How did Harry spend the summer?

He went with the FAM to Myrtle Beach. They go every other year. This year I did not go because I did not know what my finances would be like, but my family kindly included Harry in the festivities. He had a great time.

This is one of my favorite photos. It is a tradition of Mike and Jim's (my brother in laws)to get a photo of the two of them partaking in their favourite past time:

What did I do on my summer vacation?

I went up north with Corinne! Yes, and we had a G R E A T time. Corinne thinks I am immoral because I kept trying to get out of paying the state park entrance fees ..well.. no-ot re-ally. My thought was if they don't ask don't volunteer. Then come to discover that there are some shared parking lots between the Minnesota DOT and the park system. ANYWAY .. i think we saw every waterfall in Northern Minnesota between here and Canada. We went to the Boundary Waters National Forest and Thunderbay in Canada. I just wanted to see if we would get frisked at the border. I HAVE A VERY EXCITING LIFE. (But wait...in highschool my friends and I used to go to the Cleveland Hopkins Airport on a Friday night to go through security and the metal detectors. This was back in 1975. We just wanted to see if we could. And we could. What innocence!) We stayed at a famous er lodge called Cascade Lodge in the Boundary Waters National Forest. The brochure showed a lovely landscape with a Lake Superior view. Amazing how they were able to take the photo and completely edit out THE STATE HIGHWAY right in front of the lodge. (We didn't know it was famous till a found a book in a book store that chronicled its history in Grand Marais.) Needless to say Corinne thought it was a dump. I thought it was pretty nice and inexpensive and better than Motel 6. In truth it was quaint. Overall we did a lot of walking,talking and the weather was decent. We promised each other we would do it again for sure!

1- 2 3 AND 4-5 and 6

Go Sistahs! I love this picture. It was taken when we were visiting my brother and his family last May. BEFORE SUMMER REALLY STARTED!

And now it is past the halfway mark (July 4).

My son is headed to Chicago to go with my sisters and their families to Myrtle Beach. I have cautioned him to be careful, drive safely, and carry his weight. He will. I did not go this year because I did not think I could afford it since I did not know what my finances would be like. I wanted Harry to go though. We've always had so much fun. I just wasn't up to it for myself this year.

I signed up for dance lessons. This will be my second shot at it. I signed up in early spring for a class on SOCIAL DANCING through the community education program. I only ever went to one lesson because I always seem to have scheduling conflicts with work and all. This time I signed up through a local dance hall. I asked someone if they were interested and would like to try it with me and HE said yes! Surprise. We went last night and it was fun. West Coast Swing.

The last two times I've gone to Chicago I have gone out with my mom and we've gotten manicures. Good times!

Harry made the Dean's List for the Spring Semester. Yeah! So far so good.
He's got a job this summer with a company and he likes it. He is in a Co-op program so this will last through college if he wants and they will take him through all the departments. Harry is doing better than I ever expected, considering how many frights he gave me growing up so I am very proud of him.

I bought new furniture over the internet (with proceeds from my half of the sale of one of our tractors) and I am very excited. I've recieved the couch and its great and one of the chairs is coming today. I have never ever bought furniture before in my entire life. I have always picked it up from garage sales and second hand stores. I am totally excited.

At any rate, the summer is going by fast and it feels like I haven't done anything yet. That will change.

True confessions: A tale of two cats and disaster

If you are familiar with cat behavior you know some of their quirkiness. Cats will get excited with attention and petting and if they are excited they will grab you with their teeth or claws. A dog wags its tail. People think this is a friendly gesture but a wagging tail really just says that the dog is excited. The dog will bite your hand just as easily as lick it depending on its personality and characteristics (hmmm, just like some people when you say hello in the morning). I had one cat that tended to growl a lot. I had another that liked to jump on your shoulders, curl around your neck, and pull on your hair if you gave it a chance. These are sweet things if you like cats, but annoying if you don't, or when you are busy or not expecting it. Nothing to be afraid of, just good to know. If you don't know you can misinterpret the behavior.

My mom was kind of this way with the cats, but there is more and it is worse than that. I think my cats were this way with her. You see it was because they were familar with her in a way that they never would be with most strangers. It was a phenomenon I can't explain but I am sure she confused them. Yes, I am sure this is it.

She is the same height as me and has similar mannerisms and characteristics, so they used to do things to her, I mean treat her in a manner that they would do with me. The results were horrible. I still feel bad about it.

On one occasion she was sitting at my kitchen table and Georgette, the fat grey cousin who looks like a little Russian, was circling her legs and rubbing. Mom was ignoring her. Well trying to anyway. The cat stretched up on her hind legs and with her front paws, ever so lightly, pricked my mom's leg with her nails. Well she just wanted my mom to notice her, but mom got startled and freaked, and tried to kick her off. Of course THEN the cat freaked and hugged my mom for dear life and dug in with all her claws full throttle. She put a terrible scratch on mom's leg that wouldn't heal. Eventually mom had to go in and have the spot removed by a doctor ...melanoma or something. I felt awful and after that my mom always reminded me to put the cats out. Which i did most of the time, EXCEPT for one other visit.

It happened again, but with a different animal. Our orange cat, the youngest, smallest and most playful had gotten in the house and was on a stool, looking for attention. The cat was my baby.

I was in the room, and so were some other people, but for some reason the cat was focused on my mom. The cat was formulating a plan and I could see she was ready to leap. She wanted on my mom's shoulder's and she has never done this ever to a stranger. I have no idea what the attraction was except that maybe she resembles me.

This cat has always been shy of strangers. Mom was about 10 feet away and you could just see the cat calculating. My mom was talking but then she noticed too and she started to back up slowly and this look of horror took hold of her. I tried to get in the way but not soon enough. Mom was turning, and the cat was in the air. Because mom was moving the cat couldn't get the perch she wanted so with front paws first she hit my mom on the back and latched on with claws engaged. My mom did this twirly screaming thing and in seconds the centrifugal force sent the cat flying the other way. The look of horror on my mother's face when she realized what this cat had in mind will live with me forever.

Drop 5 years off your face in 5 minutes

I love this sort of advice. I have been saving this note. I'll just leave
it here....

(InStyle.com) -- Time to believe in mini-miracles! Beauty gurus say the secret to looking refreshed is in your makeup bag. So what are you waiting for?

1. Give your eyes a lift
So long, dark circles and droopy lids. When you swap smoky shadows and sooty pencils for a softer palette, tired eyes take on a decidedly youthful glow.
Rethink your concealer: Instead of applying it under the entire eye, start at the inner socket, and tap a peach-based shade to a point just underneath the center of the pupil, blending well to cancel out blue shadows. Don't use concealer on outer corners; it can accentuate crow's feet.
Skip the shadow: Define your crease with a pencil instead, in a shade slightly darker than your skin tone -- then smudge it. "You get the illusion of bigger eyes without the heavy look," says makeup artist Pati Dubroff.
Go nude:Trace your lower lash line with a flesh-toned pencil. "It's like eight hours of sleep in a liner," says makeup artist Paula Dorf.

2. Plump your lips
The perfect kisser is cushiony and plush with a whisper of color -- not overly inflated or sharply defined.
Pencil in a pout: Use a chubby tip in a neutral shade to trace the fullest version of your lips. Then blend with your fingertip to soften the edges.
Lighten up:Tiny shadows at the corners of your mouth can turn your smile upside down. Keep them under cover with a dot of concealer.
Go shiny: A bit of gloss on the center of your lower lip and cupid's bow gives the appearance of fullness. Try dusky pinks and soft toffee hues.
3. Get cheeky
Just because we weren't born with killer bone structure doesn't mean we can't fake it. Create the illusion of chiseled cheekbones and give your face a lift.
Start soft: A mousse primer smooths the skin's surface to help the flushed, dewy look stay put.
Add contour: Use two tones of cream blush. Swirl a rosy hue on the apples, then blend a swoosh of bronze below the cheekbones. The result: pretty definition and babylike fullness.
4. Make skin glow
Older complexions can look dull; youthful ones appear moist and even in texture. Look for formulas with light-diffusing particles and avoid powders, which can settle into fine lines and add decades.
Add shine: Skin that seems to glisten naturally usually involves a little artificial sparkle. Apply luminizer to cheek and brow bones and to the bridge of your nose. We like Chantecaille's for fair complexions and Modelco Luminosity Shimmer Whip in Bronze (sephora.com) for olive and darker ones.
Stay hydrated:Treat dry patches with a refined face oil. Pati Dubroff swears by Rodin Olio Lusso, which "smells divine and gives skin instant luminosity."
Welcome matte: "Nothing is more aging than overly powdered skin," says makeup artist Molly Stern, who opts for mattifying primer instead. Try Smash-box's or Revlon Beyond Natural Smoothing primer.
Keep it sheer: Apply foundation only where needed, and choose a formula that can be layered for more coverage.
5. Define your jawline
Why hide behind a chunky turtleneck when face-saving angles are only a powder away?
Slim fast: Using a fluffy brush, blend powder in a shade two hues deeper than your skin just below your chin.
Is your makeup aging you?
Consider this...
• Matte lipstick accentuates age lines, creating a puckered effect.
• Yellow-based bronzer makes skin look sallow, not sun-kissed.
• Powder blush rarely delivers a youthful glow (unless it's loaded with shimmer).
• Retro eyeliner is cool, but not when you're trying to look younger.
• Mascara on your lower lashes tends to cast unflattering undereye shadows, so skip it.

Lets Make A Deal

Me: What should i expect from a dealer? I know they have a profit margin ... i can pay cash or i can get a loan. I can get a loan from my credit union (LIKE CASH) or i can go thru the dealer (or I can just pay cash cash but i think i want a loan to jack up my credit rating).. Do dealers lower the cost of the car if i took a loan out thru them? Does having a TRADE IN affect the price of the CAR (more or less). What's my best angle to get the lowest price possible?

(I think i might hold out for this OBAMA bill to pass where we get a $4500 rebate if the car we trade in has higher mileage than the car we buy).

Mom's right he is going to give us BUCKETS of MONEY. : )

Jim: Looks like the $4500 offer will apply to older vehicles with less than 18MPG and you have to improve by 10 MPG with the new car. Assuming your present car was 18 MPG or less you may get $4500 off a new car. I’d wait for the details before you buy a new car as that is a bunch of dough. Congress is being pushed hard to get this through so details will probably be pretty firm in 60 -90 days.

Best angle is multiple quotes and don’t be afraid to walk. When you trade-in that complicates the issue but you will be looking for the lowest net cost. If they are going to test drive your old car bring a second set of keys as dealers will sometimes lose your keys temporarily so they can talk you into buying. Always, always buy on the last day of the month and late in the day. You may save a couple of bucks with their financing but not much. Don’t get the longer term warranty unless it is about 5% or the total car cost and can offer another 3 years or 50000 miles.

Me: Thanks Jim this is good information. I also sent this to Mike and he said it helps to be Ukranian (funny). He also had some good suggestions but they do a lot of research and I am such an impulse buyer. I pick haircuts based on what the lady whose cutting my hair has. At this point i am having trouble separating myself from my money now that i have it, and my current car is better than just a good car if i want practical (it gets 26-28 mpg) so i think i CAN walk away. Car dealers sound a lot like insurance agents.

Laura: Bullshit, get a MANUAL, how about Hummer? That'll keep ya safe!

ME: Well yeah if i want 12 mpg ... the amount of money i got from the house just barely fills my mattress so its not THAT much. ..and if i get another manual car then i can keep my bmw and mom will kill me. i want a new car for my image not because i need one...and a hummer probably isn't safe. I bet it rolls easy.

Laura: A HUMMER won't roll. And it could be bullet proof which would be a good feature in YOUR neighborhood! What kind of image does a mini-cooper give you?

Me: British cool i hope, i was going for hot but i suspect more like middle aged woman midlife crisis since i've been surveying my friends and thats what 50% of them have (well i asked 4 people and really only 2 of them are friends). I am trying to lose the soccer mom look anyway. The good thing about where I live is that there is a retired EMT two doors down and my landlord is a fireman.

Laura: you know i'm just teasing you, get what you like, you deserve it. British cool sounds about right. My friend Connie has one, she loves it. She's partial to BMWs because the dealer washes it for free whenever she likes. She's in some BMW club too.

ME: I could tell..... actually what i think would be safe others would characterize as aggressive.. i'd want a snowplow on the front (to clip anybody who got to close and to ensure people would yield the right of way ALWAYS) and some of those James Bond spikes on my hub caps that NEVER retract.

AS IT TURNED OUT I AM NOT GOING TO GET A NEW CAR (changed my mind..don't want to
part with the money).

Midlife Crisis Car?

Hey I am thinking about buying a mini cooper. I am going to test drive one this weekend with my mother. That will be a riot. The two of us think alike accept she is 25 years my senior. We'll find some hot salesman in his 60's (compromise) to talk to (geriatric equivalent to a ski instructor). Anyway hope you all are having a good week!

Did I tell you I sold my house?

Got Milk?

Harry and I are at a stalemate.

On Sunday Harry called me and said that we were out of milk and macaroni and cheese and cerial.

"Why don't you go to the grocery store then?" I replied as kind of a question, but mostly a statement.

"I went to the grocery store on Saturday" he says. (Hmmm, so why didn't he have the foresight to know that he would need milk? Not my fault...).

I had not been home all weekend. I was in Pine Island visiting friends. It is hard for me to say no to Harry (he sounded forlorn) so I said ok I would get milk and pasta,mac and cheese, and all that when i got back to town. UNFORTUNATELY, I was almost home and I discovered I had a cell phone in my purse that did not belong to me. I had to drive ALL THE WAY BACK to Pine Island to return it. I was ticked. I would be exhausted from all the driving. I called Harry and told him I wouldn't be going to the store. He should go and get what he needed. When I finally did get home I discovered that all we were out of was milk and he hadn't yet gone to the store. I also discovered that we had cereal and macaroni and cheese and all that stuff. It was just a ruse to make me think it was a bigger issue and that he was neglected. He wanted to use my car to go somewhere, to visit a friend or something in a little bit. I don't care if he uses my car, so I said he could if he went to the grocery store. He got this funny smile on his face and he used his own car.

As of last night (Monday) we still don't have any milk. And Harry said he would go to the store when I called him in the afternoon but when I got home I found him at the pc playing video games with his friends. That was ok. It was a nice evening. I didn't feel like being stuck inside at the gym so I was going to ride my bike to the store. With good intention I planned to finally get a crate attached to the back of my bike, which I have been intending to do for some time, and use this to put groceries in. BUT then I had a couple of beers to CELEBRATE the fact that I FINALLY SOLD THE HOUSE. After that I didn't want to drive. I told Harry i couldn't ride my bike. I don't drink milk anyway so Harry should just quit being such a big baby and GO. Harry started complaining that I wasn't acting like a mother (he says: i need a mother WHO CARES) and so I replied that I thought we should just be friends any. He should think of me as his friend and not his mother....he was too old for a mother and anyway (been there done that) ..lets try something new. We still don't have milk and he still hasn't gone to the store. He's lucky i still do laundry.

BUT all is not lost: he is moving out this weekend.

Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial weekend I was working pager duty so I needed to keep close to the house. We grilled out and Harry invited his friends, Muneeb, Damien and Kayla over one night. I grilled steaks and of course teenagers love to eat. These kids are still teens but
barely and they've all graduated from highschool. Muneeb and Harry used to hang out together in high school even though Muneeb lived in Rochester and Harry lived in Pine Island. They started to getting goofy so Muneeb confided in me some of the things they used to do together, like Movie Money. They would say they were going to a movie so their parents would give them money but end up going to an outdoor rink for pickup hockey instead. Harry 's idea of fun was always interesting...

When he worked at the grocery store I used to find bags of flour in his car trunk. One time the whole back of his car was powdered with white. Or another time i found 5 dispensers of Saran Wrap and eggs, both of which I absconded. I found out later that he and his friends had flour fights, or sometimes they would saran wrap each other's cars, and of course the eggs were for mailboxes.

My favorite memory of Harry though has to do with this plastic rubbery seagull that was about half the size of a real seagull with a squeaker inside of it. Harry has had this toy since he was about three or four. For many years he would fly it in the room, its wings flapping like crazy (in his hand running) and knock lamps over as he went. I probably should not have laughed as I was yelling at him. I forget if he ever named it...but always it would cause a commotion. I could never get him to stop doing it...probably because secretly I thought it was pretty funny too. Hey but Memorial Weekend is in memory of our fallen solders... not my son. I think that was Mother's Day where I should have been thinking of this kind of stuff.

A couple of weeks ago... to Cleveland

A couple of weeks ago I went to Cleveland with my sister Jennifer, my mom, and my nieces Megan and Shannon. We had a good time. My nieces are fun and I enjoyed the drive. Jennifer drove for the first couple of hours and after that we unanimously vetoed any offers she made to do some driving. We all wanted to go faster.

I drove at some point on the way and my mother sat up front with me. We share the trait for complaining about everybody else on the roads driving habits (too slow, what the heck are they doing? no turn signals). At one point my mother offered to
flip some guy the bird who was dawdling. I thanked her but didn't think it would be appropriate. Geeze, but it could shake the guys whole faith in humanity to have such a genteel and sweet looking white haired lady do that to him. However, I appreciated my mom's enthusiasm for getting even. On the way back I sat shotgun with her and we were having the same types of observations (thank god we aren't too big on road rage) and I kept offering to give other driver's the finger in her defense but then would (chicken out) er not do it and she realized I had no backbone but was totally about saving face for me, so I would say "should i give 'em the finger?" and she'd say "give 'em three, the bum!" knowing I wouldn't do anything because i was a coward. It was fun.


Jennifer and I went that Saturday morning to see my dad. I was driving. At one point he was in the car with us...we took him to breakfast and his comment to me was "So Anne, are you just showing off?"

I think my driving was making him nervous. He hasn't lost his sense of humor.


This is my dad and his brother, Uncle Robert. We had such a nice visit. They sat and talked about family and old times, how their parents met.. great stuff.

Bill

Billy is a senior in H.S. this year. My sister sent shots of his school prom. She had been out of town the whole week and made it back in time to see him off. She sent me an email with these pics saying both her favorite boys had "dates" that evening.

My sister sent this comparison shot...and he does look just like Andy Samberg. Nice pic.

More of the same...

I am lazy, here is a note i sent to my friend Kate, she was asking
how things were going:

Yes I am starting to blog again. I am back doing some crafts (mosaics - finishing all my old projects..one i got so disgusted with i put it outside). In general people do not comment on blogs..you need one of those counters .. i use HISTATS because it is free ( www.histats.com ) ... My lawyer is $ 4.00 a minute so I don't talk to him. The divorce is not progressing ... so I wrote him a letter and let him know i appreciated how he is driving my issue (he had sent the other attorney a note .and cc'd me on it) ..and that I still wanted a divorce and anything he could do that would not compromise my position financially i greatly appreciated.

We did sell the house! The closing date is May 29 and so far it has passed all the inspections...this weekend Harry and some of his friends are going to move the last bit of stuff out of there and do some light cleaning. Johnny is signing everything on behalf of his dad. Johnny and I have not communicated much but Johnny has gone along with all my suggestions (have two checks at the closing.. 2 1099S forms etc).

Harry is home for the month of May and then will go back to Winona at least four days a week ..he is working at FASTENOL (he got a coop job and its a good opportunity). Its nice having him around ... last night i went for a bike ride with him. I was going to go to a local bar to see SHAWN PHILLIPS (have you heard of him ... cool musician big in late 70's) and Harry was going to drive me up there at around 8pm and then pick me up again at about 11am (I was going alone and I worried about drinking too much - he offered and it saves cab fare ) ..but then I was too tired so i didn't go. But its sooo funny ..only a few years ago i was driving him to the movies to meet his friends or up to the school for a dance and then picking him up when it was over. I love that the whole thing is so reversed. A couple of nights a go i ran into a girl friend of his in the bathroom at 3am. I watched her go back into Harry's room. So then I knocked on the door and Harry answered. I made the girl go home. I told Harry this was not a dorm and we have standards and while i did not necessarily mind if girls slept over they had to sleep in separate rooms. She left. I just can't believe he thinks he can get away with that. I had less clothes on than she did and it looked like they just fell asleep watching TV because her outfit would have been pretty complicated to put on in a hurry. Anyway secretly it made me laugh. He knows that I would go after him with a broom if he was really doing anything. Hope you are doing great Kate. The weather is fantastic. I'll be in touch...planning on taking a few road trips to Chicago this summer. I like your blog too. I love all your stories about your foster pets. Ciao! Anne
On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Ed and Kate wrote:

Thanks for the comments on the blog. I've decided people read it but don't know how to write comments. That's OK - YOU DO and yours are important to me!
How is life in your corner of the world? New projects? Work OK? Harry home for the summer? Progress in getting settled? Is the house sold for certain? Your family all doing well? Are you starting to blog again?
Kate

Please visit my blog!
http://pawstolove.blogspot.com
Visit our area shelter, www.apl-shelter.org
http://www.fund.org/

Its tough being a single mom..

Oh, I forgot I am retired...

An email exchange with my sister:

Subject: Fw: last night

ME:
I got up to use the bathroom at about 3am and ran into Harry's friend Kayla. (She was fully dressed etc. so I don't think anything was going on...it looked like they just fell asleep whatever). But anyway she went back into Harry's room. So i knocked on the door and Harry was in there and I said Kayla had to go home... this was not a dorm and that there were standards and if he was going to have girls sleep over it was separate rooms.

So Kayla left... she only lives a block away. She's a very nice girl so it was all friendly.
Harry says, well what about you? .... and i said how do you know? And he says well I am just assuming. And I said well has anyone ever been here when you were here? and he said no and I said thats right.

I do have to draw the line somewhere.

LAURA:
you prude!

that reminds me...remember when I told you how they named the roads after the characters in Bridges of Madison County and you wrote in your blog how that was promoting adultery or some bs?
Well, we stopped in the diner on the way home from NE on Sunday. The lady working there met Clint when they filmed but made a point of saying she did not like the movie whatsoever. There were pictures of Clint but NOT ONE of Meryl Streep. Such a double standard....

ME:
Yeah that is BS. I agree. I did really like the movie though.

Laura, I am not a prude! Its just being civilized! I don't mind if Harry has girlfriends over, but I need to consider formality and its not a dorm room. What Harry does at school is his business... and if he wants to have girls in his room fine.

I saw a movie a couple days ago i liked...it was a bit odd though .. Assassination Tango with Robert Duvall. I liked the sex scene.

LAURA:
i was kidding. I agree with you, she should have slept on the couch

Happy Mother's Day

My sister sent me this your tube clip. The guy was dead on. I think he employed every catch phrase I ever used on my kid and step kids. It was scary.

And then there were the other things (that i try to forget). Like the time my son was riding in the grocery cart and it was about halfway filled with food and he was bouncing on the bread and not sitting quietly as i was politely asking (yeah right! I probably was too busy squeezing melons).

At any rate, I was commandeering the cart down an unpopulated aisle. i was planning to give the kid a good crack but didn't want to engender the nasty looks from other shoppers. Just as i was slowing the cart down my son bounced right out of the cart and onto the floor. He wasn't hurt too bad but enough to make him sober up. It saved me the trouble of having to whack him myself.

Oh and like another time...Harry was bouncing in the passenger seat of the car. He was about 4 years old, and i was taking him to day care. I had repeatedly told him to put his seat belt on. I was always telling him to put his seat belt on, and as usual he was jumping up and down and just ignoring me. I was going about 5 miles an hour waiting for him to comply. Finally, i just broke the car hard. The stop was just enough to cause harry to fly forward. He went head first and hit the windshield with his forehead. The sudden impact put a crack in the wind shield. Never mind that Harry had a red bump on his head, I had to take the car in and get the window replaced.

Easter (eggs etc)

So this is my entry... a reference to the first female suicide bomber. And my submission wasn't complete until we actually blew it up. It was an interactive exhibit, so we took it outside and lit the "bombs". Not easy.

This was the end result.

Then we celebrated... we went to a bar and saw the local band. They kindly invited me up on stage to play the tambourine. Dreama and I (Laura's good friend) are part of the Tamborine Ho club. My brother in law took some pictures. I wish he would send them as then you can see the group of us. Whenever I or Dreama took the stage the whole crowd of us (all the family that was over 21 plus a few friends) overtook the dance floor and pretty much took over the bar. The band took our email addresses. We are a fun crowd. Yeah!

Easter Egg Contest 2009: The Contestants

This one with the carrots on the plate was not a
contestant. It was my sister Jenny's tray of deviled
eggs that included a very cute one in the center in
honor of the occasion.

Easter Egg Update 2009: The Winners

Jim, Laura's husband won third prize. The Obama Mug. They were in the dollar discount bin at the local grocery store.

My nephew, Tommy won 2nd place and a can of carmel corn. He is going to school at a university in southern Illinois. Regardless of whether he likes it or not it will be consumed.

Brian (Shannon's friend) was the winner of the Malley chocolate Easter Rabbit. Malley's candy is a very old chocolatier in Cleveland, Ohio. A place with a lot of history for my family. We were all concerned as to whether he would share his trophy.

So thats what that is...

Our group had happy hour get together at a neighborhood bar after work a few nights ago. My coworker asked me how it was going. I've always been pretty up front with everybody at work, and it is a bull pen, and sometimes I do take personal calls at my desk.

I spent twenty years in a pretty conventional domestic situation, with a husband, kids, pets, and a station wagon. (I still have the station wagon, which I plan to drive into the ground mostly because I can't afford to do anything else!)


So to give my coworker an idea of what was happening, I told him what my kitchen looked like at the moment. That is, my kitchen no longer looks like a kitchen. I took a sculpture class in February. After that I pulled out all the projects that I have had laying around unfinished for the last five or six years, all mosaics, because that has been one of my interests since Harry was young.


The kitchen table is covered in newspaper, with tile clippers and trowels and buckets in piles and stacks on top of that. I have my next projects in a corner with books open and scattered on the floor, in front of the counter and the sliding glass doors, waiting for the ideas that are still being formulated. There are dirty rags on the counter, and gloves for grouting in the sink, and this is the way the kitchen has looked now since February. The rest of the place is starting to look that personal too.


My friend laughed. He said "Hey, that reminds me of what I went through just after my divorce, but for me it was cars. There were car parts everywhere on newspaper all over my house!" Ah, so that's what it is. It made me feel good knowing that this was a perfectly natural condition.

Summer '08

I turned 50 last July. It really wasn't so bad. My sisters planned a surprise. The tradition started with Jennifer three years ago. Laura will be next year and we'll do Ann (first person on the left) as well, but Ann lives in Memphis. She has so much to say about it.

I had to go to Chicago to celebrate. The surprise was the people that my sisters invited, like Ann! Wow. She was our neighbor growing up. She was Laura's best friend and like a sister to us (she was the fourth sister), and has been a part of our family forever. Wafa, the girl next to Ann in green, came with her husband and kids from Michigan. She buddied around with us Saturday while her hubbie hung with the kids. They have some family here too. We had a great time. Spent the day bike riding around Chicago on rented bikes. We stayed at an old hotel in Chicago and went out to eat and all that and the next morning Cathy and Abu joined us for breakfast. I used to live with Cathy in Oakpark...and then in Elmhurst. It is always nice to see Cathy and Abu.

I spent the rest of the weekend with my sisters and Ann, who had a lot of advise for me on how I should handle the future and my suddenly single status. And my mother, who always gives me great advice, never hesitates to tell me, "Oh Anne you are going to have so much fun!" I love it. How can I lose?

Nothing is sacred....

This is a snapshot from last October of my sisters and their husbands. My older sister Jennifer (the one in the white low cut T and black leather coat) is the Harley Babe. Her husband is the one with the dew rag and NO SUNGLASSES. My other sister and her husband just like to dress up and party. As with all white people, they love theme parties, so "motorcycle theme" was the perfect foil. I like this picture. This is how I think of them, just change the outfits and the backdrop.

My brother in law Jim, Laura's husband, tried to get Laura interested in motorcycles one year by buying her one for her birthday. She ran it into a bush on her first ride, and didn't talk to Jim for three days. Jim should have gotten her perfume, which she would have liked much better. She eventually sold it and bought a lot of really expensive skin care products.

Since this is my first post in about a year I have a lot of catching up to do.

This weekend I am going to go to Chicago with my son. It is the annual Easter Egg contest. Harry and I are discussing our ideas, but we cannot tell anyone (I had second thoughts about telling him..there was a BIG moment of awkward silence when he asked me what I was doing) because this is a highly competitive contest and we do not reveal our ideas in case someone else in the family feels compelled to cheat. We are not a family of cheaters, but we are ruthless when it comes to winning games, and age has no limits.