September 6 - One Year

A congratulatory kiss. It has been one year folks. I have made 365 entries in this blog. At least one photo and some rumination every day for a year. As I have gone through it, looking back on the entries, I enjoyed it. There are so many things in there that I would have long forgotten. But then there are so many things that I have now permanently made part of my history. I can't remember these events any differently than I have described them here. And all of this information is floating around out there in cyberspace in caches that someone in years to come will run across in a google search and it will all come back to haunt me.

Due to lots of encouragement, I will keep going but in a different format. I'll let you know soon. Thanks for reading and keeping up. Honestly, I am not sure why anyone thinks this is interesting. I'll never get it. Just when I think that no one is reading I get comments from strangers or friends. I really appreciate that. I shall carry on.

September 5 - Getting Ready

We are trying to get things done so we can get out of here. Why is it that we are always busiest when we are trying to take a break? It is as if people realize we will be gone and find that our presence is suddenly very important and things have to be done before we go.

September 4 - Packing

We started packing, knowing that we were going to be pressed for time in the next few days. Buttercup always helps. She has to lay on all the clothes, paying particular attention to getting hair all over the black items, play with shoe strings, hop into the suitcase, maybe even take a nap. It is all very exciting.

September 3 - Fire

We had Sue and Carl over for dinner and I was trying to build a fire outside. After the rain, our logs were very damp. I tried and tried and all I got was smoke. Matt told me to give it up. But I would not. I bet him ten dollars that I could get the fire going. He said, you are on. he did not know I had a secret weapon. I went into the basement, pulled out our last java log, and it burned beautifully for hours. We were so mesmerized that it was after midnight when we realized it was time to call it a night.

September 2 - Almost Done

Looking over the paint job. We are almost done. It does not look bad. We picked a nice dark salmon color. I will be thrilled when this is done. Then we can go another ten years without painting. Hooray!!!

September 1 - Trip Planning

I realized that we are going to California during Labor Day week and folks are going to be on vacation. I got worried that we would have a hard time getting places to stay and I was right. We had to do some work to get hotel reservations.

August 31 - My Hero

God bless my husband. I really was ready to return the Treo but he got it to work. I have to say, I do not know how the average person does it. If I did not have Matt around, I would be completely in the dark. I'd have no computer or anything else. Well I might have it, but it would not work. And Armand, thank God for you. If you were here I'd give you a big hug too. Thanks for helping Matt and knowing a great email program.

August 30 - Palm Treo

I finally took the plunge and bought a Palm Treo. (Todd, I went with a Palm!) I have a feeling this will be a love/hate relationship. We spent most of the night trying to get the email function to work. I am not completely computer dependent. For example, I have a paper calendar and I still carry an address book. I still keep phone numbers in my head. I do not keep any such information on my computer. The purpose of this device is to be able to check email while I travel without carrying my lap top. Matt has also turned me on to a curling game that I can play on it. And I can access the internet. That is worth something. But right now, I'd like to throw it out the window because we cannot get it to work right.

August 29 - Rejection

What a frustrating day. Two rejection emails. That is enough to ruin anyone's day. To make matters worse the pool was closed and I did not get my meditation in. But I have no perspective. Smithsonian probably gets thousands of essays and they can only publish twelve a year. And never mind that one essay is new and I have never shown it to anyone. So that one person reads it and does not like it and that is enough to send me into the doldrums. A rejection by at least one person in the entire world means the essay must suck. That is just not the way to look at it. But to really put things in perspective, I watched a news show about New Orleans and honestly I just have to say, Marsha, stop whining! You have got it made!

I know this is going to be a long entry, but I am going to include one of the essays that was rejected. This one has been rejected by NPR as well as Smithsonian. Well, gosh darn it, I think it is fun. It is called:

"A Big Fish"

Floating face down in the clear Caribbean water, the only sound I hear is the calming inhale and exhale rhythm of my breath flowing through the snorkel tube. The reef below is a busy marine city: mounds of coral line the ocean floor, vegetation undulates with the water currents, bright yellow and blue tropical fish lazily swim by, eyeing me furtively lest I make a sudden move. Schools of tiny white fish invisible from above the water, swarm around me, glinting in a silver flash as they dart in unison with my approach.

As I slowly kick my feet, gliding along the water's surface, a tiny white fish, the size of a small gold fish, flits in front of my mask. It turns and faces me square, its gills working, its mouth opening and closing rhythmically, as if it were blowing me O-shaped kisses. I smile at it. It studies me, and then just as suddenly swims away. I continue on, but a few seconds later, it appears again, swimming gnat-like in front of my mask. I try to shoo it away, waving my hand gently, but this is never effective for very long. The fish disappears for a few moments and then reappears, determined to stay with me. He stays very close to my eyes, swimming ahead and turning every so often to make sure that I am behind him, his mouth cooing silently. I am never sure if he is following me or trying to lead me to some unknown destination. He darts around with expectation, like a dog walking with his master, trotting just ahead but periodically glancing around, checking his flank for the presence of his companion.

After a few minutes, it seems so absurd that I start to laugh. Giggling in a snorkel mask is not very easy and I almost choke. I find a place to stand and pull my head out of the water, coughing and laughing. My husband is floating nearby and I call to him. He comes up out of the water. "What's wrong?"

"There's a fish following me," I explain. "It's right in front of my mask. It keeps looking at me." He gives me a puzzled look. I can tell that he is thinking that I have had my head in the water for too long. So I shrug "never mind" and we both go back to snorkeling.

The fish is near my cheek but I am determined to ignore him. From far away, through the water, I hear my husband burst out laughing. This time I come up. "What's so funny?"

He cackles, "The fish is cleaning you like I you are a shark or a whale or something."

Now I am thinking that he has had too much sun. "No way." He assures me that the fish is nibbling at me.

He is right. When the fish is out of sight, I can feel a very gentle tickle on my neck and chest. I have become a link in the food chain, part of the hierarchy of marine life. For all this fish knows, I am just a bigger fish and we now have a symbiotic relationship. My part is to be his protector and his meal ticket. He is doing me a favor by keeping me company and making sure my outer layer is free of the floating bits of sea life clinging to me. I feel kind of proud and at the same time strong and protective.

We swim together, me and my little fish. When it is time to get out of the water, my tiny companion follows me all the way to shore. In the shallow water, I can see him darting around my ankles. Having grown so accustomed to him, I feel a little sad. I ask my husband if I can take him home. My husband shakes his head. "He'll have to find another fish to clean." I reluctantly leave the water. Waving goodbye, I wish him well and thank him for letting me be a big fish for just one day.

August 28 - Aching Arm

I am slowly trying to get my health back. First order of business, get rid of stress. Done. Second, get some medication to tamp down the inflammation. Done. But the medicine is working slowly. In the meantime, unfortunately, I overdid it and I re-injured my pitching arm. I have been having severe pain in my right forearm and bicep for about three months. Typing is an enemy. Any sort of arm twisting hurts. I will have to stop doing my Supremes imitation for a while. That hurts!

August 27 - More Work

We spent another day dealing with the spare bedroom. here I am sanding spots on the ceiling where I have scrapped away loose paint. I sanded the wall and the old wall paper lines disappeared.

August 26 - Plaster

My goal is to get the entire house painted and we have three rooms left to paint. One room is a spare bedroom that we want to turn into Matt's office. This room has a problem. When new, the walls were covered with paper. Actual wallpaper made from paper, not vinyl, and stuck directly to the plaster. When we moved in, someone had painted over the wallpaper. This caused the paper to roll up at the edges around the window. We thought we could just peel off the paper and start fresh. Wrong. It was a disaster. We could not scrap it off. We worked on one wall and then decided that we would never get it off. Yes, I am sure that steaming or stripping, would have worked but at the cost of hours and hours of labor. We are not that ambitious so we painted over the wallpaper and the spots that we had removed. It created this topographic design on the wall. We simply put a bookshelf in front of it and forgot about it.

Ten years later we faced the same predicament. Could we fix the paper? I had a painter come in and he said that the way to fix it was to skim a coat of drywall plaster over it, sand it, and then paint. It would be good as new. He gave us an estimate for that room and two small bathrooms of $1000! That sounded ridiculous to me. Matt was fully prepared to pay but I was not. I figured there had to be another answer so I turned to the internet.

Contractors are nuts. Aside from the skim coat solution, one guy actually suggested tearing out the entire wall and replacing it with drywall, while another guy said to just cover the wall with drywall. Geez, talking about hitting an ant with an hammer. I decided that I would try my solution.

I scrapped all the loose paper. Then I got out my electric sander and I sanded down the edges where the paper was torn so that there was no ridge between the painted wall and the plaster. For a few spots, I skim coated with a very nice spackling compound. Well, it worked. The wall is not completely smooth because I am terrible at sanding plaster. But it looks much better then it did before I acted. And it saved me a thousand bucks.

August 25 - Royalty Check

I got my first royalty check from my cookbook sales. A whole $38. I'll be rich soon.

August 24 - I'm Late

I am late for just about everything. Today I was actually having a hard time getting to a 1:45 appointment. No reason except that I was just behind all day and it snow balled. All I was required to do was get up, exercise, have breakfast, shower, and go. That took four hours! I was distracted by emails and phone calls. I spent too much time reading the paper. I always have such good intentions but distracted I am and will always be.

In this picture is a little clock I made from paper. Those are paper-formed flowers.

August 23 - Lottery Tickets and Bamboo

Two stories today.

Lottery Tickets: When we went out for Chinese food the other night the meal was capped off with fortune cookies. The fortunes have lottery numbers so I decided to play them. I asked Matt to stop at the 7-11. I filled out the form but I did not do a very good job. It's been along time and there are so many more options for playing that I had to ask the clerk for help. He smiled as I referred to my fortunes to mark my numbers. I didn't win anything but darn it I had fun trying and you never know.

Bamboo: Oddly, bamboo grows all over Washington. I suppose at one time it was planted but now grows wild. I was out walking and I found some huge bamboo poles that someone had cut from their yard and left for recycling. They were beautiful and easily over 20 feet long. But they were a mile from my house and walking home with them would not have been easy. So today we went down with a saw and cut them into reasonable pieces, about 12 feet long and drove them home, very carefully, trying not to impale anyone. My neighbor asked what I planned on doing with them. I don't know but I just had to have them.

August 22 - Bra Straps

Today, I struggled to stop my bra straps from showing. In this day in age, you probably thought, why? Who cares?

I was brought up to care. I was schooled in the idea that one's undergarments were to be hidden, not flaunted or even worse, sloppily left showing because one does not care. But why should I care now? No one else does. That is exactly my problem. No one cares anymore. It isn't important. A bra strap is such an insignificant thing to care about. We should be more concerned with things that are far more important. Underwear should not even be on the radar. Indeed, girls today would never understand why we ever did care.

This is a nice way to rationalize it but in fact, when we stop worrying about these small details, we let even larger and larger issues go as well. They say if you dress casually, your demeanor becomes more casual. If you dress professionally, your demeanor reflects it. Doesn't that apply equally to life as well as work? If you dress casually for life, might you not treat it a bit more casually? Maybe you will be bit more casual on all sorts of issues. If we accept casualness, we will expect less of others and ourselves. We are more forgiving, more willing to let things go.

In my mind, this is where we took a wrong turn a long time ago. As a society, we have become brutes. Our manner as are disappearing. We are at sea if we need to have any sense of decorum because we are not taught what is appropriate. We snicker now at the idea of dressing for dinner, if we bother to have dinner at all. We shrug at ball caps in restaurants. We don't blink at denim at the theater. We don't react when women dress in ways that used to be reserved for street walkers. There are no boundaries, no limits. There is no sense of modesty or, God forbid, shame. Now there is no more shame in wearing inappropriate clothes than there is in mothers dressing their little girls in makeup and suggestive clothing, college girls starring in a Girls Gone Wild video or teen age single mothers. We as a society find reasons to forgive or tolerate all.

That is my point. Once we start forgiving bra straps, what else are we willing to tolerate as perfectly acceptable behavior in our society? It's a slippery slope. The justification that we should not sweat the small stuff because there are so many other important things to worry about just does not work. The reality is that we had collective standards for all sorts of things from dress to sexual behavior. But now we do not want to judge others or to set any moral or social standards be it on the issue of bra straps or teen sex. We just casually shrug them both off or rationalize it and go on our way.

August 21 - Barky McDougal

I have been taking my car to the same garage for about six years. When my car goes to the garage, I take it. I decide it needs service. I handle the discussions with the garage. I never had a problem with this until a few years ago, when Matt took his car to the same garage. From that moment on, I was the spouse. I became part of his records. He was listed first. I was listed second. Well that might not seem so bad except when they started to call him about my car. He would politely tell them that they had to contact me directly. But nevertheless, this pattern persisted. I contacted the manager and explained my frustration. I wrote notes when I dropped my car off emphatically explaining that they were not to call my husband. I asked them why they had this presumptuous and sexist policy. One service rep said I was not the only woman to complain but the problem never went away.

On my last visit I left a very mean note saying they were not under any circumstances to contact my husband about my car. That seemed to have worked until the next visit. I took my car in today, and not having heard one word by 5:50 p.m.. ten minutes before closing, I called. I was told my car had been ready for hours. I asked the service rep why he had not called me to tell me it was done. He said he had called and left a message. Really? Who did you call? I demanded to know. Did you call my husband? Sure enough, he had called Matt and left a message on his cell phone hours before. Of course, Matt was out of reach and unable to get the message. In his defense the service rep said he was just substituting and he called the number "they" circled. Who is "they" I asked. The service managers. I went nuts.

I gave him an entire history, years and years of begging and pleading for them to please call me directly. Pleading to be treated as my own person. I announced that I would never bring my car to them again if they did not fix this problem. He agreed to fix my records himself. He deleted Matt's phone numbers. But more importantly, I told him to put a note in my file that said 'This woman goes ballistic if you call her husband. Under no circumstances are you to call her husband or she will scream." He said he would not use those words but he would add a note to my file. I hope I have seen the last of this problem.

August 20 - Ouch!

The doctors told me that I had to lay off my weight lifting for a few weeks. Yesterday was my first day back. I did my usual lunge, squat jumping routine. Lots of abs. Well, today, does my butt hurt. So today I worked out again with a little aerobics to loosen up. Somehow in my world that logic works. Um, guess what, my gluts are not happy.

August 19 - A Day Out

Even though we get started late, we can really pack it in. Our goal was to see Superman Returns on the IMAX screen at the Air and Space Museum. We figured we would get some items off our list while we were on the Mall. First stop was the National Museum of the American Indian where I needed to get some information on a piece of art I had purchased. Then we walked all the way to the other side of the Mall to the American History Museum to see a Muppets exhibit. It was blazing hot and we were suffering with the tourists. We found Kermie but we think there was another exhibit which we never found. We did find the cafe and we spent $25 on lunch, gasp!, including an excellant gelato. Then we walked all the way back to Air and Space for the movie. We easily put in three miles. We enjoyed the movie but in this day, a big screen like IMAX does not seem that impressive given all the big stadium theaters.

We had not had a proper dinner so we went out for late night Chinese. I remember when this itinerary would have been nothing but we were pretty tired by the time dinner came. But we were also hungry so we chowed down. I simply did not want to go home and be a lump. I really try to fight those urges.

August 18 - Visitors

Matt's friend Rob and his wife Amanda along with their kids Alex and Emily came to visit. Rob is in the military and they are currently living in Belgium. They get to travel around Europe, lucky dogs. We had a nice dinner then sat outside well into the night. It started to get chilly so we started a fire and had some marshmallows. We really need to find some way to live abroad. Matt and I are the kind of people who would love it. Thanks for coming to visit.

August 17 - Summer Nights

I love summer nights. I like to sit in the dark and listen and watch. I am a four season person. I like summer nights. But soon it will be cooler and there will be a snap in the air. Then cold and winter will see us in front of the fire place. Then spring again and the blooms everywhere. I don't know if I would like to live anywhere that did not have that rhythm.

August 16 - This/That

I spent the day getting things done. The chairs in the sun room that were driving me crazy because they were too orange have gone off to be reupholstered. My car has gone to the shop for repair. The exterminator came to try to stem the tide of ants that have been on the march in the kitchen. Hundreds of ants have been trailing in looking for food and water. The drought is back. I went to the cemetary to work on my photo essay. I worked on the blog. I worked on work.

August 15 - X and the Rollins Band

We ventured out to the 9:30 Club to see X and the Henry Rollins Band. It was a trip back to the early 80's. I have seen X many times but it had been a while so we thought we would check in. I have a very strange relationship with this band. They are very accessible. The first time I saw them was a long time ago at the Warner Theater. I was in law school and I snuck into a theater with a fried. After the show, the band talked to fans outside next to the stage door. John Doe and Billy Zoom were on their motorcycles entertaining the crowd. I got Billy Zoom's autograph on a pick. A few years later I met them again in Tower Records where they were performing during lunch hour to promote a record. I'd say about a dozen people showed up. I got into a long conversation with Exene who was admiring my watch. She showed me her watch which was an antique. Turns out she is into antique jewelry and so am I so we had this nice talk about places to shop and the kinds of jewelry we collected. Well, it is 20 years later and she is still wearing thrift store clothes and it suits her. (factoid - Exene was married to Viggo Mortensen of Lord of the Rings and cleft chin fame.)

The concert was really quite interesting. The crowd was decidedly graying. I was most definitely not the oldest person there. We were first entertained by a young punk band who got an A for enthusiasm. Then Henry Rollins came out. Henry seems like such an intelligent and well spoken guy. You could see that he was having to really work up a rage. He was psyching himself up. As Matt pointed out, it was almost anti-mediation or negative meditation. He wore nothing but a pair of gym shorts and tattoos. Not even shoes. Interestingly, his hair was cut close and was clearly salt and pepper. Yes, that's what I said. He is pure muscle but oddly skinny. His legs were really thin with girly ankles. (Matt dared me to day that to his face.). He really needs to stop eating pure protein and go for some carbs. He is in incredible shape though. You have to be to scream for an hour. He has got to be close to my age and yet, he just let go. He got down into a simian crouch, I thought he looked more like Golem, and he let out the rage. He was absolutely drenched in sweat. His music is very hard core punk, lots of screaming and assault with instruments. The most interesting thing about his music is the lyrics. He is a lot like Nine Inch Nails in that one cannot ever be too cynical or down. I once saw Henry on C-Span. He was out entertaining the troops on Iraq. Apparently he spends a lot of time doing that. He has a huge tattoo on his back that says "Search and Destroy." He really loves our soldiers and her gave a big speech about how old men send young men to war.

After Henry, X came out. They really are entertaining but my fascination has always been Billy Zoom, the guitar player. X is not a usual punk band. I have always found it to be more rockabilly punk and Zoom is a classic rockabilly guitar player. He is incredibly relaxed. Barely moves when he plays the guitar. But while it looks like his hands are not moving at all, notes are coming out fast and furious. You almost think that someone else must be playing because he does not appear to be moving. And while he is playing he looks round at the audience, nods, laughs. It seems like he could play the songs in his sleep. Certainly he can play them while having three conversations. I would love to see the guy actually go into a spontaneous guitar solo. He is so good it would be awesome. But he is far too controlled, far too reserved for that.

The night ended at 11:30 so us old folks could get home and up for work the next day.

August 14 - Mom's Quilt

We finally hung my mother's quilt. It looks great in the hallway. This pattern is called stained glass. She never quite finished it. It is very heavy as it is and she felt that adding a back and batting would just make it that much heavier. Because it it not finished, from the back you can see how it is put together. This was not done on a sewing machine. She sewed every stitch by hand. It took a few years. It has many pieces of fabric from my childhood dresses. She left this piece of art folded up in a closet. She never displayed it or used it. I am not sure why. Perhaps because she never felt it was finished. Well, I am giving it its due.

August 13 - Canoeing

Another gorgeous day so we loaded up the canoe and headed to the Eastern Shore. Us and thousands of other people. We were in horrendous traffic on the way to the Bay Bridge. We observed along the way that there is no packing problem that a bungee cord cannot solve. Pyramids of chairs, bags, and beach stuff perched on car after car, none looking terribly secure.

We picked a river in an area we had never visted, the Corsica River with access at Centerville. Unfortunately the tide was out and the area we wanted to go into was not accessible. So we just paddled around for an hour watching osprey hunt for fish. We canoe. We do not kayak and people often ask us why. Well, it is simple. Kayaking is hard work. In a canoe, you are two people working together to get the boat to go. In a kayak you are one person. It makes all the difference in the world. it really does exemplify the difference between team work and trying to do something without support. I guess kayaking is good if you do not have a partner to go out with. it is something you can do alone. But if you have someone to go out with, why take on the extra work of two people in separate boats? Why not canoe?

August 12 - Bike Ride

It was a gorgeous day and I went for a long bike ride. I decided to try a new route. My bike book touted it as a ride through corn fields and farms. Well, no longer. The crops are now McMansions, growing in every field. The map in the book was not accurate because the roads have been changed to accomodate the growth. I got lost several times. With all of the stops to figure out where I was, turning around, and getting on course, it took me about 2.5 hours to cover 25 miles. It was a nice day and I got some sun and fresh air. But it is disappointing to see the farms disappear. For McMansions no less. What is the point, people? Some of the houses made the White House look like a shack. Amercians marvel at English manors. Why? You can go buy a house in Howard County that is about the same size. Who lives like that? Who has the time to live like that? I sure don't. There was an article in the paper about the kind of people who buy these large homes. The reasoning is that it is an investment or a response to the competition of having the largest and best. Most admitted to not using many of the rooms, most admitted to having to hire help for upkeep. These must be the same folks who buy Hummers. It is senseless but somehow they rationalize it out to work for them.

August 11 - Moonglow

I had a busy day, running errands, cleaning, working. Matt is under a crunch at work so I am trying to help out doing his house duties. I came upstairs about 1 a.m. and I was drawn to the balcony. The moon was high and bright, not quite full. It was a beautiful day, not hot, and the evening was downright cool. Good camping weather. The night sings, crickets and frogs produce a steady soothing sound track.

August 10 - Vacation

We finally got down to planning our vacation. Here is how it goes. We wander around thinking about all of the places we would like to go, all of the places we want to see. Then we get out the wish books--maps, travel guides. We check the internet for fun trips. Then we check our wallets. The guiding factor. We decided that this year we would take a little trip. We want to save our money for next year. We had agreed on a California driving trip. But then our wishing and dreaming kicked in and suddenly we were checking out the Canadian Rockies. We were totally into it. But it was very expensive. We batted around the idea of going, money be damned. We are not saving for anyone's college education. But then we came back to earth and said no, we have to save money. So California it is. Here I am looking at travel books, still wishing and dreaming. Matt has long since gone to bed.

August 9 - Amadou & Mariam

I am totally hooked on Amadou & Mariam. A couple from Mali, both blind, they have put out a record, "Dimanche a Bamako" that is the groovinest, most pleasant, most danceable record I have heard in ages. I have been listening to it sometimes three times a day. I just stick my earbuds in and dance around the house. Great stuff. It is difficult if not impossible to describe. First off, they are singing in Mali or French so who knows what they are saying. I just mimic the sounds as I sing along. There is a hint of reggae, a bit of world beat, a little acoustic soul. Just go to itunes or Amazon and give it a listen.

August 8 - Speeding

Oh dear, I am a speed demon. I guess that is not a surprise to most. Here I am displaying my speeding ticket. Bless that young kid who pulled me over. He stepped right into the highway and pointed at me. I hate when they do that. I am so afraid that one day an officer is going to get hit. He pulled me over while Matt was sitting in the passenger's seat on a conference call. Everyone on the call heard me get the ticket. Everyone had a big laugh about it. Doing 74 in a 55 mph zone. I am sure the officer was being kind to this middle aged lady. My car goes 80. That is its general speed when I am behind the wheel. If he had cited me for 80, I would have gotten points. He gave me a break. Little did he know that this was my third ticket this year. I already got two tickets at a photo speed trap in D.C. Those tickets are not reported. It is just a way for the city to make money and to slow down traffic in a particular spot. In this case, it took me two tickets, $50 a pop, to learn to slow down on that block. Then I just race off after I am away from the camera. I learned nothing. For the city, it is a convenient ATM machine directly to my wallet.

I have been driving since I was about 14. My earliest memory of driving is sitting on my Dad's lap steering while he managed the gas. I was really young. Then as I grew older we raced around the neighborhood and through the fields on our scooter. Sort of a precursor to the motorcycle, or a cousin, that was a beautiful antique machine. I wonder what happened to it. Soon I was driving up and down the road in our cars or trucks. By the time I got to driver's ed, I already knew how to drive. The class was required so we would just drive around chatting for an hour. When I was in college, I had a guy offer me a stock car to drive in a powder puff derby. He had seen me drive. I declined but I am sorry now. If I got that offer today, I would seriously consider it. My boyfriend at the time was a mechanic and drag racer. No kidding. He had a souped up Chevy Nova. And when we went to the drag races (official ones) I would not get behind that wheel. I would just watch him. What an idiot. I should have tried it. Youth is wasted on the young.

Since I work from home and I do not commute, I do not drive in traffic as much and I have lost that aggressiveness that comes with rush hour. But I have never forgotten how to speed.

August 7 - Bean People

I have always maintained that I am shaped like a bean. Let me illustrate. I have heard of apples, pears and even bananas (tall skinny folks). But no one ever mentions the bean. But we are out there. I have had this shape since I was a teenager. I have skinny arms and legs, a bit of a sway back and a bit of a pooch. That's it. A bean person. Bean people don't have skinny waists. no no. We have the nice Eastern European thick middle. No waist at all. Matt does not like it when I call myself a bean but I say it anyway. I even have a song. Bean bean bean I am a bean (I am a bean). It goes on from there. I have a song, now all I need is a club.

August 6 - Quilt Hanging

We are preparing to hang a quilt that my mother made. We have a huge stairwell that is just made for something this large. Matt put up a rack and I am attaching a sleeve for the pole.

August 5 - Shower

We travelled to Pittsburgh to attend a bridal shower for my niece Rebecca. She is getting married at the end of September. For entertainment, we split up into teams and designed a wedding dress made out of toilet paper. Our team won. Where is the picture of that? Well, I forgot. You'll just have to imagine it. Lisa, our model, looked stunning.

August 4 - Just Shoot Me

Put me out of my misery. I am beat. I was so wound up last night (from talking) that I could not get to sleep. 3 a.m. came before I settled down. The planets seem to be aligned so that everyone seems to have lost their collective minds. The world is on fire and in my own little world, everyone wants to sue.

August 3 - Talk Talk Talk

Today I was ready to rip the phone out of the wall. I have spent the last week on the phone. Hours and hours of listening and talking. I measure everything by my death bed longings. I certainly will not be on my death bed wishing I had spent more time on the phone or listening to myself talk. Honestly, it is not that interesting. Oh how I long for silence. I miss my quiet monastic life.

August 2 - Mar-s-h-a

I saw a lady on the news tonight who spells her name like I do--I spell my name with "sha" as opposed to a "cia". I am always very excited to see or meet other Marshas since we are so rare. We are also different in personality in the same way that Johns differ from Jons and Bill from Wills.

August 1 - Cat Whisperer

I love to whisper to my cat. We have secrets. Cats love secrets. When they hear secrets they purr.

July 31 - Bloody Mess

I dropped a tea cup and it shattered. Somehow a shard pierced my skin and hit a vein. A scene from Psycho ensued, blood everywhere. The point of this is not the cut. The point is that I dropped the cup because I was trying to make more room in the cabinet for more stuff. Time for another purge. Why do we have all this stuff?

July 30 - White Water Rafting

Our trip took us to southern West Virginia to raft the New River. The brave folks with me and Matt were our friend Armand, my brother Michael and his daughter Anna. Michael braved the front of the raft with another lady, Ellen who joined us. They got the brunt of it of course. Matt went out of the raft on the first rapid and took Armand with him. (Someone did not have his paddle in the water.) The water was at a good level, the weather was nice, the water warm. The New River is a good class II-IV river with some beautiful scenery. it is crossed by the New River Bridge, the highest single arch suspension bridge in the world. It was particularly spectacular from the river below. Good paddling.

July 29 - Sheetz

Here in the city you don't see the Sheetz very often. But when we are on the road, they are everywhere and we are really starting to love them. This company, born in Altoona Pennsylvania and still family owned, has been making a concerted effort to become the all around rest stop and it is working. This trip we did a taste test. We tried one of their fresh made sandwiches. The results were surprisingly good. The Buffalo Chicken wrap was excellent. As crazy as it sounds, two thumbs up for Sheetz.

July 28 - What Should I do?

Believe it or not folks, I have been at this for over 300 days. I don't think I have ever stuck with anything so consistently for so long (except the Bush pictures lining the litter box which has been six YEARS!) I am thinking about whether I should continue blogging. What do you think?

July 27 - Love/Hate

I have a love/hate relationship with my yard. I love to have a garden. I love growing flowers. But I hate taking care of it. Well, that is not completely true. If I had the time to tend to it I would love it. But there are moments in my life, like now, that I am so busy, that I cannot see straight and having to pull weeds is just a burden. I need some help around here. Oh, my dream is to have a staff. A gardener. A go-fer. A handy man. Someone to help me get just a few things off my list that have been on there for more than a year (and there are plenty).

I actually said to Matt I wish I was more single-minded about having fun. Now most of you think I am nothing but single minded on that score. But I can do better. I am not going to die thinking, gee I wish I had cleaned out the attic first. If it isn't clutter in the attic it is painting or cutting the grass. The list never ends. So why bother trying to keep up. It will get done in the end and if it doesn't, well the world won't end. I believe there is a critical mass for chores. One can ignore that one particular chore for a while but it keeps getting closer to critical mass until one day you say, I just have to deal with this! Then it feels soooo good to get it done.

Do the best you can I say, and just make sure your list of fun things to do is kept short because you are always crossing things off.

Here I am in my asparagus patch. The ferns are huge and the asparagus is tiny and twig like. I have not been able to find very many spears that are nicely edible. But I understand that it takes a while for a patch to mature. This is my second year and I think it looks promising.

The rest of the garden, not so good. My tomatoes came out early and are nearly finished. The tomatoes I grew are delicious and one vine had softball size tomatoes that are just gorgeous. But the vines are done producing. A vole is eating the roots of my zucchini. I can't seem to get rid of him. He is awfully cute. We have seen him poking his nose out from under the box. But one year he took down my cucumber and this year the zucchini looks like the victim. My spinach drowned from the torrential rain. My grape vine has no grapes. We are completely puzzled. We have had grapes in years past. We did move the vine two summers ago and I figured this year it would produce, but nothing. The stars this year are Swiss chard, arugula, and lettuce.

July 26 - Alzheimer's Disease

There was a feature on the ravages of Alzheimer's Disease on the Newshour with Jim Lerher (the only news worth watching) and it just got to me. They were showing a woman whose husband had suffered from early onset of the disease. At 70 she was taking care of him as if he were a baby. Watching it brought me to tears. My mother had Alzheimer's. Unless you have lived through it, it is hard to understand. Certainly not enough people understand that this disease will be the next cancer or AIDS. It is that grave of a crisis because it impacts the elderly and as the baby boomers age, our hands will be full. The medical establishment only has theories about why this is happening and there is certainly no cure.

A person with Alzheimer's Disease slowly loses higher brain functions. Before your eyes a person fades away, first the memory goes. Then the more critical thinking, the language skills, the emotional rationality. Inhibitions disappear as does any sense of self control. It as if the person is regressing through time from adulthood, to teenager to child. Imagine an 80 year old having a three year old meltdown. The disease eventually gets to the bodily functions. But it does not get to the basic body controls such as breathing and the heart. So they live on and on in these incapacitated states. You are no longer connected to them as the personality, the memory has long since disappeared. This is truly a heart breaking disease that is far harder on the caretaker than the patient who after a while is not aware of the change in their life. We watch it happen and they slowly forget it is happening. Luckily, my mother seemed to know who I was to the end but there were moments when I was not so sure.

We were very lucky because she did not have to suffer to the end. She fell and broke her wrist and this sent her into a medical collapse as broken bones in the elderly often do.

If anyone has endured this, I'd love to hear from you.

July 25 - Cobbler

We love cobbler. I think I love it more than pie. We had a big discussion about it because my childhood memory of cobbler is with clumps of biscuits. But every recipe I have calls for a crust. We called Sue and Carl to ask if they thought this was a North/ South thing since they are from the North and South respectively. They did not know. Well, I found a discussion in Cooking Light and indeed, the Northern version of cobbler is biscuits, the Southern version is a crust. I made a peach cobbler because the peaches are absolutely to die for this year and we have been eating them like mad. I do not like ice cream on mine. I put on some vanilla yogurt instead. Yummy!

July 24 - Litter Box

Okay. If you are a person who likes George Bush, skip this entry. If you are a person who believes in civil public discourse, don't go any further. If you would like to poke George Bush in the eye, read on.

We have a small area where we keep the litter box and I cover the floor with newspaper. For the last six years, ever since he was elected, I have been lining my cat's litter box area with newspaper that has pictures of George Bush on it. For six long years, week after week, I scour the pages of the paper for Bush pictures. Sometimes I include others in the mix using GOP standard bearers or members of the administration--Ashcroft was popular, Karl Rove, Cheney, and DeLay. Sometimes I pick on Frist or Brownback and definitely Santorum, if I can get them. I have included some dastardly types--Ken Lay, and Ralph Reed. All have sat under my cat's pooper. The litter box itself is lined with plastic bags but under those I have some perennial favorites like the editions declaring Bush the winner. Those stay always. I have a Ronald Reagan calendar there too. I threw that in for the heck of it. It is actually amazing how much Bush stays out of the paper. I have to keep a supply because he can be mighty elusive. I am going to miss DeLay. My supply of his pictures is dwindling.

July 23 - Badminton

We are crazy about badminton. I don't mean that whimpy sport that Americans play in the back yard. I mean the shuttlecock that can travel up to 200 mph badminton. This game is an Olympic sport that we never see. It is hugely popular in Asia--places like China, India, and Indonesia. A few years ago Matt and I took a series of lessons at the local badminton club from a Chinese guy. He could not speak much English but he was a great teacher. Unfortunately, because the lessons and the club met very early (who can start something at 6 p.m. in D.C.?) we could never get into it seriously. Trying to make it to lessons for 8 weeks was hard enough. The members of the club were very serious, many of them were Indian and they grew up playing, and we were just beginners. We did not have a chance. I'm not highly competitive in sports anyway. I actually never participated in sports in school. It just was not my thing. (I was also required to work first and so I never really had the opportunity even if I wanted to try.) I never had that instinct. I am someone who is much more comfortable competing with myself. I always feel bad for the underdog. I don't like to beat people badly, nor do I like to lose. I just want to have fun and have a game that is lively enough to enjoy. We learned enough to make the game interesting for us and every summer we go outside and put up the net.