Happy Birthday, G'ma

 Reprised from 2021. Only her age has been changed to protect the integrity.

This is how she looked when she met my father.

This is how she looked when she lived in Tucson.

I never knew the first woman.  I enjoyed meeting the second woman, the one whose memory was failing but who always knew that I loved her.  

Some things never changed. There was always a straw in her Diet Sprite.

Her purse was always over her shoulder (see blue strap, above). She was cold, but never wore a hat - "I don't look good in hats!"

There were some things she never forgot. Good grammar was imperative and bad grammar demanded correction. Yellow was her favorite color and chocolate was her favorite food.  Wrinkled shirts and sagging hems were unacceptable; she made her opinions known even when she was no longer in charge of choosing the outfits herself.

.

Today would have been her 103rd birthday.

I'd have brought her a prune danish for breakfast, accompanied by a gardenia corsage on the tray.  I'd have taken her out for a tuna-and-tomato-on-toast for lunch.   We'd have shared shrimp for dinner.

We would certainly have stopped for some chocolate ice cream along the way.

By the end, there were no books to share nor Scrabble to play.  There was her shell and her soul and the connection between the two became more tenuous with every passing day.

But now, on her birthday, I remember the smiles and the advice and the kisses.  Oh, the kisses.  She had the softest skin to receive my love.

I'm kissing the air right now, sending the love out into the ether.   Wherever she is, I know she's feeling it.  She's my mom.  We're attached, forever.

Happy Birthday, Mommy!  I hope that there is chocolate in heaven.

Sigh

Note to self:

The stainless steel pan you use to  brown the chicken on the cook top will be hot. Do not use your bent finger to give it a nudge after you use the potholder to finish it off in the oven. 

I will be back tomorrow when I can type without pain.

Notes On A Federal Holiday

I'm typing this on the third Monday in February.  Waste Management came for the recycling and the trash, but there was no mail in the mailbox.

Oh, right.  It's Presidents Day.

*****

Seeing it there I'm wondering if it's Presidents Day or Presidents' Day or President's Day.  But that led me to thinking about our current President and so I stopped.  

*****

I thought about Presidents and how few of them were good people.... it seems.... who knows what we don't know we don't know.... but given what we know, most of them have been scoundrels, in one way or another.  

Great things have been accomplished by dishonorable men.  That is a truth they don't emphasize social studies .... if such a class even exists anymore.  

*****

My grandkids have Presidents' Recess but the Prince scholars were in school today.  

Don't tell the current Administration,  but they get the last Thursday and Friday of February for La Fiesta de los Vaqueros, or as it's usually called,  Rodeo Week

Yes, I'm Piling On

It's just low hanging fruit these days.  With no real power to wield and no real leadership to wield what's left, the Democratic Party is flailing.  Stating this is probably not a revelation to you.  Just turn on the talking heads and listen to the same sentiment.  The worst President in history is being contested by a misguided bunch of I really want to keep my job and to hell with doing my job leaders.

The Democrats are lauding their victories in the polls.  There is no arguing that the voters are moving away from the right with surprising alacrity and vehemence.  Apparently, masked government agents murdering American citizens with impunity has grabbed the attention of that portion of the voting public which was mildly engaged before the videos surfaced.  

That is good news, and we should welcome them to the fight.  But let's look at where they are going.  WTOP News, writing about the special election in New Jersey, posted this headline: 

Analilia Mejia, progressive ally of Bernie Sanders, wins special New Jersey House primary

then goes on to tell us that:

(I)nstead of backing a more moderate replacement for Sherrill, primary voters chose Mejia, who campaigned on populist economic policies and the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Axios went a bit further 

The left smells blood after shocking Democratic primary result

The Democratic political machinery did everything short of seizing the voting booths to prevent it from happening and yet Zohran Mamdani is now the Mayor of New York.  He's making a name for himself on his own, taking meetings with high profile names including Minneapolis's Mayor Jacob Frey, who told us that

“Mayors work together.... we're all operating in the reality business, and the reality is, what just happened with ‘Operation Metro Surge’ is not constitutional, is not okay, and is anti-American.”

Act Blue has sold or shared my phone number to any number of candidates for dog catcher in Montana despite my efforts to control the texts spamming my inbox, and I know I'm not alone in this.  Trees are dying and energy is expended so that Hakeem Jeffries can ask me to send him money to keep the wins coming.

How dumb do they think I am?  

Happy Valentine's Day

 

Sharing The Love

This happened on Valentines weekend, 2012.  

I remember it as if it were today. 

Shockingly, G'ma was willing to forgo her post-prandial nap and accompany me to Target.  I hustled her into the car before she could change her mind.  We admired the clouds and she told me I was driving too fast and not stopping for the yellow lights and following too closely and she was my mother again, except for the clacking dentures. Be careful what you wish for, I guess.

There was an electric cart in the unloading area next to the handicapped parking space and it was calling her name.  She's still got left and right implanted in her memory bank, so directionality wasn't an issue.  She took a turn or two too closely, but the t-shirts didn't seem to mind the little bit of sway she put into their hangars.  Humans managed to get out of her way, and her enjoyment of the scene washed away frowns before they could be formed.  We chose Valentines Day cards and bought mini-packs of tissues for her purse and we giggled over but didn't purchase any of the soft pink socks with hearts that were tempting me at the register.  Sorry, Little Cuter........

Pie wasn't nearly enough lunch for me, so I suggested ice cream.  "Drive faster!" was her reply, so I did.  There's a new Dairy Queen in the neighbrohood and that's where we headed, $5.01 bringing us her sundae (all chocolate....did you really have to ask?) and my strawberry milkshake and more napkins than we needed.

Sitting there in the parking lot, sipping whipped cream and watching chocolate sauce melt into chocolate soft serve, feeling the warm breeze on my bare arms, I was 10 years old again, in the drive-thru with Mommy.

It felt really really good.

Lincoln and Washington and Their BIrthdays

 

I first published this in 2011; only Lincoln's age has changed.

 It remains one of my favorite rants.

I remember when THIS was the most aggravating thing our government did.

Sigh.

*****

Mary Ball Washington gave birth to a boy child on February 22, 1732. Unlike many of the stories surrounding this man (think cherry trees and coins across the Potomac and standing up in an open boat as it crossed the Delaware) this is an indisputable fact.

Mary was not in labor on the third Monday of February.  She produced her child on a specific day - the 22nd day of February.  His birthday didn't move around with the vagaries of the federal holiday calendar.

Nancy Hanks Lincoln met her second son, Abraham, 217 years ago today.  Like Mrs. Washington before her, she was not in labor on an indeterminate day sometime in the middle of the month.  It occurred on a certain day, a day formerly commemorated by school children and mail carriers alike.

Alas and alack, these fine gentlemen have been conflated into Presidents and their birthdays combined into a generic celebration designed primarily to afford employees the opportunity for a 3-day weekend in the middle of the winter. What was wrong with the old system, I wonder?  As an elementary school kid I looked forward to those random days off in the middle of the month.  One day, breaking up the routine.  One celebration for each president - pennies examined on the 12th, leadership and lying (not) on the 22nd.

There was no time for a weekend away (not that G'ma and Daddooooo could have afforded to take us anyplace anyhow) and there was no competition between students for who went the furthest and had the most fun.  It was an opportunity to go sledding at Bethpage (the Black Course was used for many things in my youth; this was the best of them) or to meet friends at the bowling alley and then walk to Smiles (our precursor to a 5-and-dime) where we cruised the aisles until our parents picked us up.

It was grilled cheese sandwiches with bacon on the side, eaten on paper plates and accompanied by the admonition Don't Tell Daddy since the bacon was not exactly kosher and he cared a lot more than did G'ma.  There were snow forts to be built, snowball fights to be fought, snow men to be built. The entire neighborhood roamed from front yard to front yard, creating and tumbling and finding warmth and drinks and the occasional bathroom in whichever house we happened to be in front of when the need arose.

And now?  Now President's Day is always an event.  It's a long weekend for which plans must be made.  It has no intrinsic meaning, no relationship to George or Abe or any of their colleagues.  Their faces are used to advertise white sales and car sales and furniture sales and The History Channel runs back to back episodes of The Presidents but that's about the size of the historical component.  What began as tributes to great men has devolved into spending opportunities for the masses.

Am I bitter?  You bet.  A day off followed by another one 10 days later.... what better way to combat the winter doldrums than that?  A random day, a day to cuddle under the blankets with your sweetie or to do all that laundry that interfered with your weekend plans and so still sits in the basket, mocking you.  A day to explore the neighborhood and have lunch in that place you've driven by 100 times before..... a day just to be.

Sometimes, when I was a girl really was better.

Silly Names

I've always respected the work but I never gave much thought to the physical effort involved in being a teacher.  But having spent eight hours over the last two days reading and gardening with the Prince scholars, I am a physical wreck.

Two cups of robust English Breakfast tea provided the fuel; I didn't yawn all day.  But when the pre-K teacher asked her student to go back to the classroom and tell Mr. S that nap time was over, then smiled at me and said, sotto voce, So I don't have to get up off the floor, I completely understood her situation.  I was pretty comfortable on the tiny chair beside her; the walk to my next class was a distant 10 feet away.

So, denizens, forgive me if my only original thought is why do female skiers have silly first names?

Okay, a Google search revealed only the two I already knew, but I think the question's still valid.  

Breezy?  Who names their kid Breezy?  Apparently, the Johnsons.

Picabo Street's parents called her Baby Girl before she needed a passport and thus a real name.  Picabo was a neighboring town in Idaho.  It was also Baby Girl's favorite game - Peek a Boo.  Still.......

Feel free to ruminate on this bit of insignificant trivia.  It's all my brain can handle right now.

Love of Reading Week

We were asked to send our schedule to the coordinator.  We provide the availability, she would assign us to the classrooms.  All we had to do was bring ourselves and the book(s) we chose to read aloud to the appropriate classroom at the appropriate time.

My schedule arrived, then arrived again with the classroom numbers included, then didn't arrive which I didn't know until I showed up 4 hours earlier than expected in a 3rd grade classroom and that teacher printed out the revised version.

I'm not complaining.  The new schedule allowed me a break for breakfast bagel sandwich at a nearby cafe.

Fully fortified, I gardened and read and realized, once again, that not everyone has had the same upbringing as I did.

For the first graders, I read Pickle Things, a sure fire winner with its rhymes about pickle things you never see.  The third graders were treated to the d'Aulaire's verbiage and illustrations of Greek Myths, the fifth graders dove into an illustrated copy of The Odyssey.  

The younger ones learned about Hermes boring Argus of the 100 eyes to death, marveling at the notion that the eyes they've seen at the zoo on the peacock's feathers were once attached to an ancient human and that the notion of being bored to death had its roots in ancient stories.

The fifth grade was treated to a picture of Polyphemus the Cyclops king with a sharpened, heated, wooden spike being driven through the eyeball in the middle of his forehead.  Crafty Ulysses's hug the bottoms of the sheep so we can escape the cave ruse was somewhat less impactful.

Everybody got poems, too.  Billy Collins on Turning Ten was a little too ephemeral for the 10 and 11 year olds in 5th grade.  Ogden Nash's Who wants my jellyfish/ I'm not selly-fish missed the mark entirely, as did The Lord in his wisdom made the fly/And then forgot to tell us why.  Word play that resonates with my grandkids landed with a thunk at Prince.  

A fifth grader wondered if the myths were fiction or non-fiction.  Roll that question around in your brain for a moment before you jump to a conclusion.  Did the ancients consider them to be literal truths, non-fiction in this student's view?  Without science, perhaps they did.  Now, though?  I was flummoxed, the teacher smiled but offered no assistance, so I punted.

It's like Aesop's Fables... you know Aesop's Fables, right?

Their blank looks astounded me.  I've already come to terms with the fact that little ones are no longer read nursery rhymes at bedtime, but being unaware of the fables and their morals?  This was news to me.  

Missing out on silly rhymes about the Black Death (Ring Around the Rosy) or the British monarchy (Jack and Jill) doesn't seem like much of a loss.  But the fables are a shorthand for morality and consequences.  Sour grapes, slow and steady wins the race, the list goes on and on.  Those morals were the underpinnings of my ethical education, though I didn't realize it at the time.  

What are my scholars using instead?  Does Bluey fill the gap?  

In any event, I know what I'm reading to everyone next year.

Tucson in the News, Again

The FBI is ringing doorbells, asking for any video surveillance of the street and permission to search your yard.  

There are news crews trying to find something to report.

The sheriff admits that releasing the house back to the family before the FBI arrived with its forensic magic might not have been a great idea.

There are tearful pleas for information and contact, heartbreaking in their honesty.  

Friends and relatives and relatives of friends have reached out to be sure I'm okay.  TBG was anxious about my Saturday foray to Grandma's Garden; being alone, even behind a gate I'd be sure to lock behind me, just didn't seem safe to him.

Ransom.  Kidnapping.  

It's a hell of a world, denizens.  

Television - A Snippet

Paladin was on H&I, until it wasn't.  Now it's on in the afternoon, on something called INSP.

I laughed as my brain went to INSP Gadget, one of The Cuters' favorite tv shows.  TBG brought me back to reality; it seems to be shorthand for inspiration.

I couldn't tell you the numbers to press to bring it up.  I couldn't tell you how to get NBC or PBS or anything but 576, Turner Classic Movies.  For the rest, I talk into the remote.

Finding Netflix or Apple+ requires my husband's presence.  Apparently, they are apps and have their own special section of the guide.... I think.  Left to my own devices, I'd rarely turn the thing on.  I really don't care.

But there is YouTubeTV and other services that promise to give me freedom and free services, or at least less expensive services than I have right now... if only I could figure out if I have a Smart TV or if it's connected to Bluetooth or any of the myriad factors I need to consider.

TBG loves all his channels.  He has no problem navigating the system.  I'm sitting here wondering why I'm worrying about this at all.

Something tells me I need a break.  If this is all my brain could churn out for you, it's sending me a message.  I'm off to have dinner and a Simon Toyne novel.  I'll try to do better on Monday.

Unleash The Hounds

I've forgotten where we are going to war this week?  

Are we finished with Venezuela and those nasty little boats in the ocean?  

Greenland seems safe for the moment, FFOTUS having walked away from some meeting or other with a shiny object in his tiny hand.

That old staple, Iran, has been back in the news, but the absurdity of an American President with his own private police force cracking down on the Iranian government for going after protesters in the street has been too much for me to bear.  

I've been focused on local issues (Savannah Guthrie's mom; the RTA; what to replant and replace in Grandma's Garden).  I thought that the national issues could do without me for a while.  

Yesterday, I read several reports of Congressional leaders talking about the phone calls they've been getting.  There are lots of them and they are not happy and our representatives seem to be taking notice.  

Suddenly, I'm feeling quite guilty.  I haven't been making my phone calls.  

My phone refuses to sync to my car.  Without that connection, my drive to Prince or Pilates or mahjongg is not longer my place to vent.  I knew that the vehicle had to be stopped to press 1 to leave a message with Sen. Gallego or 2 to holler at Rep. Ciscomani; I dialed as the traffic lights turned red and made my point as I drove across town.  

This was an efficient use of my time.  It allowed me to vent my spleen and leave the residue in the car.  I really don't want FFOTUS or his minions in my personal space at home, but now, in order to be a diligent practitioner of democracy I have no choice.

I tried sitting in the driveway and talking, but it felt ridiculous.  I can't hold my phone while I drive because that's just not safe.  I really should figure out why the Bluetooth isn't syncing well with my hearing aids as well as the car, but until I visit the Verizon store that's just not going to happen.  

It's not a problem my usual fix (turn it all off and wait) has solved.  I'm going to have to bite the bullet and spew political venom all over my house so that I, too, can once again be counted in all those phone calls demanding that ICE lose their masks and their warrantless searches and their Director and everyone involved in this travesty.

Sigh.

Senorita in the Garden

She's been a regular in Grandma's Garden since she was in kindergarten.

She's taken on more and more tasks as the years have gone by; now she's the one offering assistance. 

Watching her teach her classmates - supervising the creation of just the right number of holes of just the right depth in just the right size pot - makes my heart sing.

She was the only one interested in filling the big black container with soil, refusing offers to use the hose or join a friend.  She chose one of the three varieties of carrots from our storage bin, and I left her with the packet and instructions - 3 seeds in each evenly spaced hole around the edge and one in the middle - and went on to other things.  

Soon she was by my side, a few round seeds in her palm, the left overs.  We went back to admire her work.  We used the trowels to cover her treasures with a fine dusting of soil, moved the container to the corner, next to the other carrot container, and watered it thoroughly.  

But before we got it settled in, she said I could take her picture, and asked if I could send it to her mom, even though she didn't know the new phone number.  Not to worry, Senorita.  A printed copy of this post will be in your hands this afternoon.