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Staycation
Ted and me, photobombing Maya, Chloe, and Justin after the cable car ride. This was a lovely week in our humble abode. My sister, Maya, and her two children came and stayed with us for 4 days. They live in Portland, and decided to fly down and play tourist in the Bay Area, and spend some quality time with us. YAY! One of the attractions at the Musee Mecanique, which is always good for some morbid fun. They were interested in riding cable cars, going to Fisherman’s Wharf, and walking the Golden Gate Bridge. All of that is West of us, in my favorite city, San Francisco. We had thought…
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5 Years
Today is the 5 year anniversary of the day my mom died. I still miss her horribly, and I’m still pissed off sometimes that she had to go and die on me, but it’s easier than it was. More of a dull ache, not so sharp and jagged. She was a real character, boisterous and loud at times, always with an opinion on almost anything. She loved her kids to distraction. She was my friends’ favorite mom, because she would listen to them, and it was obvious to them that she genuinely liked them and cared about their problems, their hopes, and dreams. She was completely besotted by Maya, wrote…
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A Tale of Two Nurses
I’ve been fortunate enough in my own life thus far that I have seldom needed the help of a nurse. Not that nurses are bad, but often you find them in hospitals, and I’m fortunate to have only been in hospital myself when I had Maya. I was reminded of two nurse stories by two different comments on Facebook, by two friends who do not know each other, neither of whom I’ve met in real life. One is a bloggy friend of mine, who commented that Karma is real, and we need just wait for it to catch up with us. The other is Kelli, who was an online friend…
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Before Midnight
If you’re a fan of the Julie Delpy/Ethan Hawke films, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, then you’ve likely been looking forward to the third installment in the story, Before Midnight. Sunrise tells the story of Jesse and Céline, who meet on a train in Europe. Jesse is on his way to the airport in Vienna, and Céline is on her way home, to Paris. Jesse has hours to kill before his flight leaves in the morning, and no money for a hotel, so plans to walk the streets of Vienna until sunrise. He convinces Céline to join him, and they walk and talk and fall in love, and promise to meet…
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Memorial Day
Today is Memorial Day, a day when we honor fallen soldiers. My immediate family has been fortunate in that we don’t have a lot of soldiers who have died in service to their country. My father was vehemently against the Vietnam war, and refused to go to war, though he did alternate service. My step-mom’s first husband died in Vietnam, however, so certainly the family is not unscathed. How is one supposed to feel in such a case? If he had lived, she would not have married my father. On the other hand, I cannot be glad that he died. My father-in-law served in Vietnam, though thankfully he came home…
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Monday Randomness
We decided to start our weekend early, and went out to dinner, and then to the new Star Trek (link is to Ted’s review on his blog) movie on Thursday evening. I like it when we do something like that during the week…though it can make for a tired Friday, it makes the weekend feel a bit longer. I enjoyed the movie, and I’m glad we went to see it, but I didn’t LOVE it. I think they did a really good job, but there was a sense of retreading an old story, rather than going in a new direction. Saturday I decided to get my butt in gear and…
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The Last Runaway
Any system of slavery must be abolished. It had seemed simple in England; yet in Ohio that principle was chipped away at, by economic arguments, by personal circumstances, by deep-seated prejudice that Honor sensed even in Quakers. Honor has traveled from her home and family in England, hoping for a new life in the new world. Her sister is engaged to be married to a man who works with his brother in their general store in a small Quaker town in 1850 Ohio, and Honor has decided to go along with her. Circumstances change quite a bit between the sisters leaving home and arriving in Ohio, and Honor finds herself…
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The Great Gatsby
For Mother’s Day, instead of sending Maya off to an AP U.S. History study group with her friends, we went to see ‘The Great Gatsby’ and then out for dinner. We both really liked Gatsby a lot…especially Leonardo DiCaprio, whom I think was a far better, more vulnerable, weaker Gatsby than Robert Redford. And at heart, Gatsby is a weak man surrounded by tough guys, trying to finally grasp his unattainable dream. Carey Mulligan does a fine job as Daisy Buchanan, though she didn’t seem quite sparkly and shimmery enough to me. Daisy should be Champagne bubbles tickling your nose, and Mulligan is more like a serious Chardonnay. I liked…
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Wordless Wednesday
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The Magician’s Assistant
picture found here PARSIFAL IS DEAD. That is the end of the story. The technician and the nurse rushed in from their glass booth. Where there had been a perfect silence a minute before there was now tremendous activity, the straining sounds of two men unexpectedly thrown into hard work. The technician stepped between Parsifal and Sabine, and she had no choice but to let go of Parsifal’s hand. When they counted to three and then lifted Parsifal’s body from the metal tongue of the MRI machine and onto the gurney, his head fell back, his mouth snapping open with no reflexes to protect it. Sabine saw all of his…
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Friday Randomness
Happy Birthday to my wonderful super amazing husband, Ted! I got confused last night and wrote, “Happy 38” on our calendar. That’s 10 years ago. To celebrate his birthday, Ted likes to go for special birthday rides on his bike. One year over the Golden Gate Bridge, another year over near Benicia. This year he wants to ride up in the Marin Headlands. So I’m playing hookey from work, and I’ll drive in with him. I don’t even have a bike, so I won’t be riding, but I’ll drop him off on the SF side of the GG Bridge, then I’ll drive over to Sausalito. I’ll have a nice walk…
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Roasted Butterflied Chicken and Tomatillos
OK, first things first. My celebrity crush is Curtis Stone. We went to San Francisco to have him sign a copy of his cookbook back in ’07, and he was utterly charming. And now he’s engaged to, and has an adorable baby with, Lindsey Price, who played Janet on Beverly Hills 90210 back in the day. It’s like two parts of my world coming together in one beautiful place, and I’ll confess…when I picture Curtis and Lindsey barbequing in the back yard, they’re in the Walsh house. So what? Anyway, I’m a fan of Curtis on Facebook, and sometimes he puts delicious pictures up, of recipes from his new cookbook.…
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Mathilda Savitch
Da gets up to go and he pats my dirty hair and I suppose I should be ashamed, but what do I care about anything anyway. That’s part of being awful, not caring. And then what’s part of it too is the thought that suddenly jumps into my head. The thought that it could be a person’s own mother who might make a doll with her daughter’s hair and throw it into a fire. She’d watch the flames eat it up and then she’d dance off to bed laughing and having sex and bleeding little drops of perfume all over the sheets as if there was nothing to it. I…
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Wordless Wednesday
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Revenge
There’s something about grandchildren, where they exact revenge upon the parents, and the grandparents sit back and laugh. When I was young, I did this or that or the other thing to my mom, which surely drove her crazy. She survived whatever it was, but then, when Maya came along and did to those same things to me, and drove me nuts, HA! My mom was so happy. Grandchildren are the best revenge, right? What I didn’t know before, was that children can also be some kind of revenge exacted upon your grandparents as well. (See how I skipped an entire generation there? Crazy, huh?) Way back when I was…