This week’s photo challenge is about viewing the sun from a perspective other than sunrise and sunset.
Sun shining on ocean, Virginia Beach
Sun shining through stained glass window of little Episcopal church in Stonington, Connecticut
Sun peeking between buildings, New York City
Taken from inside Abalonetti Seafood Trattoria, Fisherman's Wharf, Monterey, California (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
When I taught math, one thing I drilled into my students was to consider if their answer was reasonable. Sometimes students would insist that they had checked and rechecked their answers and their computations were correct. They we’re frustrated when I’d tell them to read the problem again.
“Does it seem reasonable to you that these people would buy 25,000 square yards of carpet for a house that is only 1600 square feet?” I would ask. They’d think about it for a second, realize they had miscalculated somewhere, and take their paper back to figure out where they went wrong.
The reason I bring this up is because I received a call from my girlfriend Joanie a few days ago that left me scratching my head. Her daughter is getting married in a couple of weeks, and we had sent them a bunch of things off their bridal registry.
“Susie, the kids are here, and they wanted me to tell you that you are very generous,” she said. I thought that they had gotten all the items we had sent them, but apparently everything hadn’t been shipped at once, and they had only gotten one item.
“You must think they are very messy people,” she said.
“What are you talking about?” I was puzzled.
“I’m talking about the 64 cloth napkins you sent them!” she said, laughing.
On their bridal registry they had asked for one set of eight napkins at $2.49 each. As nice cloth napkins usually cost no less than five or six dollars apiece, the price of $2.49 apiece was a bargain. However, the person who filled our order took it to mean that one entire set of eight napkins cost the $2.49, and since we had asked for eight at that price, he or she assumed we wanted eight sets of eight. I was charged $19.99 for all 64 napkins. Now either an entire set of eight napkins cost only $2.49, in which case you should consider ordering the Harvest napkins from Bed, Bath, and Beyond, or someone wasn’t thinking of the reasonableness of that order. If it’s the latter, I sincerely hope it wasn’t one of my students.
” What type of oil did you cook the squash in?” my husband asked the other day.
“I sauteed it in olive oil and a little butter,” I told him, surprised by the question. A few days ago he asked me how to make salad dressing and memorized the proportion of three parts oil to one part vinegar. My husband does not cook, though he can do a good job of hamburgers or chicken on the grill. And he can fry an egg. But anything fancier than that is beyond him. I got an emergency call from him one Friday night a few weeks ago when I was in Michigan visiting my daughter.
“I’m trying to make frozen pizza for dinner,” he said, a question hanging in the air.
“And?” I responded, confused as to what that question might be.
“What temperature and for how long?”
Now I understood. We had bought a three-pack of DiGiorno pizzas at Sam’s club, and I had to take them out of the box because the box took up too much room in the freezer. Since they were individually wrapped, I didn’t need the box, but of course, the directions were gone.
“Twenty three minutes at 400 degrees,” I said. There was a long pause as he processed that.
“Do I take the cardboard off the bottom before I put it in the oven?” I had to cover the phone so he couldn’t hear my daughter and me laughing hysterically.
So this morning at breakfast I was gratified again when my husband asked another cooking question because I assumed that means he wants to learn how to become more useful in the kitchen. He wanted to know what seasonings I had used in the omelette.
“Fresh basil and a pinch of Aleppo pepper. I’ve noticed you’ve been asking a lot of cooking questions lately. A lot of questions but nothing in practice.”
He smiled. “One step at a time.”
Tuesday night 49-year-old Jamie Moyer of the Colorado Rockies became the oldest Pitcher ever to win a major league baseball game. This morning I read about Hiroshi Hoketsu, a 71-year-old man from Japan who will compete in individual dressage in this Year’s summer Olympics. Later this morning I will have to face Ruth in yoga class and watch her beat the yoga pants off me as she gracefully bends, twists, balances, and holds those poses for impossibly long periods of time while I crumple into a puddle in child’s pose halfway through the session, silently screaming, “No more!” Did I mention that Ruth turned 85 this week?
My problem is that I’ve come late to the game. Growing up I was a girly girl and hated any kind of contact sport. My definition of a contact sport was any sport where something could come in contact with my body, such as a volleyball, a baseball, a shuttlecock, water and air. Now I am trying to remedy that. I joined the YMCA when we moved here three and a half years ago and try to go three or four times a week. I’m walking more and going to yoga twice a week.
You would think starting so late in life would make me want to take it easy, but it has just the opposite effect. I want to make up for lost time. I’m trying to find the right sport for me, one that will make me feel cocky and powerful. My daughter has taken up running, but my knees and hips can’t take that pounding. Plus, I don’t like sports that make you sweat, or glisten, as ladies in the South do. My granddaughter is on the swim team, so that’s a possibility. I don’t have to get my hair wet, do I? My daughter-in-law does kick-boxing. I might be able to do the boxing part, but I can’t get my leg up high enough to kick. I’m starting to eye that equestrian sport as something that would work. I mean, you get to sit down, so how hard can it be? Doesn’t the horse do most of the work? Of course, those cute little costumes must be hot, and that would make you sweat, so I might have to rethink that. I’ll get back to you when I’ve picked the right sport. Maybe you could offer suggestions. Here are my requirements: find me a sport where you don’t sweat, don’t run out of breath, don’t have to lift heavy objects, does not involve people throwing things or hitting things at you, and you get to wear cute clothes. Oh, wait a minute. Golf. Is that really a sport?
This past weekend we went to the Norfolk Botannical Gardens to see the azaleas, and I came across these two trees. They fascinated me because they were nearly mirror images of each other, standing stately and tall with branches just on one side of each of their trunks. Because they were so close together when they were growing, the side closest to each other was devoid of branches. It is as if these two trees complete each other. They make me think of a good marriage. Two people growing side by side, completing each other.
Last weekend, when we were up in Boston visiting children for Easter, we all went to the Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Though we may detest the thought of whaling now, it once was a thriving industry as whale oil was a precious commodity before other forms of fuel were found. The museum was a fascinating place, bringing the majesty of these incredible, awesome creatures together with man’s struggle to capture them.
The scrimshaw displays were amazing. Such artists to carve tiny, intricate things into ivory! I peered through a little peephole in one of the rooms and saw the tiniest diorama.
What made a surprising impact on me, however, was a little fifteen-minute film that played in their small auditorium. It was about what fishermen have to go through today in order to bring us the fish we buy in the supermarket. It’s not like wrestling that fleeing chicken to the ground and hauling it in a truck to the store so I can fry it up with mashed potatoes. Fishing those big fish is downright dangerous! From the early days of the fishing industry, men have lost their lives bringing us those fish. Tuna and swordfish and other large fish live way out in the ocean, and storms can toss about a fishing vessel with devastating effects. If you have never seen the movie The Perfect Storm, you should. You will never take for granted that piece of fish on your plate again. Once, when we visited Gloucester, Massachusetts, we saw a memorial to all the fishermen who had lost their lives in that community, including those shown in that movie. Sobering! Thank you, Gorton fishermen!
I always have these grandiose plans to manage my life in order to be productive, efficient, and satisfied. I give myself pep talks, set goals, get excited about how much I’m going to accomplish and how happy I’ll be with myself after I transform my life. Then I get started…and fizzle out in a sickeningly brief time. And I’m the only person in the world who does this to herself.
No, I’m not talking about the Paleo diet plan, though with my record, that will bite the dust eventually. I’ve actually stuck with that for a solid six days now. Whoo hoo! But I was posting a blog nearly every week day, without fail, reading all the blogs on my blogroll plus others from people who have made comments, building up my readership to an acceptable level, and feeling like I was on a roll. Then, I took a week off to visit my daughter and did no writing at all. And it felt…well, liberating! When I returned, I wrote one blog post before we took off again to visit our other children. Again, I did no writing, and even worse, I did no reading. This time it didn’t feel so liberating. It felt crummy. Even when I tried to get back on schedule, I couldn’t come up with anything to write about. My creativity seemed to have deserted me. And what is even harder to swallow is that I’m the only person on this entire planet to have this problem!
I have no excuse. I get in a cycle of procrastination, and the longer it goes on, the harder it is to break out of the cycle. It’s like I’m in a giant centrifuge, spinning wildly, my face flattened from the force, my body helpless to move. I want someone to grab my arm and pull me away. Have you ever felt like that? Of course not. I’m the only one in existence who is so pathetic.
Okay. Enough of my sniveling. I apologize for abandoning you and pledge to do a better job of using my time wisely. I’m going to make a schedule for reading and writing as well as exercising, cleaning the house, doing the laundry, practicing my music, grocery shopping, and cooking, as well as fitting in my volunteer activities. Oh, no! I just read over this list and I’m getting weak knees already. But I’ve got to try to get my life back on track, because I am the only human being in the universe who has this problem.
I have finally returned after nearly two weeks of visiting children, and I always return with a new determination to change my life after I see them. There is something about being around young people and their enthusiasm and determination that stirs up a little fire in me, too. Maybe spring, with its vibrancy and new growth, its feeling of promise and hope, makes me want to renew myself also. Or maybe it’s the fact that I have a wedding to go to in less than a month, and I can’t fit into either of the dresses I have to wear, one from my son’s wedding a year and a half ago, and one from my niece’s wedding less than a year ago. How does that happen so quickly?
When I was in Michigan recently visiting my daughter, I was amazed at the transformation that had taken place since the last time I saw her at Thanksgiving. She has been monitoring what she eats and running quite a few miles a week in preparation for a half marathon. She was back into clothes she hadn’t been able to wear in quite some time, and when we went shopping, everything she tried on looked great on her. She showed me an app she has on her smart phone called My Fitness Pal which tracks your calorie count and subtracts your calories burned from exercise to give you a total calorie count for each day. When my daughter and I went out to lunch, she showed me how the app has all the menu items listed for the most common chain restaurants so you can decide what is the best thing to order, calorie-wise. I put the app on my iPad and tried using it on the day we started our drive up to Boston. The first thing I entered were the calories for my Dunkin’ Donuts jelly doughnut, and did you know that sitting in a car for nine hours doesn’t burn any calories?
Last night we returned from our trip to the Boston kids, and thanks to my gorgeous daughter-in-law who also looked even more amazing than usual, I plan on implementing the Paleo diet at her suggestion. She told me to give it a try for thirty days and see if I don’t feel so much better. Feeling better is definitely a goal, but what will really make me feel so much better is to fit into one of those two dresses. The wedding is May 5. I’m already a couple of days short of a month. The pressure is on.
Yes, I know that one of these two young women is training for a half marathon and the other one is nearly forty years younger than me, but I can do this. Just keep those jelly donuts away from me. In the words of Buckwheat, “Get thee behind me Satan, and don’t push!”
“I’m so happy to have you back,” my husband said to me this morning as I placed an egg and toast in front of him.
“Because now you have someone to make your breakfast and pack your lunch?” I joked.
“No, because I miss you so much when you’re away,” he said.
I just returned from a visit with my daughter and her family in Michigan. In a good year, if I’m lucky, I get to see them four times, once in the spring, once in the summer, once in early fall, and at Thanksgiving. It is not nearly enough, but distance, time, and money dictate it. Before my visit my daughter and I had made grandiose plans to do a lot of writing together. I brought my iPad with intentions to make a blog post every day that I was there. That didn’t happen for either of us. All we wanted to do was talk and “hang out” with each other, savoring the sweetness of our time together.
Loved watching giddy fourteen-year-olds celebrating our granddaughter's birthday. They all were treated to pedicures.
We ran errands in preparation for my oldest granddaughter’s birthday party, shopped and ate lunch out, she tutored me on the best make-up to buy and I gave her my opinion on clothes she tried on, and we worked one whole day on piecing a quilt together (a project for my youngest granddaughter’s class). Before we knew it, the week we had been looking forward to since Thanksgiving was over, and we were unloading my suitcase on the curb next to the Delta terminal. We are becoming adept at not making a spectacle of ourselves when we say goodbye. “No tears, Mom,” my daughter said as she hugged me one last time, her eyes glistening to match my own. It will be four long months before we see each other again.
Tomorrow my husband and I will drive up the East Coast, stop in Connecticut for a night to see his mother, and then continue up to Boston for Easter to see our two sons and our daughter-in-law. We will have two and a half days with them, then turn around and make the long drive back to Virginia. During those two days we will talk non-stop, eat gourmet meals, share communion at the altar rail Easter morning, and say our good-byes with stoic faces but a catch in our voices. This has been our life since our children grew up and shaped lives of their own. It is the life for so many families, now that jobs take us far from each other.
My heart gets tugged in so many direction these days. I want to spend longer than a week with my daughter and granddaughters, longer than two days at a time with my sons and daughter-in-law. I want more time with my two best girlfriends who live far away. But I also don’t want to leave my husband too often or for very long. It seems the older we get, the more anxious we are when we’re apart. So, tomorrow we hit the road again and enjoy every minute we have to share with our children. When we come home, we will get back into our routine, smiling at the memories, sighing with longing for more, and look forward to our next visits.
I’ve been cleaning out bookcases in our bedroom, trying to reduce the number of books that are stacked upon other books, sideways and every which way. I haven’t been successful, but I’ve discovered some old books I’d forgotten about. One such book is entitled, From Crib to Bib, and it is the book my mother’s pediatrician sent her home with after I was born. As I began perusing the pages of that little book, I grew more and more alarmed, realizing how far short I fell in following its directives. For example, the pediatrician stressed how susceptible infants are to infections and wrote, “Unless absolutely necessary, the new baby should not be taken out until he is five weeks of age. He should not be put on display by the proud parents until he is three months old.” Well, I screwed that up royally. I think we stopped to show our daughter off on the way home from the hospital.
As for the infant’s sleeping arrangements, the good doctor was very clear on that. “The infant should always have a room alone and certainly never sleep in a room with adults.” Uh, oh. He must never have read The Family Bed. I did. The doctor also wrote, “Rocking or singing an infant to sleep soon becomes a habit which is difficult to break.” My grandchildren still expect me to sing them a song at bedtime, and they are 14 and nearly 10. I messed up on that, too. One piece of advice in the book had me scratching my head. “Two daily naps should be continued through the third year, each of about one hour.” I tried to take naps, but darned if those kids didn’t keep me awake.
I was practically grief-stricken at how inadequate my maternal skills were when it came to toilet training. The book said I should have started toilet training for bowel control as soon as the baby was old enough to sit up so I could place them on the potty chair. At ten to twelve months I should have had my children in training pants as that was the appropriate time for training for bladder control. I started training my daughter when she was a few months past two. She was trained when she turned three. With my first son, I started when he was two and a half. He was trained at three. I saw a pattern here, so with the third one, I waited until he was three, handed him a pair of underpants, and said, “You know, you’re supposed to wear these instead of diapers.” He took them out of my hand and said, “Okay.” That was that.
I didn’t get past page 21 because I don’t want to know how deeply I failed. My three children seem well-adjusted. One is a writer and musician, one is a lawyer, and one is a neurogeneticist. But think of how they might have turned out if I had been a good mother.
Coming East 