Nobody ever warned me that I'd turn into a blathering idiot when I hit 50. I can't remember shit (sorry, Mom, that's your word, I know). I repeat myself, repeat myself, repeat myself; swear I brought things home but instead left them elsewhere (yes, Nicole, my favorite cooler was still at the cabin), look for clothes I sent to the Goodwill long ago, have imaginary friends and can't remember quite significant things I did 20 years ago. I get back from vacation and can't remember my e-mail PIN. Thank God I wrote it down before I left. So far I haven't left my keys in the refrigerator, but I know that could be coming sooner than I expected.
I thought only truly old people did this. Heck, my mom didn't start getting "scattered" like this until she hit 70-something. And instead of letting this frustrate her, she just bought more PostItTM notes.
So far this isn't all that debilitating, luckily. I don't usually get lost in the car, embarrass people or myself unintentionally or act legally insane. I probably annoy my children and my husband more than I do myself -- they already know I'm kind of OCD anyway. But when I try to lighten up a bit and am not compulsively tidying my house/workspace/dresser drawers, this is what happens. Promise me: If I get dangerously forgetful, hide the keys in the fridge. That would scare me into submission.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
And the rockets' red glare ...
Sorry for the blog lag here, but we escaped to Cedar Lake for a blissful 10 days that went by in a blink. The days began with some of the best babyback ribs I've ever tasted in my life, courtesy of friend Seth Roxberg, whose parents, Dick and Ellie, have a place in Isle and invited us for a yummy Fourth of July picnic. Seth rubbed and sauced and smoked those ribs lovingly all day, then we fought the mosquitoes for them until we were stuffed. The next night, the Roxberg womenfolk joined us for our traditional Cedar Lake fireworks display.
Our neighbors on the bay, Ken and Jaci Gangl and their family, began the tradition when all of our kids were little. One of their friends, a pyrotechnician par excellance, got us all hooked on shooting mortars high in the sky over the lake. We had the only yard open enough not to burn up our cabins or our boats, so our yard has been the fireworks' stage ever since. Ken begins shopping early in the spring, then a few weeks before the fourth he wires and packs and sets all of these fuses and God knows what else. This year he had back surgery on June 30, so he got everything set before he went under. That's dedication.
It's probably illegal or something, but our lake association kicks in a good $500 or so for the fireworks, and everybody gets a half-hour of beauty and booms that rivals any professional display. Boats bob out in the center of the lake and honk their horns with appreciation. We hear "oohs" and "ahhs" and whoops and whistles after each launch. We all get a kick out of that. It's the highlight of the summer. Our kids still act like they're 10, planning their calendars around the fireworks, except now they pencil in the kind of beer they'll serve at this blessed event.
Before anybody gets all "you'll blow your hand off" over this post, know this: Ken wires the whole thing for remote control. It beats the days when he and a cadre of brave 40-something men (including my fire-obsessed husband) used to run around in the dark with blow torches to set these things off. (Rule of thumb: Never stand over a mortar to see if it's lit.) That really set my heart aflutter. All I could see was the headline: "Twin Cities father maimed in stupid fireworks display that he helped to orchestrate." Now the same 50-something guys can safely flip a few switches. And we do move the boats away from our dock. Maybe next year we'll set the thing to music. Or maybe we'll play some Sousa on an old boom box. We have to retain the event's "amateur" ambience; that's part of its charm.
This is one of those crazy traditions that make memories for children, just like the Fourth of July kiddie parade in Virginia, where I grew up. We used to dress up in costumes and decorate our bikes and parade the entire length of the main drag, Chestnut Street (from the mine pit all the way to Silver Lake, which seemed like miles when I was four feet tall) -- and at the end, people from the Chamber of Commerce or something gave each participant a quarter. For that quarter in 1964 or thereabouts, I marched down Chestnut in a hula skirt and a Hawaiian print bra when it was 36 degrees at parade time. Then I headed right to the Pic 'n' Pay and spent it all on candy. Which costs a lot less than Coors.
Our neighbors on the bay, Ken and Jaci Gangl and their family, began the tradition when all of our kids were little. One of their friends, a pyrotechnician par excellance, got us all hooked on shooting mortars high in the sky over the lake. We had the only yard open enough not to burn up our cabins or our boats, so our yard has been the fireworks' stage ever since. Ken begins shopping early in the spring, then a few weeks before the fourth he wires and packs and sets all of these fuses and God knows what else. This year he had back surgery on June 30, so he got everything set before he went under. That's dedication.
It's probably illegal or something, but our lake association kicks in a good $500 or so for the fireworks, and everybody gets a half-hour of beauty and booms that rivals any professional display. Boats bob out in the center of the lake and honk their horns with appreciation. We hear "oohs" and "ahhs" and whoops and whistles after each launch. We all get a kick out of that. It's the highlight of the summer. Our kids still act like they're 10, planning their calendars around the fireworks, except now they pencil in the kind of beer they'll serve at this blessed event.
Before anybody gets all "you'll blow your hand off" over this post, know this: Ken wires the whole thing for remote control. It beats the days when he and a cadre of brave 40-something men (including my fire-obsessed husband) used to run around in the dark with blow torches to set these things off. (Rule of thumb: Never stand over a mortar to see if it's lit.) That really set my heart aflutter. All I could see was the headline: "Twin Cities father maimed in stupid fireworks display that he helped to orchestrate." Now the same 50-something guys can safely flip a few switches. And we do move the boats away from our dock. Maybe next year we'll set the thing to music. Or maybe we'll play some Sousa on an old boom box. We have to retain the event's "amateur" ambience; that's part of its charm.
This is one of those crazy traditions that make memories for children, just like the Fourth of July kiddie parade in Virginia, where I grew up. We used to dress up in costumes and decorate our bikes and parade the entire length of the main drag, Chestnut Street (from the mine pit all the way to Silver Lake, which seemed like miles when I was four feet tall) -- and at the end, people from the Chamber of Commerce or something gave each participant a quarter. For that quarter in 1964 or thereabouts, I marched down Chestnut in a hula skirt and a Hawaiian print bra when it was 36 degrees at parade time. Then I headed right to the Pic 'n' Pay and spent it all on candy. Which costs a lot less than Coors.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
OK, I'll bite
Emilie and a bunch of other women posted this on their blogs, and I can't resist. Besides, it's a reader-grabber. It's the NEA's "Big Read" list; they guess the average adult has read six of these illustrious titles. How sad is that?
We're instructed to: "1.) Look at the list and bold those you have read. 2) Italicize those you intend to read. 3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE.4) Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them."
- Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
- The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
- Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
- Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
- To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
- The Bible (but, of course, I'll never finish it)
- Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
- 1984 - George Orwell
- His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
- Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
- Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
- Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
- Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
- Complete Works of Shakespeare
- Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
- The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
- Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
- Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
- The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
- Middlemarch - George Eliot
- Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (twice!)
- The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (once in high school, once in college, twice in grad school ... let me tell you about all the incidents of golden imagery in this book ... oh, my. This is the perfect American novel.)
- Bleak House - Charles Dickens
- War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
- The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
- Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
- Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
- Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
- The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
- Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
- David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
- Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
- Emma - Jane Austen
- Persuasion - Jane Austen
- The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
- The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
- Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
- Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
- Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
- Animal Farm - George Orwell
- The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
- One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
- The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
- Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
- Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
- The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
- Lord of the Flies - William Golding
- Atonement - Ian McEwan
- Life of Pi - Yann Martel
- Dune - Frank Herbert
- Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
- Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
- A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
- The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
- A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
- Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
- Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
- Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
- The Secret History - Donna Tartt
- The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
- Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
- On The Road - Jack Kerouac
- Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
- Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
- Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
- Moby Dick - Herman Melville
- Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
- Dracula - Bram Stoker
- The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
- Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
- Ulysses - James Joyce
- The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (several times)
- Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
- Germinal - Emile Zola
- Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
- Possession - AS Byatt
- A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
- Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
- The Color Purple - Alice Walker
- The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
- Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
- A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
- Charlotte's Web - EB White
- The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
- Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Faraway Tree Collection
- Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
- The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (en francais!)
- The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
- Watership Down - Richard Adams
- A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
- A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
- The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
- Hamlet - William Shakespeare
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
- Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
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