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The BuzzFor Our Family and Friends
June 24 Tempus Fugit"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." -Albert Einstein
I cannot believe it has been a month since I blogged. It seems like a week or two, but the calendar doesn't lie and I have been missing in action for a month!
Where did the month go? Well, I went to New Orleans for a week to help my youngest sister, Jackie, get through the difficulties of all the tests and scans her husband had to go through to find the source of the malignancy that was found on his liver. No results yet. I'll go back when he is treated. They are both doing well mentally and emotionally. They are ready to do whatever they must and take life as it comes: one day at a time.
The projects on this house go on. The main bath is finished and while I'm not thrilled with it, it is acceptable. The fact that it went way over estimate and took three weeks longer than quoted made me start questioning my contractor. The fence repair fiasco went way over budget and that caused me to get a new contractor. I prevailed upon one of our friends, who is a commercial contractor and does not do residences, and he helped me find a demolisher to take down the old deck. The demolisher came within a hundred and fifty dollars of his estimate and did a great job. We are now in the process of getting bids on the new patio and the kitchen remodel.
This is all new territory for me. Dean was my contractor. I gave him my ideas and plans and he executed them. He hired people and he worked with them. I miss Dean in ways I could not have imagined and am surprised at how much I took for granted.
I haven't been to Nevada yet and the temps there are 112 degrees. I absolutely must get there before I go to Montana in July. But, I can't leave until I get the patio and kitchen work timetables. I'm anxious to get to Montana as I have not been there since the end of July last year.
Work on the International Women's Conference is heating up. My committee - Program - is one of those that gets done long before the conference in February. We are submitting a first draft of the program booklet to the national advisory committee in the next few weeks. We are meeting with the full conference committee once a month and with our program committee a couple of times a month. Our committee is filled with old friends and it is a pleasure meeting with them. The full committee - not so much! On the one hand, I love being of service to recovering women by putting together a program that will inspire them and fill them with enthusiasm. My committee picks the speakers for this conference. On the other hand, the work of putting on a conference for 2400 hundred women takes a three year committment from the host city. I did this conference in 1996 and it was a great conference, so I know the hard work is worth it. I'm committed to another six months of conference work.
Having said all of the above, I must say I'm grateful for everything in my life - family, friends, remodel, conference, homes. I'm grateful for the fullness of life, for health and happiness and the ability to roll with the punches.
May 26 I'm Still Here"There is nothing more surprising than right now. Right now is where you always are anyway." -James Broughton
In the 1971 Stephen Sondheim/James Goldman show, Follies, Carlotta sings, "Good times and bum times, I've seen them all and, my dear, I'm still here. Plush velvet sometimes, sometimes just pretzels and beer, But I'm still here."
I'm feeling like Carlotta. I ended up hospitalized for two days with my nemesis, diverticulitis, but I'm still here. I refused to accept that I'm not bullet-proof and in my weakened condition felt I had the strength to move a fifty plus pound scrapbooking bag from the cargo hold of my Bronco and pulled all the muscles in my arms, legs and back, but I'm still here!
I'm better - much better - and have accepted the fact that my strength and stamina have not returned yet, so I'm cooking and supervising lawn service people, fence repairmen and patiently awaiting the return of my, up until now, phenomenal energy level. I'm eating right - lots of fiber and yogurt, vegetables and fruit.
Shay and Frank are preparing to leave for their annual summer in the "wilds" of Minnesota with their Dad. It will be difficult to say goodbye to my grandchildren for the summer. I will miss them! Christy and I usually adjust in a couple of weeks and then we get the opportunity to go places and do things we don't normally do with the children. Last year we spent a week in Malibu.
All this brings me to Carlotta and her wonderful song, "I'm Still Here." Flexibility and adaptability are gifts from my Mom's side of my family and I think that is why, I'm still here! Not, mind you, just existing, waiting for the next blow, but changing and adjusting and accepting life as it comes with hope and enthusiasm. My maternal grandmother had a family motto, "...what you cannot cure you must endure and as long as you must, you may as well do it with grace." My mother and aunts quoted their mother often. Whenever any of my sisters or brother or cousins or I faced disappointment or failure, our mothers gave us the old family motto. At the time, we all thought it was lame, but today we find that having faced the vagaries of life with grace, humor and acceptance, we are able to "go on" and adapt to life on life's terms and find meaning and purpose in every single drop of it.
May 09 All Is Well"Happiness is a question of changing your troubles." -Colette
I have been out of commission with a really wicked bout of diverticulitis. I had peridontal work and a tooth implant which required ingesting many antibiotics and pain killers. The medication played havoc with my digestive system and without warning I was in the throes of medical crisis. I'm recovering - feeling better.
I'm feeling well enough to fulfill my commitment to Shay to attend a two day "Memoranza." From Friday at 5:00 p.m. until Saturday at 5:00 p.m. we will scrapbook non-stop. My art partner, Jo, will drive in from Nevada and Christy's friend "La La" will join us. Christy and Frank are going to Park City for a weekend.
Shay is an awesome scrapbooker and she is looking forward to an all night session. We have a hotel room so that she may nap for a couple of hours if necessary. Yesterday I ventured out to the scrapbooking store with Shay and let her buy anything she wanted. We're packed and ready and will leave as soon as she gets home from school.
April 09 Sisters"Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the gardeners who make our souls blossom." -Marcel Proust
I am one of four sisters and I've always loved having and being a sister. We are stairsteps. There is only a a year seperating each of us. When we were very young, we were dressed identically, but in different colors: pink, blue, green and yellow. That stopped when I started school, but by the time we were all in school we were again dressed identically in Catholic school uniforms. We all attended the same Catholic all-girls' schools. When I was a senior in prep school there was a "Wire" sister in every grade: freshman, sophomore, junior and senior. I was the most popular girl in school and was elected to everything, because I had sisters who would convince their classmates to vote for their "big sister."
We did not always agree on things, but because my parents allowed us the dignity of working out our differences, we got along just fine. For most of our lives we have been very close. There have been times when one or the other of us was busy with individual pursuits, but for the most part, we have "hung together" and that has been one of the constants in our lives. When we were young marrieds and raising our families, no matter what else was going on in our lives, we got together and celebrated our important days in the year so that our children - the cousins - could share closeness. Even when we could not celebrate the actual holidays together, we always set aside special days for celebration. On the weekend before Thanksgiving we gathered to open two sacks of oysters - one sack we shared for each family's individual oyster dressing and the second sack we ate that day in two forms: raw and fried for oyster po-boys. We would spend the entire day opening and cooking and eating oysters. We all celebrated Christmas together on January 6th - the Feast of the Epiphany or "Little Christmas" or Twelfth Night, depending on what you want to call it. The sisters and cousins exchanged gifts and had a lovely all day party. Husbands did not always appreciate our closeness and it was impossible to get one of us to take sides against the other.
My sisters and I have "hung together" through marriages, births, divorces, illnesses, deaths, good times and bad times. We are still close and as we grow older we become more conscience of how fortunate we are to still have each other. This weekend we will all be together again and with my brother and some cousins and all our children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews and grand nieces and grandnephews and many of our childhood friends and neighbors we will celebrate another year of loving one another.
We're back in City Park, which was the scene of many happy days in our childhood. We learned to ride bikes in that park, we swam each summer day in that park, we learned to drive in that park, we went to high school football games in that park and each year we had a huge family picnic in that park. The park is open again and it is our first reunion there after Katrina. We are ecstatic!
So, we'll eat and drink and reminisce and welcome out-of-town cousins and old neighborhood friends and school friends. We'll play horseshoes and badminton and volleyball. We'll listen to the rock and roll of our youth. The kids will ride all the "rides" and once, before we call it a day, my sisters and my brother will walk over to the carousel house and we will all ride the "flying horses" together and there will be laughter through tears of joy that we are all still together and enjoying our lives. We'll remember our grandfather, who always stood next to the brass ring pole and watched us go round and round trying to get the brass ring. We'll remember pleading to ride one more time and having our pleas acknowledged and being granted "just one more ride." We'll remember our parents and how proud they were of all of us. We'll each say a prayer of thanksgiving that we have been the beneficiaries of an old and traditional New Orleans family.
March 28 Partying Like A Rock Star"Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich."
-Sarah Bernhardt
I'm back in Salt Lake City after spending two weeks in New Orleans. We arrived on a Wednesday and began the party with oysters, shrimp and crawfish at Bozo's, our favorite oyster restaurant. Much to my surprise Bozo's had boiled crawfish that day. March is the high point of the crawfish season in Louisiana. The tiny, delicious crustaceans become plentiful during the Spring of the year and while the temps were in the mid seventies, March is considered Spring in New Orleans. The crawfish were warm, which is the best way to eat them. Most of the time they are cold and they are good cold also, but juicier when warm. The beginning of the season is optimum because the shells are not hardened yet so it is easier to get to the meat. Bozo's was just the first of my crawfish eating on this trip. Traditionally crawfish is boiled and eaten on the day of the St Patrick's Day Parade - if you live near the parade route and host an open house for family and friends - crawfish are boiled and eaten by some families on Good Friday and crawfish are boiled and eaten on Easter Sunday by many. My family is of the Easter Sunday boiling and eating tradition. The men in our family are proud of their crawfish cooking talent. There is stiff competition for the title of "best" in our family. It is no easy task to get it right. The seasoning must be perfect - not too spicy, but spicy enough. The crawfish must stop cooking at just the right time - this involves pouring the right amount of cold water into the boiling pot so cooking stops abruptly and they must "sit" for just the correct amount of time. Right now, our family's best crawfish cooker is my sister's oldest son-in-law, Brian. Thanks Brian - they were perfect!
In addition to Bozo's, we ate at Johnny Trauth's, a wonderful neighborhood restaurant in Kenner. We made the pilgrimage to the Gumbo Shop on St Peter Street in the Vieux Carre. We visited not just one coffee/beignet establishment, yes, we went to both Morning Call and Cafe du Monde. There is always the argument about which of these ancient coffee houses are best - who has the best cafe au lait and who has the best beignets. The argument is never resolved and we continue to try both in an effort to find the best and the contest has been going on in New Orleans for many, many years, but that is how we like it. We like the contest and do not care about the results. We ate at Mandina's on Canal Street twice because that is one of my favorite restaurants in New Orleans and is not touristy. We also managed to squeeze in a meal at Cafe Degas on the day we visited the Art Museum in City Park.
A good amount of time was dedicated to shopping for just the right "stuff" to throw to the adoring crowds and there are many large warehouse type establishments that sell parade throws. We visited and shopped at all of them. We also shopped at all our favorite New Orleans shops and I bought a beautiful cross for Meg, an LSU Championship T-shirt for Frank, the glittsiest T-shirt I could find for Shay, two silver charms for Christy's New Orleans necklace, New Orleans books from the NO Museum of Art. There were four or five movies and ads being shot in New Orleans and we ran into two of them.
The parade was, as always, a grand event. We threw about a thousand pounds of cabbage, several cases of bags of miniature carrots, five or six hundred stuffed animals and hundreds of other "stuff." Who knows how much "stuff" was thrown to the crowd by all the folks on our float - the above numbers were thrown by Rick, Jo and me. All in all, we had a great "ride" and partied like rock stars.
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