On My Way

I was thinking about this blog this morning and realized it has been over four years since my first inspiring entry.  This has been so much fun and I hope it continues for many years to come.

It’s raining, again.  Last Friday we had a hail storm.  I was at home with Caleb (who slept through the whole thing) and the dogs (who were very nervous and stayed under my feet the whole time) but Sally had gone out to buy sand for Caleb’s sandbox.  When she got back she discovered that flower garden was covered in ice and the vegetable garden had flooded in a mixture of mud and mulch.  She was naturally very upset by the whole thing and she and Tim (the handyman) spent a good portion of the afternoon fortifying the garden against future flooding.

 

Friday morning I discovered a snake by the front steps.  I don’t mind snakes but Sally feelings towards them are comparable to my feelings towards spiders.  So, the snake had to go.  I had never killed a snake before and so I didn’t manage to cut it in half with the first blow of my shovel.  This led to me basically bludgeoning the poor thing to death while saying, “I’m sorry, snake!  I’m sorry!”

 

We had a good time in NYC on Thursday.  We dropped the dogs off at the groomer, Sally went off to her hair appointment and I wandered around SoHo looking at exorbitantly priced artistically ripped jeans.  What I really love about the city is the  variety.  The variety of stores, of food, of styles and of people.  I walked about two blocks and just wanted to sit down and write about everything I saw.   Then I went and got a pedicure.  I think I will go into the city one more time before I leave and that will be in large part just so that I can get another pedicure.  Gosh.  My feet were so happy.  After that I took a taxi to meet Sally and we ate an early supper at Balthazar.  Since it was my first French meal Sally felt I should get steak and I did not argue.  We had belinis and roasted beat salad and steak frites with this amazing bearnaise sauce. Then we had a scrumptious caramelized banana pie sort of thing with homemade banana ice cream for desert.  YUM! 

 

The strangest part of the day was when we were waiting to get the car out of the parking lot and I smiled at this girl who took her phone away from her ear and yelled, “Michael Jackson just died!”  I was so shocked I made her repeat herself.  Not having a TV as a child I missed out on the growing up to Michael Jackson’s music thing. But Efe did not miss out and she was reminiscing about it with me last night.  Even though I wasn’t a fan it does still seem sad to know that such an icon isn’t around anymore.  

 

Sunday we took Caleb to the Farmers’ Market where he flirted with all the ladies and where we finally got some fruit.  It has been such a rainy spring we think we may have missed the strawberries entirely.  

 

Monday I drove the the airport and picked up Gerry (Sally’s mom).  It was a beautiful day (until the thunderstorm on the way home) and I drove Sally’s Jeep with the windows down listening to ‘90s country music on Sirius Radio.  Late ‘80s early ‘90s country music is my guilty pleasure.  It is sooooo cheesy but it makes me feel good, reminds me of my childhood and I know the words to almost every song.  

Now I must go do something productive.  

 

Quote of the Day:

Chuck: [regarding Emerson] Is he upset you brought your childhood sweetheart back to life?

Ned: He barely knows you're here.

Narrator: In fact, Emerson had finished knitting a sweater vest and two handgun cozies in the week since Chuck's return.

 

-From the ever so wonderful (and sadly cancelled) Pushing Daisies

 The sun shone for a little while this morning filling me with incredible glee.  It’s been such a cloudy rainy month and we are ready for summer- which was supposed to begin yesterday.  

 

Sally and I are going into the city on Thursday.  We’re taking the dogs to get their baths while Trisha stays with Caleb.  It will be his first time staying with anyone besides us.  But, he and Trisha love each other so I think they will have a good time.  Sally and I are pretty excited about going out for the day.  She will get her hair cut and I will get a pedicure.  Then we will go eat French food.  

 

Speaking of food, I have found a new favorite pastime which is to ask two chefs how they liked the meal they had at a restaurant.  Jay and Sally went out to eat this past weekend and when they got home I received a full report of their meal, all the components of their salad and how the steak could have been improved.  I also received these most basic and most important cooking tips, “Serve hot food hot and cold food cold!”  and “Make sure to season things well.”  It seems that restaurants mess these things up quite often.   

 

Quote of the Day:   

 “We are not chefs!  We are Enthusiastic Home Cooks!”- how Jay describes himself and Patrick while barbecuing 

Toward the end of my 7th grade year I remember my favorite teacher giving our classroom full of restless 12  and 13 year olds a knowing look and saying, “How well you handle transitions is a sign of maturity.”  Since then I’ve been slightly concerned that I may never really grow up into responsible adult.  I dislike transitions.  They give me a distinctly antsy feeling and although I try to handle them with maturity, really I just want to get them over with.  I have started doing a bit of packing - just some books and winter clothes but still it gives me a slightly disconnected feeling and I can’t help it.  I know I am leaving and so part of me has already left.  

 

But, there are nice things about this transition back to Kentucky and one of them is that I will get to see that teacher again.  He’s teaching US history these days and every time I talk to him he has a new bit of Civil War trivia to share.  I know he’s going to Utah and Boston this summer and will have plenty of stories to tell.  He’ll be busy with a new school year and farm work but I’m sure he will take time out for his daughter and we will sit around the kitchen table with Mogie and Boo and talk late into the night.  It will be good to be home.

 

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy!

Somebody should really stop me before I use my hard earned money to buy a ticket to Scotland.  It has been 9 years since I was first there and 7 years since that day J and I spent there on our Great Britain winter vacation.  I really can’t describe what Scotland means to me except that it is like home.  The first time I got off the plane in Glasgow I had the same feeling I get when I get off the plane in Louisville.  So, it’s like home except with castles, bagpipes and kilts.  Also Scottish accents.  It’s hard for me to ask for more than that.:)  Anyway, Neil Gaiman and his girlfriend (singer/musician) Amanda Palmer are going to be at the Edinburgh Literary and Fringe Festivals respectively and I was thinking of how I’ve been wanting to go to the Fringe Festival since I was 16 and how Pip is living in Glasgow now and how I have the money...

 Never go to the library intending to get a lot done when you haven't eaten any breakfast.  Still it's worth it because I got an e-mail from Phyllis which brightened my day. (Hi, Phyllis!) 

I am in much more of a writing mood today.  But now I have too much to cover.  Let’s see if I can be succinct.  

Food- We had a scrumptious chicken stew this past week but my favorite meal recently was oven baked fried chicken.  Yummy! 

Caleb- Is hallarious playing with the dogs.  If they are laying down he gets so excited and goes speed crawling over to them to pound pet them and give them kisses.  

Nadea- Is going to Sacramento at the end of the month.  She sent me a copy of their schedule.  It’s jam packed with activities.  I think she is disappointed that there is not more time for exploring on her own.  But I think once she is here she will be glad to have a real schedule.

Nanny hunt-  Sally really wants to find an American nanny but they are few and far between and in general very young and not likely to be excited about hiding out in the Catskills.  We did get one e-mail from a girl who had made her own extensive questionnaire when we got to the part where she outlined what she would do in case of a volcanic eruption we decided that we had more than enough information.

Plans- If I stare hard enough into the future I’m hoping something will reveal itself.

Restaurants-  On Monday I at lunch at the Main Street Cafe in Narrowsburg.  The waitress took me out to the back patio and gave me instructions for which trees to watch to see the nesting bald eagles.  

Three Cups of Tea-  One of the most inspiring stories I’ve heard in a long long time.  It is good to be reminded of what one person can accomplish.  threecupsoftea.com

Slumdog Millionaire-  Loved it.   Great story, amazing locals, beautiful filming, excellent soundtrack.  Dirty, painful, and full of hope. 

Vanya-   Vanya is working with customs and having trouble with all of the corruption he is facing among his coworkers.    

Visitors-  Katie’s dad, Mike is up here fishing with his brother.  We are meeting up at a diner in town and I think he is bringing us homemade sausage!

Weather- Rainy.  Very rainy.  Drowning out seeds.  Tornado warning.  Makes  us go out to the flower garden and move 37 pots and planters full of flowers back into the shed.

Am supposed to be writing something... something about Slumdog or nanny hunting (this could be funny) or my planned trip into the city or Caleb’s new fondness for biting or rain (there’s been a lot of it) but am feeling decidedly uninspired.  Will work on that and get back to you.

I saw Slumdog!  Finally!  Loved it.  Have much to say.  But am going to eat pound cake now.

In my family we go by nicknames.  Some are logical derivatives of our given names, others have origins so obscure that explaining them takes up half of a dinner conversation.  If you happen to become part of our immediate family one day you will find that you are called Roy or Nicoleta or E.  That’s why I realized I was in trouble when Trisha asked me, “Why do you call Caleb, ‘Baby Bear’?”  He has become a part of my family.

Uncle Jeff asked me a while ago how I was going to handle leaving Caleb and I explained to him my practical approach to the whole thing.  First off, I’ve known all along I would only be staying for a year.  That means I have always tried to focus on the present and not on the future when it comes to Caleb.  Secondly, if I ever thought about staying longer I reminded myself that leaving a two year old would be so much harder on him. 

But, as the time gets closer (we started the nanny search yesterday) I realize that leaving my Baby Bear is going to be extremely hard.  A couple of nights ago I jerked awake, my heart pounding, from a dream that Caleb had fallen down the stairs.  I lay there and talked to myself, “He is in his crib.  He is not near the stairs.  He can’t get out.  Everything is OK.”  I do not like the thought of leaving him.

I am thankful that I have been able to be the one to cocoon Caleb’s first year in love and see Sally and Caleb become a family.    He is going to have a wonderful life, full of love, beauty and opportunity.  I am just a bit sad I will not be a part of it.

Lace curtains are blowing in the breeze and tickling my toes as I set on my bed.  I have finished one long overdue letter and found another, half finished, behind my nightstand.  Caleb is napping and Sally is in the kitchen.  I can hear pots banging from two stories up.  We are having steak tonight with ice cream for dessert.  This morning I had rhubarb custard pie for breakfast with my coffee. 

 

It is late spring now.  Fall is sharp, bright and beautiful; winter is soft, cold and shadowy; summer is rich, intense and ripe; but it is spring that I love the best.  I love the nice little breezes, I even love, if only for a little while, dandelions showing off against green grass.  I love the promise of spring, the way it makes it seem like anything is possible.  If you haven’t tried something before, now is the time to take the plunge.  If some dream was thwarted last year try it again and this time it may be realized, may reach perfection.   That is what spring says to me.

Quote of the Day:
"The coffee of champions!"- cashier as she hands me my Mt. Dew

 It is a beautiful day and I am sorry to have to be inside.  But at the same time I am just so excited to be on the internet.  I love feeling connected to the rest of the world for one day.  I just had a fun little video chat with Katie.  She talked and I typed my responses since I'm in the library.  Other things on my agenda today include depositing my paycheck and doing a bit of job hunting on line.  I also need to look for plane tickets for Mogie and Daddy to go and see J and E in June.  I was hoping that they would be able to come up and see me as well, but school will have started by the time my year here is up.  So, I'm hoping that Mogie can just fly up and then we can drive home together.  I just want share this beautiful place with somebody else before I leave.  I got my weekly bacon, egg and cheese bagel (no biscuits) this morning and for once did not run into anybody who thought they knew me.  Once I met a man coming out of the cafe as I was going in and he said, "It's not often I see you out alone!"  "That's true!"  I said and then then thought, "Who are you?"  But really I am always so happy to be greeted cheerfully by people at the post office or on the street that I don't bother to worry about who they think I am.  Maybe they do know me and I'm just being forgetful.  

The farmer who keeps his cows on the farm brought them back from their winter in his barn.  We were happy to see them and it seems like summer again to be able to watch them out the window while washing dishes.  

 

It’s been a busy month.  There’s been a lot of rose ordering drama involving confusing websites, phone numbers no one answers, and e-mails that appear to have been lost in the ether.     We thought that the last of the roses would be arriving this past Wednesday or Thursday but they are still not here.  Otherwise the flower garden is looking really nice.  I will take pictures once everything is blooming.

 

Patrick and Jay came for a visit today.  Both dated Sally at some point in the past and both are presently working in the restaurant business in NYC.  It was fun to have them around for the afternoon.  Patrick is such charming Irish rouge.  We get along really well.  Jay is just funny.  He told me the story of how he met Sally.  (She was wearing a pink sweatshirt and Converse tennis shoes and he was wearing a v-neck sweater over a t-shirt. - It was the 80s.)  While watching the cows in the field I told him how J developed a dislike for milk after our milk cow ate onions one summer.  Jay got a kick out of that and wanted me to embellish the story so that he could tell it at a “salon” he is going to tomorrow night.  Everyone is supposed to come with a poem to read, a song to sing, or a story to tell.  

 

I had a good week full of LOST speculation.  Sally and I also watched the finale of Dancing with the Stars.  We teased Gerry about watching it last year and then got totally sucked in.  Sally used ballroom and swing dance so she liked analyzing all the technical stuff.  I know nothing about dancing so I wasn’t able to contribute much to the analysis but we were in total agreement about who should have won.  We were serious Gilles fans and not just because he is a hot French guy.  Shawn and Melissa were great but Gilles was an awesome dancer and we’re sorry that the season is over and we won’t have our Monday night ritual anymore.  

It is a stormy evening.  We were going to watch Seven Pounds on PayPerView but the satellite signal went out.  Now I’m back in my cosy room with my lamp on and The Orange Lights playing on my headphones.  Caleb is asleep in the attic so I can’t make any phone calls.  That is probably a good thing.  I’ve been feeling like a pretty lousy blogger recently.  Hardly a day goes by when I don’t think about something I need to write about, finding the time and motivation is another story.

 

Caleb has woken up at five the past three mornings, woken up at five and refused to go back to sleep.  For the past few weeks we’ve been working really hard to get him on a good sleep schedule.  It has improved his mood during the day, but our moods are not improving do to a lack of sleep.  In fact as I write this I’m thinking about how nice it would be to just close this computer and go to sleep.  

 

With the exception of his frustrating sleeping habits Caleb is doing wonderfully.  He will be a year old on July 27th (yes, he shares his birthday with Harry Potter) but he is already wearing 18 month old clothes. He has two teeth, can stand unassisted for several seconds, and just yesterday he climbed the stairs by himself.  He gives lots of slobbery kisses and shares his toys with the dogs.    

 

Right-o, enough for tonight.  Must sleep.

AAAAAhhhhhh!  There is more to my life than LOST, there really is!  But this is what happens when my day off is the day after LOST.  There is so much to talk about I don’t even know what to say and I’ve gone over most of it with Efe, Meggan and Patrick already.

 

We saw Jacob!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  He was just sitting there like a normal person!  Then there was that dark guy!  Who is he!?!  You want to know my answer?  Of course you do!  It’s Esau!  Esau, Jacob’s twin brother.  One a shepherd, one a hunter.  Jacob cheats Esau out of his birthright and that sparks a feud that lasts for years.  Jacob has to run for his life and has all sorts of adventures which eventually lead to him wrestling with God until God blesses him.  Consider the Island as the birthright and I think that there are some pretty serious similarities going on.  

 

There’s really so much to talk about, Locke not being Locke,  Jacob’s interaction with the future Oceanic survivors, Juliet falling down the shaft, Sayid being shot....  Really, there’s enough to keep us speculating for the 8 1/2 months we have until the primer of Season 6.  

 

Quotes of the Day:

“They come, fight, they distroy, they corrupt.  It always ends the same.”- Mystery Man

“It only ends once, anything before that is just progress.”- Jacob

Efe and I watched LOST's 100th episode together last night.  It was a good one although as Efe points out it is basically impossible to surprise us after 5 years.  That does not stop us from theorizing however and Efe pointed out that she thinks the religious symbolism has been getting stronger recently.  Then Ari and I spent a while on line this morning talking about what make the Hostiles so hostile and he brought up religion as well.  He thinks that they are protecting their religion/Temple.  From there we talked about Adam and Eve and the Fall and what that may or may not have to do with the Oceanic survivors.  It was very much fun.  

 

It is interesting to see where the show may be headed with an attempt to change the fate of Flight 815.  I have to say although I understand why the Oceanic survivors want to fix things so that the plane never crashes I hope it doesn't happen.  I have always felt that these people NEEDED to be on the island for one reason or another.  If the plane had never crashed Kate would have gone to prison, Claire would have given Aaron up for adoption, Sawyer would never have turned into the leader that he is now, Locke would never have walked again....  I know it wasn't an easy three months for them and that the three years after that weren't that easy either.  But I still think that in the end they needed the Island and what the Island revealed to them about themselves. 

 

Top 10 Ways You Know You are a LOSTIE

 

10. You have made your own "Dharma Initiative Fruity Floats" because you are hosting a LOST viewing party.

9. You find yourself noticing "the numbers" in your daily life, "Oh look!  There are 23 people waiting for the #42 bus!"

9. You feel an increased fondness towards bunnies and polar bears. 

8.  You know much more about the philosophies of Rousseau, Locke, and Hume than you did 5 years ago.

7.  While standing in line to board a plane you analyze your fellow passengers to decide if they would help you survive on a tropical island.

6.  You have read, The Island, Watership Down, The Third Policeman or Our Mutual Friend because they are referenced on the show.

5. You wonder if the economy is being manipulated by Charles Widmore for his own evil ends.

4. You spend your free time debating free will vs predestination with your friends, using Desmond and Daniel as examples.

3. Listening to Willie Nelson or Patsy Cline makes you think of LOST.

2. You consider keeping a notebook to keep track of the constants in your life.

1. You can't wait for Wednesdays.

 

Quote of the Day:  (Happy 90th Birthday Mr. Seeger!)

"Prestige is much overrated. The celebrity business is for the birds. Respectability is nice, but consider: whom do you most want to respect you? Money is like air or water. You need a certain amount to live. Beyond that, who wants to be a dog in the manger?"- Pete Seeger

I was driving home from the library when I started thinking about The Villages and suddenly exclaimed, "That was the strangest place I've ever been!"  I was a bit startled by my sudden outburst and paused to consider.  I have been to Dracula's castle, wandered London's back alleys at night past the "Torture museum", and driven across Iceland's lunar landscape but I've never been anywhere quite as bizarre as The Villages, Florida.  It's so hard for me to figure out exactly what it is that I find so disturbing about a bunch of retirees living in a perfectly manicured town in central Florida.  The whole city seems to be part of someone's imagination, very much like the world where Truman lives in, The Truman Show.  It is a cross between a film set and a summer camp.  Ms. Perdew drove me around displaying the "town squares" with their themed buildings. One square has a nautical theme and the other is Spanish.  The buildings are weathered to make them look old and around the squares you can find "historical" markers.  The markers tell the stories of the town's fictional founders.  Everything looks perfect and therefore, fake.  I can't imagine ever wanting to live in a place like that and I've spent some time trying to figure out what would make 10,000 other people decide to go live in a completely prefabricated world.    

If I were hearing about The Villages for the first time I might say that it is a place for people with no imagination and no sense of adventure. But that is not true.  We attended a dinner party with friends of Sally's uncle and aunt.  There was a gentleman there from Argentina (it was his wife who thought Caleb was a "splendid baby") and a lady from Crete who worked all over the Middle East as a flight attendant.  So, what attracted them to this "Disneyland for adults"?I've decided that for these people place has little importance.  No one needs to feel connected to the place where they live.  I think that is what is so foreign to me.  "It's not a real place!"  I want to say.  "It doesn't have a history of more than 50 years!  What do the Villagers know about the rest of Florida?  Are they really happy to get up and go golfing every day?"  

I see what is appealing about a warm place where you don't have to mow your own yard and have a bunch of other people to play board games and softball with.  These are successful people who gave a lot to their communities through their work.  But then they left.  I hope that I never get to the point where the appeal of an easier life outweighs the connection I feel to my home.  I know lots of people don't have the connection I feel to my hometown and my family's farms.  But, they still have communities.  If you don't work the land then you work in your community.  Yes, I think that is what is most sad about The Villages.  It is sad that the Villagers didn't have closer connections to the land they lived on, the people they lived next to, the churches and synagogues they attended.  Their communities lose so much when they move away and the Villagers lose the richness of a real life.  

Two Quotes of the Day: 

"...and in some of the people of the town and community surrounding it, one of the characteristic diseases of the twentieth century was making its way: the suspicion that they would be greatly improved if they were somewhere else." — Wendell Berry  

"To farm is to be placed absolutely."- Wendell Berry Imagination in Place  

Here I am in the library and I have to tell you I'm pretty happy about it.  I just realized that I'm bouncing a little as I listen to iTunes on my headphones.  This is the first chance I've gotten to work on line on my with computer.  It has been a busy month.  Caleb learned to stand and got his first tooth in the same weekend.  He is EVERYWHERE at once these days.  He pulls himself up on every handle and tries to open every door he sees.  Fortunately we've had a couple of warm days and we got to spend some time outside.  Caleb didn't know what to think of the grass at first.  He sat very still and then carefully placed his hand on the ground, only to jerk it back up as soon as he felt the prickliness of the grass.  But he got over that quickly and now he scoots around picking up sticks and sharing them with Honey, he chews on them for a little while and then gives them to her to finish off.  

 

Sally and Tim have been hard at work on her new rose garden.  She had a wonderful rose garden at her old house and she's excited about starting one here.  She is the type of person who can't survive without having a project to work on.  Tim has built a low stone wall around the garden space and they are planning on bringing in topsoil this week.  

 

I didn't post last Wednesday because Trisha and I went shopping.  We went to the mall in Middletown and I got to shop at H and M, my favorite clothing store.  I'm sure I've mentioned this before but I loath clothes shopping.  H and M is the only clothing store that I look forward to visiting.  I made a pretty big haul and feel much better about my clothing options for the spring.  Trisha and her fiance have set a date for their wedding so we spent our lunch time discussing wedding logistics.  

 

I haven't heard a lot more about the protests in Moldova since I last posted.  I wrote Vanya to see what he knew but he just stays in his room studying for the customs exams so all he knew was what was on TV.  This past Sunday was Eastern Orthodox Easter and I e-mailed Nadea and tried to call my first host family.  Remember them?  In Danceni?  I'm thinking about Moldova a lot these days.  It's hard to believe I've been home for so long.  I wonder if a part of me will always feel a slight disconnect from the American world that surrounds me.  Sometimes in the middle of a discussion with a friend I will suddenly feel a need to say, "But in Moldova they would think..."  I never thought of myself as having an island mentality but I think that most Americans do.  It's something we can't really help unless we are willing to step out and look at the world from a different angle.  

 

There is a man sitting in a chair across from me.  He has a bushy white beard and two plastic grocery sacks sitting at his feet.  Every now and then I feel him glancing at me.  Probably because I am appearing rather oddly delighted to be sitting in a library on a Wednesday morning.  

 

It's late and I don't have a lot of time to type but it's been a rough week in Moldova and I thought I should write something about it.   Paliamentary elections were held this past Sunday and the Communists won which lets them pick the next president.  There have been acusations of voter fraud and mass demonstrations at the parliament building.  Of course most of my Moldovan friends on Facebook are up in arms calling for an end to the communist rule in the country.  I've been trolling the internet trying to find a decent article about it but without much success.   I don't know whether or not the election was fraudulent (although I have a good guess) but I understand the helpless rage that fills those protesters (most of whom are college students) at the thought of another 18 years like Moldova's first 18.

Since I couldn't find a good article I'm linking to a film about Moldova made by a PC friend. calamoldova.com
"Ca La Moldova" translates as "Like in Moldova."

We are having a very mellow day here at Windy Willow Farm. Sally has gone into the city, Caleb is napping, and the dogs are lounging on the couch. I’m writing on Sally’s computer but listening to music on my new laptop. Yes, that’s right! I am now the proud owner of a beautiful silver Macbook. I ordered it last Wednesday. I was so excited about it but while calling the bank to get them to raise the spending limit on my debt card and waiting for an interminable amount of time for dial up to work through the order process. But when the order finally went through I felt queasy at the thought of all the money I had just spent. Then the computer arrived on Friday and I felt better right away. My Berea Dell laptop has served me well, it is seven years old and I hate to say goodbye to it. But I am excited about having a nice new reliable computer.

There is more coming soon, I promise. I’m just having a hard time writing anything these days. Not that I’m not constantly thinking of new things I should be writing about. *see! That’s the way all my sentences are sounding these days.*