2018

“Beginnings and endings are so very sacred, to give honor to all that has transpired, every experience, every joy, every pain, is a doorway to the magical. Hold your entire year between your hands, every day, every thought, every breath. Now bless it with gratitude, love and humility. You have done more to transform this year than a thousand resolutions.” 

- K. Allen Kay

Another year in the books. Looking back through blog posts and pictures I see that, despite the craziness that has been unleashed in the world, I have been anchored to a lot of love and beauty.

In February I visited dear friends in Florida, a warm, sunny break from winter’s cold.


I managed to get out shoesnowing a couple of times and enjoy the magical colors of glistening snow.


We showed some much needed love to our house by having it resided and some windows replaced.

I spent an splendid week in Chicago where I got to meet two amazing blogging friends and soak in the delights that are the Windy City.

Martha and I spent much of the summer rebuilding a room at our cabin but also relaxed for a week while my sister and brother in law visited.

I saved a chipmunk from drowning.


I did a wee bit of hiking in the mountains which awakened me to just how much my knees have deteriorated. This year has been a year of reconciling my new limited physical abilities. It has not been an easy adjustment for me.

My youngest daughter got engaged in July giving us a new son and wedding planning became the new conversation.

We shared a family beach vacation in Rhode Island and all joined up in NYC for a Yankees game.

Beaner and I travelled to Greece and made unforgettable memories together. I can still close my eyes and see those extraordinary Santorini sunsets.

I learned how to make macarons and helped rescue 6 kittens.

Beaner gifted Martha and I with a trip to New York City for a really cool Mickey Mouse exhibit, viewed some of the special holiday windows and had an incredible meal at a hole in the wall Italian restaurant.

And the final icing on the 2018 cake was my oldest daughter getting engaged and her fiance surprising her with a dinner that included both families and many of my bonus daughters - her friends from childhood and college, some of whom made long journeys to attend.



While that list is certainly more than enough to say it was a very, very good year. I am especially grateful that I have had the health and resources to work and travel and relax. But what strikes me most when flipping through these highlights is that whether they were experiencing wonders around the world or just sitting in an adirondack chair by a tiny mountain lake, they were all shared with people I love. And what could be better than that?


I wish you all many blessings in the coming year and for people you love to share them with.

Winter Solstice in the Winter of my Life

Today is the Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere, the shortest and darkest day of the year. After today the sun will shine brighter, its rays will grow stronger and it will be visible in the sky longer and longer. Yet as winter inches on, each day will grow colder (my joints achier) and the snow deeper (I hope).

I do love the winter, especially really cold, snowy ones. I love when our little lake freezes thick enough to walk across (although I now fear falling on the ice). And when the snow is deep enough to snowshoe through back woods and stream corridors and I am awed at all the little creature tracks and trails (although my old age aches and pains now limit how far I can go).

I love when the air is so cold that the sky turns the deepest blue (although my fingers and toes now turn numb) and the snow magically sparkles as it flutters down to earth. I love the joy when the night air is so crisp and clear that the stars are extraordinary bright and I can see all the way to the Milky Way (although my eyesight isn’t what it used to be).

With each passing year, winter still holds more magical delights than achy discomforts for me. I hope it will always be so.

I wish for everyone bundles of wonder and joy (and pain free joints) in this, the most enchanting of seasons.

Happy Solstice!

Rescued

When I started grocery shopping for Margaret it was summertime. She is an 87 year old, frail lonely woman living with her cat. But I noticed that whenever I came to her porch there were often one or two small cats eyeing me from behind the bushes. Then I noticed that Margaret was feeding these cats and had a very sweet relationship with them. She would call them and they came running to be pet and fed. A couple of them were small and thin but I didn’t think too much about it as they were being taken care of.

Then autumn came and I began to get concerned about what the cats would do once the cold weather arrived. Margaret did not seem bothered as she said there were stray cats around for as long as she lived there and they seem to take care of themselves. But then she told me a story of when there was a pregnant cat and she put out a box for her to have her babies in, When Margaret came out the next morning they had all froze to death.

This story gave me many a sleepless night, especially as the long term forecast was for single digit nighttime temperatures. I made some calls to animal shelters only to find out they were all full. Many places I called didn’t even return my calls. One woman I spoke to said that if I could trap them, she might be able to get them into a spay/neuter clinic. Although I was tempted, I had to decline because of the health threat they would pose my own pets.

Then I called the woman, Maria, who had fostered our cats last year. She has 6 of her own, but provides a foster room and care to strays until they can be medically cleared and are appropriate for adoption. Unfortunately her foster room was also all filled up. 

With images of frozen kittens still keeping me up at night I decided I could at least build them a shelter to stay warm and referred to YouTube, the ultimate authority on such things. There I found a great idea - to build a shelter from a large Coleman cooler - and went in search of one. Strangely they are difficult to find this time of year. (Don’t people still tailgate at football games?) Anyway, I bought the biggest one I could find, cut a hole in its side and filled it with a thick layer of straw as instructed. I brought it over to Margaret’s porch and she was thrilled. As were the kitties who began to use it within 10 minutes of me dropping it off.

But then Maria called me back. She too couldn’t stand the thought of little ones out in arctic
temperatures and offered to come and try to trap them and bring the back to her house. And so last Saturday she drove almost an hour and set out traps with food. There was a lot of tension between Margaret who thought she could just pick up ‘her’ cats and put them in carriers (not) and Maria who just wanted to trap them and get them back to her house. After much brouhaha between the women, two cats (one we thought was the mom) were lured into the traps but then the other two scattered in fear. Maria then offered to come back yet again that evening and try for the other two cats.

At this point Margaret was grumbling that she was losing her babies who depended on her. I was almost in tears thinking that now there were two motherless kittens who were scared to death and out on their own. But Maria generously offered to return that night and we trapped the two remaining cats. It was both traumatic and gratifying at the same time.

Maria sent me a few photos of the kitties, now adapting to her basement. They all had worms and will all be spayed/neutered and vaccinated. I was feeling pretty good about myself. But three days later Margaret called me again to say there was a 5th cat and it was only a baby. Crap. All I could think about was how this one littlest kitten had been all alone for 3 days in the freezing cold having no idea what happened to its family. I was distraught and weepy and once again called Maria. Once again she drive 2 hours round trip. Once again she brought yet another kitten into her home.

Throughout this process I was an emotional mess. I would tear up at the thought of a frightened cat, lose sleep over the dropping night time temperatures and agonize over where the kittens had spent the recent snowstorm. Martha kept (unhelpfully) telling me about all the other little critters who live outside and how there will always be stray and feral cats. “You can’t save them all” she kept saying, which only got me more depressed.

Then a friend reminded me of the story about the boy and the starfish which you’ve probably all heard:

A man was walking on a beach and saw a young boy throwing objects into the ocean. He approached the child and noticed that the young lad was picking up a starfish and gently tossing it back into the ocean.

The man said, “Young man, what are you doing?”

The child replied, “These starfish have drifted up on the shore and they need water to live, so I’m saving their lives by putting them back in the ocean.”

The man said, “You must be kidding me! Look at all these starfish. There must be thousands of them. How in the world can you save them all, and what difference could it possibly make?”

The young boy reached down, picked up a starfish and tossed it into the ocean. He then turned to the man and said, “It made a difference to that one.”


The world is such a mess right now with so much hate and divisive fear mongering. Sometimes it is so overwhelming and I feel powerless to do anything at all, much less make any kind of a dent in it. It can be pretty f*cking depressing.  I’m grateful that my friend reminded me of the starfish story because in the midst of all the meanness and hate, there are 5 little kittens who are safe and warm and fed and, when they are ready, will be placed in forever homes. It doesn’t make an ounce of difference to the world, but it makes a difference to them. It’s all I’ve got right now and it it will have to be enough.

Not all of us can do great things, 

but we can do small things with great love.

 - Mother Teresa

Gutter Cleaning?

Earlier this year we had our house re-sided. As part of that renovation, we also added gutters, something this 60 year old house never had. Then Fall came and a kazillion pine needles filled the gutters. Great. So before the snow flies I went looking around for tools that might make cleaning out the gutters a little easier. I went to the Home Depot site and searched for gutter cleaning tools and found this:

Frequently bought together - a gutter cleaning wand, the coupling to attach it to a power washer and a toilet seat???


I obviously have a lot to learn about gutter cleaning but it no longer matters - we are getting 8” of snow tonight. A new toilet seat will have to wait until Spring.

Full of Grace

Our furnace broke and we will be almost 2 weeks without heat. Not that I am grateful for the broken furnace, nor the expense of replacing it, but I am very grateful for my down comforter keeping me cozy at night and that the temps have stayed above 30 so we don’t have to burn the furniture to keep the pipes from freezing.

Beaner gave me a gift of a macaron making class. The chef made them once, teaching us the steps - and then we ate them. Then we made our own as a group (mine were a mocha filling) and ate those too. I came home on quite the sugar high but such a good time spent with the daughter. I may try making them at home.

Looking for a cheap earring I lost, I found a good earring I had lost months ago under a dresser. Living with cats is always an adventure. Here’s a picture of one of them trying to look innocent.

This year I tried growing sweet potatoes in a container - their foliage makes for quite a lovely plant. Yesterday I dug up these which will be roasted tonight.

And finally this is coming!!!

I encourage everyone to take deep breaths and enjoy all the good stuff in your world of which you are blessed.  May the goddesses be with us on Tuesday.

Dem Bones, Dem Bones

Seven years ago, after a bilateral mastectomy, I started a ten year oral chemo regimen to kill all the estrogen in my body. This is supposed to significantly reduce my chances of a cancer recurrence. Unfortunately, it also greatly increases the rate of bone loss.

In the first year I lost over 10% density in my lumbar spine, 6% in my left hip and the femoral neck T score was went from -.9 to - 1.3 In the subsequent years I was consistently losing at 3% to 4% and had gone from healthy to osteopenia to bordering osteoporosis scores.

All of this freaked me out because I really think bones are important so I started a program for healthier bones - calcium, Vitamin D supplements and lots and lots of time in the gym doing lifting weights. And I am pleased to report that it is finally paying off and density scores are headed in a positive direction.

Lumbar spine +3.5%

Left hip + 1.3 %

Left femoral neck T-score -1.0

However, even with the improvement the left femoral neck was at the absolute lowest limit of normal so I texted Peachie, my exercise science daughter,

Well, it looks like squats (and new pants) are in my future.

Full of Grace

Some fun and amazing things from this week


Beaner’s boyfriend has asked for our blessing for him to ask her to marry him. He would not be my first choice for her but he loves her, that is obvious. So two weddings in one year. Oh boy.

Peachie and her fiance were home for the weekend and we all went out to dinner. Sitting there watching my two grown daughters, settled in their careers and now having found their life partners, all chatting and laughing together, left me with such a good feeling. The kids are definitely all right.

Sunday we all went hiking up north to see the fall foliage. Oh how I do love the changing of the seasons.

Unfortunately my knees told me not to attempt the summit. Instead I settled in quietly next to this little surprise spring and enjoyed the water music.

The mornings are now so dark that when I walk the dog, the stars are still shining.


Young love, the mountains*, the stars, the changing seasons. No matter what craziness is happening in the political world, these beautiful and perfectly magical things remain constant and I am grateful for that.


* Fortunately the Adirondacks are within a State owned park and Trump cannot sell them

Hi, guys

A friend of mine sent me this Twitter thread from a man called Julius Ghost. I don’t have a Twitter account and I’m not sure how to credit him but I thought this was worth sharing.


Julius Ghost @JuliusGoat


Hi, guys. Imagine if one day you got kicked in the nuts, really hard, on purpose.

You doubled over. Felt the pain. Nearly passed out. Nearly puked.

Then you got kicked again. And again.
Imagine it happened to you when you were 12.
Imagine it was an 38 year old woman who did it.
Imagine it was your mother’s friend and business partner.
Imagine you told your parents and they didn’t believe you.
Imagine they never mentioned it again.
You learned to keep quiet about it.
You learned to be scared.
Imagine that later your father explained that women just wanted to kick men in the nuts, so as a boy you had to be careful.

Imagine he had very detailed practical advice on this.

Imagine you started spending your life planning on avoiding being kicked in the nuts.
Imagine you became aware that women, including much older women—even elderly women—were always looking at your nuts. Women on the street would follow you. They’d tell you what a nice package you have. They’d tell you you’d be hot if you just showed off your nuts a little more.
Imagine you started wearing clothes to hide them. You bought uncomfortable protective gear.

All the posters and advertisements in all the magazines featured men’s crotches, though frequently not their heads.

Women’s feet were frequently featured in prominent juxtaposition.
Imagine most of your friends all told you about getting kicked in the nuts.

Imagine none of them had ever told anybody else.

Imagine all the older girls at school would make jokes about kicking you in the nuts.

Imagine all the laughter. The jokes are all so funny.

Jokes.
Imagine you went to church and were told that God made girls to want your body, so you should protect your nuts at all costs.

Imagine the minister said it was your responsibility as a maturing boy not to do anything that would make girls think about kicking you in the nuts.
Imagine you found a girlfriend, and you loved each other.

One night, you were fooling around and she kicked you as hard as she could in the nuts, and it all came rushing back.

Imagine she acted like obviously you wanted to be kicked in the nuts,mocked you for getting emotional.
Imagine you told the police, and they asked you what you’d been wearing before she kicked you in the nuts. Asked if you’d had a drink. Asked what you might have been doing before. Had you been naked? Kissing?

You had.

You left.
Imagine there were laws that said that if a wife kicked her husband in the nuts it wasn’t assault.

Imagine you heard about men with ruptured testicles who had to pay for their own forensic reports

Imagine you saw statistics showing only 1% of kickings resulted in conviction.
Imagine a girl was caught kicking a boy repeatedly in the nuts while he was passed out drunk.

Imagine the judge let her off, because she was worried about the damage to the girl’s future prospects. She was a star swimmer with a scholarship.

Imagine this happened all the time.
Imagine if one day men all started talking about how almost all of them had, at one point or another, been kicked in the nuts.

Imagine if women’s main concern was what false accusation might do to their reputations, and whether this new honesty might ruin the mystery of sex.
Imagine a woman ran for President.

Imagine audio came out of her bragging about making it a regular practice to kick men in the nuts without even introducing herself.

Imagine she lost no support for this.
Imagine she claimed the men accusing her were lying.

Imagine she said they were too ugly to kick.

Imagine there had never been a male president.

Imagine she ran against the first major-party male candidate.

Imagine he had experience, and she had none.

Imagine she won anyway.
Imagine she supported a Senate candidate known for kicking young boys in the testicles.

Imagine she nominated a judge.

Imagine the judge was accused of kicking a boy in the nuts.

Imagine the accuser had to hide from all the death threats as a result.
Imagine the man who had been kicked testified, providing sworn testimony.

Imagine the judge gave an vindictive rant in response.

Imagine he was derided for providing no evidence.

Imagine if they looked for no evidence.

Imagine the judge was given an op-ed to explain herself.
Imagine the President mocked the accuser in font of a crowd, and the crowd laughed and clapped.

Imagine the judge was confirmed.

Imagine the deciding vote was a man.

Can you imagine?
Now imagine that being kicked in the nuts might result in you having to create, in your body, a genetic replication of the person who kicked you.

And imagine that the judge intended to make sure you’d have to carry it.

Imagine that was the *reason* she was chosen.
I can't imagine women's rage today, but this exercise, while abstract, helped me get nearer to it than I'd been.

Be kind to women, guys. Today and every day.


If you see somebody being cruel to women, or abusive, or violent?

Kick 'em in the nuts.



By the way it's 100% insane that this issue seems to require an analogy to draw a sharper focus on how wrong our society presently is, but here were are.

_________________

Turning Around

Last week was the anniversary of my attack. I say “my” but I really mean “our”. Sometimes it is just too painful for me to go down that road. It is a day once overpowering with emotional trauma and now, after much time and therapy, a time of general melancholy. A time of remembering the fear and humiliation of that day but also, now, being grateful for my healing journey.

I did not watch Dr. Ford’s testimony before Congress although it has been next to impossible to avoid the constantly screaming headlines. Last night Trump decided to mock her and I am horrified to see so many people cheering as he ridiculed her. Angry at him. Ashamed for them. Scared for all of us. Is this really what we have become?

Years ago I took the advice of my therapist and decided to go in the direction I wanted to go. In my case it was turning from the pain and humiliation and dehumanizing act of rape toward a place of peace and joy and love. Now it’s time for our country to decide which way it wants to go. This is beyond politics, this is about the very soul of our nation. This is about facing forward and refusing to to be scared backwards. This is about doing the hard work of turning this ship of hatred around.

We are on this sinking ship and unfortunately, we are all on it together. If it goes down, we all go down. Yet there seems to be no talking reason to irrational people. They have no shame. They have no conscience. The only tools we have left are our votes. It is time to toss these rich, white, aging men off the brigg and take back OUR country. We deserve so much more than this.


34 days.

All the Lonely People

A good friends of ours, who is also a colleague of Martha’s, was recently diagnosed with a very aggressive form of breast cancer. Her treatment plan includes at least 9 months of chemo, radiation and then, if those are successful, a double mastectomy. She is a single mother with an 8 year old son. As soon as she allowed her diagnosis to be public, people started volunteering. A schedule was almost instantly filled with dinners to be delivered, rides to chemo and play dates for her son. All the kids at the elementary school made her get well cards. The village stepped up in a big way.


Last week a young woman (Sarah) I have known since she was 3, and was most recently a colleague, got the news that her 21 year old son was killed in a motorcycle crash. She had had this baby boy when she was only 15 and gave up a lot to be able to raise him. I went to the wake with my dear friend Anna who 28 years ago suffered a similar loss when her 5 year old daughter and 4 year old nephew were killed by a drunk drive. We got to the funeral home early and already the line was out the door and around the building. The show of support was tremendous. Once we reached the receiving line Anna hugged Sarah and whispered something in her ear. I have no idea what she said but I am sure it was something that will help Sarah as she navigates through this tragedy,


So while it was an extremely sad and emotional week for me and my community, what happened next hit me even deeper.


Margaret, the elderly woman I am now grocery shopping for, told me that her daughter has abandoned her. She has had no contact with her for over 3 years. She had signed her house and her father’s house over to the daughter and once that was done the daughter just wrote her off. She told me that she has spent all of those Christmases, Thanksgivings and Mother’s Days alone - with her daughter and granddaughter living right across the street!


I have no idea why the break happened but I just can’t imagine being that alone. She sits in her house in a deep state of depression. I emailed my organization’s volunteer coordinator with my concern and this was part of her reply:


“It is a sad situation and hate to say we are seeing more and more of people alone with no one they feel they can ask for help.”


I had been quite melancholy about my friends who have very long roads to healing, but this broke my heart even more to think of all these elderly people sitting in their homes, alone.



Much like everything else in our society today, there seems to be an ever widening gap between the haves and the have nots while we overflow with resources. I know people have so much to give and in these days of uncivil and mean divisiveness, community acts of kindness and love stand out even more and give me hope. But we need to figure out a way to funnel some of this generosity to the people who are in so much need of it.


I don’t have the answers but in reading about loneliness I read that what lonely people miss most is intimacy. Yesterday I visited Margaret and gave her a hug. She cried. It’s a small drop in the ocean of her loneliness but it is a start.


All the lonely people, where do they all belong? They belong to all of us.

Grecian Adventure

Everything started out smooth enough. Leaving from our small, hometown airport, we breezed through security. But then we learned that our flight would be delayed because our plane was stuck at a different airport. That would cause us to miss our connection to Athens but we discovered a different flight leaving so we hopped on that. We taxied out only to come to a full stop. Apparently there was too much air traffic in the NYC airports and we had to wait. Then we were told that because of low cloud cover we would have to wait longer. We finally arrived - 10 minutes after our Athens connection had left. First we were told we had to wait 24 hours for the next flight but after some wangling we were able to catch a flight to London later that evening and then a connection to Athens. All in all we arrived about 7 hours later than originally planned.

Unfortunately, our luggage did not arrive at all. It is such a lonely, sinking feeling to watch all the other people on your flight collect their bags and leave while you stand there, alone, hoping against hope that your bag will miraculously appear out of the shute.

We reported the bags lost and found our driver to take us to our hotel. This was our view, from our room - the Temple of Zeus:

And the view from the rooftop restaurant where we had breakfast every morning:

I always carry one change of clothes in my take-on bag but of course my daughter, who never thinks anything will go wrong, did not. So out we went into Athens to buy some essential toiletries, underwear, and some clothing to carry us through.


The next morning we had booked a tour of Athens and the Acropolis. We saw the 1896 Olympic stadium which hosted the first modern games

And Hadrian’s Arch:

And of course, the Acropolis.

The Acropolis museum is built over an ancient settlement and there are glass walkways through which you can view it:

We spent about 1 1/2 hours with a guide learning much about the building of the Acropolis and the meaning of the sculptures and particularly the reverence for the goddess Athena:

And then walked up the hill to view the buildings themselves.

Throughout my career as a city planner I always worked with historic preservation. But now my efforts to preserve and protect 200 year old buildings seemed humorous in comparison to the 600 B.C. buildings I was witnessing. I was awestruck. But this was my daughter’s dream vacation and she did not want to spend too much time with history lessons so off we went shopping again. At least they were old historic neighborhoods (Plaka) we were shopping in:

Our luggage had still not arrived (which I write calmly about now but was a major source of stress at the time) when we were off to take a ferry to the island of Mykonos. On board my seat mate was a Greek woman who worked in hotel development. We had a long and educational (for me) conversation about our different development experiences and parted with shared email addresses.

Mykonos is a beautiful island of whitewashed buildings (by law your house must be white) and small churches (by law, in the rural areas, you must build a family church - about the size of a garden shed - before you build your house) and vineyards. We had a lovely hotel right on Platys Galias Beach (Pelican Beach)

Our luggage had still not arrived although by this time they had found it - one still in Newark and other in London - and they promised it would be delivered on the next plane. So back to shopping in Mykonos Town.

It is a very compact town with winding, narrow streets. I was told this was to deflect the strong winds that sweep across the island and also to confuse pirates:

Here we ate amazing seafood (although I had to ask the waiter to behead and debone a sea bass for me as I didn’t like my food looking at me) and wandered the streets buying bathing suits and more clothes.

And then we spent the evening walking along the shore, eating gelato:

On our second day in Mykonos my daughter scheduled a bike tour. The description sounded wonderful - starting from a family owned vineyard and organic farm, take an easy bike ride to a secluded beach, have a picnic and return to the vineyard, all while our leader, Dimitra, told us about life on Mykonos.

Ten of us gathered and were assigned mountain bikes. We were told to bring water, a bathing suit and towels which I carried in the backpack I used as my plane carry on. Out we started in the blazing Mediterranean sun. Our first stop was a small church where we learned about the religion of the island.

Then the ride started get difficult. The roads were all arid dirt and rocks and I was terrified of wiping out, especially on the steep downhills. Soon I was trailing the rest of the pack by greater and greater distances but one group leader always stayed behind with me.

We finally made it to the beach and I lost no time in jumping in to cool off.

We shared a picnic of wine, fresh lemonade, seasoned tomatoes, cheeses, breads, meats, olives and an orange cake in honor of the 30th birthday of a woman in our group.

There was a long and steep hill to get back up so I left the group early and started walking my bike back up. Soon everyone lapped me and I was once again pedaling in the back of the pack. But I made it back, huffing and puffing, my heart rate far exceeding safe. I should note here that I carried the backpack in the blazing sun because my darling daughter didn’t want to ruin her tan lines.

At this point some of the folks left but we stayed at the vineyard sipping wine and lemonade and chatting with a couple from Germany, a couple from northern Greece and two sisters from Chicago.

One more day at the beach and visiting the windmills and eating amazing seafood and finally our luggage arrived!

Then off on another ferry to the island of Santorini, known for its white buildings and blue domes.

Here we had a beautiful hotel room facing the volcano with phenomenal sunsets.

While Athens was for history, Mykonos for shopping, Santorini was to be for sunbathing and wine. We spent a day at the Black Sand Beach, made from the volcanic lava rocks smoothed into small black pebbles.

We dined in Oia and watched the world famous sunset, and we went on a wine tasting tour that took us to 3 different wineries, tasting 5 different wines at each stop.


At the first stop we learned about how the grape vines were kept low to the ground because f the high winds, and because they had no wood to stake plants. Instead the vines were wound into low ‘bird’s nest’.

Then we saw where the grapes were stomped, by feet, and the juice funneled into barrels for fermentation.


Our last stop was on a hill top where we could watch the sunset while sipping the last dessert wine. I did take a tiny sip of each wine but then my daughter drank the rest. She was pretty much wasted by the time it was over.

We spent our last day lingering over breakfast and getting massages at a fancy spa. Delightful.

Then it was onto Santorini airport for a flight back to Athens.

Santorini airport reminded me of a third world, 1940s airport - a small building with 6 gates and about 20 seats. The place was mobbed with weary travellers strewn all over the floors and there were no working outlets to charge phones and few working bathrooms. I was never so happy to board a cramped little plane and get out of the terminal.

One more night back in Athens where we enjoyed a lovely rooftop dinner overlooking the spectacularly lit Acropolis

and then back on a plane for the 12 hour flight home.


I am still struggling to get back on a sleep schedule and I still haven’t finished unpacking.

When asked about my favorite parts of the trip they were mostly the times we spent away from the tourist spots like the killer bike ride and times spent talking with folks from other countries. Having grown up near New York City I was used to multiculturalism. Now I live in a homogeneous suburb. It was very refreshing to see and hear different languages, dress, foods, etc.


Other little weird observances -

Almost everyone speaks English - most better than I do.

New York Yankees caps are worn by people around the world. I personally found people from New Zealand, Germany, Greece, Spain and Great Britain all wearing them. When asked if they were fans the answers were always “no, but the caps are prized.”

Nutella everywhere. I mean everywhere. It is in cookies and gelato and crepes. I had a Nutella calzone the size of a football and there was Nutella on every breakfast bar. I have no idea how these people stay so thin.

Cats are also everywhere.  They wander in and out of shops, which always had open doors, and sunbathe in shadows.  People apparently put out large plates of food for them and they inhabit the islands as if they owned the place.

All in all it was a wonderful trip making memories with my daughter. The lost luggage stress has faded and been replaced with beautiful new clothes we would not have bought otherwise.

Personally I would have liked to do more historical/educational wanderings - there is a town in Santorini that was bured by the volcano that is older than Pompeii and an archaeological site on the island of Delos that many people list as a “must see”. But wandering around beautiful small towns, relaxing at extraordinary beaches with crystal clear water, chatting with locals and folks from elsewhere, dining at seaside restaurants and sharing the most breathtaking sunsets every night with my daughter was a pretty exceptional adventure.

August Odds and Ends

August has been extremely busy with mostly good and fun times

My sister and BIL visited at the lake which is always time spent chatting and mindlessly eating. (Did we just eat an entire half gallon of ice cream in one sitting?)

Beaner took Martha and I to see the Piano Boys as our Mother’s Day present. I didn’t know the Piano Boys were actually a pianist and a phenomenal cellist. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a person play their instrument which more joy and abandon. Soul nourishing.

We went blueberry picking and filled the freezer for future pies and muffins but squirrels ate my entire orchard.  There's not a peach, apple or pear left to be seen. At least I had a couple of peaches off the tree before the plague came.

We have had extremely overcast skies recently which, we are told, are not clouds but rather the smoke from the California fires. Holy smoke! I can’t imagine what it is like on the west coast.

Thanks to one of my alma maters, the entire family congregated at Yankee stadium to enjoy an unlimited buffet, free hat and great seats on a perfectly pleasant night to watch a game. And our team actually won - something they have had difficulty doing lately.

Wedding planning going at full pace. Venue, check. Date set, check. Wedding dress, check. Peachie has been planning this since she was 5 so I don’t have to do much.

Roaming around the County Fair watching sheep shearing and cow milking. And, of course, this.

The passing of Aretha Franklin. She was the soundtrack of one of the most beautiful chapters of my life. I am enjoying all the tributes which are taking me back to that very happy place. Bittersweet.

Tomorrow Beaner and I leave for Greece. I am grateful to be able to create such memories with my oldest daughter but claustrophobic me is very anxious about the 10 and 12 hours trapped in a plane, plus feeling responsible that all plans go smoothly. I would ask that you send some travelling mercies into the universe for us.

Wow, August flew by..See you in September.

A Day at the Beach

I grew up a few miles from the beach. My parents loved the ocean and I learned how to swim, to build sand castles, to quickly eat a frozen fudgy wudgy bar before it melted there. My mother would pack sandwiches and drinks and we would spend the entire day playing in the surf and sand. These were the days before sunscreen and nobody worried about being in the sun too long.

Occasionally my grandparents, who lived in New York City, would join us. I don’t have many memories of my grandfather as he died when I was four, but I remember seeing some photographs of them at the beach with us. My grandfather dressed in his street clothes - pants, shirt, socks and shoes, and my grandmother in her house dress, stockings and shoes and a gigantic sun hat. My parents would bring beach chairs for them and they would sit under a huge umbrella and enjoy the open air reprieve from the city, but never bathe in the sun.

Once we were teenagers we went to the beach every day, either hitching a ride or, once old enough to drive, strapping our surfboards to the top of the car. Our closest beach had 5 parking fields, each which developed their own following. Field 5 was generally for families, Field 1 for fishermen, while Field 2 was for teenagers. We would congregate there every day to surf and play beach volleyball but most importantly to work on our tans. From 9 am to 4 pm we would lay out on our towels, slathered in baby oil, and soak up the rays. Back in those days we only had transistor radios and everyone listened to the same station and the sound covered the entire beach. Every half an hour the DJ would say “roll your body” and the everyone on the beach would turn over. It would be fair to say that the main activity of my misspent youth was sun worshipping.

Over the years I have given into bringing a beach chair so I could comfortably read. I still used a towel to lay on so I could evenly tan both my front and back. Then, when the girls were babies, knowing more about the dangers of sun exposure, we bought a respectable beach umbrella to shade them from the heat of the mid-day sun and slathered them with sunscreen. I still laid out with abandon and found the feeling of the sun on my skin to be one of the most pleasurable feelings in the world.

We just returned from a beach vacation. My daughters are in their twenties and I am in my sixties. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, I can no longer tolerate too much sun like I used to. What changed? My daughters stretched out in their skimpy bikinis and I wore a one piece bathing suit with a pair of water shorts and a large brimmed sun hat I just bought for my upcoming trip to Greece. I lugged a beach chair and umbrella through the sand. But it was windy and we couldn’t keep the large beach umbrella firmly in the sand. Having just read that a woman had been impaled with a blown away umbrella made me take this very seriously. I went up to the beach shop and bought one of those small cheesy personal umbrellas that latch onto your chair. I could direct it to keep the sun off the majority of my body but wound up draping a towel over my burning knees and legs.

My daughters couldn’t hide their amusement. Or was that embarrassment? I have now officially become my grandmother.

Going Home

Martha and I have been working our butts off at the cabin. We hired a contractor to rip out a concrete floor in a back room that had heaved and was allowing water to seep up through the floor. They replaced the floor but left us with only studs for the back wall. We put in new windows, installed beadboard, laid carpet and sided the outside. My hands and shoulders were stiff for days.

Then we ripped apart the last third of the deck, shored up the foundation, unscrewing all the boards, flipping them, screwing them back down and re-staining them. Brutal on the back and knees.

But the most difficult project was replacing a back door that was thoroughly rotted. The door sat in a frame that had settled significantly and was now a trapezoid shape and never closed completely and was barely held shut for years by a hook and eye. Plus the door was about 7 inches shorter than a standard door. Removing the old door I found lots of rotted wood that needed to be replaced. Then I framed out a rectangle for the door frame. We had to cut 7 inches off the bottom of a fiberglass door to fit but we did it a little at a time to make sure we didn’t cut too much. After each cut we carried the heavy door, jockeying it into this narrow space, then back to make adjustments including having to router and re-position the bottom hinge.  My shoulders and wrists are screaming in protest.

There is nothing on my body that does not hurt. Nothing. As much as I enjoy doing this kind of physical work, and my psyche absolutely needs it, my body needs so much more time to recover from each day of labor.

And to that end I am leaving for a relaxing family vacation where I will enjoy the healing power of warm sand, beach walks at sunrise, salty air, the calming ebb and flow of the ocean and seafood meals while watching sunsets.


Having grown up by the ocean, for me it is like going home.