The one person who subscribed to my blog has probably long since given up on the consistency of the writer.  Actually I think it's my daughter and how nice that she thought her mom might be good at this.  Last time I was here was 2009 and now it's 2011 and I'm very willing to discount the time entirely as too much happened that I'm no longer capable of remembering.  And why is this blinking blog continually blinking-how very annoying!  Sooooooo, yes I've continually had ideas for stories but since I've not been in the mood to write them down they've disappeared into the murk possibly never to be retrieved.  I now see myself as the little old lady in a nightcap, yes, the kind that goes on your head because my head actually gets cold at night when the heat goes down.  I wear my fleece hoodie to bed and am thinking of making a few plain fleece hoods to sell to other little old ladies with cold heads or even head colds.  I picture myself out in the yard in stockings rolled under my knees, carpet slippers flapping at my heels, liver spotted face peering out from under my tattered hoodie, ear trumpet at the ready and a mint julep at hand.  I've never had a mint julep but it sounds more sophisticated than a beer and a shot. 

I had an interesting day yesterday subbing at an inner city school with a highly diverse population.  Kids of several languages, creeds and colors populate this school.  Many are new to the country as well as to an American school.  My hat is off to the teachers who are performing miracles to my way of thinking.  One little middle-eastern child was bouncing all over the kindergarten room in a fit of over-stimulation, hardly able to focus in his urge to explore everything at once.  In spite of the language barrier we communicated with clapping and YAYS for tasks completed and well done.  He has a long way to go but he's indeed on his way.  In the special ed. room I managed(barely) to keep the lid on with a group of rambunctious boys who were bound and determined to get the goat of the old lady substitute.  We parted as friends though I'm sure they are hoping I will never darken their door again.

This is the end, the blinking blog has finally got MY goat.  AARGH!  I shall try again later when the stuttering blog page is back to normal; reminds me of atrial fibrillation, a condition which I hope never to repeat in the near or far flung future!

I always thought I should start a journal, but I'm so inconsistent it's laughable.  No wonder I can't remember where I've been, much less what I've done.  Oh, it's all in there somewhere and ready to draw on when necessary but not written down neatly with drawings and diagrams, line-outs and ink blots.  Soooooo, a summer went by and while I may not have missed May I certainly missed summer.  I can't remember anything before September, it must have been quite uneventful.  I do remember the old timer's party in Aspen and the subsequent high school reunion.  I read some of my anecdotes at the party and discovered people actually want to read the whole enchilada but I'm having trouble getting it done as usual!  Then I fell and thought I broke my wrist well, my thumb hurts!  But after x-rays and more x-rays, the Doc has pronounced me unbroken!  So now what?  I can't really type comfortably and that means I have an actual excuse not to do anything!  If I had my druthers I'd find myself on a beach somewhere soaking up more wrinkles and liver spots, reading poetry and trashy novels, wrapping myself in a long white caftan and devouring exotic meals(which would probably cause me indigestion and no end of sleeplessness!)so there. 

After the reunion my husband of 47 years and myself putzed out to Moab, Utah for the second year in a row to see Canyonlands and hike the NBC trail to Morninglory Arch.  I used my trekking poles and basically huffed and puffed(which I didn't do last year, so I must be slowing down)all the way, and when we arrived at the end of the trail a group from England was happily rappelling down the wall behind the arch making me feel a bit old, to say the least.  One of the Brits said it was actually his first time doing this sort of thing and he was terrified and had to be coaxed the whole way.  NBC stands for the now politically incorrect Negro Bill's Canyon, thus NBC.  Personally I like the name because it gives credit where credit is due.  African American Bill's Canyon just doesn't work and power to the guy if he actually lived there and maybe even discovered it.

After Canyonlands and NBC, both awe inspiring, we drove on to Nine Mile Canyon, a forty mile outdoor art gallery of incredible petroglyphs left there by the Fremont people.  The Fremonts are called so by archaeologists though the Ute tribes who've live in the area for centuries wonder aloud who their people are if not descended from the Fremonts??  The Fremonts supposedly moved on but they left a jaw-dropping record of their passing in their renderings of the animals and hunts and their beliefs.

The final week was spent in a time share in Park City(also did that last year)and we soaked in the hot tubs, went to a feast of a brunch in Alta, hiked more, explored Salt Lake and the Mormon Temple and found a Brew Pub, much to Tony's delight.  There was an art show of religious inspired works from Mormons around the world which was quite fascinating with artists working in every possible media from oil to watercolor, woodworking to sculpture, collage to quilting, many outstanding works.

That was our vacation and now we're back home and growing older by the minute, which, come to think of it, we've been doing all along!!

It could be that I bypassed May altogether or it left me behind to gather what buds I could in June.  I subbed quite a bit, enjoying the students for a five day stint in a 4-5-6 Montessori classroom.  The 6th graders had gone on an archeology field trip and returned the afternoon of my final day of subbing.  As they saw their classmates coming down the hall, the fifth grade girls nearly swooned at the sight of the sixth grade heart throb, cap on backwards, sunglasses on his nose, camping gear stowed in an impossibly large backpack striding toward them, tanned and grinning. They screamed!  I do remember a fifth grade crush,  I carved our initials on an Aspen tree somewhere near his ranch, but I never swooned nor screamed, was I a cold fish?

I did my last day of subbing on May 22nd and Tony and I left for southern Colorado on the 23rd.  We took the train over La Veta Pass to Alamosa, had lunch and returned.  We sat in one of the old dome cars that I remember riding from Glenwood to Denver when I was a ten year old.  It was a treat, though there wasn't any wildlife visible on the way, well, a jack rabbit and some magpies and ravens.  The Aspens were just leafing out in that eye-popping phosphorescent spring green.  Wildflowers were everywhere, lupine, locust, Indian paint brush, wild snapdragon, gorgeous.  There are two engines that pull two different trains, a diesel and an old steamer.  We took the diesel but met the steamer at the half-way point so some passengers could return rather than take the day-long trip. 

Then it rained for three days.  I read a Tony Hillerman mystery that I picked up in Alamosa.  When the sun finally came out it was warm and we enjoyed treats and conversation at the Bakery and brunch with a host of friends.  We decided to go to Taos to celebrate with our friend, Victoria, a school nurse whose last day for this year was the 29th.  Taos is our trip to Europe, we love the town, the galleries, the shops, the food.  I started getting a niggling little headache but it didn't stop me from pigging out at our favorite Mexican restaurant.  I should've known better.  By the time we got home I was a sick puppy and whooped my cookies and packed it in.  I was back to my old self the next day, old being the operative word.  Losing your lunch at an older age leaves you with a literal pain in the neck, and the back, and the stomach as the strained muscles scream in protest.  We returned home and I was never happier.

I have finished a story for a children's magazine.  I decided to have a professional editor polish it just to see what it would look like.  I found her name listed on the Write4Kids website.  She did a super job for $50 which I was glad to pay as I found her changes valid and kid-friendly.  I've got it ready plus cover letter to send out tomorrow.  Wish me luck. 

Paradise
Eleisa Trampler

Paradise is here
here in the blue-green mountains
in the deep sweet forests
in the rush of streams
and the flash of the rainbow fish
in the bounding of elk and the silence of deer

there is paradise in the breath of horses
the whimper of puppies
the twitching tails of the small cats and the big cats
in the wings of songbirds
and in the talons of raptors

paradise haunts us in sunrise and sunset
in the shimmer of moonlight
and out among the far-flung stars
where the hand of God is tracing the future

there is paradise here
here in the spume of the wave
the creep of the crab and the tortoise
and the sounding of whales
the small fish and the big fish
here where the sea moves in rhythm with the moon
is paradise

there is paradise in the dry dust of deserts
the spine of cacti
the slither of snakes
the web of the spider
the sear of the cloudless day

paradise is borne upon the wind
seated in the clouds
fallen with the rain
drifted in sparkling snows and
locked in ice

and paradise is here in the eyes of the child
in the hands of the elder
in the toil of the worker
here among the many hued peoples of the earth is paradise
in the cry of the newborn
the smile of a mother
the care of a father
the joy of a brother and sister

yes, we are in paradise now
and we must treat paradise with respect
and if we treat every living thing with such love and care
the care that befits paradise
then the paradise that is to come will be ours.

Soooo, every 4 weeks is not bad, and your point is? 

Just returned from Aspen, no we are not in that league, we have an old friend(91, to be exact)who loves our company and allows us to occupy the guest room.  We can  therefore afford a 4-pass to ski on the mountain we bombed down as kids.  My first straight-on schuss through the bumps on Ruthie's Run was at age 11.  My best friend's sis was in the lead, showing us how to find the fall line between the bumps for a successful trip without multiple fractures.  We had bear traps for bindings in the early 50's so if you fell you did not come out of the skis, you just had a spiral fracture or some such exciting and painful injury.  Ruthie's is the run where the World Cup is held by the way.  Heh, heh, and I did it all when I was just a pup!  Nanner, nanner!!

On our first couple of days the snow was hard-choppy on top and slushy on the bottom.  The wind blew like sixty and as we enter our 8th decades(OMG/LOL)we find our tolerance for such discomfort waning.  We opted for hot chocolate and an oatmeal cookie.  Our ski day looks like that anyway, never more than four hours on the slopes, we take a run, stop for a hot choc, take another run, pottystop, take another run, have a cider and a cookie.  We never have lunch because too much food no longer allows for good carves, digestion gets in the way!

Below was another story, Kurt had gone to lunch with the postmistress(she's really a stunner about the age of his grandaughter.  Last year she took Kurt to Victoria's Secret with her girlfriend from Montana in tow.
They shopped and asked his opinion and he was happy to give it.  Oh, yeah, you're thinking-that's Aspen all right-a coupla gold diggers, but you would be wrong.  Kurt has had a life-long fascination with stamp collecting and his collections have been sold for a goodly amount so the postmistress allows him free reign in the post office and they've become good friends.)  Anyway, after lunch Kurt took a tumble on the steps and cracked a rib.  We finally managed to get him to the hosp. for xray and catscan and lo, just as he thought, he was in a lot more pain after the doc's probing than he was before.  We got him home and started him on the pain meds and were grateful to be there round the clock as the meds MAY CAUSE DIZZINESS, so we spent a few days in eldercare until he got things sorted out for some home care.  Not that our overnights were helpful.  One night he fell out of bed but didn't call out so who knew?  Next am he was up with cuts on his head and ear from hitting his nightstand.  Talk about feeling useless.

Last phone call to Kurt reports that he's getting better every day.  "Now that we're gone?" quips my husband.  "HA-HA!" replies Kurt. "OO!- Don't make me laugh!"

And your book? You're wondering.  What about your book?
Well. I reply, it's coming along, albeit slowly, soooooo....... Read the rest of this post

Ah! Valentine's Day and what's not to love.  I remember writing, years and years ago, a Valentine poem for my young students who were finding their way around a clock face.  It was inspired, if not blatantly copied, from the little readable candy hearts we all love to chomp.  Here it is:




I LOVE YOU AROUND THE CLOCK

One o'clock: I love you.

Two o'clock: I'll be true.

Three o'clock: Love me too?

Four o'clock: Yes I do.

Five o'clock: Here's my heart.

Six o'clock: We'll never part.

Seven o'clock: It's a date.

Eight o'clock: Don't be late!

Nine o'clock: You're divine.

Ten o'clock: You're my sunshine.

Eleven o'clock: O Dear Valentine...

Twelve o'clock: Won't you please be mine?

Perhaps not terribly imaginative, but struck the children as the perfect Valentine for the cards they were making for their parents.  I made a classroomful of copies for the kids to paste haphazardly on their pink, red and white lace doilies festooned with beginning attempts at cutting out hearts.  Those first Valentines are most endearing with scrawled handwriting that reads I love you in all sorts of invented spellings.  I still have those that my own 40 something children produced so many years ago and they still bring a tug to my heartstrings.  HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

Dear President Obama, the letter from my 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade students began, we are so happy for your being our new president.  We know that you want us to help so here's what we can do:

We can turn off the water and the lights when we're not using them. 
We can pick up trash and help keep the environment clean. 
We can pick up trash even if it's not ours. 
We can recycle.
We can carpool to help save gas.
We can go outside instead of watching video games.
We can see what we have before we go to the store and buy stuff so we don't waste money.
We won't waste food.
We can be thankful for what we have.
We can learn and do teamwork and respect others at school.

Sincerely yours,
Rooms 248 and 249
Academia Sandoval Montessori
Denver, Colorado

Even the kids realize they have a stake in this and need to be responsible.
God Bless the children.

At last the GREAT FIASCO is over.  HOOPDEEDOO!  Everyone is so full of hope and enthusiasm for our incoming president.

I've been listening to renditions of LIFT EVERY VOICE AND SING (the Black National anthem) and my favorite is done by the EmpowerMen.  Click below to hear their soulful sound and this powerful song of a people whose struggle for liberty and justice has been a long time in coming.  Let's all be a part of this new future.

Eleisa (Lizzzt)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W6tqHNVqKs&feature=related

Well, what can I say?  I am slow.  I get bogged down as well as boggled.  It has been nearly two months.  And what to show? Nada!  AH!  There's the rub!

The holidays are a blur, the decorations need to be taken down, the cards answered, the email answered, the call to writing answered.  That last is the one I long to get to, but alas, since everything else intrudes I must try to get up at 5am, drag myself kicking and screaming to the computer, stare at the screen, and await the muse in order to hunt and peck on the keys.  As I am pulled this way and that, it doesn't seem possible, after all one must sleep in order to think. 

Last year my husband was determined to buy a fake xmas tree, blaarf!   As we surveyed the offerings we noted nary a one sans lights; built right in they were!  Where was room for my chile lights or even the ropes of little twinklies we'd purchased in years past?  Too bad we couldn't find one of those aluminum models from the fifties with the rotating light wheel that changed the tree color to all shades of the rainbow.  What ho!  Here's an aluminum one(well, tinsel)of course, it had the lights built right in.  WARNING! it said, don't touch the wiring it's full of lead!  It was perhaps the ugliest tree in the assortment, so we bought it.  It's really too small, too hideously triangular, too full of lead laden wiring(should I wear gloves when I trim it?).  It's just too too!  It sits there forlornly, waiting for someone to turn on its lights so it can glow its way into your heart.  (Now, there's a sentence!)  I managed to get most of my favorite ornaments on it: the angel my mother-in-law made us for her last xmas gift, the race car with Santa driving that my son made when he was ten, the stiff starched crocheted star that my elder daughter made for us some years ago, the painted Russian eggs by my youngest daughter and her husband, and all the painted ornaments from grandchildren, but the chile lights are missing.  Next year I'll beg for a real tree, a big one so I can drape it with everything and have it fall over as usual.  That's my kind of tree!

We tripped off to Breckenridge before xmas for a week, skied once and wandered the streets as the snow fell and fell and fell.  We had a roast beast for day after xmas dinner(as we had family on that day)and I made carmelized roasted veggies, yum!  The grandchildren went on treasure hunts in order to find their presents.  I gave them coupon books with various tempting visits to grandma's for sewing, cooking or science projects.  (My grand daughter wants to make a plushy stuffed snake this weekend.)  We went to our home away from home in southern Colorado for New Year's week and read and went to the bakery and read some more and went to the bakery some more, and went to a friend's home for a New Year's Day feast with a honey baked ham and a roasted turducken(a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey-a carnivore special!) with all the trims.  We ate to bursting!

So, now we are back to humdrum and deciding what to do in the new year: fitness for all, teeth(my husband's)need attention, kitchen plumbing in Denver, bathroom plumbing in so. Colo., upstairs floors need refinishing in Denver, could use new curtains in Denver and so. Colo. but will possibly postpone, need to do some subbing, new wills, copying photos for photo journals for my three children, continued sorting and cleaning out of 39 years of accumulated debris AND WRITING!  Now see, if I put writing at the top of the list what would happen to the rest...

The bathroom has actually gone from disaster to nearly finished with the plummer having plumbed and the painter having painted and my handy husband having been handier than usual what with installing the beadboard walls and the floor.  So staggering downstairs at midnight to pee will soon be a thing of the past. 

I wish I could say the same about my book which has had to take a backseat to the uproar mostly because I've had to continue subbing in order to acquire some funds for the bathroom project.  Of course the best thing to be said about it is that the adventures of my little heroine continue to percolate in the dark miasma of my cluttered brain and that is nothing short of a miracle.  I say that because if you are 69 years old you may often find that you've lost your thought in the time it takes to cross the room in five seconds or less.  Dang, what was it I was going to say?  (And I've actually lost the thought from one sentence to the next!)  See what I mean!  YEESH!

Chessie(my little heroine)says YEESH a lot because her mom does and she wants to be just like mom(I did, didn't you? Unless you wanted to be just like dad!) Chessie is short for Francesca because that's what I wanted to be named instead of Eleisa.  Nobody could pronounce Eleisa, I was Alaysa, Alieza(with a long "i") and mostly Aleesha(where is the "h" in Eleisa, I'd like to know?)so I picked a name out of a hat and called myself Francesca, which I soon found out was pronounced Fransessca, so I was right back where I started. 

Chessie's story came from an earlier picture book which I had written with my third grade of some years back.  We brainstormed a Halloween tale about a plucky troop of trick-or-treaters who found themselves on the porch of a nasty looking witch.  She invited them in for a cauldron of treats and they had to grab one and run.  The littlest, a ghost who was brave enough to go back and ask for a green lollipop instead of a yellow one(and who got both a green one and a yellow one for her trouble)turned out to be Chessie, a child who attributes her bravery to the fact that she was wearing a ghost costume.

Come to think of it I could use that ghost costume right now.  Here comes my husband, "...a blog? You have a BLOG, you don't even like to go to coffee in the mornings and chit-chat and you have a BLOG!"  Well, that took the wind out of my sails, remind me to write only in the am when he's gone for coffee and I have my hour or so of peace and quiet at home alone, so much for my thoughts of the day!

Happy Halloween:  Mu-u-u-u-ha-ha-ha-ha-hah!

And here's my favorite poem for this spooky holiday,
one that hung in my classroom every year at this time,
right next to the skeleton!

SOME ONE

by Walter de la Mare

Some one came knocking
At my wee small door;
Some one came knocking,
I'm sure-sure-sure;
I listened, I opened,
I looked to left and right,
But naught was a-stirring
In the still dark night;
Only the busy beetle
Tap-tapping in the wall,
Only from the forest
The screech-owl's call,
Only the cricket whistling
While the dewdrops fall,
So I know not who came knocking,
At all, at all, at all.

Well, well, I thought I was going to get to post a picture but I see naught of that here, so I guess I'll just post a post. The plumbing in the bathroom commenced a clatter last week so the plumber's been to plumb(not Joe, thank goodness!) and the painter's been to prime and we are embarked on another old house project through necessity and not by design.  Our old sturdy brick two-story was built in 1910.  We've been in it since 1970, OMG! that long, eh?  I'd slip a photo of the old girl right in here but alas, I haven't figured that out yet.  Anyone? Help!!  Anyway, we'll probably be here 'till they cart us out.  Occasionally I change the "daycore" just to make me think I'm somewhere else, but it only amounts to moving something to another room or making some drapes out of old(and I mean 1930s OLD!) twin bedspreads. Which brings us to my husband, Tony, who's not a "daycore" kind of guy. Oh, he's very neat, a Virgo, you know, but bedspreads on the windows? And drapes that "puddle" on the floor?  Drapes don't "puddle" kids and dogs do, or doo-doo, well you get the picture.  He's happy to attempt to modernize, as in vinyl windows (AAAAAAARGH!) to lower heating costs.  I begged and pleaded on behalf of the old wavy-glass windows, but to no avail.   So, the bathroom is in his hands, my plans were considered, but discarded as too expensive(he's got that right)and impractical(I wanted the wood floor replaced and polyurethaned(not very green anyway). I'm closing my eyes to the whole process and will just be happy not to have to stumble downstairs to potty in the middle of the night!  And soon, very soon, I'll be back to normal and get my little chap book finished and polished and off to the pubs! 

Last posted 6 weeks ago!  Is this a writer or a dreamer?  I've just overextended myself and still haven't cleared away the detritus.  My friends have probably thought of me as once removed or lost in space.  I've been traveling, returning, subbing(got to do something in this economy)and so forth. 

My husband and I went off to Aspen for an Oldtimer's reunion.  We lived in Aspen in the 1950s and early 60s when the town was just coming into its own.  Now that it has exploded beyond our wildest dreams, we no longer want to return permanently, it's just too terribly trendy.  However we do like to see old childhood friends and hike from the Maroon Bells to Crater Lake(our test to see if we can still manage the terrain).  We stay with our wonderful friend Kurt who is 91 years young and still likes to have house guests.  He regales us with harrowing and hilarious tales of his life as a holocaust survivor and as proprietor of Aspen's best 20th century watch repair/jewelery store.  His shop, THE ALPINE JEWELER, was where my husband bought my antique wedding ring.  Long retired, Kurt delights in reminding me that he had a part in a musical production about Aspen(the score was written by my father in 1951)in which he played a minor acting part as "second fiddle"!  I have compiled a book of Kurt's stories as we get a new one or two every time we visit him, so I often veer off course just to write down his memoirs in exchange for his hospitality.

After Aspen we took off for Moab, Utah and Arches National Park.  For two days we hiked through this breathtaking Park with our cameras glued to our eyes, taking pictures of every lovely view.  The sky was that deep blue that so complements the sandstone formations and we were completely enchanted by Delicate Arch, Landscape Arch, The Spectacles, and Balanced Rock.  At the base of Balanced Rock were small piles of stones that people had erected in honor of their visits and Tony and I added our own little piles as well.

After Arches we drove to Park City, Utah for a week in that resort area.  We hiked a trail on the ski mountain
at Deer Valley and drove over to Sundance to reacquaint ourselves with a favorite trail there.  Taking the ski lift to mid-mountain on a cool misty day, we trekked over to Stewart Falls.  The weather cleared and we met two couples from North Carolina on their first trip west and enjoyed viewing the falls with them and photographing each other.  Some days later Tony and I visited Olympic Park and watched summer training for ski jumping and snowboarding.  The athletes fly high and land in a pool of water bubbles to cushion the fall.

Our Utah vacation drew to a close and we returned to Denver where I subbed for three days before we left for La Veta, Colorado and our home away from home.  We had invited friends down for the Celtic festival and attended a remarkable concert of fiddling and clogging.  For our closing week our son's family came down for Ocktoberfest and we all had a good time.

We're back home now and I'm subbing again, this time for a teacher who has double pneumonia.  Her class of four year olds is a trip and gives new meaning to the expression "herding cats"!

And writing? well it's taken a back seat to all this activity, but I'm getting into it.  The GOOD NEWS is that the album for which I wrote liner notes(pictured on my jacketflap page) has been nominated Jazz album of the year in Europe. YIPPEE!

YEESH!!  Has it been three weeks?  This is not a good sign.  Our Washington family flew home, we went to southern CO, returned, and I am now into the second of two weeks of subbing at a dual language public Montessori school in Denver.  I get to use Spanish for two weeks and am hoping that my input is comprehensible enough for the kids to get something out of it.  The DNC folks are coming to town so I've begun the school year with having the children design a classroom Bill of Rights(in Spanish) and I've set up a mini-museum with copies of the original Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, a hall of presidents, a book nook of bios and info in Spanish and English, and a virtual tour of Washington DC.  They love it.

My husband, bless his heart went back to our digs in southern Colorado and played 91 holes of golf in a week!  At least I have had the luxury of time to think.

The DNC is heating up as the bigwigs arrive and the protesters set up camp.  I'll probably go to a peace march and that'll be it.  Otherwise, just like you, I'll be glued to the TV set.  WOW, the chance to vote for someone more intelligent than me!  The mind boggles!

Yes, my daughter and her family are still here and a good time is being had by all.  We did go to the top of Denver's capitol building but were disappointed that we could no longer go out on the balcony.  The view of the front range of the Rocky Mountains is all but obliterated by the tall buildings that form the new city skyline.  A bronze plaque once described the various peaks and their heights and as you walked around the balcony each prominent mountain was given its own square plaque with an arrow pointing it out.  Now we are reduced to peering out of the windows and wishing that the view had been preserved.

We also went to the State History Museum and all were quite fascinated by the exhibits presented.  It was a free day at the museum and docents were on hand to give children and adults mini-tours in a number of areas.   We sat in an 1899 classroom, made butter, roped a calf, panned for gold and viewed the beautiful miniature models of various aspects of Colorado's past.  If you come to Colorado, don't miss it.

The Museum of Nature and Science is equally impressive.  My grandchildren were quite taken with the full sized dioramas representing the altitude zones of the mountains and the animals that reside in each.  They loved the mini mine tour and the gold vault that displays gold nuggets that were taken from a number of Colorado's mines.  The dinosaur hall was captivating and the Imax movie, Flight, was super.  My 16 and 14 year old grandsons declared these museums their faves.  They were mine too, when I was a child.  Now, if I can just get them to the Art Museum, we'll have covered the cultural scene.

My ten year old grand daughter dug into the "ragbag" and picked out fabrics for a hand puppet.  I showed her a few basic stitches and with both some hand and machine sewing, she turned out a cute dragon.  We'll explore the old photo albums next and by then the visit will be over.  G'mom and G'pop will go back to a humdrum existence of golf and writing and mini-trips to Aspen and Park City.  It's a hard-knock life!!

The cleaning's been completed and the arrival of our daughter's family is set for today at 10 am.  There are five of them so we'll have to take two cars to the airport.  The Honda Element that we bought in 2007 seats a mere four people including the driver, the old Suby seats five.  So we'll caravan back to the house and begin ten days of controlled mayhem.  On the agenda?  Hilary and Eric will renew their marriage vows, then we'll have a barbeque.  My husband's done all the shopping and prep for that including cole slaw and fruit salad to go with the steak and lamb.  Hil and Eric will spend one night at the Stanley Hotel-shades of Jack Nicolsen and REDRUM!  A mountain hike and picnic is planned, then Pirate's Cove for swimming.  I'm hoping for a capitol dome tour for the kids to the top of Denver's state capitol building, and/or a few other Denver attractions, such as the new Art Museum, the Museum of Science and Nature and perhaps a ride and tour on the Platte River trolley.

I may be too exhausted to write for a while!

There we go, two words I always seem to misspell, porridge and privilege,  yes there's a "d" in the former and none in the latter.  I was probably too tired to notice the little red line from spell check.  Good news is I finally got some sleep, only up once last night and went right back to sleep afterwards.  The solutions to my little character's problems are filling right in.  Now I need to deal with the lower back pain from sitting at this thing for too long. 

I remember when I had an elective in high school and decided to take typing.  Filling my mother in on my choices for the year,she noticed the typing and said,  "Why are you taking typing, you don't want to be a secretary when you grow up, do you?"
    "Well, no,"  I replied.
    "Then take acting, you're good at that."
    So of course, I'm a stare at the keyboard, hunt and peck typist(heavy sigh)and it takes me eons to get everything put down correctly.

Lindsey, who's on this site as "I blog therefore I am," tells me not to get addicted.  Too late, Lindsey, I'm hopelessly addicted to sending missives to cyberspace, even without a soul to read them.  Reminds me of what my mom used to say about her music when I asked her about the jazz scene at the Hickory House in NYC where she played in my dad's band, Joe Marsala and his Chicagoans, "Most of the great stuff's out there," she said as she waved her hand in the air, indicating outer space and beyond.

Ah, well, so be it, maybe some of my great stuff will be out there as well.

Ah, the old insomnia's got me.  Yes, I tried melatonin, it felt like someone'd hit me over the head with a brick!  Plus which, I didn't sleep at all.  As a matter of fact it activated my restless leg syndrome until I had to get up and wander around with my eyes half shut.  Darn stuff cost $10 bucks.  Suppose they'll take it back?  I've only used one tablet!  I guess I need the nursing home diet:
Oh, please!  Breakfast porrige or maybe even curds and whey, larger lunch of chicken, say, with broccoli and mashed pots with gravy, a parker house roll, mini salad wth iceberg lettuce, a mere bit of cabbage, tiny tomato, slice of cuke, wishbone Italian, then one of those jello concoctions with grapes and marshmallows.  The stomach revolts.  (Course with today's prices, they've probably gone back to cat food.)  With this menu you know they've got napping in mind and sure enough by the time lunch is over the whole place is a-snore!  A light supper consists of a cup of soup, half a sandwich, apple quarters, you know, so the inmates will surely doze off again after evening meds and stay asleep because of not overeating.

Not too terribly inspiring, eh?  Well I've had my light supper at the Mongolian barbeque, so I guess It's off to beddie-bye.  After all it's after 7:30!




 

I have been on this thing since the wee hours(well, not that wee, actually 8am which seems wee to me since I'm retired).  Good thing my guy has gone off  to play golf.  (He flogs, he says, which is golf spelled back'ards, as if you didn't know.)  He thinks I spend too much time here, and I do-staring off into cyberspace, writing all sorts of piddlypoo to godknowswhom.  It's my escape to another world, especially since the surge in gas prices.  And friends?  Well there are more people here than anywhere I know, and so...

I'm stuck with one of my stories.  There are the two little friends, sitting on the steps, chins in hand not knowing how to solve the problem.  One little mite wants to wear her old ghost costume for Halloween, the one that makes her brave enough to go out on fright night.  Trouble is, it's too short, so what to do.  Well, it'll come. 

As a former teacher I thought holiday stories were all but dead.  Still, bookstores parade their holiday themed books and I always appreciated buying new ones for Halloween, Christmas, Hannukkah, Martin Luther King's b'day, Valentine's Day, President's Day, Mother's and Father's Days, Independence Day and what have you.  While my story may not be clever enough for today's market, it's what I've got.  And you just have to keep writing until, ZAP, that clever idea pops into your head.  So hang in there!    

Yes, Andy J Smith, I cannot tell a lie, I filched this from you because I can't
resist categorizing the trivia.  Actually since the short term memory is blinking
on an off, I will need this later to recall what I was doing yesterday.

What were you doing five years ago?
1.  Researching the lives of my parents, jazz musicians in New York City
     in the 1930's and 40's, for journal articles.  
2. Taking a 4 thousand mile trip by car from Colorado to Nova Scotia and back.
     I had Diverticulitis in Duluth, wouldn't that make a catchy song title?

What are five things on your to-do list for today (not in any particular order)?
1. Aerobics with Tiffany at the gym, huff-puff!
2. Work on my stories, I'm polishing three at once.
3. Get rid of the hornets in the shed-on second thought, I'll wait 'til the freeze.
4. Clean a couple rooms, kids arriving for a ten-day stay.
5. Take a nap.

What are five snacks you enjoy?
1. artichoke hearts and black olives
2. blueberry and yoghurt smoothie
3. leftover cold spaghetti
4. toast, butter and brown sugar sandwich
5. dates and/or candied ginger

What five things would you do if you were a billionaire?
1. Set up trusts for my children and grandchildren.
2. Fix up my house and provide for retirement.
3. Help find a cure for autism.
4. Help rebuild homes for musicians in New Orleans.
5. Buy my husband the car of his dreams.


What are five of your bad habits?
1. nose picking-eeewwww!
2. I talk like a truck driver.
3. I am rendered decisionless in my old age!
4. puttering
5. sitting in front of the computer for too long

What are five places where you have lived?
1. New York City
2. Aspen, CO
3. East Greenwich, RI
4. San Francisco, CA
5. Denver,CO

What are five jobs you’ve had?
1. trick cyclist and unicyclist with the Hamid-Morton Shrine Circus
2. department store salesgirl
3. motel/hotel maid
4. singing waitress at the Crystal Palace in Aspen, CO
5. bilingual (Spanish/English) elementary school teacher

So I'm supposed to put three things in a box to open in 50 years, eh?  Well since I'm already over the hill by 18 years, I guess I won't be around in 50 more.   So what will I  leave to posterity?  Hmmm!  I could leave them my documents folder so they can see how  many ideas I had that never came to fruition.  My recipe for rhubarb cake is a winner, maybe someone would like to whip it up for dessert.  And I think a tape of my parents' 1930's and 40's jazz recordings are great so I'd like to pass those on.  

How would you describe yourself in one sentence?

I'm Italian!