No Problem Too Big

I take just one drug in a teeny-tiny dose every morning which is said to save me from indolence, obesity and a persistent sadness whose most visible sign is something called “shark mouth.” Its  side effects meanwhile? Only the usual array: sleep problems, nervousness, sweating, and increase in both appetite and weight. Small potatoes if only there weren't now several new challenges in my life, among them:

One: I spill on myself. It’s like when I was pregnant and my arms weren’t long enough to get the food to my mouth, only now I spill because I eat while sitting at my keyboard which I have to do because of my commitment to keep bringing twinkly prose to a weary world. My solution: I wear a bibbed chef’s apron whenever I sit down to write. Instant fix! And it looks pretty comical too, especially when it’s only over my bra. (“What’s THIS?” said Dave the first time he saw it last week.) This picture here gives you the idea though I guess the baby isn’t mine. Or the apron. Or the body.

Two:  The bathroom is now entirely too far away for me to get the aspirin I so badly need nights as my little broken kite of body torques around a progressively twisted spine. Also, it’s too far way to get the coffee I need immediately on waking. I long ago set up a coffee pot in the bathroom because the kitchen was WAY too far away but now the bathroom seems too far too. What I want is to get that coffee pot right next to my bed so it’ll be like that scene at the beginning of "Pee Wee’s Big Adventure" where he wakes up and here is his breakfast cooked and delivered by a series of clever little gadgets. You can see that below if you can bear to watch Pee Wee, the sly fox, building a career by mocking childhood. (Anyway that’s what Mr. Rogers said about him and I believe everything Mr. Rogers ever said.)

To see what shark mouth looks like click here.  Meanwhile, enjoy the idiot Pee Wee. Oh and my Levoxyl-requiring disease? Mild hypothyroidism AKA Hashimoto's. No big deal. In fact as common as ants at a picnic so..... once again today I'm feeling grateful!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYyD55elKJA]

Rare When It Happens

Rare when it happens that the room you rent looks even nicer than it did in the brochure. I drove yesterday to Portland Maine to see two college pals and am staying at a B & B called The Pomegranate Inn. A month ago when I first saw the picture that opens up on their website I said to myself “That’s my room!  And it’s on the third floor, up under the eaves, high among the treetops!”) The three of us walked and talked tirelessly for seven straight hours and all I could think when I turned the key and walked into room 3 was “where's the bed?” I turned on the tiny television for a few minutes for the inanity of the 10 o‘clock dramas (yet more body parts found in urban settings! yet more lady coroners in low-cut lab coats joshing with yet more engagingly boyish members of the law enforcement community! ) then slept and dreamed of peonies and cotton balls and Oscar Wilde. And when I woke this morning I understood why:I am in a room with intricate hand-painted walls where the bright ocean light is positively ladling in through the windows, onto the bed, onto the walls, onto the fat and cheerful pillows. The place looks exactly as it had in the promotional literature and maybe better and how often does that happen in life?Speaking of Oscar they say that even as he lay dying he was funny. The story has it that right near the end he turned his face to the wall, opened his eyes and said “Either this wallpaper goes or I do.”I have always imagined that wallpaper looked quite a lot like this. But me, I could look at this wallpaper forever - and I’m just betting this room is every bit as nice at dusk on a clammy November day as it is right now at seven on this high-summer morning.

A Clean Well-Lighted Place

I’ve stayed in plenty of hellish hotel rooms  - the one with sludge burbling up through the bathtub drain, the one where the single dim light crackled and went out the second I flipped the switch, the one whose door I opened for the first time to find it already occupied by a naked guy just toweling.  This past weekend though I stayed in the best hotel room of all, in the on-campus hotel at Indiana U - which amazes me mostly because on-campus hotels are usually pretty sad. I know I've never been able to stay in the one at Brown without feeling that I slept in a minimum security prison facility.But this one! It had 1930s-era casement windows! That actually opened! And when they did open they let me look out a stand of old trees under whose canopy lay  a tiny churchyard, where, for those three nights, the dead slept no more deeply than I did 60 feet above them.I took this picture at dawn of my second day and what a calm state the view alone put me in - or maybe it was the perfect pillows, four per bed. Or the fact that the bathroom, done in 1940s-era tiles, looked as clean as a just-polished diamond. All I know is I felt safer and more ‘held’ in that room for those three nights than I have felt since my baby days when I lay watching a summer sun creep up the wall by my crib and knowing that soon the kindly Tall People would come to lift me high and set me down in a brand new-day.

Dollar a Pound

When my oldest was 14, she hassled me continually about my nice cheesy clothes with the wonderful shoulder pads so flattering to the hips.  “Get RID of the shoulder pads!" she would cry, and also “Why do you want to wear new stuff when you can just as easily wear used?” This from deep in the flannel and denim rags she had scored from Dollar a Pound, a clothes emporium with a huge scales in the middle that shares space with The Garment District with stuff was a tad pricier, meaning jeans and men’s suit coats might set you back 4 or 5 bucks.I hadn’t been to these two stores since the early 90s but I was there this week with three 16-year-olds, and how they exclaimed over the costume section with its American Flag platform boots! How I exclaimed over the gorgeous wear-‘em-with-nothing-over-'em dress bras with their spangly mesh trailing down over a bare tummy! And then - and THEN - I came upon rack after rack labeled “80s Clothes” and almost lost consciousness. Here were the tops I‘d been so unsuccessfully scouring the department stores for! The filmy long-sleeved blouse done in flowing polyester! The smart short–sleeved one done in faux-linen! The high-necked cinch-waisted black velvet top that flared up and outward like a flower vase! I felt like Daisy Buchanan sobbing into the creamy silk and linen togs of the soldier she wouldn’t wait for and so lost forever. “I’m … I’m crying because they’re such beautiful shirts,” Daisy said, near to hiccups with emotion and, well, now I was crying too. I was crying because they were such beautiful shoulder pads. I bought all three of those tops, PLUS a wonderfully flaring skirt, PLUS two long trailing scarves that smelled only a little like an attic - all for just $45.The kids paid about a third of that on their own whimsical togs.Then we snapped each other’s pictures, took in some learnin' at the Museum of Science and caught “Away We Go,” starring adorable John Krasinski of The Office, that master-of-the-deadpan-look, and all I can say is Talk about your rainy day fun!

Girls For Sale

Here’s the latest Believe It or Not: I found a bunch of bathing suits that come with the ladies already IN them. And OK, yes they’re made of see-through plastic and are missing their insides and their arms and their whole back half but still they have the important stuff, meaning,  ahem, 'bweasts', that fill out the suit very nicely.“Wo they’re selling ladies! “ I cried when I came upon them in the bathing suit bin at my local BJ’s. Four other shoppers whipped their heads around to stare at me, but I couldn’t help it: they reminded me so much of the Visible Woman I got for my ninth birthday and oh the fun I had painting her little pancreas and tiny colon!She had breasts too, which were highly interesting to us kids since our mother was so modest she practically hid in the cellar to change. As a result Nan and I grew up in ignorance. What were breasts anyway? WE sure didn’t know and we were girls! We called them ‘lumps.’ “When will WE get lumps?” we asked each other.And now here were all these bathing suits that came with them! I picked one up. A two-piece, nice. Little black shorts and a kind of overblouse, cute. Made by Jantzen, a reputable house.I grabbed one and brought it right home; put a fright wig on its stem of a neck and propped it up on the bed next to Dave who said “DO NOT take a picture! OK DO NOT put that picture on your blog!"So I took her into the study and propped her up against the window so you could see her.She’s amazing , right?  She even has a bellybutton!  I love her.She goes with my skeleton, the next best thing I bought in the last six months.Now all I need is a bag of innards and there’s my kit: Visible Woman '09 here I come!

Valentines Day Proves Pane in the Glass

Seen at left : the busted paneOn Valentines Day, I left two guys here for an hour while I went out to buy a special little supper for One of Them.

I was at the store when the One called.

“You may want to come  home now,” he said in his best this-is-no-big-deal-so-don't-over-react voice. “The cat broke a window in the study and you need to decide if you can work in a different room for the next six or eight weeks.” (“Wait, the cat?” I thought. "Wait, the STUDY? The room I spend all my time in, in every single day of my life?!"

The Second Guy was our carpenter friend Mel who was here fixing one of our old curved windows, whose upper and lower sashes don’t even meet anymore never mind lock, thanks to the Funhouse-style dip the whole house took at some point in its long life. He’s been spending six or seven hours per window around here lately, fitting precisely carved shims of wood into the frames to TRY making rectangles out of parallelograms.

And on this day he was in my study with one pane of glass out and leaning against the bookcase. But when he turned on his electrical drill, it startled our sleeping cat Abe so much he leapt a foot in the air and shot toward the door, knocking some books off the sofa arm and propelling them bang! like a couple of missiles straight into it.

I felt sad because it was such a great window with its wiggly glass that made the whole outside world look moist, and trembling - new-made almost.

I don’t know if Dave felt sad. He didn’t say he did but I recall how sad he was the time our three-year-old put a similar crack in one of these old windows just as was working so patiently to re-glaze it. He had to sit in a chair and stare into space for an hour to get past it. And I remember too how ten years later when we finally had enough money to replace that curved pane of glass it took eight long weeks for a new one to be made.

At least it was warm then.

It isn’t warm now. It’s freezing in here as I write her, and the noise of the street is drifting up through this hole-in-the-side-of-the-house where a window used to be - in spite of the plastic sheeting Mel taped over it:

The whole thing kinda took the shine off Valentines Day I think because in the end David didn’t want to drink wine with me and ate my nice little supper standing up at the kitchen counter.

I guess it didn’t matter. It was just a bunch of stuff from the Prepared Foods Aisle. And all I really wanted to do was go to bed and look up at the moon.  “It's a new day tomorrow!” I told myself.

And when the new day arrived and I put on a coat and came into this room I found it so filled with the smell of the outdoors that I could tell right away: with the snow melting pretty fast now something very nice is starting to happen with the soil: it’s coming back to life.

So I'm content really – and heck I still I have two other windows to look out of.

Be Glad of it All

Here’s why I’M thankful on this last day of the long giving-thanks weekend:1. I don’t have to peel anymore slimy flesh off a turkey. The soup's all made and I'm done sifting through gunk to find the tiny bones.2. I’ve decided I’m not going to even TRY doing the dreaded Holiday Card until January since I have new book just published and it'll be all I can do to get the word out about that.3. The book is an audio book so I didn’t have to annoy the socks off my whole family by asking them to read it for errors. I just closed myself up in a back bedroom with some fancy sound equipment last summer and let fly – and amazingly enough it doesn’t seem to embarrass me to listen to it because my old pal Roger Baker out in Albuquerque not only took out all the swallows and lisps and hiccups but also added original music between the ‘cuts’ so it’s all pretty and nice.4. I can actually SORT OF of swing a golf club even though my spine is twisting up like a contortionist with this secret scoliosis I didn’t even know I had, never mind a neck with so much joint-degeneration in it the guy doing the X-rays in at Mass General in October said, “Wo! Whadja, fall out of a tree or something?” I’m taking these lessons and my head hasn’t fallen: amazing.5. I’m not sure but I THINK I’m getting to be less of a workaholic. The whole neck problem comes from being such a wonk all my life, actually hand-writing term papers in fancy Old English script in high school, taking notes on my notes all through college, bringing entire pieces of furniture on ski vacations to strip and refinish them. (Picture it ! Whole SETS of chairs! Entire bureaus!) Last night before supper I was able to spend a whole hour locked in a locked closet with my four-year-old grandson without once feeling like Patty Hearst or panicking about all the emails I wasn’t answering. A little later I asked him if he wanted to hear the world’s greatest tenors and put on a CD which I had thought was Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo but which turned out to be the soundtrack to the Kenneth Branagh movie of Hamlet. “Where’s all the singing?” I said after we'd listened for a good two minutes. “Shhhh! TT” whispered my little friend, putting his finger to his lips. “This is just the part where the curtain is going up!” I liked that. I really liked that, because it reminded me to feel thankful AND glad AND lucky that...6.Yet again this morning whatever shape we find ourselves in, that big old curtain went up for us all.

Enjoy ALL Da Holidays - BLEAGGHHHH!

Last week at the supermarket I came upon a bin of a half-price Halloween stuff which was exciting for me since I'm always JUST A LITTLE late for every holiday besides which: I do love a skeleton.

I'd just begun examining one bald and clattery dude, thinking maybe THIS is what I can use to explain the pelvis to little Eddie Marotta, four, when suddenly the meat guy heaved out of the back room, bloody apron and all, and hollered “Buy him! The guy is crying out for you to buy him!” - and pressed a button on the top of this dude's plastic noggin and what do you think? - he stuck out a six-inch tongue and said something sort of harsh and smart-aleck-y in the voice of a Rodney-Dangerfield-style comic.

I bought him on the spot and he rode around in my van for six days, his bony feet and his domed skull just peeking out from the top of the shopping bag. Then yesterday he came inside for our uncle’s 88^th birthday party.

Little Eddie was there but he didn’t make much of him – kids are so over these talking toys with their microchips and their scripted remarks. His innocent angel of an 18-month-old brother, however, took one horrified look and practically jumped clear out of his Pampers.

As to the rest of the fam, they just shook their heads and said it was a pity SOME people didn’t understand that these were hard economic times and excuse me but what happened to restraint? TERRY?

They were just jealous, the losers. They're always jealous.

Luckily they were all cleared out by 9 o’clock this morning when I set my buddy up in a coupla different spots and took some pictures. You see him silent at the top and delivering one of his jokes here below.  I'm leaving him around til Christmas Eve I think when I finally put up the tree because, face it, the guy is so suave already; just think how great he’ll look in an ascot and Santa hat, clutching a big old cup of egg nog!

"Hit me!"

Locked Out, Rained on, AND I Have a Bad Accent

BOY was it hard to get up and hurry away Wednesday morning with all that post-election excitement in the air. Our babies had slept over so their two mums could watch the returns at our other girl Annie’s house where the food is always so yummy. They had asked and I’d said Sure we’d love to have them only I couldn’t really help much in the morning since I had to leave at 6 for my turtle-crawl out to the Albany Times-Union for a noon appointment. "I mean I won’t be able to make bacon or scramble any eggs or pick them up warm from their beds and kiss their little faces" I told them  But hey they were sleeping HERE, remember? they were coming back HERE after, and they did come back and I could have left at 6 like I was supposed to only, well I just HAD to make them all some bacon and scramble them all a few eggs so it was 8:30 by the time I left and I raced over that Mass Pike and screeched into the Times Union parking lot at five of twelve, shirttails flying.

And two hours after that I had to be at the big Public Radio station to record these little essays for WAMC’s wonderful morning show “The Roundtable.” Co-host Sarah LaDuke set me up and away I went, reading my copy, squeezing all the personality I could manage into the teensy holes of that mic, being so careful - not to ‘pop’ my p’s for one thing but also because I do seem to have a bit of that ol' Marky-Mark Boston accent and it’s embarrassing when you’re talking about a low-carb diet and everyone thinks you’re referring to corn cobs. and really the  whole recording for the radio thing is just this wickedly hard high-wire act for me, a do-or-die, here’s-180-seconds-kid -don't-screw-it-up kind of thing and by the way couple million people are gonna hear it. Whew!

And after all THAT I got lost on my way to the hotel and it was dark and cold when I got there finally and then my key wouldn’t work so they gave me a new key.  No dice. Another new key along with an escort by the maintenance man in case I didn’t know how to slip a plastic card into a slot but STILL no dice. A third new one and my escort and I remained locked out of my room, and this time he swore in Spanish and winged that key clear into the meadow outside my sweet suite of rooms in this nice little Residence Inn.

Finally, totally exasperated after trying yet another key he said, “Look, can you just stay inside tonight and like NOT GO ANYWHERE and I’ll replace the lock in the morning?” And I said I sure could and Management gave me a free Weight Watcher frozen dinner and a free Duraflame log for the cute little fireplace and I did JUST HAPPEN to have a fat 24-ounce Budweiser from the gas station I filled up at 30 minutes before so tell ya what: I crawled into that bed with my food and drink, watched maybe 11 minutes of post-election excitement and was  sound sleep by 8pm, safe, and full, and shut up tight in my room just like it was my baby days again and this was my nap. :-)

Heaven's Gate

Foreign Travel Experience commences on Alitalia flight with Long Oyland woman across aisle braying for first two hours about places been to. (“Newpoht! Oh my Gawd when I tell you! Newpoht is very hoy-tone! And Santa Barbara? And last years when we did Hawaii?!”) and on and on ‘til panic mounts so high take out carefully prepared home-cooked food brought along just in case airline offers only one greasy cold-cut and a hard little fist of bread for breakfast. Consume in 90 seconds, then OOPS here comes Italian flight attendant, dead ringer for David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust to deliver small packet bagely pretzels swollen like dead fish in the tank.

“No!” think, “not good for!” then flip package, read fine print in Italian: “Nutritional Constituents” it reads, with, underneath, a rundown of ingredients, all meaningless to non Italian-speaking self; decide, heck, sucker its own constituents. MUST be good.

Eat, in two bites.

David Bowie returns, offering liberal pourings red wine, miraculously free of charge (provided airline ticket price not taken into account.)

Five minutes into vino, while listening to Long Island lady exclaiming in gravelly voice about Rodeo “Droyve,” Bowie comes yet again, this time with piping-hot school lunch look-alike: grey roast beef with grey-green broccoli both floating in taupe-colored sauce.

Turn up nose. Finally, take single bite. Stuff totally delicious! Suck up every bit, mopping gravy with napkin, practically.

Bowie approaches one more time, asks "Lasta leetle bita wine, Senora?"

Say "Maybe a touch heh heh."

Twenty minutes on, tummy full to bursting and with Long Oykand woman’s accent ringing in ears, fall asleep, not to wake til three-quarters of the way across Italy with air so clear it’s like something straight out of Central Casting, Alps themselves stretching their necks to tickle belly of plane.

Possible scenario: Plane actually went down mid-flight; wine-bearing angel on board, Heaven ahead, and this its front door.

Politics!

 So Sarah did OK. She smiled her face off. Sometimes it's all you can do. Never let ‘em see ya cry, I say.

Now should Joe Biden have the skin on his head yanked up so he can see again? Or DID he have all that head-skin yanked and that’s why his eyes have a slightly Asian caste? And how about them chompers?

I had forgotten he lost his wife and child in a car accident in the 70s but that second wife sure is nuts about him. Everyone should have someone who looks them in just that proud way. Unconditional positive regard, that’s what the shrinks call it. That’s what Jesus was handin’ out. We all need it who doesn't? And so what if he had some work done ? You make huge mistakes in your life, you lose people you love, then you wake up one day and notice you’re still here. Might as WELL get a hairpiece if that’s what it takes to put a bounce in your step. Strap on that colostomy bag and keep on dancin’!

I haven’t been able to write in a while. The inside of one ear got sealed up with dead skin and ear wax so I went deaf. Then the dentist opened my head like I was one of those Russian dolls. Last April my tongue turned black on account of Listerine's Teeth Whitening Mouth Wash which caused most of the flora in my mouth to die and the fungus to flourish – they were mushrooms basically -  and though THAT felt pretty bad, all this last week felt worse. Also I wet my pants twice but not in a urine-involving way.

Stories too disgusting for a blog I know; I put 'em in my column instead - (BIG smile! -  so WATCH THIS SPACE ON SUNDAY just before I leave for Italy. I’ll put it up above here where it says "This Week’s Column." Meantime you can read about my favorite four-year-old there.

That’s it for now. I sent money to my favorite campaign again. Still waitin’ on the buttons they said they’d send back. Gonna put a couple on our cats, the real ambassadors of our neighborhood but I’ll still have a lot left. Give me a shout if you want one, yo. Meantime, let's remember our manners and let cool heads prevail :-)

Wednesday in the Park

Today it's raining though my column for this week evokes a sunny day. It's raining and Wall Street is crumbling but I look around and see this:

1) People moving about and smiling at each other's dogs just the same.

2) Acts of kindness: the liveried man outside the big hotel notes my troubled face when I find his lot full and takes my car for me and parks it smack in front and charges me just ten bucks though I am gone nearly three hours.

3) The chance always for a smile: The Gypsy Rose School of Pole Dancing is right there beside the fancy photographic studio where I am going to get my picture taken because the Girl Scouts have asked me to as a former Leading Woman. Ruth Bramson, the great new CEO of these Girl  Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts, wants to activate all us former Leading Women; hang our portraits and get us back to mentoring those 55,000 young ladies, which is more than fine by me. Last year, when I offered a class for their Beyond Bars program I had so much fun my face hurt from smiling. (Beyond Bars brings Girl Scouts and Brownies into our two women's correctional facilities so they can have their troop meetings with their mums.)

But I guess what I should say is that I saw these things rather than that I see them because it was yesterday really and the sun shone just as it did the day I wrote this column which you will also find at the top of my home page here.

So let's have some pictures of that day now: The smokers referred to there, looking so calm and iconic you'd think they'd been there forever, like the hillside they sit on. 

The new and the old: Boston City Hall finished in 1968 and therefore brand-new in our minds,  juxtaposed with the Old North Church of "One If By Land Two if  By Sea" fame built almost 300 years ago: 

 

 

And finally a man waiting for what he needs to feel normal...

 

    

...which is all any drinker is trying to do when he drinks: Just feel normal. Just feel the way the rest of us feel when we get up, come sunny day or rainy day. We stand and stretch and the molecules sing and the bright blood froths and even the dourest among us must think - HAS to think - "Thank you God, for quick life and this new day to enjoy it in."

May He - or She - watch over us all today, the dogs and the pigeons, the smokers and the drinkers, the pole dancers, the troop leaders and the elected officials especially in whom we have placed so much trust.

Dorks on Segways

I came to DC for the AARP 50^th birthday bash and convention Thursday night because I knew I'd get the chance for a bargain-price Segway tour. That was my secret REAL reason coming here but then two things happened: (1) I found out that a tall athletic way-younger-than-me fellow columnist shattered her pelvis riding one and (2) I saw what dorks people look like traveling in them.

So thus far I’m grounded but I’m still having fun. There are thousands upon thousand of people here in the gargantuan Convention Center, and not that many with grey hair either since the organization starts romancing you the second you turn 50. I invited my friend Pat to come with me. Her registration fee was 30 bucks and mine was just $20, so never mind that they make it ridiculously easy for you to come to this annual wingding but you also get all kinds of deals on hotels, rental cars, insurance, airfare, etc. etc. 365 DAYS A YEAR. (I read recently that 40% of the population will be over 50 by something like 2011 and how frightening a thought is THAT, kids?)

The last time I was in DC it was to sleep 30 to a room with a bunch of teenagers who jumped over every parking meter they saw and kept chinning themselves on the ceiling rails of the subway, so the company is different this time but the spirit's still great.They’ve got Martina Navratilova and Magic Johnson, Cal Ripken and the agelessly crinkly Shirley McClaine. The last two nights there were concerts by Natalie Cole and Chaka Khan and Chicago and tonight the big headliner is Paul Simon who I sometimes think is my cool older cousin so familiar is his every song to me.

Barack spoke to us by live feed this morning and 5,000 people were clapping and stamping their feet. And Maya Angelou and Quincy Jones who are having a little visit with us in the auditorium that seats like 500,000 are just plain bringin’ down the house.

I say 'are' because I’m in this auditorium as I write. 'She' just asked 'him' if he enjoyed doing Killer. He was up all night flying home from China so so didn’t quite catch the reference.

"Uh, Killer Joe?" he said.

“No NO!“ said Maya in that deep school teachery voice of hers. "I’m talking about that big album you did with Michael Jackson!”

When she realized her mistake she laughed harder than anyone and slapped her knee besides and I thought HERE'S a person that would NEVER worry about bring thought a dork and I’m just wondering now: is it too late to scare up that Segway tour before my flight home at tonight?

Long as They Don't Do it in the Street & Frighten the Horses

Today Uncle Ed and I went to our favorite place, the little pond where we both like to watch the ducks dip their heads in the water and show everyone their underpants.  We had just been to his dentist which took forever and made him grumpy (“Who gets fillings at 88”?) and I was fretting generally. I had dashed into the supermarket for some hot barbecue for him and I of course had my sad little soggy salad from the last night's dinner which looked like somebody’s stomach,  not the nice fat part you can rest your soft drinks on but the organ. (This is what Old Dave does with all leftovers: he shovels them into plastic bags. The man is great with clean-up but I do shudder to see those plastic bags, which really do resemble an array of body parts there in the fridge which sometimes look like they’re pulsing.) Now now here we were there at the pond, Ed all grumpy, me all anxious and blue, my secret favorite Bad Day Combo.

On a whim I asked him if he minded my leaving him here to look at the water while I took a very quick walk to clear my head, and on that walk which lasted all of 18 minutes I saw a sight: A couple on a bench wrapped in a Hollywood-style embrace, lips locked.  HE was ardent; kissed that girl for longer than it takes to asphyxiate someone, and with that whole head-moving-around thing thrown in. SHE was tentatively accepting, if practically bent over backwards by the force of his enthusiasm. After one mad tonsil-assaulting smooch he suddenly stopped, stood up in front of her seated self, knelt down as if to propose, then stood again quick, made his whole body as rigid as a plank and lowered himself like a man doing a push-up to land on her…. chest sort of while the whole time still kissing her and kissing her.

I had only walked past three times in the last 90 seconds while pretending not to look but I bet she felt me. I bet she felt us all, the joggers and the cyclists and the wheezy old guys with cigars.  “Watch it there pal” is what we were saying but we needn’t have worried: Out of the blue the girl suddenly brought her foot down BANG! on the pavement once, twice, three times to get her man’s attention pushed him away and in two seconds excessive adoration was put in its place: they were sitting up nice side by side and once again thanks to Womankind civilization was saved. SAVED I tell you!    

Funkytown Roadtrip

The world looked so pretty and clean this morning I started to think I was in Disney World. Dogs were grinning from the windows of their master’s trucks and the early morning light made the distant hills look like big old lions rolling their muscles. “These two hours will pass in no time!” I thought as I rolled from Central New Hampshire over to Portland Maine.

Only then I began noticing that about every 100^th tree was infested with tent caterpillars whose webby nests look like cotton candy caught in a sandstorm.

Only then I saw a skinny old lady dressed in Barbie doll-style togs close her car window on her own dog’s chin. She did it slowly but she did it on purpose – pushed that button so fast to get herself some coffee it hit the poor thing smack under the jaw.

Only then I saw a porcupine who was worse than killed by the car that sealed its fate; I mean yeah it was dead but it also had this long red rope-looking thing coming out of its stomach. It looked like a sweater somebody decided to un-knit. It looked like a vacuum cleaner whose plug someone just pulled from the wall…

And all of this WOULD have really harshed on my mellow - until I passed a little phone-booth-sized structure up on blocks in somebody’s front yard, wooden, shingled-roofed, with the classic crescent moon carved into the door and in leaning against it a big hand-painted sign saying “For Sale By Owner.”

It was an outhouse of course but a new outhouse or a slightly used one? I was darned if I knew, but tell ya what, just the very thought of an enterprising spirit like that had me smiling the whole rest of the way to Portland.

National Boo-Boo Day

Yesterday was the birthday of Crisco, Crisco being LARD , pure pig fat, and right next door to mercury in terms of being in the doghouse these days but I tell ya what: you want to make a really good fine pie you’d best dig out the Crisco.

It was also Chinese Lovers Day, Editor Appreciation Day, and National Best Friends Day, though I didn’t make a pie or love any Chinese people either. I did get to thinking about Chinese Handcuffs which like a lot of things (Iraq, Viet Nam) are easy enough to get INTO but a whole harder to get OUT of.

I didn't do much about National Best Friends Day either except annoy the socks off my designated best friend/spouse talk about your Chinese Handcuffs. He was annoyed because he had JUST TOLD me that TVs with DVD players in them suck on account of how the DVD part breaks and then were are you and what did I do but directly disregard his advice and go buy that very thing. He hates it when people fail to take full advantage of his sagacity. Especially when it’s his moron wife who should know better but what can he do? Even if on nine levels I test his patience like you wouldn’t believe on that tenth level he finds me irresistible. (Smug smiley face goes here.)

But I guess I DID celebrate the day a little cone to think of it in the sense that I file my column on that day of the week and so appreciate my editors afresh on account of the crazy mistakes I bad make in my typing, especially right at the last second before I press “send.” Once I was trying to tell about this teacher who liked the kids and was liked in return but what did I end up writing instead ? “She licks the kids and the kids lick her” and no spell-checking program on earth would ever find that gaffe. It takes an editor, right? And so for the zillionth time THANKS GUYS and here's to boo-boos all around. Now let’s eat us some pig fat and catch some nice Olympic swimming!

Here's the pig fat: OH ya!

Jiggling Eyeballs

No sleep the night before last. Forced to try old trick of hanging head off edge of bed while watching old movies upside down. Ten minutes of Deborah Kerr with hairdo like a Chia Pet’s and am out cold. But whoops deadline day so up at 5 to write with manic panic. Break at 8 to bring ill-fitting clothes to tailor Bob who cut off his ponytail. Needs to attract the ladies again, says. Uses internet, says. Finds it all quite the task since main thing you need to find out fast is, Are they fat. Says you take 100 women over age 50, only six are attractive.

Am entertained if offended for the sisterhood. Then Look at watch. Cold sweat starts run down sides. Race home, coffee up, resume madly writing then oops it’s 11. Column done and filed but 87-year-old uncle sitting in his apartment for an hour waiting.

Go get him. Buy food for our quick day-trip/ field-trip north to the summer place. Score food for the journey. Stuff cats in their carriers, pop ‘em in the car. Get gas and drive 90 miles up I-93, making wider loop for sake of scenery. Take wrong turn off 104 seeking yet more cows and horses; 45 minutes extra for scenery more dubious. Bladder distress for cats, man 87, woman over 50 wondering could she could POSSIBLY be one of six if she wets her pants.

Get to the lake at last whew, ahead of every other family member. Within ten minutes husband arrives. Then chef daughter Annie. Then daughter Carrie with spouse Christine, stroller, bibs, young'uns. One person gets sand in pants. One tried eating rocks. Uncle has couple belts. Carrie and Chris cook up youth foods. Carrie hops in shower in sports bra 'n bikini briefs, one child at the knee and one in arms. I feed Uncle. Husband David inspects beach sand for squirrel BMs. Annie produces 15 golden-trumpeted squash blossoms from farmers market, begins stuffing with ricotta cheese to bread and deep-fry. Uncle and I can't stay. Drive 90 miles south. Drop him his apartment 9:35. Tear to the mall before 10, hoping to get busted phone looked at, hopefully fixed. “This little machine is DEAD" says gum-chewing tech at Verizon Store. Store closing now, grill coming down; no more Blackberries like this in stock anyway.

Wobble homeward, thinking of them all at summer place. Iron for reasons unknown. Turn out light midnight so as to be up at 5 and back on the road by 6 to do child care with Auntie Chef Annie and Dave while Carrie and Chris leave kids behind to go to a wedding. 6:30 now, late again here. Eyeballs jiggling. Headache and back pain. 6:45, get in car. Picture family all still sleeping, old guys fishin' in cove. All this Just 90 miles to the north. Be back up there in no time. Picture sun just warming deck and loons up and off for breakfast.

The Angle of the Dangle

Smith College the 1930s:Fire Drill/Escape the Burning Dormitory Trick

These gadgets were still in use when I got to Smith, just moments before college kids everywhere exploded into the flesh-baring, headband-wearing joy of the youth movement.

The girls in the picture are just 18, whether they look it or not. That’s when you had to do: take the Escape from Your Burning Dorm Room test as a freshman just a few weeks in. They look like they’re trying to hang themselves eh? Some of them look like they’re even OK with the idea.

I used this title just to be fresh of course but when I first typed it I wrote “angel” instead of “angle” which made me wonder if I should call this 'Angels in Danger', or maybe 'Angels Descending' and there’s my problem right there: I never know who’s going to be talking when I open my mouth, either that nice girl with the white gloves who started at Smith in 1966 or this crazy person who in talking about life with small children says the word 'penis' twice in front of an audience of kindly women in beautiful sundresses.

That’s what I did yesterday when I was the speaker at a luncheon put on for the members of the Winchester Boat Club. I guess there were 125 of 150 of them there, all in lovely sundresses and little shawls. Out of respect I wanted to dress beautifully too and at first put on a few killer outfits only to think Who are you, the bride? What is this, a short story by William Faulkner? I stopped then and called darling Ryan Dunn to wake him up, Ryan who helps me with much of my business life- only being just 19, Ryan was of course still sound asleep with his cell phone off. I thought “Be calm Terry.” Also “DON’T be a show-off with these fancy outfits" and so wore black slacks and a blazer and looked instead like a matron in a women’s prison but that was ok; we are meant to set self-consciousness aside are we not?

I really was getting a little panicked now about who would help me lug in the all my books which I had been graciously invited to offer for sale after the talk. I called Ryan four more times, then dialed up his dad at work who called their famous neighbor Bob Bigelow who walked straight into the house, straight into Ryan’s very room adn yelled TERRY MAROTTA NEEDS YOU AT THE BOAT CLUB GET UP I'LL GIVE YOU A RIDE and if you don't think getting yanked into wakefulness by a six-foot-seven former Boston Celtic isn't scary, well talk to Ryan.

The day went great anyway and the women laughed as I talked about all the fun we can have in life and also how we might die any day, all of it mixed in together as is usual with me. It's just my standard mode of expression I think, Funny With Death in it, Deathy With Fun in it. And right at the end one of the men that works there came shyly up for some small talk.

He told me his wife is about to have their fourth child who was pretty sure coming early. He also said that his dad had just died and his mom was feeling a little rocky and when he said that his own voice caught just a little. He ended up choosing the book with all the comical stories about small children in it and also the collection whose central message is that that OK sure maybe everything does die but then it all comes back again if you look at it the right way. Then he and his men helped Ryan and me get all our stuff back into my little red minivan and we drove away and the skies opened and the rained drummed like crazy on the hot asphalt and I felt about as happy as a person can feel, with angels descending all around her.

(and this is Ryan, who finally woke up and was wonderful)

Be My Friend? Look, Here's My Allowance!

 Yesterday I seem to have invited everybody in my entire Contact list to be my 'Friend on Facebook' talk about embarrassing, since some of my contacts are famous people. Like Gloria Steinem. And Garrison Keillor I think maybe. And the POPE! and the Center for Wart Removal in Atlanta, and OK yes I’m making it up about the Pope and the Wart Lab but not the others. I HAVE these addresses but I never use them - or I use them only sparingly.

For example when I was younger, see photo, that's me in the chair sobbing, no of course not, that's me the mother, sorrowing over the first haircut... When I was younger my mom died at a party right in front of us all just as we were toasting her birthday, and this highly shocking event caused me in the 2 or 3 years following her death to do all kinds of odd things: Like wearing hats, I think to channel her old jauntiness. Like CRYING while giving speeches that were suppose to be light and funny, making the whole audience cry too, talk about your Typhoid Mary. And like writing letters to famous people.

I wrote to Ronald Reagan and sent him the column I did about him when I saw him in Concord NH. I wrote to the Prince of Wales after seeing him at the 350 birthday of Harvard. I remember sitting in the Yard looking up at all those ivy leaves declining like Latin nouns down the sides of the old buildings and thinking 'Damn you Ten Thousand Men of Harvard, why did you keep my kind out for like 99 % of your history?'

I wrote to Garrison Keillor when I applied to be the first Journalist in Space. I had mentioned him in my application essay and have always kinda figured that's why I got to the final 40 in that contest.

I even wrote to the great John Updike when I read a short story of his in the New Yorker that made it apparent his mum had died too. I sent him a condolence note and a copy of the column I wrote about Cal’s dramatic death – that was my mom's name, 'Cal', as jaunty a name as she was a person, a cigarette held tight in her teeth as she took the corners on two-wheels to get us to that convent school she enrolled us in by mistake where she was in a fight with the nuns from DAY ONE.

And they all wrote back, these famous characters: Ronnie R. wrote right back. The future King of England did too or at least His Honor Lord High-Fanny of the Royal Equerry wrote on his behalf. And Garrison Keillor and John Updike sent actual postcards, John Updike's saying a thing so nice about my writing it pulled me up out of obscurity like the wave of the Bibbity Bobbity Boo wand of Cinderella’s fairy godmother. In fact just last month he had another story in the New Yorker, this one so beautiful I was forced to write him again and what do you think? Another postcard came, as gracious as the first.

Now 15 years had passed between my first letter to him and my second, that's how careful I am. And I wouldn’t DREAM of writing to the Pope even if I had his email address, and the same goes for Lord High-Fanny who gave me some serious attitude in his letter just because my column said Prince Charlie wore the academic hood of his alma mater whereas in fact he wears the robes of the University of Wales just because he like OWNS Wales or some insignificant thing like that.

Gloria Steinem though? Gloria’s address I was saving for a special occasion, like offering myself to come be the jester at the next Inter-Galactic Women’s Conference. And now – agony!- my girl has called her girl if you can call an Address Book a girl and I seem to have asked her to be my friend on Facebook! The Queen gets invited to the worker bee’s after school party, Aaargh I could die! But, on the other hand in the last 24 hours I've heard from people I haven’t seen in decade and have admired their pictures and have written on their walls so why be embarrassed? Because really we're ALL members of the Class of '08, right? So really, why NOT write in each other's yearbooks?

Hide-a-Key

I love my post office, not just because it’s so neat and compact, so Neo-classically civic in that built-in-the-1930s way, but because it’s such a beehive of activity. Outside this place it I have had my fender bumped, been bitten by a swan and seen an elegantly dressed lady pull back her head like a snake and spit! into the bushes. Once I even got propositioned there by a man 20 years my junior. (It happens, ask any woman who smiles a lot. It says nothing about us and everything about Testosterone and the bald truth that Nookie-Hope Springs Eternal in the breasts of those roiling with it.)

I live in the Aleutian Islands, of course. I say that so you won't try going to Post Office and wrecking things for the cheery 50-something man I’m going to tell you about now: He was bounding up the steps just as I was bounding down when I ran into a woman I know who stopped me mid-bound on the third step. As I stood talking with her and facing back up the steps in the direction of the Post office’s broad façade, I saw this man suddenly shoot straight up in the air, sweep his hand long the lintel over one of the windows and land with a look of immense satisfaction on his face.

“What did you just do?” I asked him.

“I keep my the key to my Post Office Box up there. This way I never have to worry about forgetting it!”

Now how adorable is that ? Just when you’re thinking everyone is lost in cynicism and mistrust along comes a sweet Jack-in-the-Box of a guy like this. It's what I love about life on this earth.

And now if you'll promise to respect his privacy and not swipe his key and steal all his mail I’ll show you a picture of my Post Office, which I harvested just now by Image-Googling the name of my town in the Aleutians and the word “Neo-classical.”

And Whoops! what do you think came up as well? A Neo-classical picture of ME in the tub after a long day’s writing, where hey I mean you can totally SEE why the young guy hit on me, eh? A babe all right, even WITHOUT my Wonder Bra on!