Even with 4 Boys Helping

Halfway through the week here and I need to catch my breath. The other day I pulled 30 square feet of English Ivy out of the ground, a vine so tenacious you fall over backwards when it finally comes loose from the soil. I felt myself strain one of my pectoral muscles someplace in there. It may have been all the raking that followed the pulling-up - and I wasn't even alone with the task! I had four strong male teens helping!Still, when the night came and I had pain running down my left arm I thought, "This is it!" - until I also felt that angry pec complaining and realized it was the day's exertions.David and I have both been waking up at 5 with the skies so bright these mornings. "I almost died in the night of a heart attack," I told him cheerfully."No you didn't," he said. Much of my family has dropped dead of heart which is why that time in 2001 when I fainted twice in two minutes the doctors gave me the full workup.I see a cardiologist still though I think I can safely stop now. I don't appear to have the Maloney heart that killed my mom, my aunt, my great-aunt, my great-grandfather and his little daughter who was ony 12. It seems I have the Sheehy heart - thanks Dad! - so whatever gets me in the end it likely won't be heart.Still, it gave me pause. See? There I am with them up top ha ha. So now I'm thinking Relax a little. Take a day off now and then from the blog.So that's what this is if makes sense to say you're taking a day off when obviously you're writing anyway .The plants I put in to replace the English ivy are adorable by the way. I couldn't be happier if I planted 12 baby bunnies out there!

How To Face Down Time

I grew up a few doors away from a girl who looked like Grace Kelly. When she was 20, she sat for a formal portrait and I can still see the strapless gown she wore for it: how the light played on those bare shoulders; how the dress billowed at her hips. That June she married and moved away. The next time I saw her she had on a hat and a high-necked blouse, and her whole torso was  encased in the tight rubber hug of a corset. She looked 50. I was 12 at the time, and I have to say: it scared me to death.Expectations for women may be subtler today, but for sure they’re still out there.Take hair colo. Women are simply expected to color their hair at a certain point. Now I always had black hair. When some grey began appearing, I thought, Fine. “But you’ll look .... old!” said the hairdressers, mournful as morticians. So then for a while I had hair the color of somebody’s liver; the color of cow-tongue even. And I hated it.I mean you care about you appearance; you want to fit in - but not that much, you know? I think of what Secretary of State Albright said once in an interview. Sometimes she dresses up, sure. “But when I work, I really work: I rub my eyes and my makeup comes off and I stick pencils in my hair.” Bravo, Madeleine! I thought, reading that“Stay attractive!” is the message the world sends women generally. Attractive and slim if at all possible. Buy great scarves if you can’t stay slim, but please: Go easy on our eyes.I understand these impulses. I want to look nice too. I don’t want to be rendered invisible, which is what this youth-centered culture does to the 'older'.At my last college reunion, I met a woman who got a masters degree a few years ago and went to work teaching women in prison. Once, she told us, somebody unpleasantly asked one of the incarcerees what exactly they were doing in this course. ’’Right now we’re reading Maya Angelou,” said the inmate with quiet dignity.My new friend beamed proudly as she told me this. Oh and did I mention? She herself is 77 and wears her hair in a crewcut tinted a deep burgundy.Maybe it was she who helped fuel the rebellion I feel building lately inside me.I’ve always hated slips. I’ve always hated pocketbooks. That hot day just past   I was doing without both, wearing just a sundress and the cellphone I rely to keep in touch with my young people and my editors. I had it hooked tucked into my bra  as I chatted with the proprietor of a shop I go to every day.It buzzed, causing me to  glance down at the little square bulge it made under the cloth. “Does this look like a pacemaker? “ I asked, suddenly wondering.“Yup” said my friend the merchant.I undid a quick button and hooked it on the hip-band of my undies.“Now it looks like a colostomy bag,” he said dryly.Pacemakers. Colostomy bags: the language of mortality but what are you gonna do? We’re all bound to age,  sure enough. I guess all I’m saying is I'd like to do it my way.

Funny Blog, This One!

This is my blogger friend Brian's offering for today. He's alone this weekend in case anyone wants to run over there and check on him ha ha. Oh, and as is the case every day, the pictures he digs up by way of illustration make things even funnier. Go here to see the site and start your day with a chuckle.He calls this one  Beyond the Horizon

 Z and I just celebrated our 34^th wedding anniversary, last weekend.

Yeah….

Go figure…right?

Time flies.

It seems like only yesterday that the judge lifted that restraining order.

And like any couple that’s been legally entangled for more than 3 decades—illegally for nearly another before that—it’s only natural to want to stretch your legs and look for new adventures beyond the horizon, just to see whatever else is lurking out there.

At least that’s what Z told me.

And who am I to argue.

No one that’s who!

Again…at least that’s what Z told me.

She was kidding of course.

Of course….

But she did ask me to drive her to the airport yesterday.

She’s making her yearly pilgrimage to Chicago to visit relatives.

Hers, I believe.

Which, once again, leaves me on my own for a few days to ponder the big picture.

To be honest, I’m not even sure where this huge picture that suddenly appeared in the living room came from.

Z says she didn’t buy it.

I know I didn’t buy it.

But there it is…this big picture, left behind for me to ponder.

As if I didn’t have enough pondering to keep me busy.

Like what’s the best way to make sure I don’t throw the wet laundry in the oven again this year.

Or forget to close the refrigerator door.

Actually that’s an unfair characterization…I didn't really forget to close the refrigerator door.

I did it on purpose.

I just thought it would save on snack preparation time, between innings of the ball game.

And it did.

Despite the fact that everything had a funny taste to it.

And the neighbor’s dog got in through the side door—which I actually did forget to close—and ate all the cold cuts, plus, what

I believe was leftover rigatoni.

But hey, live and learn…right/?

And what better time to navigate the learning curve other than when you've got a few days to yourself to experiment.

Anyway, like I said, I’m fending for myself the next few days.

And when you've been living with the same person—minus the 90s—for over 30 years, there’s a bit of an adjustment.

But not all of it is bad.

For one, I don’t need to shower everyday…why would I?

Or shave...ZZ top, bottom and sideways will have nothing on me.I don’t even need to change my clothes…who’s gonna know?

Okay, the pizza delivery guy, but is he really gonna risk losing that extra buck I throw him at Christmas.

I don’t think so….

I’m also thinking of taking my Jell-O sculpting to the next level.

I don’t want to give too much away...but think big, like in Big Top big.

And of course this gives me the opportunity to get back into my alternate treadmill redesigns.

So I have enough to keep me busy….at least through Saturday.

Sunday, I might look into lawn coloring…not sure.

And Z’s closet looks like it could use some straightening…maybe even some thinning.

That would be a nice surprise wouldn't it?

I can’t wait to see the look on her face when she sees all that extra space….

Okay…gotta go.

The goldfish delivery guy is here.

Picking Up the Pieces

Any big effort takes its toll and we sure made a big effort for the dinner we gave the other night, even if it was of the potluck kind. It was enough of an effort so that at 1am Wednesday morning I woke and thought, "My life is out of control! I can't do all this anymore! "

Then I fell back to sleep. not to wake again until woke 5am when Old Dave turned  on the lights so he could read his Robert Jordan novel.

"Hey!" I said. "It's still night!"

"No it isn't," he said. "Look outside."

I looked outside and he was sort of right: the birds were zooming around like madmen and the sky was coral.

"Yeah but come on! Barely 5am and you put the light on? Go to the Insomnia Room!"

That's what we call the room across the hall that we use for company.

"You go to the insomnia room," he said mildly.

"I'm in the sleeping-room, where people sleep! You're the one trying to do the outside-the-box thing."

Then we both fell back asleep and next thing we knew it was 7:35.

I haven't slept until 7:45 since maybe Fifth Grade. When I opened my eyes and leaped from the bed, I  strapped on my anxiety without even asking myself if I needed it, staggered to the coffee maker, ran the water for my bath and didn't come truly awake til I stepped into it.

From the tub I can see a slice of sky, which by then was the color of Heaven itself, and perceived that  maybe, just maybe, just for today I could, if I were brave enough,  let Time float me on her gently lapping waves.

And so I did.. The sky stayed that heavenly blue until almost noon, so after my 10:00 appointment I stopped at my favorite pond here and just looked at the water.

It calmed me so much I just had to take this picture. Is there another month like the month of May, even with these blizzards of pollen filling our nasal passages and coating every surface? I don't think so, no. May , with a coltish wind upon the water. Ah, May....

Cleaning Out the Bookcase

We're having a 25-person dinner here this week so I decided a month ago that I'd better fix the place up, since the living room has remained untouched since 1989. I mean we clean and all, and I guess we've re-covered a sofa or two, but still: there was a real time-capsule in the room and that time-capsule was:This bookcase.For behind the many books, which I have taken out one by one, and dusted and recategorized, I found many a vintage item:

• There was an ornament imprinted "Baby's First Christmas, 1976".
• There was two of the primitive musical instrument known as the recorder, often offered to school kids for their first attempt at music-making. I remember begging my kids to practice on this fiendish stick and then having to stifle a scream as they began doing it. Even today when I picked it up and played "Cotton-Eyed Joe" on it, I feel a jolt of electrical current worming up my spine.
• There was a video on the workings of the lower torso dating from my two year study of Anatomy.
• And finally there was a wee piece of paper that fluttered down as I removed the books. It was clearly written on a typewriter and it appears to date back far further in time than 1989. Its message:  "I wish to borrow this book and will return it in one week."

And here they all are, together.And here is the Pelvis, for your pleasure. Oh and an old timetable, also found...But where are the children who played these recorders? Where is that baby from the Bicentennial? And now that I think of it, reminded by this wee strip of paper, where in tarnation is my copy of Tina Fey's Bossy Pants  that I lent to I'm-not-sure-who 18 months and have not seen since?So much is lost along the way - sigh. Later today, I'll be putting the room back together but for now I think I'll comfort myself with watching my nice video. (Look at the lurid picture on the front! Love it! Half a pelvis is bette than none I always say. ;-))

Happy Birthday Fatty

This in honor of the recent birthday of my youngest, seen here in Fifth Grade, impersonating America's tubbiest President, William Howard Taft.For a while there, we were in danger of some real solemnity in this family; of growing downright grave what with practicing the quieter virtues. We had two children at first, both females, and I can tell you we all floated along on a great river of calm.Even when a third child had come and was, of all things, a boy, we still moved with tranquility, and for a while the baby seemed to do so too - until the day at about 12 months old when he stood up in his crib and began hollering to his stuffed animals. A certain vividness surfaced for us all then; and quiet understatement went down for the third time.This little boy’s grandmother had been a wise-guy and we all loved that about her. She died when this third child was only three so he doesn’t remember her.But I found myself calling my sister not much more than a year after her death. “I know this sounds weird, but I think Mom’s back!" is what I told her. Because this third child was a happy little wise-guy himself, and brought to the once-peaceful supper table of family life a level of hilarity we never would have predicted.He fancied toilet plungers as a First Grader, and when, at the hardware store, he saw a display of very small ones, he cried out with joy and began promptly applying them, with great sucking sounds, to his ears, mouth, and bare tummy. He asked for half a dozen for his birthday.He told us in Fourth Grade that the teacher said they would need string for that night’s homework.“What if we have no string?” he asked her. “Use dental floss,” she replied, setting herself up for it. “I can’t,” he answered with mock-sadness. “My family doesn’t believe in oral hygiene.”We dreaded the next parent-teacher conference.Around this same time, he got a new jacket imprinted, as these jackets often are, with our town’s name. The nice man helping us pointed out that with so many jackets alike, it was a good idea to have his name stitched on the sleeve.“OK!” he agreed readily  “Only have it say ‘Fatty,' he added, and three grownups could not talk him out of it.At this point he was four foot eight inches tall and weighed 72 pounds. Every spring at his yearly checkup, the doctor would say, “Due for a growth spurt soon!' And every year he would look ironically over at me.But while we awaited this famous growth spurt, we had some dandy fun.I recall the time he pulled some hair our of my hairbrush, glued it to his bare chest, sauntered into the living room and said in a theatrically deepened voice, “Dad, I’d like to use the car tonight.”When he finally turned 11^th, I remember we got him everything but more toilet plungers – and also a cake reading “Happy Birthday, Fatty.”Of course he insisted on being the one to light its million candles; then rushed into the darkened next room and made us march in with it, singing.“What did you wish?” one of his sisters asked after he blew out the candles.He wouldn’t say - some things are serious, after all - but I knew what I wished: that night. I wished we could rewind the eleven years and run them clear through again.And the 11 years that followed them too. Ah, those years too.

Bring on the Workweek

Took the weekend off. Did no work at all. Acted like a 12-year-old in that I pretty much just listened to my i-Pod, wrote in my diary and gave my feet the critical eye.I also broke precedent and looked in the mirror for a full seven minutes, which made me stand appalled by what has become of me. I have wrinkles galore, a furrow deep enough to plant carrots in and this new weird thing where my spine snakes over to the left, then doubles back on itself and snakes over to the right. Most people don't notice it until I mention it but then they see it all right. When I pointed it out to my friend Ahmad he said in his mild way, "Oh yeah! Your pants are here and your shirt is over here!"Also I'm getting these dark things on my face, like Morgan Freeman has. They're like pigmented freckles only I've never had freckles.Plus my eyes, which were always too close together, seem now to be heading for opposite corners of the room.My teeth look like kernels on the corncob you split open and then toss back in the bin. (WHY WASN'T I MADE TO WEAR BRACES EVER?) Also my bangs are too short - they make me look like Imogene Coca if anyone remembers her.And my eyebrows are disappearing.I was examining the Nike Swoosh of my spine when my man sauntered into the bathroom. I had this flannel shirt on that I found in our son’s high school bedroom.“It’s a men’s small but it’s not quite makin’ it in the buttoning shut department."Get a breast reduction,” he quipped.He was kidding of course. The real problem was about a foot further down, but maybe I should anyway. I mean, it’s too late for braces, right?Maybe I can enter these years like a sort of sprightly un-busty Mary Lou Retton. Hey, it would take my mind off the rest of me. What does a thing like that cost anyway? And why go around looking like this sadsack..... When I could go around looking like this:Well. Such are the thoughts of a person with WAY too much time on her hands. Bring on the workweek! 

Ah, Hotel Rooms!

All my talk of ironing yesterday  has me remembering the many hotels rooms in which I have stayed, wasting that great first hotel hour by ironing.(How many other women find that the first thing they do is put on the hotel TV, heave their suitcase up onto the bed, crack it open like an oyster in its shell and proceed to drag out that in-room ironing board, all folded up and hanging like a bat in the closet? After a really long trip you can find yourself ironing even your bras.)Some hotel rooms have irons free from gummy buildup, irons that actually keep  working without shutting off again after 90 seconds.Those are the good ones, and they contrast sharply with the room I stayed in on a trip just last month with tiny aphids swarming around in the john.Then there was the other room I took during that same trip whose microwave was knocked silly by the time change we had at 1am on that second Saturday in March. I don’t know how a microwave could know about the time change but this one seemed to. The morning before we ‘sprang forward’ it was just fine. The morning after it was blinking Clock! Clock! Clock ! - then when you tried to set the clock simply showed you what looked like a little snake thing doing a sort of wiggly Egyptian dance.But the worst hotel room of all was the one I stayed at in Manhattan once, with a stream of black silt continually glugging up through the bathtub drain. I could only pray it was silt. Also, the bulbs in its lamps were so dim you couldn’t read your book - the bulbs that weren’t already burned out that is . Ah the memories!The best hotel room was a tall narrow chamber on the banks of Italy’s Lake Como with a wardrobe instead of a closet and a window hung with silky golden curtains.Its bathroom had all those weird European bathroom doodads like one of those steel towel racks that never seem to work. All over Italy I went that fall of '08, staying in hotel rooms with these same heat-up-able towel racks but never did I find even one that actually worked. Maybe I was just being really stupid and they weren’t racks to heat up your towel at all but rather some contrivance utterly unimaginable to us Americans, like the bidet, which you see all over France.But so what?  In this room the best feature wasn’t the bathroom anyway.Nor was it the room’s ‘closet’, an armoire no wider than  a couple of coffins lashed together and then upended.The best part of the room was those golden curtains which I can still close my eyes and see , a whole four-and-a-half years later.Here’s a picture. May we all stay in a room with curtains like these , at least once in our lives! I live off this visual still. It looks almost like a painting doesn't it?

Life With Young Children

The fact that today is the birthday of my third and youngest child  who was not yet in the world until his sisters were five and seven, has me remembering back to the fun we had in the years raising our kids, and the sense of peace I still feel when I am among them... For In a family, you are known. You don't have to pretend or explain. They take you as they find you - even if they do take frequent joy in mocking youOn certain nights, around the supper table, one of our kids would suddenly say, "OK, let's switch roles. You be Mom, you be Dad," etc.  Then a fast improv would follow.Once, I drew the then-13-year-old; swung my hair over one eye and said, "I need money, need a ride, I need money, I need a ride..."This youngest, the then-five-year-old whose birthday it is today, once acted out his father for us in this game. He puffed out his  tummy, lay down on the floor and began snoring with a newspaper over his face.Our then ten-year-old then 'did' me. "Come to dinner, people!", she shrieked. "Come eat your dinner before I throw it in the yard!"It's instructive to watch yourself thus parodied.And there's never a dull moment, just generally in a family, because in a family, everyone comes home with tales of pain and triumph - and with funny stories too.That then-kindergartner, being new to the world, had the most stories: The story about the little girl in his class who squeezed her eyes shut and clasped her hands as if in prayer every day when she recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Or the tale of the older boy who told him he had his pants on backwards. "I can't understand it," I remember our little guy saying. " I put them on this morning and they were frontwards! Sometimes I put one pair of underpants and find out later I have  two pairs on. One day I put on a pair and looked later and they were gone!""You talk a lot," one of his older sisters observed to him mildly, after ten straight minutes of this monologue."I can't help it," he said earnestly. "School is a strong thing."School sure is a strong thing. And work is a strong thing too. We all go out each day to face strong things.I remember how the morning would come and one alarm after another would go off in this house. The sound of five showers would drum in the bathroom. Coffee would be gulped, cereal smeared and sprinkled around. Then there'd be a mad scramble to find shoes.Now too there are those same scenarios in households the over world.  Folks go out into their day and return for supper, glad to be back home.Back in the years I am thinking of now, when the children were asleep at last, we two tired parents would make the rounds and collecting stray socks. We would kiss their sleeping faces and they smelled so good; like apples, and geraniums, and fresh-baked dough.We knew that one day these children would be gone from us, and dinner would be a  far quieter affair.We were right there for sure.But today, on the birthday of our youngest who is up in his 20s by now,  I'm reminded again of how much their dad and I have loved them all; and how much they have made us smile.

Tips for the Public Toilet

A few tips for using the public bathroom:

• One, head right for the first cubicle you come to. In their natural animal desire for privacy most people bypass cubicle Number One. Hence, it's apt to be cleaner. 
• Two, DON'T be afraid to use the cubicle with the baby changer in it. This dandy drop-down shelf makes an excellent shelf for whatever you might be carrying. 
• Three, don't make a giant mess by spreading toilet paper all around on the seat for heaven's sake. Women used to be told they could get a particular kind of lice from the undraped toilet seat. Consider that is was usually men telling women that for motives one can only guess at. 
• Four, if you are a women do not try attempt to relieve yourself while crouched ten inches above the seat. Unequipped with a proper nozzle, a woman can't hope to get the 'aim' thing down and no one who follows you wants to find a seat covered with spray. Yuck. 
• Five, follow the posted suggestions and refrain from throwing in the toilet anything they tell you not to throw in there. I know the signs rattle us: one day, while using the rest room at her place of business, my sister got so addled by such a sign that she tucked her ten squares of toilet paper into her wallet and blew her nose on her paycheck. 
• Six, never flush your paycheck, as she then did. Under these circumstances it's hell to get a new one issued to you. 
• Seven, when it comes to sink-time, do wash with as much soap and hot water as you can for at least as long as it takes to sing the Happy Birthday song. 
• Eight, no need to sing that song out loud however. 
• Nine, check your heels to be sure you're not carrying a 'paper trail' out into the world. The only thing worse than that is walking out of the Ladies Room with the back of your skirt tucked into your underpants. And finally... 
• Ten, enjoy the hand driers.They're more fun than a barrel of monkeys.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTI6n66u5AQ]

The Best Laugh I've Had in a Month

The best laugh I've had in a month came to me yesterday when I came across this video, brought to my attention by Dave Hunter who  has a blog called Reaching Utopia that you can see here.  I should say that what you’ll see below is from the "funny" category on his site.  There are many other, more serious sections too.)Now kick back and relax and think on the times when you too were this young, and limber, and crazy :-)  (God I love watching people fall to be funny! I used to do that. I did just about anything to get a laugh.)[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KNXXC1tDJQE]

Turns Out You Really DON'T Need Big Muscles

It’s been a while since someone asked me to swordfight and play basketball but I got to do both Sunday afternoon. Lucky thing I didn’t have pointy high heels and an Easter bonnet on!This was with little David, my second grandson, who is five.The shooting hoops was his idea. He said I’d probably be ok at it even though I didn’t have big muscles. He pointed out that John, seen above here taking a splinter out of David’s finger last summer, doesn’t have big muscles and yet he’s good at everything. (Funny idea of not big muscles eh?)As it turned out, I proved not to be so great at the basketball part. Plus then the little boy's grandpa came out and sunk a few while holding a beer in one hand just to show he still could. (I knew the guy played varsity basketball in high school but the only evidence of all that I’ve ever seen is the tiny Medford High School satin shorts that still sleep in his bottom drawer. I didn’t know him then.)But never mind, because I was good at the sword-fighting which was my idea in the sense that I brought the swords. Light sabers they were really, newly purchased and brought to this Easter celebration just in case 'Somebody' needed a little more exercise.What I didn’t know; what I learned from little David with his cute lisp is that sword fighting is only really cool if you keep leaping up onto stone walls and back down again. That I could have done all day.Here’s how little David looks these days, ready for anything, as you can see.And here’s how I looked Sunday, just heading back outside for the re-match he challenged me too. Ah spring!

We'll Always Have Paris: On Hanging In

What Mindy Kaling says about her parents' marriage is all well and good but are WE pals, the many rest-of-us coupled up and marching together in life? Based on my experience, here’s how you can tell:You’re pals if you started married life thinking it was funny to throw cups of cold water from the bathroom sink over the shower curtain and onto your spouse, all nice and toasty and soaped up in there.

You’re pals if, even decades later, you both still laugh when one of you reaches for the drinking cup while the other is just stepping into the shower

The two of you are pals if you say nothing about the fact that a CERTAIN PERSON in the marriage never, ever wipes off the sink after shaving, leaving puddles that drip down to leave white marks on that nice wooden vanity you had to really stretch to buy.  (You used to say plenty about this habit, but your remarks had no effect so you gave up. “Pick your battles,” wise older souls have told you all along and now you get what that means.You’re pals if that person says nothing about the fact that for some reason you can no longer cook a meal without opening all the doors to the kitchen cabinets and then leaving them open. (It’s a mystery why you do this. “Creative ferment?” you try telling your spouse, who just gives you that studiedly neutral look on seeing them and before quietly going around shutting them all.You’re pals - and you can stay pals - if you can master this neutral look, as it is far safer than a smile, which can be seen as a smirk, or a gloat, or what it usually is: the ill-fitting mask for a scowl.In fact in the name of marital accord you must ban many looks, from the I-Told-You-So look to the I’m-a-Saint-For Putting-Up-With-You look. Facial expressions like these send malevolent veils out into air that twist and curl and choke off all good will in a marriage.Kaling says no, she never did see her parents gazing into one another’s faces - unless perhaps her mom was administering drops to her dad’s eyes. She says gazing isn’t necessary when you are pals and I think she's right. If you hang in long enough to become pals you can tell how the other one’s day has been, just at a glance.When I first got married, my mom started referring to my husband as ‘Silent Sam,’ as a joke, just because, unlike the rest of us in the family, he didn’t feel the need to talk until his listeners all lapsed into comas. Maybe I too wished he talked more at first, but after a time I began to ‘get’ him.I remember thinking he didn’t care that much for our little cat - until after she went missing for several days. Then one morning she suddenly popped out of the bushes. “Here she is!” he cried from where he stood in our driveway and just for a second I saw his knees buckle with relief.I think Mindy's exactly right: Spend enough time living right close to people and you can’t help starting to love them . And gazing and pretty speeches hardly come in to it at all.Oh and that's us, above . November of 2004, Paris. Gooood time!

C'mon Married People

I just finished reading Mindy Kaling’s 2012 book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? And Other Concerns, a part-memoir, and part-general-musings-kind of a book that dances right on the edge of the funny and the moving.Mindy stars in The Mindy Project on FOX, but for many seasons prior she has also played the inimitable Kelly Kapoor on NBC’s blockbuster hit, The Office. She has, in also written, directed and co-produced many episodes of both shows. No flies on this girl!One short section of the book shows what I mean about her ability to both amuse us and touch us. It’s about marriage, and her parents’ marriage in particular. She says her parents get along because they are pals. They like to talk about the same things.

"In my parents’ case, they can spend and entire day together talking nonstop about rhododendrons and Men of A Certain Age, watch Piers Morgan, drink a vanilla milkshake and go to bed."

I should point out that the name of this section is “C’mon Married People” and in it she talking directly to us wedded folk.She begins by saying she doesn’t want to hear about the endless struggles to keep the ‘spark’ in marriage or about the work it takes to plan date night.Instead,

"I want to hear that you guys watch every episode of The Bachelorette together in secret shame, or that one got the other hooked on Breaking Bad and if either watches without the other, they’re dead meat....I want to see you guys high-five each other like teammates on a recreational softball team you both do for fun. I want to hear about it because I know it’s possible, and because I want it for myself.”

That right there. That’s the what I mean about the disarming double tone:  “I want to hear about it because I know it’s possible, and because I want it for myself.”She says, she guesses that “happiness can come in a bunch of forms, and maybe a marriage with tons of work makes people feel happy. But part of me still thinks… is it really so hard to make it work? What happened to being pals?

 "I’m not complaining about Romance Being Dead – I’ve just described a happy marriage based on talking about plants and a canceled Ray Romano show and drinking milkshakes; not exactly rose petals and gazing into each other’s eyes at the top of the Empire State Building. I’m pretty sure my parents have gazed into each other’s eyes maybe once, and that was so my mom could put eye-drops in my dad’s eyes."

Funny, right?“I’m not saying that marriage should be easy, but we get so gloomily worked up about it these days.”And that part’s surely true, is it not?“Maybe marriage IS work,” she says, “but you may as well pick work that you like.So “Married people it’s up to you. It’s entirely on your shoulders to keep this sinking institution afloat. It’s a stately old ship, and a lot of people, like me, want to get on board. Please by psyched, and convey the psychedness to us.

And always remember, she ends by saying, “so many, many people are envious of what you have. You’re the star at the end of the Shakespearean play, wearing the wreath of flowers in your hair. The rest of us are just the little side characters.

And there it is: a sweet, funny and sage perspective on marriage from a single girl. Next in this space: Companion thoughts on marriage from someone more than 40 (?!) years in.

You're the Jackass

Thought for the day, paraphrasing Deputy Marshall Raylan Givens from the FX series Justified: “You run into a jackass today, OK you ran into a jackass. You run into jackasses all day long, you’re the jackass.” (Only Raylan uses a more vivid word for it.)How right he is though: Some days all you want to do all day long is pick a fight with people, only you don’t know that’s what you want. You think the people who irritate you are just idiots. even if they happen to be people you love, and you’re dying to tell them so.It’s happened to me more than once, but now I have Raylan’s maxim to help me get right in my head.I mean to use it too. Because what’s true is that on most of those days when you’re trying to pick a fight every minute the whole time what you really need  but can’t seem to ask for... is a hug.Humans! When will we learn ?

The Pit - and The Pendulum Too

This was me Sunday night, all but the rats: I was so sick I thought I was dying. That’s exactly how you do feel when those steel walls of pain close in on you, like they did for the poor sucker in "The Pit and the Pendulum" by Edgar Allen Poe. Here come the room’s walls, shoving you like dirt before a backhoe, closer and closer toward this yawning oubliette-style hole that has suddenly opened in the center of your pain - and let’s not forget that special blade of a pendulum that starts lowering down from the ceiling on the poor guy.I could feel that too, in my delirium, tickling the fibers of my pj's, then starting to slice me neatly open.What did our friend Emily Dickinson say? Pain has an element of blank, It cannot recollect When it began, or if there were A day when it was not. She was right about that, boy. Past and future fall away when pain is extreme.I tried to think of all the tasks and projects I had planned for the day and could not even remember what they were.I felt like Job on the dung heap. Like Job scraping his boils, and listening to that trio of distinctly uncomforting comforters who showed up and started proposing reasons for his suffering. You deserve this, I kept thinking, and really it’s not hard to think you do deserve many of the blows Fate deals you. In my case I have to look no further than the self-satisfied tone of my last post:  Oh! I swapped out some colors and re-arranged the decor in my little burrow!  What a clever little foxy am I!

(That's me on the right, the girl-looking one, admiring my walls. )

It was a terrible night anyway, with some vividly extra terribleness toward dawn. But then ....As quickly as it came the pain left, and one again I felt skipped over by the Grim Reaper; passed over as the ancient Jews were passed over by the Angel of Death so 4,000 years ago today. and happy be set down on the safer shores of that wide Red Sea; once again on the shores of Health and the blessed dullness of everyday life.

The Wearin' o' the Green

Who isn’t looking out the windows lately?  It’s not just the merchants who are scanning the skies for signs of spring, it’s all of us. I guess they do it so they can tie their promotions to the next card-buying opportunity that’s set to break over us. The rest of us do it so we can be ready to throw off the dowdy feathers of winter coats and walk around outdoors for a bit in our shirtsleeves.As far as the seasonal merchandise goes, I can bypass the rows of bright plastic eggs and Easter basket grass no problem.  I have a cellar full of such stuff. I can bypass the cardboard Pots o’ Gold and the leprechaun hats too. In fact, I’ve grown so resistant to the jingoism of St. Patrick’s Day that I sometimes 'forget' to wear green on the 17th, though all my family on both sides hail from that Emerald Isle. You know what I mean: this stuff:So those things are easy to do. What I can’t seem to do is stop running outdoors, because outdoors things sure are getting lively.

• A couple comes down a city street. She has blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and a baby inside so big it’s the main thing about her. As she passes, she looks down at her great belly and says to her man, ”Have you noticed? When I walk, it sways from side to side!”
• At a busy intersection in that same city I see a man with the deep inadvertent tan of the homeless.  He stirs from his seat on the sidewalk and approaches some preschoolers attempting to cross the street.
• The preschoolers file along, cuffed at the wrist to a thick soft rope, so many living pop-beads on a brightly colored necklace.
• Their teachers look alarmed at the approach of the man - until his courtliness and self-assurance win the day. He stops traffic with one long arm and with the other bows them all across.

Later, back in my own town, I stop at the post office to pick up my mail. There I find a package of home-made biscotti from a reader in Maine, a letter addressed to “Box Holder,” which acts as a bracing reminder that the world will keep turning long after I stop renting space in it; and, a handwritten note.“Your newsy bits about life help make my day, so here is your pat on the back,” says the note.“Excuse my spelling. I’m 89 years young and get up every morning.”There is no signature and no way to respond - unless I respond by doing so here.A toast then to the 89-year-old and the biscotti-maker both!

• A toast to the baby soon to be born and his swaying mama too!
• A toast to St. Patrick’s Day just past too because why be such a grouch, Terry?
• A toast to all adults shepherding every pop-bead necklace of children everywhere.
•  A toast to those little ones, fixing to one day take their place in the world.
• And finally a toast to the courtly gentleman with season’s first tan, who rose from his spot on the sidewalk to help them across the street.

Cannibalism?

While trying to fly to Memphis today I began paging through my photo stream and came upon this picture.

It was the front page of the in-flight snacks menu that American Airlines was giving out just a month ago, mere moments before they merged with US Air.I took a picture of it with my phone, it looked so strange to me.I suppose they've destroyed all copies of the thing by now, bearing as it did the 'old' AA logo and a good thing too. It looks like the man has two sandwich halves for legs. What's the guy silently saying anyway?

• "You've heard of mermaids"?
• "Eat My Legs?"
• "Try running on these babies, Mr. Pistorius!"?

Really all I could think was,  "Fire the jokers who designed this one!"

Feeling It

Hey the winter is over, storm or no storm. That old snowpack is beginning to look like the dough the pizza-man tosses over his head so as to fill it with air.Look at these winds, that are now so strong. Out my window I see the large trunk-like limbs of an oak swaying like the branches of a willow.Between the winds and this new strong sun,we're all getting kind of giddy.At the dry cleaners’ the other day, a woman I have never met turned to me as we waited in line. “I know you!” she cried. “You’re the one whose sister sings opera!”I am in fact not the one whose sister sings opera and said so as kindly as I could.“Well anyway, I know I’ve seen you at those summer concerts in the courtyard of the Episcopal Church!”Wrong again, but why say so when this late-winter thaw brings such high spirits?For sure it was high spirits that moved the tiny girl I passed at the town pond to bend over and toss her little skirt clear up over her head, revealing a paradise of ruffles on the seat of her little undies.“Hayley, put your skirt down right now!” cried her mother. “Why would you even DO that?”Silly question, when it seemed to me she did it because the geese were also doing it at the thawing margins of this chilled champagne-bucket of a pond. Down went their heads into the water. Up came their feathered bottoms, as gloriously arrayed as young Hayley’s ruffles.All I know is that something is coming and it isn’t more winter, in spite of today's snow... In spite of the fact that the Great Blizzard of 1888 that brought snow to the sills of the second-story windows began on March 11^th of that year.Even that old oak tree feels it. Day and night now, I watch its great limbs, stirring, stirring the sky like vast wooden spoons.

Just Say.... No?

I've been taking so many drugs this last week it's a wonder I haven't begun having ALL the side effects, from compulsive lip chewing to random head movements to tongue swallowing - the whole terrifying litany.These are the meds that handsome young doc gave me in at Mass. General a week ago today:There's this Flucticasone Proprionate, the real name for the drug you see advertised as Flonaze, which sounds so much like the opposite of what the drug is meant to do - I mean do you seriously want more fluids FLOWING out of your NASAL passages? -It's a wonder the team that came up with that name wasn't immediately fired.Then there's Iophen, basically Robitussin with Codeine, which I had to practically produce a passport and birth certificate to take delivery of.And finally there's this stuff called Benzonatate, which I guess I was saying wrong. Someone my age, raised on declensions and conjugations you'd pronounced that word BEN-zo-nuh-TAH-tay. I had to look it up in Wikipedia to see how you really say it (be-nZO-nuh-tate.Either way you say it doesn't it sound like every Christmas carol about the birth of the Baby Jesus?Who says the Latin Mass is dead? Give a click here. Pretty beautiful actually![youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyV01zXuW-A]