A Day in the Life............

of a yogurt carton, or how I spent my Tuesday......in pictures.

She who sits in the dish........

WINS!!!!

I love it when puppies do the sorts of silly things that make you stop and take notice of them. The sorts of things that make them stand out in a crowd. I sometimes second guess myself when evaluating a litter...and then.....one of them (who I was leaning towards anyway), does something that forces you to look at them and take notice. Kind of like a little tug on the sleeve...."Here, I'm over here. Look at me. I thought this up all by myself and I fit. Its a perfect fit. It must be my bowl. See. I fit right in it......perfectly. Its just the size of my butt. Thats it. I have to stay, because my butt fits perfectly in this bowl."

WHO can deny that sort of puppy reasoning. Dear Lord....don't tell me she's another keeper.

I rest my case........

I hate to say "I Told You So"....but, I told you so!

What has to happen, to force a city to sit up and take notice? It no longer seems that the safety and welfare of of the average man on the street (or student in the college) is important.



http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/ci_9978793

I feel guilty..........

I feel so guilty if I complain about the heat.
It’s stifling in here.
Can you believe how hot it is?
The humidity is just oppressive these last few days.
Who can work on a day like this?

Every single time I hear myself complain, I think about my grandparents. They never complained about the stifling weather. If you wandered over to their house on one of those oppressive days, you would find them sitting in their darkened living room….Pop-Pop in his rocker by the radio and Nanny in her big easy chair. One would be reading, the other stitching, waiting for the sun to dip towards the horizon so they could continue their outside work. It would be quiet….just the whirring of the fan as it swept back and forth, moving the hot air in a pattern across the room. The fan would sit precariously on the top of the desk; large, black metal, with open blades. You instinctively knew not to reach up to feel that air moving. How many of us remember hearing at least once, those ridiculous words, “Do you WANT to lose a finger?” Nope, not me? I preferred to preserve my digits….so I NEVER reached up to feel that cooler air. Well, maybe just the once.

They never complained. They kept the most sumptuous vegetable garden at the bottom of the orchard. It grew an abundance of vegetables; enough to can for the coming year for several households. Beautiful corn, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, onions, carrots blueberries, blackberries, rhubarb and the most gorgeous arbors of grapes. On those stifling days, when there was no hope of rain you would find them carrying bucket after bucket of water from the side of the house, across the driveway, through the orchard, to those tidy rows of fruits and vegetables. I am sure in later years they were able to run hoses down to the garden…but my memory is of this back and forth process with their bucket brigade. No moaning, no groaning. Just occasionally Pop-Pop would take out his worn, red bandana, mop his forehead, shove it back in his pocket and continue the process.

In their bedroom was a small window fan. One side of the fan sucked the hot air out, while the other brought the cooler air in. It was small and it was inefficient; a precursor of more modern units. But to them it was a wonder of modern day appliances. They marveled at its effectiveness in cooling down their oppressively hot bedroom.

With a memory as clear as this of a 50’s style automatic sprinkling system and their modern day air cooling system, how on earth can I complain about the heat?

Memory Chip

Isn’t memory a funny thing? I can clearly remember small, rather insignificant (in the grand scheme of things) events that happened over 50 years ago and yet……I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday. I often wonder how we store so many facts, lyrics, stories etc in our brain. I mean, I can remember the words to every single song that I have heard on those silly infomercials on TV. You know the ones. For $29.95 you can purchase every love song from the 1960’s. And for another $9.99, we will throw in the 70’s love songs, too. (I kind of resent the fact that the 70’s were discounted by 20 bucks; seems kind of unfair to those who were in love then).

But…I digress. I seriously can remember and sing along to all those songs. I cannot for the life of me remember if I paid the gas bill last week…or wrote and mailed off the note I promised to my friend. If I made a note, that I wrote the note….I’m good. How pathetic is that? I have to write a note to myself, that I sent out the note.

I HATE that my brain has become so jam packed with useless trivia…that I can’t remember the important stuff. I want more space in there to store important info that I need at my fingertips. I want to be able to remember words that I know I know…for the crossword puzzle I am working on. It’s not helpful in the least that I can remember “There she goes, just awalking down the street, singing doo-wa-diddy-diddy-dum, diddy yeah”. What’s THAT about?

I want some little memory chips installed in my head. I want to be able to pop out Useless Song Lyrics From the Sixties (and Seventies), dump them and put in a fresh new chip that’s ready to go. I don’t need them anymore, but I sure would like to remember if I paid that bill.

Sounds like a goal to me!

Patience is.....not what it's cracked up to be

When did I become so obsessed about time? I used to not give a rip about what time it was. I could go for ages without glancing at a clock or watch. Now, it’s like Father Time himself is running after me with a big stick, bopping me on the head, pointing at his watch and saying “Hey…hurry up, do you know what time it is???”

Why this change? Why do I care if it’s a few minutes, plus or minus, till I get where I am supposed to be. I DO care…I care more than I can begin to explain. I probably care more than is necessary. Actually I tell a lie…I obsess. It must be no later that 10:59 Pee Emm when I get out of my chair from knitting and writing, shut off the lights and TV and head to my bed. If you are a dog….you better have gone out at 10:57 or 58. For awhile there, it got so bad…that one of the dogs would get to his feet at 10:56 and stand and stare at me as if to say “Aren’t we supposed to be closing shop here and heading down the hallway?’ Good grief, I have created a neurotic dog!!!

We live a life of schedules, appointments and time frames. I loved when we lived in the UK and TV programs started/ended at odd times. 8:11 pm-Are You Being Served, 9:08- The Two Ronnies. At 10:43, the station would end its broadcast for the day with God Save the Queen. It was kind of a given that you would rise to your feet as you heard the national tribute to the Queen…guess it served two purposes. Allegiance to the Queen AND you were on your feet and heading to bed or for a cuppa. Seemed like a clever ending to the day. I didn’t give it a thought or obsess about.

I am not sure why the obsession about time. Perhaps I sense it is moving more quickly than I can keep up with. Perhaps I feel like I haven’t accomplished enough in my timeframe. Perhaps I sense the internal clock ticking away….a countdown on my life. There must be something to be said for living on a deserted island…no clocks…no appointments….no need to be anywhere in a timely manner. Of course you might get totally bored BUT, I would love the opportunity to be on one…with my books and my knitting and maybe a wine cooler or two. Sounds like a plan. What time shall we leave?

Edifice Complex

Wow…every time I drive into town I am overwhelmed by the size of Mr. Trump’s manliness. There it is….rising up out of the land, reaching toward heaven and obliterating a good portion of the sunlight that used to warm the innards of Our Town. There it stands sucking the life out of our once quaint and charming town. You can almost see the cars steering away from the sides of the building to avoid the inevitable metal droppings carelessly left too close to the edge of floor # 37 by some cat-like worker picking his way across the narrow girders.
http://www.topix.com/us/osha/2008/06/object-falls-at-the-site-of-trump-parc

We didn’t know we needed a taller building; one more monument to remind us of our greediness; our need for one more penthouse view of the distant NYC skyline. One person’s view becoming many peoples’ darkness. Another Trump Park, Trump Tower, Trump Plaza, Trump This…….

Its ugliness rises up to greet us as we approach our town. One more shining example of Mr. T. giving the finger to those who were here before him.
He has an edifice complex, you know.

My little world....welcome to it......

So…at some point my world started shrinking. Maybe its because what once seemed so big to me…so far away….so unreachable….just shrunk. That’s it…everything shrunk. The other side of the world once really did seem like…..the o-t-h-e-r s-i-d-e of the world. Everything was a long, long way away and so much bigger than we imagined. You can get the news now…in a nanosecond. I can get news flashes from the other side of the world while its happening. Just imagine….during WW1 they didn’t hear about events for days and days. Heck…when people landed on these shores their family didn’t hear about it for years, if ever.

When did I start seeing little things? When did the little people start creeping into my life? The real little people started arriving back in Croydon, England. They arrived in little plastic bags…by the dozens….by the tens of dozens; the original little green men. These little fellows then became the marching armies of Europe, mostly from around the early 1800’s. They were hand painted, by regiment….every tiny accurate detail…every banner, every weapon….every detail down to the buttons on their uniforms. The most incredible part was the fact that they were only 15mm tall…that’s right…just 15mm. These little fellows crossed the Atlantic with us….and continued to march and multiply. Some now sit astride noble steeds wearing beautiful saddles and bridles, some lie broken and bleeding on the scarred battlefield. They have now taken their positions upon enormous pieces of plywood. Every detail of a battlefield is in place…every rock, every tree, every blood soaked regimental flag. Spread before us is the entire battle of Waterloo in all its bloody, victorious glory.
I walk past this battlefield, often with armloads of laundry on my way to the laundry room; sometimes, carrying a dog for grooming. I pause for a moment…studying the field spread out before me and I feel humbled. It represents so much history; history that I have absorbed through osmosis from my husband who is so passionate about his armies. It also represents hours upon hours of tireless work on his part to recreate this piece of history that lays before me.

So….I guess my world shrunk but it opened a much larger world to me. I can now see an entire battlefield representing thousands of patriotic fighters defending their nation and their kings….right in my basement.

It is humbling.

I'm a Political Junkie

OK….so where to start. Here’s a good place…..so…..I totally stopped watching MSNBC. I was addicted to that channel…for a very long time. I loved those guys. I became such a huge fan of the likes of Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and the newbie David Gregory (from my alma mater, no less). And then…they all totally tanked on my candidate. Not that I am a narrow minded woman’s libber…but GOOD GRIEF, when did the news go from presenting the facts, to actually shaping the news to fit your candidate?? I was so angry I actually wrote to Chris. Like he even read it??? I think not, but I was livid. So, I dropped out. They had become as bad as FOX Noise.
Not much different with the newspapers either. The NYT totally got behind the new guy, after giving the thumbs up to the Lady of Chappaqua. Check the editorials today…and they are picking away at the new guy like gannets. Go figure.

When did reporting the news become making the news??

Say it ain’t so, Joe…say it ain’t so. My Grandfather must be turning in his grave. He was such a purist about the news. He set such a fine example of staying in touch with current events…albeit from his rocker by the radio. Just the facts Mam, just the facts. He would hate the hypocrisy of the reporting of today….actually its not really reporting. Its self-indulgent crap most of the time. Just the facts, Mam…just the facts. (does anyone even remember Joe Friday?)

How do they teach journalism in school today? Seriously, how do they teach it? The cable channels now totally spin the stories to fit the beliefs of who generally owns the station. Can you say Rupert Murdoch? The spinning is now seeping into the network news channels. It’s pretty much all over the place. How do they teach this stuff? Oh wait, I know, they don’t. They send you to the Creative Writing School.

We have lost some of the great newscasters of old. That’s what they were…..newscasters. They cast the news out there to us and WE pulled it in and put our own interpretation and spin on it. I don’t need Chris Matthews; I don’t need Keith Olberman, nor David Gregory or Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity or any of the rest of them.
Come back Uncle Walter. Come back Tom B. You are not too old to give me my daily dose of news. Just the facts Walter, just the facts Tom.