pomegranatesandpaper

Into Each Life a Little Rain. . .

Last night at midnight, I was awoken by a massive, rolling boom of thunder followed by an intense bolt of lightning right over the house. I jumped right out of the bed and Bella Sera jumped off the floor and stared at me as if to say, "What are you humans doing now?"

Within seconds, the wind began to shriek and there was a thunder, wind, and rain storm the  likes of which I haven't seen since we left Memphis.  The wind shear was incredible  and the rain was coming in horizontal sheets as thick as snow. The trees were bending, garbage cans were flying across lawns, and the street light across the road blew out in a million sparks. Soon hail starting hitting the windows and we decided it was best to step away from them.

Mr. Pom and I flew around and shut doors and windows and mopped up water and then just stood transfixed by the bedroom window and watched the force of the wind and water rip apart trees.  And then we realized that Cucciolo was in his crate in the guest room with all the window opens. He was calmly sitting there waiting for us to explain why he was getting wet inside the house.

It was over in ten minutes and by the time I thought to turn on the TV, it was passing across the Long Island Sound to Port Washington and I thought of a few people I knew who would be worried. Police cars soon appeared at either corner of our street as trees and wires were down.

I was just happy that all three kids were away so if anything happened, they'd inherit the  house mortgage. I was especially glad The Teen was away because she has a little PTSD from her early years in the hall closet in Memphis while the tornado sirens were going off. (I found out today that she was online at imdnight with her cousin here so she knew all about it and was tracking the storm online. HELLO: thanks for calling the parents and giving us the heads up!)

This morning, sister A told me that there was a tornado warning and the civil defense  screen came on the TV (she watches late night TV). She got her kids into the stairway to the basement. Sister M told me she ran out onto her front porch to secure her objets d'arts and furniture (what a gal!).  The next town over had so much hail that they had to get out the snowplows in July. Today it looks like a warzone with giant trees snapped in two, old, huge trees upended roots and all, and piles of limbs on every street corner.

I know I was a little bored, what with being sick for the last SIX WEEKS, and really ill over the long weekend, but honestly, I'd rather be bored than have these late night wake up calls. Really, I won't complain about the weather anymore, okay? Cool and rainy is okay over hot and thundery.

And Mr. Pom? He had to be practically pushed out of bed to help me shut everything and then he was able to go right back to sleep. I was coming down off of hyperventilating and he was already snoring. Sister A said her heart was pounding for quite awhile after her family was fast asleep.

Look, weather gods, this is NEW YORK, not Memphis, not Kansas City. We do NOT get tornados.  When our buildings get knocked down, it's by terrorists, not tornados. 

What's the world coming to?

Currently Contemplating:

• How I would do if I had to perform my job in front of a crowd, whilst singing and flipping molten lava hot sugar up into the air?
• If Ace of Cakes cakes actually taste good since they are worked on for days and handled by so many people?
• If anyone around here makes sugar free Italian lemon ice - or watermelon flavor?
• How long it takes for Augmentin to kick the ass of a sinus infection?
• How many days I can leave early due to above without my boss freaking out and assigning me to the bowels of the courthouse to cover the pro se cases for a week?
• Where I can find robin egg's blue linen to make slipcovers for my fugly chenille couch?
• If it would be incredibly tacky to use the blog to ask if anyone has contacts for jobs in mechanical engineering for a certain college graduate son?
• Why I didn't check to see if we had any nail polish remover in the house before painting my nails fire engine red....badly.

Inspired By

Thursday's style section of the New York Times -

The Lettered Set

Mrs. Kargman has a stationery wardrobe which includes,

miniature raspberry-colored notecards with chocolate borders that say “Jill and Harry” (Harry is her husband), made by the Printery in Oyster Bay, N.Y., a century-old stationer from which she also orders white “empire”-size notecards with red borders and her initials; correspondence cards from Kate Spade printed with her first name; and pale gray sheets of writing paper with a white border from the Grosvenor Stationery Company in London.

I am a stationery fiend like Mrs. Kargman, though not of her class since I had never heard of the term, "social papers", which aparently have a specific definition, to wit:

real “social papers” are not boxed cards with your initial from your corner stationer. Social papers are made with hand-cut dies, a universe of fonts and stock in shades like creamy ecru, tobacco or artichoke, to name a few of the offerings at the Printery.

Lucky thing my ignorance, for despite luscious colors like artichoke, seems that "social papers" start at " $350 for 100 of Dempsey & Carroll’s best seller, the No. 3 notecard; $500 will get you tissue-lined envelopes to match."

But who wouldn't like a set of stationery as diverse as their wardrobe?? Well, I would - even if most my missives appear on a glowing screen and blinking cursor.

Can't afford $350 for 100 or just despair of using other than tissue-lined envelopes?

Shop Etsy!

These zinnia cards are from Sarah Parrot's gorgeous shop.

As are these peony flat cards. Which to order?? Not really a need to decide between the two since they are $3.50 and $8.00 respectively you can get both.

Letterpress offers this lovely tandem bike card.  The color sings summer and the paper looks so creamy and lush with its deep embossing.




Beautiful vintage letterpress cut from inkadoodle.




While not stationery, wouldn't you love to pull one of these lovelies out of your bag to jot down your grocery list?

And sometimes, less is more.....

These are so summery - brings me back to dating Mr. Pom and trips to Playland on summer nights.

 

How about these for a punch of summer!

Can't break the email habit??

 

These will reassure you. 

Can't choose? Want them all?

Then this option is for you: the card of the month club! Really cool retro designs sure to please.

Visually Clueless

has happened to summer?*

Oh, but that this was MY office space for the summer.....

And these were MY office supplies. . .

 

Ya think this is belongs to a New Jersey housewife?

(Totally blaming the weather on my new addiction to trashy reality series.....)

Note to self:

So quit bitching about the weather and start making some art....

and no

butts about it

(totally blaming the weather for lame blog jokes......)

____________

****this font brought to you by The Teen (not really, but in her honor).

Home Again Home Again Jiggety Jig

CURRENTLY CONTEMPLATING

• Buying a row house in Baltimore by the harbor
• And then a camp on the Eastern Shore
• Eating more steamed crabs on a tablecloth of Kraft paper
• Buying a French press for al fresco morning cafe au laits
• Wondering whether The Teen will eat anything other than sugar for 4 weeks
• Wondering where The Teen gets her courage to go off alone to work 12 hours a day at her passion for 4 weeks
• Whether I can justify my third coffee of the day
• Redoing our bedroom to look like a boutique hotel:
  • sisal wall to wall
  • upholstered headboard
  • king sized bed
  • flat screen TV
  • silk drapes
  • matching dog beds
  • dogs that will sleep in dog beds and not on ours
• Where all my readers/commenters have gone

Favor

I have removed the new widget that runs at the bottom of the posts as "you might like these stories" because I think the script is causing the access issues some of you have been reporting. If anyone is still having trouble accessing the posts or leaving comments, please drop me a line at artjournal@optonline.net so I can continue to work with SixApart to resolve the problem. Thanks!

The Growing Season

We've had so much rain that the plant and bushes are just bursting with growth, sending tendrils up in the air and grabbing at anything to support their waterlogged stems.

I have never had lusher roses and hydrangeas. Now we hold our breath that the rain tapers off because we are just on this side of garden rot and it if doesn't dry out soon, we are going to start to lose a lot of plants.

As well as our sanity.

Pictures of the garden? Pictures of the new garden bed? Would be nice, no? But the rain again....too dark by the time I get home from work or too wet.

I did manage to capture a few moments of sunshine in the backyard where the climbing roses are just thrilled at all this moisture. Look away, all ye professional gardeners and do not spate on my bedraggled bushes which are in sure need of good pruning and staking!

Mr. Pom almost ripped out these pinks last year when the arbor vitae had shaded them out of any bloom. Glad he never found the time.

Ditto with the red ramblers. The little dogwood is crowding out their growing and sun space and they are in the habit of getting in under the gutter of the garage, which is not good. But look at these beauties!  Hard to imagine how such a slender stem supports so many blooms.  how could I ever trim these back??

Other things around the house are growing, too.

Remember Little Cucciolo?

How innocent! How angelic! (See the ottoman next to him - it's in the basement waiting for the day when I can completely restuff the bottom since we discovered he was crawling under it and systemically pulling out all the fibers.)

He's gotten a tad larger......

Bella Sera, who turned three this week, has actually gotten a tad smaller as her son, the crazed demon pup, keeps her going all day long and she's lost all of her postpartum chub! You go girl!

And speaking of growing older, the baby of the family is about to break all our hearts and go off for a month on her own.    How did it come to be so quickly that all my children are grown? I like it - and I don't.

In early spring, we were at College Night at the high school. She took me over to a bulletin board in a hallway that was a display of her art class's self portraits. I found her drawing immediately - a lovely likeness, I agreed.

She waited for me to notice something else. The board was heavily collaged and I didn't immediately see it.

And then I gasped.

And then I almost burst into tears - in the hallway! of the high school! with a million people she knew all around us!

Her baby picture.

The assignment was to draw a self portrait of herself now and when she was a toddler.

Words cannot express how I felt seeing a long lost photo come alive under my own child's hand, and the startling likeness.

She's never getting these drawings away from me and the second I have a chance, they are getting framed and hung in the living room. They had a place of honor at MM's party and she was just mortified, of course. Savvy mothers reading this post will understand why I put this photo at the bottom and didn't lead off with it - this way she may never notice it and demand I take it down!

Honestly, I don't think I've ever gotten a greater gift. So of course, I am never satisfied and I demanding that she do the same for her brother and sister's baby photos, too.

A happy mom.

Little Miss Perfect

Today is the calm before the storm - again - because tomorrow is  D-Day: pack up The Teen for her month long pre-college program far away. It will be a mad dash of a day to Target, grocery store, a shoe store, the art store and packing, washing, ironing.

And since it may be the only day we spend together this summer until we go to the Cape, I am hoping for a mother daughter mani/pedi and quick zip into the city to our fave place for breakfast. Now that The Teen has a job, she's no longer our sweet companion on our weekend jaunts and I miss her.

Mother/daughter relationships: so fraught with tension, love, judgment, acceptance, miscommunication, joy, sorrow, tears, and laughter. 

Whatever my faults as a mother and my daughters' frustrations with me, I know that they know they are loved and cherished and enjoyed. I know they are not perfect and they certainly know I am not.

And I never entered them in a beauty pageant.

Being rarely home during the day, I am unfamiliar with daytime TV choices. Feeling under the weather today, I came home early from work and just wanted to lie on my bed and veg out. Flipping around the channels, I stopped at "Little Miss Perfect".  Thinking it was the movie, which I now realize is "Little Miss Sunshine", I discovered it was a reality TV show on child Beauty Queens. I watched the  hour with my jaw hanging down like a mule on crack.

The first episode  featured an absolutely darling, sweet, not overly made up but completely self-conscious little girl being made to wear a snake around her neck for a talent competition,  and was then followed up by an hour long show where moms and daughters are competing together as beauty contestants.

I just don't know  child beauty pageants still existed. For some reason, I thought they had been outlawed after the Jon Benet tragedy. Obviously I was talking through my hat since it appears it is alive and well and about as close to legalized child pornography and abuse as one can get without having Child Protective Services busting down your door.

Hair extensions, fake tans, acrylic nails, full make up, Dolly Parton look-alike hair styles, enough sequins to make Bob Mackie jealous, and the most revolting poses, dances, and sexual coquettishness to make Nabokov blush.  Sad faces, robotic-like runway strutting, fake eyelashes, and the parents crying over having to tell their daughters that the "judges didn't think she was pretty enough" when she loses the competition.

AAARGH!  The years of therapy! The self-worth issues! The food control, sexual acting out, drug abuse, wrapped tighter than a drum perfectionism.........

I don't which episode was worse: the one featuring little kids with the thousand-dollar dresses and Southern moms parading their kewpie doll daughters across runways while they wipe tears from their unmade up eyes. Maybe it was just this episode, but it seemed as though the more ornate and sexual the child's appearance and demeanor, the more plain and unkempt the mother's appearance.

Now I am now writing about good ol' soccer moms with mom jeans and Gap t-shirts; I am talking about women who look like they do not even pass a brush over their hair or look in a mirror in the course of a week, but slavishly fuss over every sequin, eyelash, and hair extension on their child. Moms who had black roots under the most bleached out hair and triple X bodies (in size not adult content) who were rubbing glue sticks on their daughter's chest because the little one didn't have an actual chest to keep their sexually precocious  dress from falling down.

The next show featured  mother and daughter competitions, with Dad's helping to choreograph dance routines using  kitchen chairs and camo hats. (Every Dad featured had a mullet or a ponytail and some form of camo.)  The children walked liked they were made of porcelain and their mouths were frozen in smiles. The moms were getting botox and squeezing into gowns they once wore 30 pounds and/or 30 years ago.

Hard to say which was more jaw-dropping or troubling, the intensity of the moms who had completely let their own self images plummet into the basement in order to micromanage every fake hair on their daughters' heads, or the moms getting their lips botoxed and squeezing themselves into gowns last worn 20 years/10 pounds ago. 

At the risk of being tarred and feathered, I have to say that it brings up some of the most unpleasant  aspects of living in the South - not that all these people were from the South, but it was a definite culture prevalent there at many levels and in many forms.

I know that this sounds like a very east coast putdown. And I am painfully aware that  this beauty pageants are just a more disturbing level of the more popular culture of pressuring kids to compete in sports, academics, and college placements.

And while I want to grab some of my kids' friends and tell them to slow down and take a couple weeks  off from the pre-college classes, college boards prep, volunteer activities, and athletic camps to just sit in the sun and throw each other in the pool, at least I have never had to shudder at hearing one of their  moms tell them that when they are walking down the runway in front of the judges to be sure to put  put "some brass in their ass".

Summertime & The Reading Is Easy Or Not

In the early afternoon of a misty, grey Saturday, we found ourselves in our favorite Cape bookstore, The Brewster Bookstore. I certainly didn't need to be there; my big blue bike bag was full of books I'd brought from home:

• Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson: 
• This was a Cornflower recommendation (increasingly the source of all my favorite reads). Written b the author of The Haunting of Hill House and the short story, The Lottery, this pre-Erma Bombeck memoir of raising a young family in Vermont is splendid - witty, intelligent and just infectiously good-humored. 

• I had to follow her memoir up with her dark comedy, We've Always Lived in the Castle. I'm only a quarter of the way into it but it involves two isolated, eccentric sisters, their invalid uncle, and a bowl of arsenic-tainted sugar......

• With a very special place close to my heart, I've been carrying around Country Matters, a collection of the writings of Jo Northrop, the late columnist for Country Living. I discovered the existence of her book after writing the post on magazines last week and I ordered it immediately. I am savoring it one essay at a time, hoping to keep it in the reading pile for the rest of the month.

• The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters:  No one does a Gothic ghost story with as much restraint as Sarah Waters, except Henry James. Creepy,  absorbing, and so perfectly paced that the tension becomes unbearable and ultimately the end is both puzzling and apparent.  The main character of this novel, by an author twice nominated for the Booker prize, is not the doctor/narrator nor the almost spinster daughter with athletic legs, but the crumbling, decaying manor house with which everyone is the story is obsessed. 

• For a complete change of pace after a very long foray into English country manor between the wars impoverished gentry balls in the house with dawn champagne breakfasts and libraries with the wallpaper peeling off the walls and down at the heels maiden aunts and mothers in threadbare gowns and a ghost in the attic nursery . . .I am about to begin My Cousin the Saint by Justin Catanoso, a memoir about a New Jersey Italian American who discovers that his grandafather's cousin was a "Vatican-certified miracle worker". Sounds just ofbeat and engrossing enough for the pleasures of summer reading.

Where was I? Oh, yes - I had all these books in the pile and about twenty more, but when I saw this cover on the bookstore table, there was absolutely no way it was not going home with me:

This improbable book is the story of Tecumseh Sparrow Spiver, a twelve-year old prodigy cartographer who lives on an isolated ranch with his silent, dysfunctional family, composed of his self-engrossed, scientist mother, self-engrossed, silent cowboy father, his frustrated, lonely teen age sister, and the lingering shadow of his deceased brother who T. S. may or may not have caused to die. 

The design of the book is splendid:   an  oversized 8 inches wide with a 4 inch sidebar on either side that are bursting with T. S.' s hand-drawn illustrations and maps that have a vintage, antique quality. Only in the seventh grade, T. S. already has had illustrations and maps published in Scientific American, Nova, and for the Smithsonian. He maps out all part of his world, from the water tables of Montana to the number of bad ears of corn in his sister's bucket, to the number of times his father sips his whiskey while he watches his cowboy movies. The recent trauma of his brother's death is told mainly in the sidebars, which are crammed with cross-sections of insects, sewer systems, and the flights of bats.

The story itself is a wild, sometimes sad ride as T. S. takes off from home on his Quixote-like cross country journey and discovers more about his family than he could know while living in their midst.  I read it the entire way home in the car from Cape Cod and finished it tonight after dinner.

For someone like myself, who loves to journal and sketch, the drawings, charts, maps, and diagrams make my head buzz and my fingers itch to add them to my own journals.  Today, during a particularly boring stretch of a deposition, I found myself charting the number of questions and answers given per minute in a ten minute stretch...

Please let me know what you are reading, what suggestions you have to share that we can look forward to putting on our own TBR piles!

June Bug Out

We are off to

Where we hope it will not be a weekend like

Or

Because we plan to do a little

And a lot of

So we are not so much like

Talk to you soon!

Grace Between the Raindrops

It has been an incongruous spring and early summer. Instead of sweet-smelling evenings and light-filled days,  rain has wrapped round us like late fall and the evenings dim with cloud coverage and cold temperatures meant for blankets and cups of tea instead of ceiling fans and lemonade.

We're a little bit tired of it, wearied of it, really. My wardrobe of new skirts and patent leather sling backs seems to mock me each morning and I have to resist my goose fleshed arms reach for turtlenecks and wool pants and yes, even boots.

I know it's the 8th straight day of rain and 55 degree mornings, but today I could not take one more day of black and brown and put on a skirt - an off-white button down the front canvas straight skirt, with a print top and pink short sleeved cardigan. I did put on patent leather flats and sighed over the pretty canvas ones that would have gotten ruined in the rain. My bare legs were a bit wet and cold, but the pink sweater was commented on by more than a few spring-starved souls.

One of my concessions to working for a living (as if I have to deem to concess to a life-sustaining activity) is to make my office a place of comfort. For years I believed that a working woman needed to have a utilitarian, impersonal space designed to impart only the fiercest confidence in clients and superiors. There would be no breaching of the professional aura by doodads and gizmos or homey touches.

Now, I no longer care. I am who I am and if I have to spend 56 hours a week in a room, I better be surrounded by photos of loved ones, color, my own paintings, a tray of shells, pretty boxes, and other bits and pieces of art I've picked up here and there. I have my "Beach" fragrance beads that a lovely blog reader sent me.

One of my absolute musts is a desk lamp. I cannot stand fluorescent lights. A desk lamp's ambient light makes all the difference between feeling imprisoned and feeling if not at home, then at least in a place of my choosing.

I am blessed with an office with a wall of windows and my desk lamp, although small, is usually enough. These gloomy mornings, however, my little lamp barely penetrates the darkness but I am stubborn in not switching on the above the head horror of humming, white jailhouse lighting.

Each dark, rainy morning this week, someone has walked by and wondered aloud if I was there - oh yes, I see you now, they kid, peering as if with a flashlight into a rainforest. I had to resist the urge to conform and switch on the ceiling light but stuck to my guns.   Since 99.9% of our time is spent on laptops, there's really very little need for other light sources, unless you are the type who forsakes coffee and may be found asleep and drooling over a keyboard in a darkened room.

We moved into these offices two months ago and since  I brought in my little lamp, a white metal carved base with a pretty chintz fabric shade,  it's drawn a lot of attention from other women on the staff. One by one, pretty lamps have sprouted on desks up and down the hallway.

One attorney has an elegant Tiffany inspired light that casts jeweled shadows across her desk. Another has a large, lime green, barrel-shaded contemporary that I lust after.  In further gentrification of our spaces, house plants have become popular.   A huge rubber tree was seen ambling across the floor, its owner trudging behind it, completely hidden by the leaves like an explorer on safari.

I, myself, have killed a lavender plant and ivy plant - the type that a nuclear war could not spoil - in the space of six weeks and I am plantless at the moment. I have decided that rather than buy another potted plant, one that I will promptly forget to water and find dried like hay after I return from vacation, I will wait and buy a small ficus. Is there a season for ficus? Will I find it turning sickly and yellow and need a rake? Probably, but it will be a new office topic of conversation and I predict many more small trees foresting our office floor.

PAR-TAY

Too tired to talk!

*******But *******

Happy, happy, happy, joy, joy, joy!

Princess: it just wasn't the same without you!

The Calm Before The Storm

Dudettes! I am so tired! Getting ready for MM's graduation party and a wicked week at work.

But - look! The sun and blue skies for the first time since last Sunday!! Woo hoo! Just in time for the tent to be delivered so we don't have water dripping on the tables.

We've cleaned out the rooms, made space in the kitchen, put all the leaves in the dining room table, ordered the food, and gotten loads of candles - oh, and beer. (They are all over 21...)

Tune in Sunday for pics of the big event. If I'm not too exhausted to raise a camera. Where is that camera and I bet it's not charge.....

Menu:

• cheeseburger sliders

• pulled pork sliders
• grilled chicken
• mac and cheese
• penne a la rabbiata with broccoli rabe and sausage
• eggplant parm
• bruschetta
• chicken wings

Can you tell by the menu that there are mainly college boys coming?? And now I'm freaking out that I don't have enough and I should have ordered a 3 foot sub....

See y'all in a day or two!

P.S. If you are having trouble getting my blog to open or leaving comments, would you drop me a line at artjournal@optonline.net?  I've had complaints from a few people and I posted a bunch of replies to comments yesterday and they never showed up on the site.

Thanks!

I Have Issues

It really is a wonder that any print journalism is able to stay afloat these days. I realized this week that I no longer rush to the mailbox at the beginning of the month to wait for "my magazines". First off, most of my magazines went belly up this year (Country Home, Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion) and the remaining ones have so few pages and so little content that I just breeze through them while standing in front of the racks at Borders. 

 

 

I grew up in a magazine reading household. My mother kept a big, flat wicker basket on the second floor hall up against the stairwell and all our magazines were thrown in there until someone weeded them out and stacked them on the shelf by the basement where they were handy for school projects. 

 

That basket was filled with the magazines of the day: Time, Life, Look,
 Readers Digest, Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal,  and the occasional Redbook before the cover featured how to have an orgasm a minute.  We learned about current events from Time, we were introduced to photojournalism in Life and Look (who would ever forget the photo of John-John saluting JFK's flag-draped coffin on the strong steps of The White House),  repeated jokes from Humor in Uniform in  Readers Digest, learned ten ways to serve meatloaf in Family Circle, read each spouse's side of the story in Can This Marriage Be Saved (worrying if our parents exhibited any of these symptoms) and learned how to write a short story by reading them over and over in Redbook.

In a houseful of five daughters, there were also plenty of issues of Highlights, American Girl, Seventeen, Glamour, Mademoiselle, and even a few copies of Cosmopolitan that my oldest sister  hid from my mother in her dresser.

 Every August, we mooned over the back to school issue of Seventeen, wishing we could buy the plaid skirts, woolen crew neck sweaters and  Weejun loafers, that were impossibly hot to wear for the first day of school in September.

 

Do you notice that this girl actually looks "plump"?? 

When I was  a young married and paper was just invented, I discovered a new magazine, Country Living, that set the design standard that coalesced with our obsession with the PBS show, This Old House. Once we found an impossibly out of date and out of the way old house to buy in the woods, we promptly filled it with Sturbridge plaid draperies, turn of the century quarter sawn oak furniture, and a Queen Anne camel back sofa.

I hoarded those issues and spent many a rainy afternoon pulling all of them out and planning what to stencil on the kitchen walls (tulips) and how to decorate The Princess's nursery (Gear Yellow Rubber Duckies).  Soon after, I began reading Country Home, Victoria, Mary Engelbreit, and a variety of quilting magazines.

In the mid-90's, we moved to Memphis and my taste morphed from plaid wing chairs to chintz-covered slipper chairs. The calico print camel back sofa sported a new slipcover of blue and white glazed cotton. Soon Traditional Home and House Beautiful  began filling my mailbox and I became expert at faux finishing and trompe l'oiel and other French design elements that I half understood.

One day,  on one of my almost daily trips to Michael's for some craft supply, I spied   a magazine cover with a photo of a wooden box covered with old maps and an "antique letter" created on parchment with rubber stamps and collage. I bought my first edition of Somerset Studio and my little craft world exploded. I was published in the magazine within the year and my life expanded tenfold and now I am a regular contributor to what I consider the premier mixed media art publication, Cloth, Paper, Scissors.

I feel adrift without the regular issues filling my mailbox. I am glad for the issues I've kept over the years and mourn the complete editions of those I trashed on our cross country moves. I've even gone so far as to buy sets of back issues of the original  Victoria on Ebay.

Most of my free reading time ( as opposed to reading for work time and reading for pleasure, i.e. novels time)  is spent not reading costly  magazines, but a long list of blogs  filled with gorgeous photography  about decorating, remodeling, thrifting, faux finishing, vintage collecting, drapery sewing, garden growing, collage making, studio outfitting, basket weaving, yarn dying, quilt making, book binding, story writing, canvas painting, child rearing, and party throwing blogs.

It's just not the same, though. Sitting on my bed with a cup of tea and a cashmere throw across my legs is just much nicer with a the crinkly papers of a magazine than with a cold, rectangular laptop.  It's almost too much, what I can find on the 'net. Printing out photos for a class project just isn't the same as tearing them out of a set of old magazines.  And there's no moving, first person end page story to read before I log off for the night.

More importantly, I can't trace my evolution as a person, as a homeowner, as an artist and writer from the Internet. I can't lug out my back issues of a blog and say, look, this is the article that inspired me to make a wedding ring quilt for my sister's wedding, or pull a dog-eared issue of a blog off the shelf to revisit for the first column I read by Jo Northrup in Country Living. 

Of course, I am using the internet to write about magazines!  Come to think of it, those monthly columns by Jo Northrup in which she wrote about her life in the country were the first thing I read when I got the magazine each month, and inspired me to begin writing about my ordinary life, which led over many years to my blog.And I never would have gotten the column in CPS if I hadn't been on a big, prolific email list for years with one of the editors.

But I'll always prefer paper over plastic, pages over screens, and that  is why I will never have a Kindle, no matter how much Mr. Pom swears at me when he lifts my carry-on as we board a plane.

Support a freelancer: go buy a magazine!

What Is So Rare Than a Saturday Morning in June

With apologies to James Russell Lowell.

A photo not of our house

The noon church bells are pealing at the bottom of the hill and spread out over my neighborhood as I sit in the coolness of the porch. The gloomy rain of the past three days has finally ended and the morning's clouds are finally broken by the midday sun.

Mr. Pom and I breathe in the fresh, cool, earthy smells of late spring.  We sit in the stillness of the neighborhood, listening to the birds chirping and the church bells begin the prelude to Christ Jesus, Victor.  It is indeed a day to adore and celebrate what the Lord has given us.

The morning's errands are almost done. We have exercised the mutts, had our cappuccinos, trolled the Home Depot for sales on annuals, and loaded up the rear of the LabCruiser with as many bags of mulch as it can carry. Last Sunday, I used all my wifely wiles and motherly apron strings to induce Mr. Pom and Mystery Man to expand the narrow strip of garden bed under the living room window.

The idea was to balance out the wedge of garden on the other side of the lawn by expanding the strip in front of the house in curve over to  the giant mountain laurel that hides the porch. It took all afternoon, but they got most of the plants in and now we are mulching. It balances out the wedge of garden on the other side of the path.  Pictures will follow as soon as it is done.

Typical the prohibiting of activities along the Sound

Of course, in gardening nothing is ever "done". Once I get the major shape and bones put in, I still have the ongoing planting to do as we fill out by season, shifting and transplanting and creating some unity so the eye has somewhere to rest.  We were rather haphazard in this endeavor, though we had a clear idea of what we were going to start with.

I choose to undertake this project whilst in the midst of finishing a submission. (One I had over two months to do, of course.) So there was much calling up to the window for me to fly down the stairs and out the front door to look at this arrangement or consult on what we needed in that corner.

The dogs were besides themselves as I flew out the front door, closing them in by themselves. They cannot go out in the front unless leashed because the front yard isn't fenced. I tried once before to keep them in the yard and the minute I grew distracted by a weed, they were a yard away and headed for the busy main street.

Eventually, I gave up the pretense of getting any art or writing done and joined the boys outside where I cut and laid landscape fabric. Mystery Man was taking a shower and Mr. Pom had gone on another Depot run. At some point MM thought I had the dogs and I thought he had the dogs and a search of the house revealed no dogs.

Our new front lawn this is not.

After much frantic running around backyards and hollering their names across the neighborhood and as my stomach jolted everytime I heard a car speed by, MM called out for me to come inside. There, in their crates with the doors open, slept two sweet dogs who apparently knew that if no one was in the house, their crates were homebase and it was time for a snooze.

I took that as a sign for myself and turned on the TV to some inane cooking competition and quickly was snoring along with the dogs.  Weekends are meant for less heavy lifting, but it is almost summer and the outside chores are piling up. The work week was just as insane, hence the lack of posting here.

Today we are off to Niece #1's graduation from high school and next Saturday is MM's graduation party. There are annuals to plant, beds to mulch, back porches to paint, menus to plan, and oh, maybe some napping.

Posts to come: the gardens, spring reading, and summer books.

Miss you all !!

Tuesday

CURRENTLY CONTEMPLATING

• Taking a painting class from this artist - if only I'd written down her name last summer in Provincetown.
• Taking this quilting class from Material Obsessions if they are set up to mail to the States. 
• Moving in with Elspeth Thompson if she'll share her railroad car by the beach with the Pomegranates - we'll be happy in a tent dear Elspeth, you'll never know we're there.
• Planting sunflower seeds along the back fence if it's not too late for a fall bloom.
• Making mahi mahi tacos with mango salsa for dinner.
• Whether to buy an elliptical trainer or a hatrack since Mr. Pom says both will end up being used the same way.
• Cleaning my art studio, specfically the acrylic glaze/kitty litter incident from a few weeks back. I'd link to the post but then you would all know how long it's been drying on the studio floor into concrete and my face would be scarlet forever.

This Is Where I Am If You Need Me

Popping in from here:

Where I am supposed to be doing this:

To tell you that this

Is blooming.

Life and Work

The two collide often - every day it seems.

Trial attorneys are hardened,  used to disaster, tears, emergencies - as long as they are not our own.

We are composed, professional, and efficient - even with nervous clients who need their hands held.

The tears of a witness on the stand are something to be controlled and contained so as not to unduly impact a jury. Unless they are the tears of our witness, and in that case, they should be encouraged.

Simply put, we have heard it all, three times over.

So why today at a deposition, when  I asked the man who was suing my client  if he had any scars from his many injuries, which I knew he indeed had, and he did not answer me and stared off into space and and murmured to himself and the pause grew too long and the interpreter and I and his attorney exchanged glances, and as I was about to repeat the question, his face grew red and his eyes full, and he covered his face with one hand and tapped his chest with the other, and I said,

"Do you mean your abdomen, the scar from your abdominal surgery?"

and he shook his head and tapped his chest again and  choked out the words,

"A mi corazón, a mi corazón,"

why today did I leave the court reporter's and want to kick someone, maybe myself for the job I have to do and have to do well?

The Infection Has Set In

No, not the creeping crud, tho we all have had it in various varieties over the last two weeks.

No, I'm referring to my strange behavior this spring.  I think the dogs have sucked all my energy out of my brain. They have used up every last bit of energy I have for anything other than showing up at my desk on time each day.

Don't get me wrong, I love their little furry faces, like right now as one is drooling on the keyboard trying to wrap herself around my neck like a chinchilla and the other is trying to wrap himself around my  neck to get at the napkin on the table next to me.

These new critters have entirely engulfed us, and though Mr. Pom seems to have retained his need to buy multiple pots of plants every weekend, I am still in March mode, i.e., looking mournfully at the garden through the window and sighing.

I can't seem to get my vim and vigor in the direction of the dirt. 

The garden photos from last year, instead of motivating me, are alarming me:

Lordie! I need pots and plants and seeds and .....oh my, I am so tired.....

So Monday morning, luxuriating in no work, a quiet house, and temps warm enough to sit on the side porch with a cup of coffee, I am hard at work at writing my next essay for Cloth, Paper, Scissors. Mr. Pom comes downstairs and puts on the TV since the dogs have woken him up, too, and I shut the porch doors to let the peace and quiet continue. Must concentrate! Must write!

Must find inspiration. Maybe I'll surf a few blog links. Oh, lookie, a new one. And it leads me

to here

Must. Have. Front. Yard. Looking. Like. This. Today.

All I need is a weathered teak bench, ten year old roses and other flowering bushes, and about a million bucks worth of dirt, mulch, flagstones....

But wait!

What if I move the wicker loveseat and the two chairs onto the front lawn.

And mulch out an area directly in front of the little strip between the yard and the driveway.

Use the left over paving bricks from the walk to outline the area.

Pull the bottom of the strip around to the front and plant some shade tolerant flowering bushes.

That grow tall and can give a little Secret Gardennoodthenwe'llhaveprivacyfromthestreetandIcan
plantnightscentedbloomsandwe'llbuildapergolaourselvesandtrainwisteriatogrowoverit
andputpotsofannualsandbulbsallaroundandwhenwe'redonewe'llframitallinapicketfence,
paintthehouseyellow,getnewblackwoodenshutters,andalongwindowboxfromSmithand
HawkensafterItakedownallthestupidaluminimsidingtrimonthedoorsandwindowsthat
thepriorownerputupandthen

and then

and then

we'll be bankrupt.

Calming breath.

What was I doing?

Oh, right. Writing my next essay.......

What time does the plant nursery open this morning???

City Dogs

Sunday morning of a three-day weekend. The threat of rain, cold and gray. A perfect morning for cuddling under the covers, bringing warm cups of coffee and plates of cinnammon toast - or bagels - back to bed with the New York Times, and drifting back to sleep while watching Sunday morning.......

Right.

Let me introduce you to the Pomegranate

very reliable

5:18 wake up call:

So what's a gal and a guy to do at 7:00 a.m.  on Memorial Day Sunday?

We could go to the dog park, but that's so yesterday. How about the beach? Nope, can't bring dogs after Memorial Day.  OK, what about a hike somewhere upstate....nah, gonna rain soon.

Why won't they just go back to bed???

Ya can't fight Mother Nature. So let's just load em up and move em out!

Why bother to drive upstate just to take the dogs to a park when you have the greatest city in the world twenty minutes from your door?

Millions of people walk their dogs in Central Park each day.

Why not drive in and join the joggers, strollers, and multitudinous dog walkers for a Sunday morning stroll?

We were door-to-door in twenty minutes and found our pick of parking on the street next to the Museum of Natural History. A quick jaunt across Central Park West and we were in the heart of the park, minutes from all the landmarks that are so familiar from movies and TV.

We were strolling along, making good time in the jogging lane, when we hit our first snag:

Pigeons.

Bella Sera is a young adult retriever. She understands what her instincts tell her to do:

Birds/Pigeons/Squirrels

RETRIEVE!

WATCH MR. POM STRUGGLE TO KEEP HER ON THE LEASH!

WATCH MR. POM NARROWLY ESCAPE BEING PULLED OFF HIS FEET!

Meanwhile, I, of course, am very smug.  Cucciolo does not care so much for the pigeons. He is indifferent to the squirrels.

aaaaaaaaahhhhhh

OMG DON'T LET HIM EAT THAT HALF-CHEWED APPLE/BAGEL/YOGURT/DISGUSTING  THING FILLED WITH BODILY FLUIDS!!!!

WATCH OUT - WOMAN ON A BENCH EATING A COOKIE - HE'S GOING FOR IT!

WATCH MRS. POM SPIN AROUND LIKE A TOP AND CLEVERLY FOIL CUCCIOLO BY WRAPPING THE LEAD AROUND HER BUTT, WHICH SHE KNOWS IS BIG ENOUGH TO HOLD HIM!









Okay, it took awhile for them to get the hang of city life. All around us were people with dogs off leash who just looked over at their dogs and they heeled. Us, no way, no how were we taking these mutts off the leash, not even on The Great Lawn. Strawberry Fields Forever? More like Dog Gone Forever. Neither Mr. Pom nor I are spry around to sprint across the meadows and climb the boulders in search of two errant dogs, one chasing a crow and the other chasing a bialy.

Once they got the hang of it, though, and we stumbled into Dog Heaven, it was like a scene from Sex and The City, only instead of flirting with the sailors (and by the way, it actually is Fleet Week), it was more like labs flirting with greyhounds and snooty standard poodles.


Central Park is a beautiful place and it is the dog mecca of the city. In the early morning hours, it is filled only with runners, people with small children who won't sleep in, and dog owners. Instead of our woody dog park, we had rolling fields, paths along the lakes, boulders to climb on, statuary to admire, the beautiful mall to walk through, bridges to cross, gazebos to sit in, and all the while, dogs ran up and greeted us like old friends.

Where else but in New York does a dog  have an entire fountain in which to bathe?

 

Or  their own private reservoir in which to play Marco Polo.

Only in the greatest city in the world, do dogs play water polo by shorelines designed in the nineteenth century, under ancient weeping willows.





New York doesn't skimp on fantastical sites in which dogs - and their owners - can play hide and seek amongst the Euros and the elderly upper West Side inhabitants with their Greek diner cups of coffee and The Daily News.


 



We wouldn't let them swim, though they almost pulled me  in as I stood on the steps to let them get their feet wet. The water was slimy with pollen and we had nothing with which to clean them and a long walk back to the car with two wet dogs was not what I had in mind.





But what fun to let them get a drink from a fountain pool that has been featured in so movie sets.  Such elegant surroundings for a couple of yard dogs.  Mr. Pom was Joe Cool as he stood next to the magnificent urns filled with hydrangeas on the bridge over the reservoir.











Here I am trying to make sure that they don't push me into the water while Mr. Pom fiddles with the camera.



 


Best part of the morning - we found a sidewalk cafe with a parking space, pulled in it, rolled down the windows, and let the dogs take a nap whilst we had cappuccinos and muffins, all the while smug that we had walked the equivalent of about 40 New York blocks and could well afford the calories!

Tomorrow, the plans are to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge.

I promise I'll remember my camera and not have to post these grainy cell phone pics.

And we'll try to not end up in the East River.

Mille Grazie!

Thank you all for your kindness and warm wishes.

Who is sweeter than my
 internets?

Your comments brought such cheer to our week!

And made us feel as though you all stopped by for a graduation party.

A lovelier time could not be had!

Pomp and Circumstance

One minute, you are  leaving your son off at nursery school and he's crying for you to come back.

(Okay, he never cried for me to come back.)

And the next, you are sitting on a field with 2400 other parents, watching your son receive his degree.

The day began early and I knew he was excited because when we got there before 8:00 a.m., he was already in his cap and gown and ready to go.

The stage is set and ready to receive 1200 degree candidates, including doctorals and masters.  The engineering school is the largest constituency at the university.  The sun is shining and the morning is scrubbed clean with white chairs and red programs anticipating the ceremony. The procession is led by bagpipers, who always lend a thrilling gravity to a ritual, and ended with the colorful robes of the faculty processing onto the stage and taking their places amidst the color guards, the mace, and the bunting.

Soon the seats of white are filled with hooded robes bearing the colors of their schools and the thrilling punctuation of a the dress uniform of an officer candidate. So Top Gun!

Finally, after  many years of hard work, studying, exams, projects, and lots of frat parties, and several hours in the hot sun, MM receives his diploma, shakes the President's hand, and emerges with a B.S. in mechanical engineering.

We could not be prouder. 

I remember years and years ago, watching him sitting on the floor of the den in our house in Memphis. He'd gotten a Legos - or Knex? - roller coaster kit for Christmas. The box must have contained 5000 yellow, white, and red interlocking pieces.  Soon the wooden floor was littered with the multicolored pieces and I wondered if he'd ever get it together.  He sat on that floor for the entire vacation and little by little the coaster grew and grew until complete. It stayed in the den and was shown to all visitors until the following Christmas. 

I don't want to sound like a mom, but I am,  so why not - I knew then that he'd be a mechanical engineer.

I  look a little wan here, but it is only the sun in my eyes.  I cannot express how happy and thrilled I am to have seen two of my children successfully complete fine colleges. I do not take for granted the privilege of being present at the the threshold moments in my children's lives.

The mantle of college performance  is now transferred to The Teen, who must uphold her siblings' fine accomplishments.  

And don't for a minute think she cares - she is the most free thinking and easy going of my children and she will do whatever she wants - and do it fine.

 

The pride of Sigma Epsilon - they could be students anywhere, anytime, in this century or last. The romance of the cap and gown, the youthful glow, the manliness, the casual demeanor of the gifted and privileged.

Father and son walking back together;  sharing the accomplishment, worked hard for by both.



After the graduation, the school held a barbecue for all the families. In the midst of the chatter and hugs and exclamations, a young woman was standing with her friends and sobbing and laughing, wiping tears from her face as she said good bye to her best friends.

My daughter and I noticed it, it as hard not to notice a young woman with tears streaming down her face, alternately laughing and crying and hanging onto her friend's hand.

The intensity thrust me back into my college years, and the memories of the intense friendships, the studying of poetry and literature and philosophy, the all nighters, the endless papers, the dawn breakfasts at the diner, the getting by on a few dollars a week, and the music playing all the time, the music that was the soundtrack for our lives, and the demonstrations, the broken hearts, the whirlwind romances, the sleeping around, the stolen boyfriends, the late nights at the Rat, the endless packs of cigarettes and  coffee and beers, the hall parties, the disco dances, and lying out on the mall in the sun, pretending to study while keeping an eye on the latest crush walking to class.

And I remember the friends walking across the meadow in the early morning after a late night call that a father had died. And the friends who drank their way through their parents' divorces and their chances of going to med school, who crashed cars into trees, and hit their heads against walls and were taken out in stretchers, of girls who expressed their freedom by sleeping with everyone's boyfriends, of boys whose hearts were crushed by girls who didn't notice them and girls who were hopelessly in love with boys whose tastes ran to men, with those whose siblings were lost on drugs, whose mothers were dying of hereditary diseases that hung over their own heads, of boys who punched holes of Irish tempers into walls, young men and women who struggled with their sexuality and their money or lack of money,  with their hopes for the future and their fear of the future, and their desire to be something, anything, more than what they saw in the world outside the campus walls.

Was there ever a time more heady than college?

 And while I was waxing lyrical and sentimentally and asking all my son and his friends if they were sad to be going, if they'd miss their academic years, if they wished for more time in the sun,  with the books, and long afternoons with girls, and frat nights, and  beer and barbecues, and bike rides in the fall and sledding down the hills, my son, as usual, had a much simpler and clearer reaction,  that simply of

thumbs up, and

JOY.

Let The Gardening Begin!

The weather has not exactly been conducive to gardening, but in between the raindrops, we've managed to get the front garden cleaned out and ready for spring.

No matter how many plants you stick in the ground and nurture all season, winter is greedy and has its way with them and there are many empty space where once was thriving perennials.

So what's a girl to do?  The Poms decided that despite a grey, chilly, damp day, it was time for the first trip to the nursery.

I have to admit that Mr. Pom had to drag me there. It was cold! I hadn't made the mental shift yet to spring planting - I sound like a farmer, no? Let's just say that I was not yet ready to open my wallet and hand it over, which is my usual spring, early summer state of mind.



But it was too late.

Who could resist these tender spring lettuces - and we don't even grow lettuces. Their colors are so fresh and vivid, a very welcome respite from the grayness that has hung overhead for weeks.

Despite this beautiful display, I still wasn't feeling "it" and Mr. Pom eyed me suspiciously when I trailed after him like a sullen child. He, however, managed to arrive at the check out counter with an armful of lavenders.


Then on Mother's Day, we visited another nursery to buy a beautiful pink azalea to plant at the cemetery for Granny Pom.  The sun was shining and although brisk, there was a bouyancy to the air that lifted my spirits.

Ah, that's better! A new fragrant lilac to to replace the elderly one that our elderly neighbor decided to "help us out" and cut it in half.  It will fill in this empty space nicely, and since the money for the picket fence in the front yard has gone the way of the economy, it provides a little border with our neighbor's lawn.

And as you can see at the bottom of the photo, digging up dirt releases all sorts of wonderful smells that a pupper cannot resist.      I may be able to keep the crows away with a windchime hanging in the garden, but a pupper - I'm gettin' my shotgun out!

Have a great weekend - we'll see you after Mystery Man's graduation!

May Flowers

A week of celebrating for the Pomegranate Family:

• Mother's Day,
• Sister's #4 50th birthday
• Niece #1's 18th birthday. 
• The Princess comes home Thursday for a visit;
• Friday we leave for MM's college graduation; and
•  Saturday night we go to my cousin's 40th birthday party.

It was a gorgeous, clear, sunny Mother's Day. The Empress, Sister #2, The Teen,  and I drove into Manhattan to go to  Lady Mendl's Tea Salon at the Inn at Irving Place, in the heart of Gramercy Park. The inn,  two adjoining townhouses built in 1834, is across the street from Washington Irving's home and down the block from Union Square.  

The townhouse is very discrete, with no signage except a very small plaque for the tea salon, which I was glad to see to confirm that we weren't about to stumble into someone's private home. After the massive oak doors shut behind you and you are taken into the orchid-filled parlor lit with fragrant candles, it's  easy to forget that you are in Manhattan in the twenty first century.  I felt my own usual rushing-to-get-into-the-city-mood lower dramatically as we relaxed in slipper chairs while we waited for the seating and looked around the parlor filled with carved screens,  mirrors, and lovely groups of women of different generations chatting.

The rooms have very high ceilings, ornately carved moldings, antique  light fixtures, huge ornamental mantels,  massive Chinese blue and white porcelainware planted with leggy white orchids, lamps with beaded fringe,  tiny powder rooms with vintage marble sinks tucked under the stairs, chinoiserie piled with more ceramics, and beautifully laid tables surrounded by divans upholstered in silk.

Sumptuous! We felt very Edith Wharton all afternoon.

The tea is six courses, with champagne and pots of tea -

Somewhere along here were the  finger sandwiches...

.

By course 4, the finger sandwiches, we were stuffed. Still to come was the mille-feuille cake above  - a dozen whisper thin crepes layered with chantilly cream and raspberry sauce, and a plate of cookies and huge strawberries dipped in chocolate.

The last surprise was a teapot cookie and a bag of tea to bring home.

It was the perfect place for women to visit and enjoy each other.  The two rooms were very calm and serene and the atmosphere was very warm and not stuffy or haughty. The tables are far enough apart that you are only aware of murmurs of conversation and laughter. We were never rushed, never felt like we were waiting for the next course, and never had to look for a server when we needed anything.  We felt like we were at home - a very luxurious home - and it was the perfect ambiance for everyone to relax and the generations to be together.

Over many cups of tea - which we each got to select from about 15 kinds - we laughed a lot, talked about Sicily and the family, caught up on various family comings and goings, and tried to figure out how to stuff all the extra food into an empty envelope in my sister's purse.

We didn't want to leave the cake, but we were stuffed. And the the little silver cachepot of crystallized ginger - yum! A certain teen, who was so pleasant all afternoon despite her heavy cold and being the only person under 25 there,  was seen stuffing the sugar cubes decorated with rosebuds into a jeans jacket pocket.

And after a long drive home, stuck in traffic around Columbus Circle after giving The Empress a little driving tour of the city, we arrived home to Mr. Pom's grilled steaks and roasted asparagus.

I may never eat again.

But it was worth every, single bite of this beautiful day!

Ain't spring grand! 

What a Treat!

The Teen is still sick!

What a treat!

I get to be home another day!

Seriously, good moms should not be happy when their kid is sick and they have to stay home with them.  Ergo, I am a bad mom.

If only I had thought of that moniker sooner, I, too, could be on book tour like Ayelat Waldman.  I'm always a day late and a dollar short.

The Teen's  flulike/streplike symptoms (high fever, achey, earaches, sore throat, congestion) tested negative for the above and we are left with a run-of-the-mill REALLY BAD cold.

That's what the official diagnosis was by the ped: "A REALLY BAD cold". (Yes, she talks in capital letters.) But, she said that usually when they come on as   quickly and badly as this, they leave just as quickly. We are very relieved it wasn't the flu (of any kind) and today The Teen has no fever but is just generally crudded up and wanted me home one more day.

I told her not to worry, of course, I'd stay home, I'd just miss seeing them on all Christmas Day. (Oh, come on, I'm Italian and need to dish out the guilt otherwise it backs up on me and I eat my weight in cannoli.)

Now if the DD (Damn Darling Dogs) didn't get up at 5:30, I could be in my pj's all day, watching Regis, Ellen, Martha, and writing blog posts and Twittering all day.

Instead, I already put out three fires at work, went to CVS where I gave them my passport, birth cert, marriage cert, and law school license in order to buy REAL suphedrine, and took the DD's to the dog park, and it's only 9:00.

And don't tell ANYONE, but I forgot the poop bags.

Sigh.

That's Mr. Pom's job, y'know. He always has the poop bags. All I had was a tissue, so it was muddy enough from the rain that I covered it up. If you tell anyone, I'll be drummed out of the park and then I'll have the Cucciolo chewing ALL the moldings in the hallway and my house will fall down.

Today the sun is actually shining. Maybe it will dry up the mushroom covering my lawn and house. Sister #4 is deathly afraid of mushrooms-on-the-lawn. I must remind her not to come over r she will get skeeved out. She is celebrating a Very Big Birthday on May 12th as is Niece #1, her daughter. 

Sister's #4's BB is the BIG 50 - but I can honestly tell you that she does not look A Day Over 40 and is just adorable and we wish her 50 more years of love and happiness!

Bejeweled.

Luck affects everything; let your hook always be cast. In the stream where you least expect it, there will be fish.
Ovid

Mother's Day is this Sunday and we have planned a rather sweet day with The Empress. Tea is involved at a special place in the city and I am sure you will read about it and see pics later on.

I am home today with a sick kid, being a mom. It's easy to not feel like a mom when the two bigger kids are out of the house and the youngest recently got wheels and doesn't need her mom too much during the week.

I recall with ease being a young mom with little kids during rainy, wintry days and kids with sniffles and temps. I remember juggling work and raising them, working part time as a lawyer, enjoying my two days a week at home when I would have time to bake and cook, to have playgroup over, and to spend an afternoon making Play-Do pies. 

I was extremely lucky in those days. I had a mother in law who put aside her work work to watch the older ones and later on, a beloved  next door neighbor who made them pasta with ricotta for lunch and took them to the mall on rainy days.

Just through serendipity, I was hired by a lawyer who needed someone part time and gave me an office and the freedom to work the days I wanted to and to see my own clients. I even took off a month each summer to just hang out at the lake with the kids. 

When the brood increased to three, I was supremely lucky to take a 7 year child care leave and be at home with them everyday and volunteer for all those things that moms do.

Those days are long gone, but I still love being a mom and the challenge of learning to be a mother to adult, almost-independent children  who don't need their noses wiped, but still need Mommy and Daddy when things get tough.

So much of life is a question of luck. And commitment. And perseverance. And hard work. And sheer, dumb luck.

How lucky am I to have a job where I was not scheduled for court today so I can stay home today on a moment's notice with a sick teen who requests her mom?

Even more, to have bosses who understand family needs and a company who provides the ability to work from home so I don't go back to a disaster tomorrow?

How lucky, also to have a teenager who still wants her mom around when she has a temp and a sore throat and feels generally icky? And what about the luck of a husband who gallantly takes 2 walks - in the rain - with the dogs so I don't have to worry about it?

And speaking of luck, how about adopting a big, dark as night mama dog who likes nothing better than sick days when she can spend the entire day sleeping with the invalid, waking up only to get a drink or get her tummy rubbed?

Staying in on a rainy day, serving up cinnamon toast and tea and watching silly daytime TV.

A little slice of a lucky life in the middle of a busy week.

Somersaults for God's Sake

Emily Dickinson

A little madness in the Spring Is wholesome even for the King, But God be with the Clown — Who ponders this tremendous scene — This whole Experiment of Green — As if it were his own!

The rain came in on Sunday and reminded us that the summerlike weather of last week was just an aberration. Tonight, the lamps are lit at 6:00 and the fire is laid to take the chill off. The screened porch got its delivery of new furniture, but it is too cold and wet to even take it out of the packing boxes.

But I cannot be fooled into thinking that it is any month but May, not when my lawn is covered with petals tossed like William Blake's pearls.

Robert Frost

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

William Blake

Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
  . . .
  The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
  The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.


Here is that rush of blue for spring, like royalty cloaking the humble weed and elevating it to a nosegay fit for a queen. 

 Alfred Lord Tennyson

But I must gather knots of flowers,
And buds and garlands gay,
For I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother,
I'm to be Queen o' the May.


Even the stores are full of spring whimsy, garlands and butterflies, whimsies and poufs that make me want to sit on the lawn with needle and thread and shimmering shades of silk!

Carl Sandburg


  2

White pigeons rush at the sun,
A marathon of wing feats is on:
“Who most loves danger? Who most loves wings? Who somersaults for God’s sake in the name of wing power in the sun and blue on an April Thursday.”
So ten winged heads, ten winged feet, race their white forms over Elmhurst.
They go fast: once the ten together were a feather of foam bubble, a chrysanthemum whirl speaking to silver and azure.

Let joy fill you to bursting, do somersaults for God's sake and trill like  Wordsworth's thousand blended notes for all the heavens to hear !

Saturday has been a day of contrasts: cold and misty this morning as Mr. Pom and I walked the dogs in the woods. The trails had a new layer of dark brown mulch which looked like a velvet path laid through the tender green of the new leaves.

I am a big crab some weekend mornings, especially when there are two dogs raring to go out before 7:00 a.m. into the rain. Wouldn't it be better to walk them later? No, is the emphatic response from the dogs and the husband.

Of course, my mood lifts once I am in the thick of the woods and it is quiet and mossy and the dogs are sniffing every spot and running just far enough ahead to make that pleasant  noise of paws thundering on the ground like hooves when we call them back.

My impatience returns on the ride back to the house. We have to leave off the dogs, pick up the Times, and drive all the way cross town to get to breakfast. But to tell the truth,  it's not breakfast at all that I am after. I am fixated on my first cup of coffee, a rich latte made with Italian coffee that tastes like no other that I have ever had. I have learned to drink it slowly, accompanied by two soya rolls, mini baguettes with a sourdough taste, a thick crust and a dust of cornmeal.  Some days, if very hungry or tired, I will order a fruit crepe accompanied by yogurt and Mr. Pom may have round Belgian waffles with chocolate syrup and cinnamon - the sybarite! 

But always, the coffee is the center of it, the coffee and the quiet, and the papers and both of us lost in our thoughts, occasionally looking up to read a tidbit, though more than a few words are frowned upon by the other who is pulled without permission away from the crossword or the sports page.  This is our jewel of the week, a time that is spent summer or winter together, a private time that restores our equilibrium before we rush off to cleaners, groceries, yard work, cleaning.

So it was with great trepidation that I encouraged The Teen to follow through on her desire to get her first after school job there. We love the owners and have become regulars greeted by name. It is a family affair and the ambiance is friendly and warm. But I worked at enough after school jobs to know that the relationship between part timers and management is not always an easy one. What if she didn't like it? What if they don't like her? What if I can't go there anymore because of it??

All right, I know, I can't put my need for my weekend morning routine to surpass my need to support my child's desire to work and I should be encouraging her independence and self confidence. And I am. And I do. But now my easy going relationship with the cafe is complicated with worrying about her getting there on time, paying attention, not screwing up, and getting enough time off to study. And what if they are rude or mean or she finds out that they drop the food on the floor and then serve it to the customers?

I decide that I cannot insert myself in her new relationship. Certainly my parents never knew more about my part times jobs than where it was located. I cannot be a helicopter parent. I still make sure her smock and little kerchief is washed and ironed and she's up on time. I obsess about what they will say when they find out she's going away for four weeks for a precollege art program this summer. I remind her too often to get enough sleep and learn to shut my mouth before she snaps.

This is her second weekend and so far, it's worked out. We all pretty much ignore each other when we're there. We're low maintenance customers and rarely approach the counter once we sit down. She's busy making sandwiches and pulling cappuccinos and clearing off tables.  She's not thrilled when I bring friends in or her own pop in, not with the Breton headscarf and the green smock. But I was waiting to speak to her one afternoon and proud of the way she sweetly helped an older woman get more cream and made sure the woman could carry it to her table.  She's got a great sense of humor and is very outgoing and is not afraid to be herself and she is so much more self-assured than I ever was (or ever will be).

Thus far, we're she's doing a good job. We worry a little about her stories of her screw ups and hope that her boss is understanding. We are concerned about how tired she will be and when she'll do her weekend homework  She is concerned about how she will fit her skim boarding in and go to the beach with us and Cape Cod and to the city on weekends. We tell her this is what growing up and having a job is  - and then we secretly worry about it, too.

Barktrayal

You think you know somebody.

You let them into your life. You love them. You give them everything you have. You give and you give and you give.

And then,

when you have nothing left to give.

Betrayal.

I never, ever  thought I'd ever be writing this. I never thought in a million years that this day would come,  but the worst I can imagine has happened in the Pomegranate household.

After months of tender loving care, negotiation, supplication, treats, walks,  and kibble galore - - - - -

the dogs have hired a lawyer.* 

All I have to say is:

SEE YOU IN COURT!

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*See comments section to yesterday's post