Musings
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The Dark Side of Genealogy
Many years ago, in my mis-spent youth, I worked at the front desk at a big San Francisco hotel. One evening, a very cute black man checked in, whose last name was Ward. “Hey,” I said, semi-flirtatiously, “that’s my last name, too.” He smiled and said, “Yeah, it’s that southern thing.” Ugh. Stopped me cold. Maybe he thought that somewhere back in time, some of my ancestors owned his ancestors. Which is surely not true, since, 1. My Ward surname came from my mom’s step-dad, so I wasn’t descended from him by blood; and, 2. Our Ward family was poor Irish in Oklahoma, and surely never had the kind of…
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Escaping Ennui
Ted and I went to escape the heat as well as taking advantage of Maya’s going to her best friend’s house on Saturday (free babysitting!), and we drove into Berkeley to see “A Scanner Darkly.” It’s a complicated tale, and one wonders how and why the main character (played by Keanu Reeves….whoa….) got to be where he is. In one flashback that may or may not be real, we see him in his home, with a lovely wife and two children. The wife and kids are playing a board game, and he is reading the newspaper. He gets up to make some popcorn, bonks his head on an open cupboard…
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Mom Always Said Not to Play Ball In the House
Since it was 115 yesterday (according to this morning’s Chron…I never saw it get over 112…HA!), we pretty much didn’t leave the house after 10am, except to take out the garbage. As I mentioned, TV Land had a Brady Bunch marathon on, and after an early dinner, we were watching the top 10 most popular episodes, and of course, the episode with the broken vase came on. I suddenly thought, hey, why was that only Peter’s fault? All three of the boys were playing basketball in the house…it was just Peter who got unlucky enough that he bounced the ball down the hall, over the ledge, and broke the vase.…
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I Think the Sun Is Trying to Kill Us
According to my local paper, the high yesterday was 111 F. Ugh. It was so stinking hot. Maya went to her best friend’s house to play, and Ted and I decided to go see a movie…the A/C had conked out at the theater, so it was kind of like an oven in there. We bailed. But when it’s 111 degrees out, you don’t want to do a lot outside, so we drove to Berkeley (where it was a frigid 92 degrees…), and found our movie there. We saw “A Scanner Darkly“, which was a pretty serious cautionary tale about drug use. I liked it, but I kind of think that…
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Brentwood Corn
There are two Brentwoods in California….the Brentwood down near Hollywood, where the rich and famous reside, and the Brentwood in the ‘Far East Bay’ or the ‘Far Western San Joaquin Valley’, whichever sounds better to you. 😉 Our local Brentwood is known for the quality of their corn. When you go to the grocery stores or farmers’ market, the signs proudly proclaim, “Brentwood Corn”, and you know you’re getting the good stuff. Well, we went to Brentwood the other night for dinner. Ted’s mom had heard good things about Cap’s Oak Street Bar & Grill, so we all piled in the car and took her there for her birthday dinner.…
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Why do IDIOTS get away with crap?
Remember the plum tree that keeps me awake? Well, two corrections…as someone pointed out, it’s the fence making the noise, not the tree…and it’s actually a cherry tree. Not like the kind you go pick cherries from in an orchard, but the kind that drops cherries all over the sidewalk and they make a mess and you step on them and track the juice in on your carpet. Yeah, that kind of tree. Anyway, we’re tree hugging liberals, and we certainly don’t want the tree cut down…just pruned a bit, so it doesn’t knock down our fence. We live in a condo complex, and Ted is the president of the…
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Father Bob
The other day, I mentioned a poem by ee cummings, that was introduced to me by a teacher of mine, and I said I would tell you a bit about him someday. Well, today is the day. That teacher’s name was Bob Hanlon, and he was my Latin teacher, as well as my Composition in Literature teacher in High School. My first day of 9th grade, when I first saw him, all I could think was of the Beatles’ line, “I am the Walrus”, because he was kind of pale, kind of roundish, and had this big, walrus-like mustache. But the more I got to know him, the more I…
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Our Weekend So Far
This weekend has been busy so far. Friday evening we went to a potluck hosted by some friends from Maya’s school. One nice thing to come out of that was that the only other girl there for Maya to play with was E, a girl who she doesn’t really get along with at school or in scouts. They had a nice time, and I’m hoping that opened her eyes a bit to the possibility that this girl might be OK. Not that they will necessarily hang out at school or scouts, but that maybe when they’re the only people around, they can get along then. There are dynamics involved when…
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Saturday Poetry
OK, after the last three days of serious, personal family stuff, mostly written by someone else, I’ve decided to lighten things up a bit, and bring you a poem today, also written by someone else. Who knows, maybe this will become a Saturday tradition, a poem that I love but did not write. no man,if men are gods;but if gods must be men,the sometimes only man is this (most common,for each anguish is his grief; and,for his joy is more than joy,most rare) a fiend;if fiends speak truth;if angels burn by their own generous completely light, an angel;or(as various worlds he’ll spurn rather than fail immersurable fate) coward,clown,traitor, idiot,dreamer,beast- such…
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Russian Cooking Class
The main fundraiser at Maya’s school is a Spring Festival, which combines with a live auction, and raises much needed funds to keep the school doors open. The big ticket items tend to be the quilts, which are made from squares made by the students and sewn by dedicated parents, trunks made by woodworking parents, and excursions put together by the teachers. One of Maya’s teachers, Zhanna, is Russian. She emigrated from the Ukraine about 10 years ago. Her offering for the auction was a day of cooking, where the parents and kids would learn to make traditional Russian food, enjoy the pool at her condo’s clubhouse, and all around…
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Failure to Thrive
Any parents out there know what this term means…when you have a newborn, and they’re not doing so well. Well, no newborns around here, but what with the weather being 103 yesterday and me getting all grumpy because I was hungry (just for dinner, it’s not like I even missed a meal, for goodness sake) and then I had a hard time sleeping last night because, though the fog came in and brought much needed relief from the heat, it also brought a wind that pushes the plum tree next door against the fence, causing a creaking noise ALL FRIGGIN NIGHT LONG. I’m just saying, it was hard to sleep.…
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I Need A Chauffer
Yesterday, I walked everywhere, and boy, these dogs are barking. I started with a walk to Noah’s for breakfast, which is just about a mile and a quarter each way. Not too far, but my shoe selection was based more on heat than comfort. In other words, I was wearing sandals. Next, we had to go to the old work office to move what little bit of stuff there still remains into a storage space. The office is in a business park, and the storage space is actually a small office two parking lots over in that same office park. Yesterday was also one of my coworker’s last day, so…
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Props to Safeway
I stopped at Safeway on Thursday evening, and when I got back to my car, there was a woman filling the trunk of the car next to me with fruit and veggies. Corn, watermelon, strawberries, and so on. She didn’t have any bags, she was taking the items out of a big box and putting them into her trunk. I asked her if she had bought all of this at Safeway, wondering if she was against bagging her groceries for some reason, or if she were planning a huge party, since there was so much food. No, she said, Safeway donates the food to the Lindsay Wildlife Museum. Color me…
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This Isn’t Even Alaska…or Yosemite
Here’s your picture of the day. Click the picture to get the story. Moral of the story? Don’t leave food in your car…a lesson I learned back in 1984, Yosemite, food in the station wagon, bear in the station wagon, food gone, windows broken, car moved a couple of feet, 4 very scared campers who had just graduated from High School (one of whom would be me…) Ack! (Picture died with the move to the new blog. Sorry. It was a picture of a bear in a convertable.)
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This Is Us*
A few nights ago, I was up watching Sex and the City DVDs, and it was the episode where Miranda and Steve get married. Miranda was saying that she didn’t want the cookie cutter wedding, didn’t want someone else’s idea of a wedding, that what she wanted was a wedding that represented them, and who they were. I liked that. I liked it, because it resonated with me. I felt like we had that, a wedding that represented us, 13 years ago today. When faced with the idea of a big white dress and a long walk down the aisle, I thought, “Well, that’s nice for other folks, but not…