Daily Mantra:

“Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.”

{emily.dickinson}

My darling Mikki….I think she must be the sweetest witch in all the land. This is her THIRD year as a witch…maybe she picks it because its so contrary to her personality. I am just not sure, but here we are again as a witch. Witches are divine though…a {hello} to another day of witchery, ghosts and ghouls….

also, a goodbye….

My grandmother Dorothy Warren passed away late last evening. When I met her, I was 5 years old, angry about my parents divorce, and not too keen on adding any more family members to my already confusing life. I can still remember my very first moment with her…stepping out of my mothers old, blue Thunderbird with a sully look on my face. She embraced me and buried my head into her body as if she had always known me.

“Do you like Rocks?” She asked.

“Umm…sure.” I said, faux shy {I am not a shy person…but I play one on TV}.

She grabbed my hand as if I was the only one that ever mattered in the world and we walked up the pine needle laced drive way to the garage attic where she showed me a world of amazing I had never seen before. As a middle school science teacher, she had spent half a lifetime collecting rocks, shells, weird things that appeal to the ages of 5-really old, and a sense of adventure that could only be compared to an Amazon explorer in search of the worlds most perfect leaf. My other grandma’s, although wonderful, could not compare to the excitement that Grammy Dot could give. Dress-up, anyone? She had the REAL outfits. A nature walk? She had the nets. A girl scout patch that you had to earn by Monday or your leader would have a cow? She had just the thing to blow her away, and make those other green chicks look like a clover with only 2 leaves. Want to play volleyball, bad mitten, baseball? She could organize it like it was a world event, and then beat your socks off.

Do you ever just meet someone who is unexpectedly brilliant….? That was her.

Hats off to a simply divine lady…I am not feeling sad tonight…just lucky.

Happy Halloween!

Daily Mantra: “Children learn to smile from their parents”

{Shinichi.Suzuki}

So…even though Michael and I have gray hair, 2 crazy daughters, and full time jobs,  we thought it would be the best idea in the whole wide world if we went back to school to further our educations. I mean…sersiously, we just didn’t think we were busy enough…and we really wanted to add to our college loan debt like any real American aspires to do. This has meant being away from home 4 nights out of the week, missing out on the dinner and night time rituals, and most of all…sanity. This was Michael’s night,  so the girls and I decided we would do something special for him while he was gone…

a clothes line of {love} if you will…

I had a picture of him and Mikki printed up through WHCC and mounted for his office and stung it up on the line.  My husband is an avid fisherman (even though I have seen him actually catch very few…you know how that is) so Mikki thought a fish would be the perfect addition…

Only a few more credit hours, right?

We will make it…

Daily Mantra: “The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.”

{anais.nin}

I can still smell them. Little pillows of doughy goodness rising triumphantly in the old, log fueled cook stove. A small billow of smoke rolled out from the back…a reminder of the last pie baked.  I was four, and although any detail of what I did last week {or an hour ago} is difficult to muster, the memory or my great grandma baking biscuits is clear. I would sit on the unfinished hardwood floor and wait impatiently in front of the stove as they cooked; my grandmother and her would sip freshly perked coffee and talk about the kind nothingness that mattered.

“Don’t sit to close, deary…you don’t want them eyebrows comin’ off”, she would say in her coastal Maine, daringly harsh dialect. I would back up at first, but inch closer when they wern’t looking.

A pile of Courier Gazette newspapers sat in the corner in a disorganized pile; a collection of pictured time, she would call them.

My grandmother would call them a cluttered fire hazard and role her eyes.

She shuffled across the splintered floors in her worn soled slippers, and shewed me back with an ugly crocheted potholder. A half grin came across her face {the Irish woman never really smiled} as she grasped the cast iron from the hot stove and placed it on the burner to cool.

Sometimes I find myself desperately wondering if I am giving my girls these perfect morsels of childhood memories. I wonder if my parents, or my grandparents worried too.

Daily Mantra:

Sick

{by:shel.silverstein}

"I cannot go to school today,"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
"I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox
And there's one more--that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut--my eyes are blue--
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I'm sure that my left leg is broke--
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button's caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,
My 'pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is--what?
What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is. . .Saturday?
G'bye, I'm going out to play!"



Well...Mikki is home sick today. I got up this morning to her screaming
and went into her room, only to find that she had thrown
up all over her blankets. This is the joy of motherhood at its best, I think. After a clean up, a hug, and a made up bed on the couch
I gave her a bowl and pleaded in a quiet, severe, and sleepy tone of voice,
"Please...please,if you have to throw up, use this."
I stumbled back up the stairs, crawled into bed, and rested my head on the pillow. A half hour later...a knock at the door.

"Mommy, Mommy, I did it...I threw up in the bowl."

Yippee.

Daily Mantra: “You make me want to be a better man.”

{melvin.udall (aka: jack.nicholson) in ‘as good as it gets}

When I first met my husband (ok, like two or three weeks after I met him) he said that line to me. At the time, I had never seen the movie…so of course, I thought he was the most original, poetic, loving man in the world. I really knew I had a catch with a man who could say something like that. Fast forward a few months later, I was sitting down and watching that movie with him, and out comes “You make me want to be a better man” from Jack Nicholson’s mouth. I think my jaw must have dropped clear down to the floor. I had totally fallen for a guy who used a line from a MOVIE! I remember hitting him on the arm, and him looking at me bewildered, as if Jack had stolen the line from him. Sure.

By then, it was too late. I had moved in with him. We had silverware and a coffee pot and our own separate bath towels. Other than the one liners he fed me throughout the first six months of our relationship (yes…there were so many more), and the times he told me I was beautiful when I was pregnant…80 lbs heavier, cancles, a sick obsession with mens sweat pants…he has been stand up guy, so I have let this minor (MAJOR) detail slide.

One of my old boy friends from high school used Shakespeare (of course, I was smarter then, so I knew what he was doing), but I still went out with him anyway. Another one used chocolate and flowers…this was by far the best approach. (I have a passion for sweet food and things that smell nice, like most girls). In the end, it turned out that he was making an advance payment on the lies he would tell me later on in the relationship.

Yup…call me a sucker for all things sweet, pick up lines, and other lies of love. I am glad I am…it has made for an interesting adventure to say the least.

An unrelated photo….although if I never fell for that movie line, these two wouldn’t have happened, right? So…lets say…slightly related.

Katie was feeling shy today ( I was going to say ”in the bag” but I don’t think that would be a good thing to say about my 2 year old ), so Mikki thought she would contribute.