Updates and Sundry

I didn't honestly mean to take a two-week vacation from blog updates, but owing to a variety of circumstances up to and including a bout of poor health, that's what happened.  I trust that your lives were able to continue with some semblance of order despite not reading anything new here.

I'm in the middle of preparing for the annual October invasion by my beautiful goddaughter, her adorable husband, and their delightful friend and traveling companion.  Kevin and I actually get almost a full five days with them this year, which is the longest they've ever been able to stay with us, and of course we have to make every moment count.  So it's possible that come Thursday, I'll forget to update.  I'll try not to forget, of course, but I can't promise anything because I'm notoriously feather-headed sometimes.

I do have one exceptionally good piece of news to share with my readers, however, regarding a previous post.  You might recall that back in June, I alerted all of you to the tribulations of Jason Puracal, an American wrongfully imprisoned in Nicaragua for drug-related crimes he didn't commit.  I'm extremely happy to be able to tell you that Jason's case was at last properly reviewed and his sentence overturned.  Jason is a free man, reunited with his wife and son, and ready to go back to his life.  Of course, there are a lot of expenses from this long and arduous legal battle, so if you're willing and able to help, visit their website to find out how.

I'm still, in what might charitably be considered my free time, plugging away at The Graystone Saga.  I'm very grateful to all of you who have read it thus far.

And I'm going to have to leave this here, because the day is slipping away from me with undesired speed.  As Frost said, I've got miles to go before I sleep, so I'd better get started.  I hope you're all having a great day.

It's My Birthday

Happy thirtymumbleth birthday to me!  Please celebrate my natal day by being good to yourselves.

I've actually had a really good reason for missing the last couple of updates.  Last week my father-in-law experienced a ruptured aortic aneurysm and had to have emergency surgery.  So a lot of the time that I haven't been at work has been spent with my in-laws.  I'm happy to report that he's doing extremely well and has trounced the odds (very few people survive a ruptured aneurysm in that part of the body).  He was moved out of the ICU yesterday.

Meanwhile, the contest is over.  Everyone who liked the page for my web serial novel on Facebook was entered into a random generator, and the winner will have a character named after him in a future chapter.  The winner is...

Thomas Warner!

Congratulations!  Thanks to everyone who entered.  I'll do another contest a little way in the future, and this time I'll come up with something that's not Facebook-related so that people who don't use Facebook aren't excluded.

My husband is giving me a look that's meant to remind me it's time to go for my birthday lunch, so I'll conclude this here.  Thanks again, everyone!

Something Borrowed

Everyone knows that brides need something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.  Those who pay attention to such things may also remember that they need a lucky sixpence in their shoe.

My sister Liza (I have two, she's the youngest) has decided to focus her attention on the something borrowed aspect of the rhyme.  To that end she has launched ThingsBorrowed.com, a blog-based site designed to help eco-conscious brides acquire things for their special day that have already been used and loved once (or more than once).

She puts it more eloquently than I can.  To wit:

Maybe you’re seeking that perfect “something borrowed” for your special day, or perhaps you’re already married and it makes you so sad to know that beautiful vintage veil you found for your own wedding is all alone in a box in the attic.  Or are you an ecologically conscious bride who wants to avoid buying new as much as you find reasonable?  Well, that’s where we hope to come in–by providing a special place for like-minded brides to help each other!

The site is still extremely new, but I know my sister.  She's got drive and enthusiasm, and if she can only get sufficient encouragement, she'll see this through.  So please keep an eye on this site, and refer it to all of your acquaintances who are or will be planning weddings.  It's going to be a great resource!

(P.S.  Don't forget about the contest on this blog, it's still going on!)

Photo post: Grandfather's slides

My grandfather was an avid photographer, which accounts for a lot of my own interest in the activity.  For many years, all of his photos were developed in the form of slides, which my mother inherited after his death.  Recently, she purchased a machine that allows us to scan the slides and transfer them into her computer, which makes it easier to share them with others as well as, well, see what the heck they are.

As I noted in a previous post, he was a woodworker with a tendency to take pictures of every. single. piece. he made.  So several of the boxes have been labeled "Furniture" and we have quietly ignored them.  Among the rest, however, we've come across some real gems from my mother's childhood and also from my own.  So instead of sharing my own photography with you today, here's my grandfather's.

Photo post: Peddler's Village

Recently, I went with my mother and her aunt to Peddler's Village for the first time.  Peddler's Village, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, is this little shopping...place, in picturesque Bucks County.  There are more than seventy stores all clustered together, like some outdoor shopping mall, but they're all specialty stores.  My stepdad's comment was that I would probably love it because it's a bit like shopping at the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire, and he was right.

The website, which I've linked in the previous paragraph, will do a better job than I can of describing the stores, the amenities, and the history.  I just want to show off what I did with my camera while I was there, and maybe pique your interest in the place.

Mouse in the House

Just a reminder:  this Thursday, March 8th, I hope to see many of you at the fundraiser shopping event being held at the greatest little store in the world.  Pretty please.

Speaking of said store, we play music all day, every day.  We play the CDs that we sell, which are from a company called Putumayo.  Putumayo specializes in world music, so of course that fits in with the global theme of the store, but...well, not every song appeals to every listener.  The staff tends to be a little divided on the quality of the songs.  We do seem to all be in agreement that Blues Around the World is the unanimous favorite of the CDs, but beyond that, there's some discrepancy.

Putumayo puts out a series of children's CDs, the 'playground' CDs.  I myself am not crazy about most of these songs, which are of course geared toward younger kids.  There's one song, I couldn't even tell you which CD it's on, but my coworkers and I pretty much all agree that this song drives us nuts.  It's called "Mouse in the House."  A grown man sings about how there is a mouse in his house, and he's terrified.  It's really kind of sad.  Catchy, but sad.

This song was on my mind earlier, though.

I was at my mother's house, sitting down to dinner with her and my sister Liza and Mom's Aunt Edie.  Mom had brought soup from Panera, and I had just finished passing out the bread when Mom asked, puzzled, "What's that black shape up on top of the window?"

We all looked.  "It's a mouse," said Liza.

"No!"

Yes, it was.  Vicky, the fifteen-year-old cat, only seemed marginally interested, which is a bit of a shame since she used to be a champion mouser; apparently she's decided she's retired.  I guess the mouse didn't know that, though, because it was hanging out on top of the curtain rod to keep out of her reach.  Gamely, I attempted to use a paper bag to trap the mouse...who promptly took a massive suicide leap through the air, making us all scream.  It hit the floor and kept going, and nobody quite knows where it went.

And suddenly, all I could think was "There's a mouse in the house and I'm scared."


I'm not afraid of mice, as might be indicated by the fact that I tried to catch the thing and release it outside. In fact, I've had more than my share of experience with them coming indoors.  We had a mouse problem here in my house some years ago, during a time when the resident cat was a tuxedo-patterned creature called Harley.  Harley wasn't the most intelligent beast, but he had absolutely the sweetest disposition.  He was my baby, he followed me everywhere around the house.  During the winter months, though, he'd take up position by the stove, which is where the mice would sneak up from the basement.

I'd hear a loud crash, which was the sound of Harley slamming into the stove when a mouse appeared, and I knew what was coming.  He'd find me, wherever I was, and bring me his prize - alive and squirming.  I would then pick him up and carry him outside and say, "Okay, drop it."

And he did.  And it would run away, unharmed and probably looking forward to telling its grandchildren one whale of a story someday.  One friend of mine speculated that it wasn't multiple mice at all, just one mouse with a daredevil complex who kept sneaking back into the basement.

The mousing adventures came to an end after Harley's death in 2003.  By then we'd acquired Madrigal, who is considerably less merciful, and it only took one mouse to not survive the adventure before word got out to the rest of the vermin community that our house was to be avoided.

I wonder what sort of memo is going out among the mice at my mother's house.

The Goddaughter Inquiry

As I mentioned in my previous post, my goddaughter Kristie got married last weekend.  Kristie and her new husband Alex are regular guests in my house; they come to stay with us at least once a year.  They are easily two of my favorite people in the world, and I will sometimes talk about them at great length to anyone who will listen.

It's well known among my friends that I am thirty...something.  (Let's leave it at that.)  Kristie is in her mid twenties.

Of course, if you do some math, that suggests that I became a godmother when I was around ten or so, since most godparents get the job when the godchild is still a baby.  Obviously that wasn't the case here, but while I was sharing wedding details with her, my coworker Sunita asked me to explain how this all came about in the first place.

Well, it's kind of a long and needlessly complicated story, but here goes.

Some six-odd years ago, I met Kristie and a small pack of other geeks who were interested in the same movie I was - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  Specifically, these geeks ran an online roleplaying game where they played as characters from the movie or additional characters they'd created.  Through a series of small and generally not noteworthy circumstances, I ended up in the role of Captain Nemo on the board, and unofficial Team Mom off the board. See, as it turned out, these guys were all considerably younger than I was; Claire, the eldest (who was a bridesmaid on Saturday), was a ripe old 20.

Now, what does this have to do with my being a godmother?  Well.

As the oldest and only married member of the group, and the only one who didn't still live with his or her parents, I issued a general sort of invitation for "the kids," as my husband and I had started to call them, to visit.  I had great fun pointing out that both he and I had been investigated by the FBI, who found nothing, so their parents should have no qualms about our being upstanding citizens.  (It's true, too.  We were both federal employees for several years, the background checks were required.)  The two members of the group who live in England, the aforementioned Claire and Sarah, decided to actually take me up on this and arranged to come over during Sarah's spring break from university.  Kristie, who lives in Tennessee, decided to bring her little brother Jonathan and join the festivities.

This turned out to be a Really Good Thing for me, because while Claire and Sarah were here, my grandmother died.  I knew it was coming; I even warned them it was a distinct possibility; and Kristie and Jon arrived the day after she went.  The four of them were my greatest consolation during the very difficult days that followed, and I cried like a baby when they all left.

I'm getting to the point, honest.

Claire returned that fall for my 30th birthday party, at which Kristie and Jon were also supposed to join us but a hurricane got in the way.  A month later, my grandfather - husband to the grandmother I just lost in the spring - also died.  Kristie came two weeks later, which was a comfort, and we had a good visit.

Close to Christmas, I got an unexpected phone call.  Kristie was on a road trip with her college choir, and they were stopping for supper at a Wendy's not too far from where I live, and would I like to drive over and see her for a bit?  Of course I would!  But I wasn't really prepared for what I found when I got there.

Kristie explained that trying to tell her friends that she was going to Pennsylvania to visit her 'internet mom' was a little awkward.  I guess if you're not used to the concept, it does sound kind of peculiar.  She also explained that in her church, the kids pick their own godparents.  So as a result of these two facts, she'd decided that if we were willing, she'd like Kevin and me to take on the job.

And that's how I acquired a nineteen-year-old goddaughter in the middle of a Wendy's parking lot.

Memoriam

This is not a post I thought I would be making so early in this blog's existence.

This past Tuesday morning, I was awakened by a phone call. My parents were calling with the news that they had decided to put Molly to sleep.

Molly, as those who read this blog's earliest posts may remember, was the world's biggest golden retriever. Just last month we celebrated her seventh birthday. (Any excuse for a cake...) In recent weeks, it's become more and more difficult to get her to go outside to do what she needed to do, because her legs were in so much pain. She's been sleeping downstairs on the sofa with Mom because she couldn't go up to bed anymore. Ultimately it was determined that her back knees were shot, and by the time the heartbreaking decision had been reached, she was no longer capable of standing. Knee replacement was an option but a bad one, and even if it all went according to plan she'd still be in pain for the rest of her life. So mercy was applied instead.

Molly was a naughty puppy. She didn't mean to be; she was just big and playful and goofy. As the dogsitter-in-chief, I had my share of growing pains with her. I distinctly remember sitting at Mom's one day with the laptop on my knees and a golden retriever puppy teething on my arm while I typed.

"Run for your lives," I told my friends, "it's Dogzilla!"

As she got older, though, she became a really very good dog. She liked to wash Sheela's ears for her. She loved "babies" (stuffed animals) and would carry them around for days, washing them and cuddling with them. She also loved big towels, and we could trick her into coming inside by asking "What happened to you!?" and giving her a rubdown with a towel, telling her that "Now you're gonna be all right!" Oh, and snow - she loved to play in the snow.

The end was a little confusing to her, partly because she was on so many painkillers. All she knew was that everyone had come to see her, she was having a party. That wasn't too unusual, really, and it made her happy. I couldn't be there at the very end, but Mom said she went with a smile on her face. (Dogs smile, you know.)

So dogsitting just became a lot simpler. Mom's house just became emptier. Our lives just became emptier.

But I believe there's a heaven for animals. And I believe there are a lot of stuffed animals and towels up there. And she's gonna be all right.


Molly
March 2004 - April 2011

Happy St. Patrick's Day

The post that would normally go here on a Thursday is going to be deferred until either later tonight or tomorrow morning.

See, it's St. Patrick's Day. And I celebrate that.

I'm not Irish. (Well, maybe a tiny bit through one of my great-grandmothers, but not enough to give it much thought.) My husband, however, is - and looks it. We're talking 100% pure natural redhead, keep out of direct sunlight kind of Irish.

Due to a series of somewhat bizarre circumstances, our originally planned wedding date of October 7, 2000 had to be canceled. (Years later, when we buried my beloved grandfather on October 7th, I remembered this and was grateful for those bizarre circumstances.) So instead we got married on St. Patrick's Day in 2001.

As of about an hour ago, we have been married for exactly ten years. That's kind of a long time, these days. As my friend Kate said in her congratulatory email, "Ten years and you still like each other! That's quite an accomplishment!" And we do, that's the thing.

In a little while we'll be going out for our traditional St. Patrick's Day anniversary dinner -- at the Japanese steakhouse. This always gets people's eyebrows raised, but it's actually kind of logical. A few years ago, we attempted to go out to dinner for our anniversary, and pretty nearly every local restaurant was crammed with St. Patrick's Day partiers. On a whim, we tried the Japanese place, and lo, it was very nearly empty. Because after all, who eats Japanese food on the Irish holiday? So now we go every year.

I put it this way in my Facebook status: Ten years ago, I changed my name. I've done a lot of things that I regret, but that's one I've always known I got right.

So while I fully intend to do a normal blog post later on, right now I'm just relaxing in the company of my favorite person, reflecting on the fact that we've made it this far and, if we have anything to say about it, will keep on going. Check back with me tomorrow for a regular update about saving the world in weird ways; just for today, my world is going to be very small.

The Sheela Dilemma

As longtime readers and real-life friends will recall, my parents have three dogs, all of whom have had blog entries dedicated to them at some point or another. The eldest of these is Sheela, the one who doesn't understand that my husband actually belongs to me and not to her. (I've got the ownership papers, but dogs can't read.)

We had a recent scare concerning Sheela because she developed a large tumor in her little eight-year-old body. We were pretty sure it was cancer, so it came as a surprise and relief to learn that it's only Cushing's syndrome, which is not uncommon in dogs and is quite treatable. Thank goodness for that.

Today, Sheela had surgery to remove the large fatty tumor from her body. The indignities to which she's been subjected are at least tolerably amusing. She's been shaved and stapled. The vet told my mother that she wasn't sure where the tumor ended and the fat began, so "I probably gave her some free liposuction while I was in there." Mom has her dressed in a baby's onesie so she leaves her staples alone.

The other two dogs are less than sympathetic to their big sister's plight. Molly is sulking over the amount of attention and fussing Sheela is receiving, while Rikki is disturbed by the hospital-ish smell she's emanating. He sniffed her wound when I was there earlier this evening, and ran away shrieking. Sheela was still too doped up to care much, fortunately.

Hands down the funniest part of the whole ordeal is the list of rules the vet sent home with Mom. Most of them are tolerably sensible; she needs to be carried outside to do her thing, can't go down or up stairs on her own, and must not be allowed to lick her incision or pull at her staples (hence the onesie). It's the first item on the list that made us laugh.

No running or jumping for the next several days.

My immediate reaction: "Has the vet met this dog?"

"I looked at her when she gave me the list," said Mom, "and said, 'Sheela doesn't run or jump. Ever.' The vet replied, 'I didn't think so.'"

"Hey, now, she does run," I objected. "She's the Squirrel Scout leader. She runs to the window when there's a sighting."

No Squirrel Scout meetings for a while, I guess. I sure hope the neighborhood will be able to survive until she's back on active duty.

Furniture in the Family

I awoke this morning to discover that today's installment of Catena Comics, a webcomic by my pals Tracy and DeBray Bailey, included a shout-out to this blog in the news blurb under the comic. I'm guessing that's where a few of you came from, if the sudden jump in stats is any indicator, so welcome. :)

I promised to tell the story I am about to share, but it hasn't been easy to prepare it. I've spent the last two hours doing something which qualifies as highly peculiar, even for me. I've been researching, photo-searching, and ultimately watching a few episodes of a 1970s television show called Welcome Back, Kotter. You might be wondering why I'm interested in a show that premiered on television a full year before I premiered in existence. Truth is, I'm not particularly interested in the show, but it was something that had to be endured in order to find what I needed.


Gabe Kaplan as Gabe Kotter; Marcia Strassman as Julie Kotter; no copyright infringement intended, etc.

Surprisingly, there are no decent screenshots that I could find which feature the Kotters' dining room table. The only one I found had the table covered with a green cloth while Mr. Kotter and his oddly-nicknamed students played poker. So I had to watch the show in order to take my own screenshot. But there it is -- the table.

Now, to explain the significance, I have to talk about someone very important to me, preferably without getting too emotional. My mother's father -- we called him Pop-Pop -- told me about this maybe a year or so before he passed away in 2006. He and I were very close; I mentioned him previously in this blog, when I recounted the saga of being forgotten by my high school football team at an away game. As stated there, he was a bus driver for our school district, but he only took that job after he had to retire from the true love of his life, which was woodworking.

Edmund Kratzer Custom Cabinets operated for 22 years out of a converted two-room schoolhouse. On a whim, I did a quick web search to see if anything came up for the name, and was amused to discover the existence of Kratzer Furniture, an Amish furniture maker. No relation, to my knowledge. We are, however, direct descendants of Johannes Kratzer, who gave money and a chunk of the family farm to construct a schoolhouse; the original building is gone but Kratzer Elementary occupies the land today. (I throw all this in not because it's relevant to what I'm getting at, merely in case anyone reading this recognizes the name.)

My grandfather was a master craftsman. I'm sitting in my own living room at the moment, and I'm surrounded by no less than three pieces of furniture made by his hand -- the coffee table, a trunk, and the credenza that houses my television. Up in the guest room is the desk he made me when I was twelve years old. He preferred butcher block cabinetry, although he could work with many different styles. Growing up, my sisters and I were amused by the family photo albums that contained not pictures of relatives, but snapshots of the different furniture pieces he constructed. It's just a little surreal to open an album adorned with the words "My Family Photos" and see pages and pages of tables, cabinets, and wardrobes. It wasn't merely a local business, although his workshop in the old schoolhouse was the only location (that is, it wasn't a chain). He told me once that he fulfilled orders from about 42 of the 50 United States, and one or two foreign countries.

By now you've probably figured out where this is headed. I wanted to find a picture of the Kotters' dining room table because I'm related to it. Pop said he didn't know, when he received the order, what the table would be used for; he found that out after he shipped the table to California. You'll notice, in that picture, that the tabletop is very definitively the butcher block style. The instant I saw it I knew he had been telling me the truth. I didn't really doubt it, because my grandfather never lied to me (unless you consider him pretending to be Santa Claus to be a lie), but I know his style and that was proof enough for me.

This wasn't his only famous order, although it may have been the one that was seen by the most people. I wish I could verify with him which morning talk show it was for which he made the table; I thought it was Good Morning America but it doesn't look quite right. Whichever one it was, the host of the show liked it so much he commissioned an identical table for his house. And then there was the matter of the ten tables ordered by someone in Studio City, California.

The order came in and he didn't think too much about it. Someone in Studio City wanted ten tables, he would make ten tables. He received the order and payment, both from someone named Marion Morrison. The name didn't mean anything to him, but my mother (who was a teenager at the time) came home and saw the order sheet stuck to his filing cabinet with a magnet, and shrieked. Pop couldn't understand what she was so excited about, so she had to explain to him that Marion Morrison was a very famous actor. He just used a different name when he filmed his movies.

You might have heard of him. He was known as John Wayne.

Pop laughed when he told me this story, saying how much he wished he could have kept the check. With John Wayne's real name as the signature, it's almost impossible to say how much that piece of paper would be worth now. But he needed the money, so to the bank it went.

The cabinet shop closed when I was fifteen years old, because Pop's health wasn't so good. That's an understatement, really; he had to have a quintuple bypass. But I remember how it looked, and I remember how it smelled, and I like to think that Pop is still making tables where he is now.

Yeah, I know that some people reading this are going to shake their heads and say that either my grandfather was full of it or I am now. I don't have any trouble believing his story, but I can see where someone else might. All I can say is that to the best of my knowledge, everything I've just related here is true. I can't prove it, so don't ask me to try. Some things are better taken on faith anyway.