter were on the doorstep. They’d arrived in Bethesda at 7 am, but felt it was too early to knock. I was teased for years after that - inviting Internet Strangers to dinner, but it felt right. And as it turned out Richard was younger than our nephew Chris. They were missing their families in Missouri and I guess we were surrogate parents for them for that one day.

A couple of years ago we went to Pittsburgh with Dean’s friend Mike to spend Thanksgiving with his sister and her family. That was a nice trip. We also spent at least one Thanksgiving with Sandy and Arieh before they moved to Chile. We may have gone to visit Neal and Marie one year as well.

After Dean’s sister’s husband passed away Diane often traveled to Bethesda for Thanksgiving. The past few years she’s come with Chris and Sheri, her son and his wife, who live in Charlottesville, VA. Those have been nice, low-key Thanksgivings where we mostly sat around and relaxed and visited with them.

This year I didn’t expect Diane, Chris or Sheri for a couple of reasons. Sheri’s folks moved to Virginia, so I suspected they’d want to have Thanksgiving with her family. Diane was planning on going to Illinois - first to be with her mother, but after her mother passed away in October, to be with her brothers and maybe help deal with her mother’s things. She ended up not going to Illinois, but not coming here either. She needed to veg out at home — something she deserves after the past couple of years.

While some people have longstanding traditions for Thanksgiving - we tend to have brief and fleeting traditions. I’m not sure which is best, but I kind of like our way.  Each year holds the promise of a surprise.

Happy Thanksgiving

Published 9 Months ago in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

 Andrew in 1998 with an apple turkey he made at school.

Exploding Pyrex

Published 9 Months ago in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

I wonder if Martha Stewart ever had a Pyrex dish shatter while she was attempting to make a pumpkin pie from scratch. I doubt it. I’d just put the two halves of a pumpkin in two Pyrex dishes and was dealing with the seeds when I heard an explosion in the oven. I thought it was one of the pumpkin halves, but it turned out to be the 9×13 dish in which it was cooking. Glass shards were everywhere and I had to toss out the pumpkin. I was worried that some of the glass got on the other half and didn’t want to risk anymore ER visits this week.

Of course I looked up “exploding pyrex” on the internet. Here is what I found: It happens, even though Pyrex folks don’t want us to use the word “explode” it happens.

Luckily I anticipated a mishap with the fresh pumpkin and bought some canned pumpkin.  The seeds turned out delicious though.

Review: A Door Near Here

Published 9 Months ago in Book Reviews and reading. 0 Comments

A Door Near HereAnyone who knows me well knows that C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia was a huge factor in the person I’ve become. I cannot say I’ll read them again, but when I read them in my mid-teens I was somehow different aftwards.

I remember devouring anything that was in any way associated with the Narnia stories and now still get a small thill out of mentions of the Wardrobe or Aslan like when I saw a car with ASLAN on the license plate outside Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago. Or when I remember the time I ate dinner off a table with a pedistal made out of the packing crate in which the Wardrobe travelled to Wheaton College.

Back when I was frequenting the bulletin boards on a forum discussing the Narnia movies I heard mention of a book about a girl who looked for the door to Narnia. I found it on Amazon and put it on my wishlist, expecting to know when I should buy it. I eventually broke down and purchased it about a month ago, and began reading it last week.

The book, A Door Near Here, is not the light fiction/fantasy I was expecting. It is a very heavy story about alcoholism that resulted in child neglect. It is about four siblings who stuck together and survived a very nasty part of their lives.

Katherine, the eldest sibling has a lot on her plate. Besides being only 15 years old, and all that that entails, she has been responsible for ther younger siblings for several years while her alcoholic mother worked long hours and dated promiscously. After losing her job, Katherine’s mother drank more and spent much of her time, intoxicated, in her bedroom, leaving her four children to fend for themselves.

When the story opens, Katherine’s main concern, apart from feeding the family from an empty larder, is her youngest sibling, Alisa who has developed a strange attraction to the woods behind her school. Alisa believes that a door to Narnia lies beyond the fence, in the forbidden woods. She also believes that if she finds the door she can bring back a magical cure for her mother.

Katherine thinks that Alisa is losing her mind and tries to disuade her from looking for the door and believing in Narnia and Aslan. Katherine’s religion teacher is no help because he seems to be meddling in her life and encouraging Alisa to belive in Narnia.

This story, although it ends on a positive note, is not a happy one. It doesn’t have the magic of Bridge to Terribithia, another book that elicits images of Narnia. The book kept me interested. The writing was never clumsy or stilted. The characters were compelling enough - not perfect, any of them. The jacket of A Door Near Here explains that the book was the author’s Masters Thesis. It is certainly the most interesting Master’s Thesis I’ve read.

Memories in the laundry room

Published 9 Months ago in friends. 1 Comment

Isn’t it funny how seeing (or smelling or tasting or hearing) certain things makes you always think about certain people, places or events in your life? I’m like that about the most mundane of objects - especially in the laundry room. Folding towels makes me think of my mom. Cleaning lint from the dryer makes me think of my friend Chris. A wooden clothes drying rack makes me think of my friend Marie.

I met Marie in the early 1980’s when her husband, Neal, and my boyfriend, Dean, shared an office at Carnegie Mellon University. She was a nursing student. She was also a birder before it was a popular or even accepted pastime. We did a lot of things with Neal and Marie in Pittsburgh until they moved back to Rhode Island. I was heartbroken. I’d not had a friendship like the one I had with Neal and Marie since — well, probably since forever.

We kept in touch and visited them a lot. We spent Easter with Marie’s boisterous Italian family and met Neil’s brother and his wife. I considered Marie one of my closest friends and asked her to be my matron-of-honor at my wedding. She and Neal flew to Illinois for the wedding and even accompanied us and our friend Paul to Wisconsin for our first honeymoon.

Over the years we’ve visited them probably once a year on average - perhaps a little less. They visited us a few times, but not as much as we did them. We rejoiced at the births of their children and they did the same for ours.

Marie and I had a few differences - I remember that we disagreed on whether or not a teacher who had no children could be as empathetic as those with children. As a child free teacher then, I thought I was as empathetic as one with kids. (Later– after my own daughter was born — I agreed with Marie and told her so.) We also had a bit of a falling out when I suggested she see a movie instead of a play of some play we’d just seen. I didn’t mean anything by it - knowing that their life was so busy with their children. It got her upset though.

The last time I saw Marie was at her Newport Beach beach house when we visited them for a few days. The room Dean and I shared had a collapsible wooden clothes-dryer and I remember Marie coming in the room one day, folding it up and putting it away. I remember thinking that one of those might be handy to have. The day we left I had a monstrous hangover from way too much wine at a party they had the night before.

We planned on visiting them again the next summer but about a month before we were to go Marie emailed us that she and Neal had separated and would probably divorce. She was shocked too, but doing ok. She said we could still visit, but it might be uncomfortable.

I was beyond shocked. I was devastated. It was like a dear friend had died. NealandMarie was dead. It was now Neal or Marie. Not that we needed to make a choice, but it felt like that. We couldn’t make a choice. So we’ve not seen either of them. We’ve both communicated with Marie through email and telephone conversations and I IMed Neal a couple of times. They both say they are friends and we should feel free to go visit — we could see both of them.

Perhaps it is the divorce, or perhaps it is just the busy life we have with two teenagers and aging parents, but New England is no longer somewhere we first think about visiting when we are thinking of vacation plans.

The last I heard from Marie, she said she was seeing someone and was doing well. I’m glad. She is still one of my all-time favorite people and always will be. I’ll always consider her one of my best friends, even if we never see each other again.

So, on days when I have a lot of clothes that cannot go in the dryer, I think about Marie and our friendship and sometimes I cry a little, but usually I smile remembering the good times we had.

Proof I cannot walk and do anything else at the same time

Published 9 Months ago in event. 1 Comment

Today started out great. I found my TomTom in a bag that I searched throughly twice earlier. I’d been looking for my TomTom for days and on Friday came to the conclusion that I just was not meant to have a GPS device (an earlier one was stolen from my car).

Today was also a film group day. I’d seen the film, so just went to help out with tickets. I got there early and talked with a number of patrons as well as the manager of the theater. We had a large number of people show up - always a good thing.

At ten I left the theater started to walk to my car. I crossed Woodmont and was stepping up on the curb in front of Barnes and Noble when I tripped* and had a spectacular fall, landing on my nose and the right side of my face. I felt my glasses bend and grit scrape my cheek. My first thought? “Gee. I hope no one saw me!”

I rolled over on my side and sat up. No such luck. A crowd of concerned Bethesda folks were asking me if I was ok. I think I said I was, then noticed the blood dripping off my nose. Someone handed me some tissues, then a car stopped, someone got out and gave me about 50 tissues. She then went back to the car and got me some “wet ones”. Those stung my face. The car left and a police car pulled up and the officer asked if I was ok and if I wanted an ambulance. Another woman asked if there was someone she should call. I gave her our number, but I’ve taught the kids not to answer the phone if they don’t recognize the number. Oops.

The policeman asked if I wanted an ambulance again, just so they could check to make sure I was going to be ok. I finally said ok. He told me to sit back on a bench instead of the ground where I’d been sitting. The woman with the phone kept trying to get through, and finally Clare answered. The woman gave me the phone and I told Clare that I needed Dad to come get me from Barnes and Noble because I fell. She gave the phone to Dean who promptly asked if I crashed the car. When I told him I fell, but thought my nose was broken he said he’d pick me up, so I told the police officer he could cancel the ambulance. (I most certainly didn’t want an ambulance contributing to the gawk-producing spectacle)

While waiting for Dean the police officer gave me some sanitary gauze, someone else gave me a box of tissues. I got lots of second glances. Another police car stopped to chat with the one police officer. That was causing more people to look my way.

Dean finally arrived, pronounced my nose possibly broken and took me to Suburban’s ER where they didn’t give me stitches (but super glued my flapping nose skin together) and where X-rays showed that my nose was not broken. Good news.

It doesn’t hurt, really. The scrapes sting a little and my nose is tender to the touch.

I look a mess though - and am told it will get worse. Maybe when it gets really ugly I will post a photo. Yeah, right.

*I think I misjudged the height of the curb. I was wearing glasses - which is unusual for me to wear them out of the house.

Now why was I worried?

Published 9 Months ago in Uncategorized. Closed

When I first met Maria, more than 17 years ago, I remember being nervous. Her husband had just been hired to the same branch office as Dean and they became immediate friends. Dean explained to me that Maria was totally blind, and had been since she was an adolescent. I’d not spent much time around anyone who was blind and even though, in my job as a special educator, I’d become accustomed to being around people with special needs, I was nervous about meeting Maria. I was not afraid of her or her condition, but I was worried that my verbal communication skills were not adequate to fully and comfortably communicate with someone who could not see my hand motions or body language. Now it seems silly, but at the time I was worried.

Maria put me at ease immediately. She may have sensed my discomfort and from the day we met we became good friends. We had kids around the same time and spent a fair amount of time in each others company. I’d take my two young children to visit with her and her children fairly often and we saw each other socially through our husbands.

When Maria asked me to help her learn her screen reading software about the time I was looking for work in the field of IT, I ended up learning more than I think I taught. I ended up putting that volunteer work on my resume and I think it was what ultimately got me hired for the accessibility specialist position at Caliber.

When Maria approached me to help her with a web page for her job seeker’s group I was happy to do so for a couple of reasons. First of all, I wanted to repay Maria for being a catalyst in getting me the job back in 2000. I also wanted to brush up on my accessibility skills, and what better way to do that than to work with the users of screen readers and other assistive devices? I was also interested in knowing how accessible Wordpress.com could be - at least to readers. (I’ve already discovered it has some glitches when creating sites).

So yesterday I visited with a few members of the Unlimited Success group. Because of Maria I was not worried about the meeting in any way. I knew my stuff and I had no concerns about talking to a group of visually impaired adults. The folks I met were gracious, welcoming and opinionated - which is a good thing. They knew what they wanted and had opinions of what worked and what didn’t. I’m more excited about this volunteer opportunity than I have been about most others I’ve done.