For The Long Run

A Message from the Birthday Queen

2009-07-27T01:17:00.000+01:00

I know I'm getting older because time has become this quick, cruel trickster. Even though individual days or certain weeks can feel like lifetimes, the general passage of time seems to have sped up incredibly.

If I had to describe the last year in one word, I think I'd have to go with challenging. Sometimes, the challenges were of the good variety, like adopting Callie or starting a new job. Other times, they were decidedly unhappy, like losing Peter's mom and having serious problems at the old job. I'm still more inclined to "punch the puncher" than roll with the punches, but I'm proud that I got through this year mentally intact and no worse for wear.

This is the year that I learned how to enjoy the process, instead of fixating on the final product. Revising had always been my least favourite part of writing. I was impatient and stubborn. I wanted to get things right the first time.

Peter had been bugging me to market my first book, but I'd been resistant because I knew it had some problems. I finally buckled down and made the changes I thought were needed. He and his sister were awesome test readers. His sister went above and beyond when she did a bit of clever networking and got my book in the hands of a real-life publishing professional.

The result was a stellar rejection. Instead of the publishing world equivalent of “it's not you, it's me”, I received a gift of a rejection: a short note that laid out the problems with the work and offered suggestions on how to fix it.

I'm deep in the thick of that process right now and I can tell you, it's not easy. But in appreciating this opportunity, I am learning to enjoy the process.

When I sit down to Work on a Book or Begin a Project, I can often feel myself tensing up. I want to get it right. Or I worry because I don't have a full plot. These tendencies have made writing seem like a scary, nervewracking chore sometimes.

But then I discovered writing exercises, which have allowed me to relax and just enjoy trying to tell a story. I've always been good at stringing words together. Now I'm learning how to create scenes that tell a story. I'm learning which details add to a story and which detract. I'm learning that words are good, but they're not enough by themselves. In the last few months, I've written over 170,000 words and it's been pure joy.

My goal for next year is to work on following through. I've noticed an alarming pattern in my work. I get into the 100-120 page range, a bit past half-way, and I melt down. At this moment, I have four works-in-progress that I abandoned at that point. I don't know why that's become my wall, but I intend to either go around it or burst through it this year.

But first, I am going to enjoy the process of being the Birthday Queen. On tap for today is a run, a trail ride, a visit to a pet farm, lunch at the Lake Hotel in Killarney, some time with the doggetts and a movie.

Tagged

2009-05-15T05:33:00.002+01:00

Today's post is brought to you courtesy of Wake Up and Smell the Coffee, who was kind enough to tag me and give me an easy post. I remain somewhat incommunicative lately, even falling off the edge of Facebook, although that's mostly because all the changes they've made have made it ridiculously difficult to keep track of my friends.

1. What are your current obsessions?
I remain firmly obsessed with Friday Night Lights. I've also been spending a lot of time doing writing exercises. In fact, in the last three weeks, I've written 80,000 words, which is pretty much a short novel. Something about the lack of pressure just makes the words fly out of me.

2. Which item from your wardrobe do you wear most often?
A lime green t-shirt that says "I'll Mess with Texas." I got it years ago from a thrift store for $3.

3. Last dream you had?
When my alarm went off this morning, it was in the middle of a dream in which I was an FBI agent, investigating an IRA splinter group in Chicago. I was standing in our old apartment, interviewing a witness and cutting up photographs. Yeah, I have no idea either.

4. Last thing you bought?
Ummm.....groceries?

5. What are you listening to?
The clock ticking and Callie snoring.

6. If you were a god/goddess who would you be?
On a bad day, Kali. On a good day, Aine.

7. Favourite holiday spots?
I was just bemoaning the other day how we don't reallly go on holiday - I go back to Cleveland to visit my family. Which I enjoy, but I'd really like to have another adventure, like the one Youngest Brother and I had in Venice and Slovenia.

8. Reading right now?
Re-reading The Great Gatsbyy, still my favorite book ever although One Hundred Years of Solitude is a close second.

9. Four words to describe yourself.
Stubborn, loyal, practical, introverted

10. Guilty pleasure?
Pick Me Up magazine

11. Who or what makes you laugh until you’re weak?
My brothers - put the two of them together and anything could happen.

12. Favourite spring thing to do?
Walk in the rain when it's warm.

13. Planning to travel to next?
See item 7. (At Christmas, probably)

14. Best thing you ate or drank lately?
Oatmeal butterscotch bars that I made last weekend.

15. When did you last get tipsy?
Cannot even remember. Probably the wedding I went to last July.

16. Favourite ever film?
Broadcast News

17. Care to share some wisdom?
Go have an adventure. That's always the answer.

18. Song you can't get out of your head?
Lately, it's been Amy MacDonald. Mostly "This is the Life" and "Poison Prince".

19. Thing you are looking forward to?
Have some friends visiting at the end of the month.

20 If money were no object, where would you choose to live?
I don't know. Probably somewhere on the coast of West Cork, with an apartment in Berlin and a cabin in the northern woods of Finland.

A Poem of My Own

2009-05-01T01:17:00.001+01:00

Hope you enjoyed Poetry Month. I have to confess that it was nice to know my blog had a post every day, with minimal effort from me. It was sort of like having a self-cleaning house or a self-driving car or something. (I'm telling you, they ever make a robot who can drive a car so the passenger can laze around with a laptop, reading blogs and such, I will so be there.)

But now it's back to reality. I think I might be coming out of hibernation, but the new job means a total daily commute of 80 miles/2+ hours, so I doubt my posting will be anywhere near daily.

The time in the car is interesting. I'm trying to look at it as an asset - a time to think or sing along with my IPod or just appreciate the truly beautiful place where I am lucky enough to live. I like the thinking time and find it helpful for my writing (although it means I have to remember the words that are trying to jump out of my brain when I hit a good thought).

This week, the time helped me write a poem. Shocking, I know. In fact, I considered declaring May to be Bad Poetry Month and I'd write one every day. But really, I'm not any kind of a poet. (I'm not a dancer either.) Enough waffling. Here is my poem.

The Blank Page

Gatsby believed in the green light
A future that recedes into the past
A current forever pulling us backwards
A life of unfulfilled wistfulness

Not me.

I believe in the blank page
A future that stretches to the horizon
A line that marches us forward
A life of limitless possibilities

Above all, I believe this:

Respect the blank page
Do not fill it with history
Or burden it with hesitancy
Or tie it down with conditions

Write boldly, quickly,
With a sense of purpose
Don't think
Just open your eyes and dream

so you want to be a writer?

2009-04-30T01:07:00.001+01:00

By Charles Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

The Country

2009-04-29T01:17:00.001+01:00

By Billy Collins

I wondered about you
when you told me never to leave
a box of wooden, strike-anywhere matches
lying around the house because the mice

might get into them and start a fire.
But your face was absolutely straight
when you twisted the lid down on the round tin
where the matches, you said, are always stowed.

Who could sleep that night?
Who could whisk away the thought
of the one unlikely mouse
padding along a cold water pipe

behind the floral wallpaper
gripping a single wooden match
between the needles of his teeth?
Who could not see him rounding a corner,

the blue tip scratching against a rough-hewn beam,
the sudden flare, and the creature
for one bright, shining moment
suddenly thrust ahead of his time -

now a fire-starter, now a torchbearer
in a forgotten ritual, little brown druid
illuminating some ancient night.
Who could fail to notice,

lit up in the blazing insulation,
the tiny looks of wonderment on the faces
of his fellow mice, onetime inhabitants
of what once was your house in the country?

Homage To My Hips

2009-04-28T01:37:00.001+01:00

By Lucille Clifton

these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why (Sonnet XLIII)

2009-04-27T01:27:00.001+01:00

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

Be Drunk

2009-04-26T01:17:00.001+01:00

By Charles Baudelaire
Translated by Louis Simpson

You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

Dreams

2009-04-25T01:17:00.000+01:00

By Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

In Louisiana

2009-04-24T01:07:00.001+01:00

By Albert Bigelow Paine

The long, gray moss that softly swings
In solemn grandeur from the trees,
Like mournful funeral draperies,--
A brown-winged bird that never sings.

A shallow, stagnant, inland sea,
Where rank swamp grasses wave, and where
A deadliness lurks in the air,--
A sere leaf falling silently.

The death-like calm on every hand,
That one might deem it sin to break,
So pure, so perfect,--these things make
The mournful beauty of this land.

In April

2009-04-23T01:07:00.000+01:00

By James Hearst

This I saw on an April day:
Warm rain spilt from a sun-lined cloud,
A sky-flung wave of gold at evening,
And a cock pheasant treading a dusty path
Shy and proud.

And this I found in an April field:
A new white calf in the sun at noon,
A flash of blue in a cool moss bank,
And tips of tulips promising flowers
To a blue-winged loon.

And this I tried to understand
As I scrubbed the rust from my brightening plow:
The movement of seed in furrowed earth,
And a blackbird whistling sweet and clear
From a green-sprayed bough.

Some Days

2009-04-22T01:57:00.000+01:00

By Billy Collins

Some days I put the people in their places at the table,
bend their legs at the knees,
if they come with that feature,
and fix them into the tiny wooden chairs.

All afternoon they face one another,
the man in the brown suit,
the woman in the blue dress,
perfectly motionless, perfectly behaved.

But other days, I am the one
who is lifted up by the ribs,
then lowered into the dining room of a dollhouse
to sit with the others at the long table.

Very funny,
but how would you like it
if you never knew from one day to the next
if you were going to spend it

striding around like a vivid god,
your shoulders in the clouds,
or sitting down there amidst the wallpaper,
staring straight ahead with your little plastic face?

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

2009-04-21T01:57:00.001+01:00

By James Wright

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.

Home Is So Sad

2009-04-20T01:57:00.000+01:00

By Philip Larkin

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

2009-04-19T01:47:00.000+01:00

By W.B. Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Remember

2009-04-18T01:37:00.000+01:00

By Christina Rossetti

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you planned:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

Failing and Flying

2009-04-17T01:37:00.000+01:00

By Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

Stealing The Scream

2009-04-16T01:27:00.000+01:00

By Monica Youn

It was hardly a high-tech operation, stealing The Scream.
That we know for certain, and what was left behind--
a store-bought ladder, a broken window,
and fifty-one seconds of videotape, abstract as an overture.

And the rest? We don't know. But we can envision
moonlight coming in through the broken window,
casting a bright shape over everything--the paintings,
the floor tiles, the velvet ropes: a single, sharp-edged pattern;

the figure's fixed hysteria rendered suddenly ironic
by the fact of something happening; houses
clapping a thousand shingle hands to shocked cheeks
along the road from Oslo to Asgardstrand;

the guards rushing in--too late!--greeted only
by the gap-toothed smirk of the museum walls;
and dangling from the picture wire like a baited hook,
a postcard: "Thanks for the poor security."

The policemen, lost as tourists, stand whispering
in the galleries: ". . .but what does it all mean?"
Someone has the answers, someone who, grasping the frame,
saw his sun-red face reflected in that familiar boiling sky.

Dharma

2009-04-15T01:07:00.000+01:00

By Billy Collins

The way the dog trots out the front door
every morning
without a hat or an umbrella,
without any money
or the keys to her doghouse
never fails to fill the saucer of my heart
with milky admiration.

Who provides a finer example
of a life without encumbrance—
Thoreau in his curtainless hut
with a single plate, a single spoon?
Gandhi with his staff and his holy diapers?

Off she goes into the material world
with nothing but her brown coat
and her modest blue collar,
following only her wet nose,
the twin portals of her steady breathing,
followed only by the plume of her tail.

If only she did not shove the cat aside
every morning
and eat all his food
what a model of self-containment she
would be,
what a paragon of earthly detachment.
If only she were not so eager
for a rub behind the ears,
so acrobatic in her welcomes,
if only I were not her god.

This Is Just To Say

2009-04-14T01:17:00.000+01:00

By William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Little Gidding

2009-04-13T01:17:00.002+01:00

Ed. note: My favourite part is V. You can read the rest of the poem here.

By T.S. Eliot

V.

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

My Shadow

2009-04-12T01:17:00.001+01:00

By Robert Louis Stevenson

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an India-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.

He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

Fern Hill

2009-04-11T01:07:00.000+01:00

By Dylan Thomas

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Sailing to Byzantium

2009-04-10T01:07:00.000+01:00

By W. B. Yeats

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Novel

2009-04-09T01:17:00.000+01:00

By Arthur Rimbaud
Translated by Wyatt Mason

I.

No one's serious at seventeen.
--On beautiful nights when beer and lemonade
And loud, blinding cafés are the last thing you need
--You stroll beneath green lindens on the promenade.

Lindens smell fine on fine June nights!
Sometimes the air is so sweet that you close your eyes;
The wind brings sounds--the town is near--
And carries scents of vineyards and beer. . .

II.

--Over there, framed by a branch
You can see a little patch of dark blue
Stung by a sinister star that fades
With faint quiverings, so small and white. . .

June nights! Seventeen!--Drink it in.
Sap is champagne, it goes to your head. . .
The mind wanders, you feel a kiss
On your lips, quivering like a living thing. . .

III.

The wild heart Crusoes through a thousand novels
--And when a young girl walks alluringly
Through a streetlamp's pale light, beneath the ominous shadow
Of her father's starched collar. . .

Because as she passes by, boot heels tapping,
She turns on a dime, eyes wide,
Finding you too sweet to resist. . .
--And cavatinas die on your lips.

IV.

You're in love. Off the market till August.
You're in love.--Your sonnets make Her laugh.
Your friends are gone, you're bad news.
--Then, one night, your beloved, writes. . .!

That night. . .you return to the blinding cafés;
You order beer or lemonade. . .
--No one's serious at seventeen
When lindens line the promenade.

29 September 1870

Another reason why I don't keep a gun in the house

2009-04-08T01:57:00.001+01:00

By Billy Collins

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.

anyone lived in a pretty how town

2009-04-07T01:47:00.000+01:00

By e.e. cummings

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

One Art

2009-04-06T01:37:00.000+01:00

By Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Hay for the Horses

2009-04-05T01:27:00.000+01:00

By Gary Snyder

He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of haydust in the
sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
---The old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds---
"I'm sixty-eight" he said,
"I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done."

Credo

2009-04-04T01:37:00.000+01:00

By Matthew Rohrer

I believe there is something else

entirely going on but no single
person can ever know it,
so we fall in love.

It could also be true that what we use
everyday to open cans was something
much nobler, that we'll never recognize.

I believe the woman sleeping beside me
doesn't care about what's going on
outside, and her body is warm
with trust
which is a great beginning.

If

2009-04-03T01:37:00.000+01:00

By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master;
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run--
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

A Psalm of Life

2009-04-02T01:27:00.000+01:00

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What the Heart of the Young Man Said to the Psalmist

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
"Dust thou art, to dust returnest,"
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act to each to-morrow
Finds us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,--act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing
Learn to labor and to wait.

Introduction to Poetry

2009-04-01T04:47:00.002+01:00

I'm not back, exactly, but I decided I wanted to have a project for April. It's National Poetry Month, an event that you can't help but be aware of if you listen to NPR. I have to confess that I have a complicated relationship with poetry. I despise the prententious, breathy way that poems tend to get read at Open Mic nights in a certain sort of coffeehouse. It's enough to turn me against the whole art form, but then I read or listen to something from someone like Billy Collins and my faith in poets is restored.

I idly toyed with the idea of writing a poem every day for the month. But I don't do windows or poetry, so that was right out. Then I found Poets.Org and spent way too much time stumbling around and rediscovering some of my favourite poems.

Why write something sub-par when I can share a great poem with you instead? Best to leave this poetry stuff to the professionals after all.

I selected today's poem especially to kick-off my project.

Introduction to Poetry

By Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Recharging

2009-03-15T18:28:00.002Z

I love taking personality tests and quizzes. I think it's a girl thing. Open any magazine aimed at women or girls and you're bound to find a quiz. I'm not sure I can put into words the allure of a quiz, but the compulsion to complete them is undeniable.

One of my favourites is the Myers-Briggs, sort of the gold standard in the industry. As I've gotten older, I've noticed that my type has changed and can also vary depending on my mood. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe I've gotten wishy-washy and indecisive in my old age. Or perhaps I'm gaining wisdom and the ability to see shades of grey and adapt to circumstances. Wisdom is one of the few bonuses of aging, after all. (Well, that and the oft-cited ability to eat ice cream for dinner if you so choose.)

My most consistent personality trait, no matter which test I take, is introversion. This used to trouble me, since Western culture values extroversion and I was mistaking introversion with shyness. Make no mistake, I'm also shy although I can manage social anxiety better than I used to. But introversion has nothing to do with social anxiety or poor social skills. It's all about where you draw your energy.

Extroverts draw their energy from other people. Introverts draw their energy from within themselves. An extrovert would find monastic life as difficult to bear as an introvert would find being a celebutant. Introverts find interacting with people tiring and need time alone to recharge their batteries.

I've been going through a tough time lately and I recognize my introversion coming into play. I guess I'm kind of like a turtle in that during times of trouble, I pull inward. It's not denial or avoidance exactly. I've assessed all of my options and gathered the information I need to make decisions. The next few plays are mapped out in my head and I'm ready for whatever happens next. But I have drawn into my shell, most notably in both blogging and commenting on others' blogs. It's not that I don't enjoy blogging, it's just that I don't have the energy for it.

So it might be a little quiet here for the next while. And I probably won't be commenting much, which is regrettable, but a necessary step. When the clouds lift, I'll be back. And I'll be better for having the time off.

Basketball Diaries

2009-02-25T05:42:00.004Z

If I had to boil my personality down to a single word, I think I'd have to go with stubborn, a trait that I both love and hate. Stubbornness is fantastic for getting things done, for hanging in there, for picking yourself up and going back out into the mean, scary world. But the dark side of stubborn means never being able to let go. Stubbornness makes you dig your fox hole deep and settle in for the long fight, which is not the easiest way to live sometimes. The worst thing about stubbornness is that it makes you too stupid to walk away from a lost cause.

I always try to be rather circumspect about what I put up on my blog, since I understand that A.) things live forever on the Internet and B.) anyone could read it at any time. So I'm not going into details about the current issues that have me musing on stubbornness and lost causes, and really, the details aren't all that interesting anyway. (And rest assured, this has nothing to do with the important aspects of my life, like Peter or my family.) Instead, a story from the high school files...

I went to a mid-sized (240 in my graduating class) private, Catholic high school. It was a bit of an odd place because it had been all boys up until the early 80s. Some of the male teachers were a little bitter about the change and it seemed like bias toward boys was built into the system. By the time I started school in the mid-80s, it was fully 'integrated' but a lingering sexism prevailed.

I've never met a brick wall that I didn't want to bang my head against, so I found all sorts of inequalities to rail against in this environment. My sophomore year, I decided to make a point about intramural sports, which though theoretically open to all were, as a practical matter, limited to boys. (I'm not talking about the basic school teams that go play against other school's teams, I'm talking about within-the-school, just-for-fun leagues.) No girls ever signed up for intramurals because of an unspoken understanding that it was just for boys.

So I signed up for intramural basketball. I'm five feet tall and basketball's never been my best sport, but that's what was available. Predictably, I was the only girl to sign up and my friends thought I was crazy. But there was a point to be made and I was just the girl to do it. Enough sophomores signed up to field several teams, maybe 5 or 6, I don't remember the specifics. I just remember that it was 5 to a team and we played half-court games, sideways across the gym, with two games going at a time. And one unlucky team was lumped with the stupid girl.

The day came for the first game and I was nervous but determined, getting dressed in the girls' locker room all by myself. The biology teacher was the referee and he gathered my team and our opponents around him and had a coin toss to see which team would get to call shirts or skins and pick the direction to start play. My team won the toss and the captain, smiling gleefully because he would have his revenge for getting stuck with the girl, said we'd play skins.

Much sophomoric snorting and guffawing commenced as I stood there dumbfounded and truly appreciating the situation I'd created for myself. The biology teacher silenced the boys with a few flaps of his arms. "You don't have to take your shirt off, everyone can remember which team you're with." And so began my inglorious intramural basketball career.

I was okay at defense and sometimes even managed to wrestle the ball away. I could move the ball with some fluidity, but would pass as soon as practical, because I knew shooting was my weakness. I was credited with one basket during the 'season.' That was only because an opponent messed up after half-time and dunked in the wrong basket, which the biology teacher credited to me out of pity. My teammates rarely passed to me and pretty much never spoke to me.

This wasn't an after-school special in which the boys come to the realisation that the girl is a person too and deserves to play. It was pretty much an hour of misery after school every Friday for several weeks. It even created some residual grief and misery that spilled out over the rest of the week, like the way a certain table of boys bellowed 'Larry' (as in Larry Bird) at me when I had the misfortune of passing them in the cafeteria. But I did not quit and, in fact, I don't think quitting was ever in my mind as an option. When the season was done, my point was made and I did not sign up for intramural basketball again.

When I told Peter this story and tried to think out loud about why I didn't just quit (since it only occurred to me 20 years later that it would have been the smart thing to do), he said 'It's because you love to be miserable.' I've thought about that a lot recently and I've come to the conclusion that I do not actually love to be miserable. But I cannot figure out a way not to be stubborn (and I honestly don't know if I'd want to change that about myself even if I could) and sometimes, stubbornness begets misery.

Blog Share Feb 2009

2009-02-18T00:07:00.003Z

Ed. note: Today is Blog Share, that magical day when participants give and are given the gift of anonymity. Special thanks to -R- at And You Know What Else who organized all of this.

Family. It’s the one subject I hardly talk about on my blog. I mean, I’ll speak of them, always good things, but that’s about it. Family is sometimes the reason you wish you weren’t such a shameless self-promoter when you first started your blog and gave the address out to EVERYONE.

I have this aunt. She’s my mom’s sister. And, well, she’s a bitch. Sometimes it is a wonder how we are related and how my mom and her are cut from the very same cloth.

I lived away from home for 10 years before moving back about four years ago. Those 10 years are the years I grew into the person I am today. So for a lot of those years, I missed out on family holidays and get togethers. I missed all the drama. I wouldn’t trade those 10 years for anything. It is a nice thing to be removed sometime. Especially when it comes to the drama.

My aunt is a racist. Here is a woman in her early 50s, who still uses very hateful and derogatory terms to refer to people who aren’t like her. And the worst part is that she is passing this on to her children. My cousins, who are intelligent people, people in their early 20s, are just as prejudiced as their mother. It embarrasses me to no end when she uses racial slurs. It is even worse when she looks at me like I understand and think she’s funny. I don’t. I was raised better than that.

One Christmas when I was home years ago, I sat down at the table with some of my family, and we were all chatting and snacking on a bowl of mixed nuts. There was a Brazilian nut in the mix and I didn’t know what kind of nut it was. And when I asked my aunt, all she told me is that they were called N-word Toes. I asked again. Because since she’s an educated person, a nurse, I knew that N-word Toes was not the official name of that nut and that she must KNOW THAT. And she just kept using that word over and over. I got so upset, I started crying and stormed out of the room. I didn’t celebrate Christmas with my family for five years after that.

There are many times I wonder how my mother and her can be so different. How they could have been raised the same way and my mom turned out to be loving of everyone, without a hateful bone in her body. I’m glad the storks gave me to my mom instead of my aunt when they were handing out babies.

My aunt is very proud of her children. And they haven’t had the easiest life, losing their father, my uncle, at a young age. But when it comes to accomplishments, her kids can do no wrong. Nothing in the world that my brother, my sister or I accomplish can come CLOSE to anything that her kids do. Her kids that are both over 22 and both still live at home. Who are in no hurry to leave because mom is still footing the bill. Don’t get me started on her complaints about her kids milking all her money when all she has to do is force them to act like the adults that they are and make them get jobs and move out.

My accomplishments in life can never stack up, so I don’t even share anything about myself at family gatherings. My mom reads my blog, as well as my other aunt whom I love, so if I have something big to share, they already know about it and I can save face and not get belittled in front of my family when I share exciting news.

I know this so something trivial to share in a blog share. I mean, she isn’t a horrible person. She works hard and takes care of her family and has done it all on her own since my uncle died, which is no easy feat. But my mom also raised three kids on her own as a single parent and she doesn’t play the victim and remind people of this fact every chance she gets. You do what you have to do and you move on. That’s life. It isn’t always puppies and unicorns.

I’m lucky in that I have many family members that I am close with and who celebrate my highs and comfort me during my lows. It’s just frustrating to have a woman like my aunt, who is loud and obnoxious and who rules every conversation, who is there to constantly remind you that you’re not as good. It is hard to really be yourself and enjoy your time with your family. Which should be the one place where you can totally be yourself without some bitch of a family member telling you that being mentioned in a best-selling memoir is nothing like getting a PhD.

Do you have family members like these? Please tell me I’m not alone.

Please check out the other participants:
And You Know What Else
Andrea Unplugged
Blue Soup
Bright Yellow World
Bwildered
Caity of the Keps
Catheroominations
Citystreams
Daily Tannenbaum
Did I Say That Outloud?
Dispatches From The Failed Mommy Club
Face Down
For The Long Run
Full Of Snark
Heidikins
In Java, Literally
Just Below 63
LizLand
Malfeasance
A New Duck
NonSoccer Mom
The North Is My Snowcone
Not The Daddy
Operation Pink Herring
Pants, Pants, Pants
Red Red Whine
Sassy Buster
Sauntering Soul
Shushing Action
Snarke
Snow-Covered Hills
Swimming With Sharks
Thinking Some More
Trueish Story
Way Way Up
Whiskey Marie

Forgiving and Forgetting

2009-02-09T06:59:00.004Z

When Peter's dad died, it was after a long, drawn-out illness. We'd been expecting it for several years and actively preparing for it for at least six months. The post that I wrote about Tom pretty much wrote itself, since my mind had been turning it over for so long.

When Peter got a middle of the night phone call on Thursday morning, I wasn't prepared for the news that his mother was dying. Nóirín had suffered from dementia for several years, but she seemed physically healthy enough to live for years. No one thought she'd go from healthy to dead in less than 36 hours, but it was the kindest, most merciful end one could hope for. Enough time to talk to her daughters on the phone and have her sons by her side, but not enough time to fret or suffer.

My relationship with Nóirín could have been a disaster. I arrived from the States, an interloper with the potential to steal her son away from her. Peter had been a surprise, a late-in-life baby whom Nóirín believed was sent from heaven by her own mother. She wanted the best for him and didn't think that dropping out of college and shacking up with some stranger qualified. She could have done a thousand things to try to split us up.

Instead, Nóirín invited us over for lunch. Tom was on a business trip and Nóirín decided she wanted to get to know me. Nóirín was charming, welcoming and managed to put me at ease, even though I knew that she was concerned about my relationship with her son. The first lunch opened the door for weekly dinners at their house with Tom and her. By putting Peter first, we were all able to muddle through.

What could have been a disaster grew, in time, to a warm familial relationship. Like all families, we had our disagreements and less than admirable moments, but we were always able to move on. Nóirín was able to forgive me for the disruption I had caused and, in time, she forgot her objections and realised I might be the right one for her son. Loving your own children is easy. Truly loving and accepting your children's spouses must be tough but Tom and Nóirín set an example that I can only hope to live up to if we ever have children.

When the time came to have our big church wedding, Nóirín and Tom arranged an evening party in their home, so their family could meet my family. While I'm sure Nóirín worried about the party going perfectly and everyone having a good time, she didn't show it on the night.

She had a special talent for interacting with people, for lighting up and making you feel like you were the most interesting and special person in the world. As a reclusive socialphobe, I could only watch in awe as Nóirín charmed my brothers and bonded with my parents. My family still talks about that evening and how much fun they had, all because of Nóirín.

Dementia is a cruel condition that robs you of your mind and self. Nóirín biggest problem was with language, particularly speaking. Sometimes she would just pour out great jumbles of words that seemed almost meaningless. Other times, her meaning was more clear, but the words were mixed up. It was heart-breaking to witness. But dementia is also strange, in that it's almost like a curtain and every once in a while, a random gust of wind will blow the curtain aside and give you a glimpse of the person inside.

In the middle of the night on the eve of Tom's funeral, Nóirín came into my room. I think she was looking for Peter's sister Ciara and was not expecting to find me. "Who are you?" she asked me as she sat down the edge of the bed. "I'm Ann, Peter's wife," I told her.

"Oh yes, he's a lovely boy. I just... I just don't know what to do. Can you tell me what to do?" Nóirín knew that Tom was dead, she knew that the funeral was in the morning, and she was anxious. I took her downstairs and made her tea and toast, then sat with her while she ate. When she was finished, she announced that she was ready to go back to sleep.

Upstairs, in the hallway outside her door, she gave me a big hug. Her smile lit her whole face as she told me "Thank you so much. You're a darling girl. I'll never forgive you."

Goodbye, Nóirín. I'll never forget you either.

January Reads

2009-02-08T13:56:00.002Z

All my great intentions to increase my reading productivity came to naught in January. I only managed to read two books.

I blame the first book - One Mississippi by Mark Childress. My dad highly recommended this book, so I was looking forward to it. I ended up hating it and it took me forever to trudge through it. The book was set in the early 70s and the narrator was a high school student. But the language was jarringly out of place. A lot of the vernacular used was more 2008 than 1972. I might have been able to forgive the language if the characters had had any redemptive value, but sadly, they did not. I found most of them quite loathsome.

I know, I know - if is short, why continue to read bad books? In this case, it's because I kept thinking it would get better. By the time I realised it wasn't going to, I was nearly halfway through it and felt obligated to complete it.

The other book I read last month, Intuition by Allegra Goodman, was fantastic. I wasn't quite sure about it at first. I struggled with the first two chapters. Then I took a bath and ended up reading 100 pages. The book is set in a cancer research laboratory and focuses on the issues surrounding one of the research fellow's projects. At first it is failing, then he discovers tremendous results. When his girlfriend, who is also a research fellow in the lab, attempts to recreate his results, she fails.

The book focuses on the fallout of the failed experiment and their failed relationship. It's a real page turner and is written with a beautiful sense of ambiguity. Even when I finished the book, I wasn't sure who was right and who was wrong. The nuance was just incredible. If I ever get to the point of writing half as well as this book, I will be in good shape.

Top Tips for Exercising

2009-02-07T07:27:00.003Z

My pal, the Rotten Correspondent recently solicited advice on exercise routines. I started typing a comment that was so long, I realised I might as well turn it into my own post.

I've been working hard lately to exercise every day and lift weights three times a week. It's been going well, although a huge disruption right now has thrown a bit of a spanner in the works, but I think I'll only end up missing two to three days at most.

Here's my advice for exercising:
1.) Keep in mind that you don't have to go to the gym to exercise. I've been running up and down the long hallway in our house, for an hour each day. It's warm, dry, comfortable and the activation energy required is pretty low. (i.e. I don't have to go anywhere.)

2.) Whenever possible, do your workout as early as possible. I like to get it out of the way and keep myself from getting bogged down in excuses. Plus, there's a special sense of satisfaction from knowing you've done it, not to mention exercise-induced endorphins.

3.) Whenever possible, put your exercise clothes on as soon as you wake up. I find that this helps set my expectations and get my mind ready to exercise.

4.) Figure out what works for you - exercise should be enjoyable or you're not going to do it. I hate riding my bike, but I love running. Once upon a time, I had a personal trainer who said I had a bad attitude because I would ask for alternate weight lifting exercises when he gave me one I didn't like. That's not a bad attitude - that is a practical attitude. If you can skin a cat several different ways, you sure as hell can find an abs exercise that doesn't make your back and neck feel awful.

5.) Yogi Berra once said that baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical. Exercise is the same way. If you can figure out how to occupy your mind while you exercise, the physical part will take care of itself. Laurie likes to exercise with Mr. Darcy. I like to exercise with Coach Taylor, Matt Saracen, and Tim Riggins. (Yep, that's right - I've loaded up Friday Night Lights on Peter's old IPod and watch it as I trot up and down my corridor.)

Happy exercising!

Groundhog Day

2009-02-03T17:39:00.003Z

So, yesterday was groundhog day, a strange tradition that I've never understood. I remember having it explained to me when I was a kid and so much about it puzzled me. First, there's the whole shadow business. Seeing a shadow means a later spring, but doesn't a shadow necessitate the sun, which, you know, typically appears on nice days?

But more troubling to me was the 'six more weeks of winter' bit. I couldn't for the life of me understand that. Every calendar I ever saw had the day spring begins very clearly printed on March 20th. So say the results of groundhog day meant that spring was going to start on a different day, would that mean that all the calendars were suddenly wrong or should be reprinted? I cannot tell you how much puzzlement this whole groundhog thing brought me when I was a kid.

Now, it's just a mildly amusing sideshow and quite irrelevant in Ireland, where we don't have groundhogs at all. But it does make me smile, in a way, when I remember one of my all-time favourite films: Groundhog Day. I'm a sucker for existential angst and I love the progression and development of Bill Murray's character.

I was reading Slate yesterday and came across the Happiness Project, an effort by Gretchen Rubin to document her attempts to develop a happiness in her life. In yesterday's post, Gretchen mused about what you would want to do with your day if you were forced to live it over and over again, Groundhog Day style.

I had a good long think about this and here's what I came up with:

an early morning wake-up

a few hours of productive writing

a good, long run

a visit to a pet farm with Peter

many rides on a Big Swinging Boat

a good long walk with the dogs and Peter

a quiet evening relaxing at home

I guess it's sort of a combination of my favourite parts of a regular day and the best parts of my birthdays.

How about you? What would be your perfect Groundhog Day?

Ed. note: My Uncle Greg did the snow sculpture of Punxsutawney Phil. They've gotten a lot of snow in Cleveland recently.

Thursday Three: Why YA?

2009-01-29T07:27:00.000Z

When I first started writing, I thought about writing mysteries, since they comprise the bulk of my reading material. But I soon realised that I didn't have the skills in plotting to pull of a mystery. I still have a few good ideas in my head, but they're going to have to wait until my writing skills catch up with them.

I fell into Young Adult (YA) pretty easily, the way you fall into a comfortably baggy sweatshirt on a cool autumn day. I practically lived at the library for most of my young life, so YA is comfortable and familiar to me.

But it's more than that. YA books, by necessity, are about teenagers and that period of life appeals to me. Not that I would ever want to go back. No way, no how, not even knowing what I know now, would I ever want to go back to high school. But I can still appreciate the unique facets of that time and exploit the story-telling potential.

I've been thinking a lot recently about why the teen years appeal to me and I've come up with three key reasons, perfect for a Thursday Three.

#1. The Emotions. You never feel anything with the strength and purity you did when you were 15 or 16. Every emotion you have is the super-charged, super-enhanced technicolour variety. There are no little joys or small disappointments. Every feeling is a tidal wave. You grow out of it, of course, because it's impossible to feel with that intensity for the rest of your life without going insane. Maybe it's the masochist in me, but I like remembering and visiting the Planet of Intensified Emotions.

#2. The Invinvibility Conundrum. The teen years are marked with the most bizarre confluence of awkward low-self esteem and the perception of omniscent invincibility. You're uncomfortable in your own skin, but you somehow know everything and are unstoppable. A friend once confided in me that the most crushing discovery of adulthood, for her, was the uncertainty. Where once she sailed through life with an adolescent's self-assurance, she now plodded through second-guessing herself. This dichotomy provides a rich vein to mine in story telling.

#3. The World of Endless Possibilities. When you're a teenager, every life decision is still waiting for you to make it. Each time you make a decision, you narrow down the choices available to you. It's inevitable - the turns you take on the map of life lead you closer to some places and further way from other places. It's not always impossible to change, but after you get far enough along a path, it becomes exceedingly difficult. I love the blank page and the idea that all the options are open.

Pavement Surfing

2009-01-28T17:53:00.003Z

Lately, I've been absorbed in reading about the struggles Laurie's been having with Riley and his propensity for barking and lunging at random passersby. I especially found it amusing to think of how many arms are required to perfect the Victoria Stillwell method of dog training.

Our dogs are fairly well-trained, but it's nothing to do with me. If they've any manners at all, they've gotten them from Peter, our in-house dog disciplinarian. As a result of Peter being the Enforcer and Big Boss, I do sometimes run into trouble when I'm walking the dogs alone.

Mild-mannered Toby can turn into a slavering, barking menace of a horror film dog if he is confronted with a dog he does not like. He seems not to like unleashed, unneutered dogs, of which there are many in the Middle of Nowhere. He also takes offense to random small, fluffy dogs, which is always embarrassing, especially when said throw pillows are attached to little old ladies.

Callie loves people and dogs. She just wants to meet and befriend anyone, to the point of whining incessantly if she's not allowed to make go make nice.

I try my best to control the dogs when we're out in public. But I discovered a few weeks ago that if we were approached by a loose dog that Toby wanted to kill and Callie wanted to love, the best course of action was to drop Callie's leash. She would then run off as our emmisary in the doggy world, bearing good wishes. In actuality, I think she scared the collars off a lot of these macho country dogs, just through her sheer size and exuberance.

We commonly had problems with the landlord's sister's dog, a squat black lab called Harry. But when Callie met Harry, he decided that perhaps he didn't really want anything to do with us, ever. When we pass now, he skulks behind farm equipment or stays on his perch at the top of the hill, gazing at us with trepidation.

Allowing Callie to be our bouncer has worked out so well, I probably grew a little bit complacent. As long as we weren't on a main road, I thought I'd always have the drop-her-leash option available to me. I was wrong.

Yesterday afternoon, I took the dogs for a walk as the sun was setting. It was the first day we've had that made you believe that spring could be just around the corner, that our seasons really are going to change out of the dark, dismal, rainy winter. (We've had about 10 inches this month alone.) So there we were, out on a quiet country road enjoying the weather.

We'd just approached the postmaster's daughter's house. I know they've two dogs: a pedigreed hunting dog who lives in a kennel and a black lab who prowls the yard loose. The lab, whose name is Spree (or, this being the Gaeltacht, it could be Spraoi), is a cheerful dog who is exceedingly good about staying within the bounds of his property.

I spotted Spree hanging out on the front step of his house. Then I spotted an older lady walking a grey-muzzled black lab on the road. The woman waved me off, as if to say that her dog was not friendly. I had an inkling who this was and that the dog really hates all other dogs. I could see the dog straining and fighting at the end of the leash, pulling the woman along.

I gathered up my leashes and dragged Toby and Callie as far up the driveway as I could, but I didn't want to go too far because I didn't want to add Spree into this mix. The woman called out and asked me to push in further. I took my dogs right up to the last fence post of the outer yard, parked Toby's face in the corner, and hoped for the best. It was clear to me that there was no way I could drop Callie's leash in this situation as she'd probably scare the pants off the woman, if not end up in a fight with the leashed dog, who was giving Toby a run for his money in the horror movie dog competition.

As the woman approached, my dogs started to react to her riled up dog. Callie and Toby both turned and started lunging toward to woman's dog. I did the best I could to control them, but before I knew it, they were dragging me. I dug in my heels and dropped my body as low as possible. I was pavement surfing behind the dogs, suddenly and painfully aware that I was not only outnumbered, I was also outweighed.

They dragged me at least 30 feet before I was able to stop them. If we'd been in a cartoon, I'd have had piles of ripped up asphalt under my feet, so fiercely did I dig in my heels during my struggle. It ended alright, with no contact between the warring factions, although I was well and truly mortified.

An Evil Genius Helps Me Write

2009-01-23T12:33:00.002Z

Recently, I received a precious gift - two extra days off each week. Yes, this gift came with a price, but it's one I'll gladly pay since it gives me time to write. I've got no excuses now - it's time to apply the seat of my pants to the seat of the chair and get the damn thing done.

Of course, I had to do a few things first. Like tidy up the house. And tire out the dogs. And assemble my writing music. For a long time, the only thing I could listen to when writing was classical music. It was like the rhythym and flow of the music pulled the writing out of me without my mind getting distracted by lyrics. But something changed for me, maybe around the time I started running. I found that music with words could put me in a certain frame of mind, could give me different memories, could help create the world inside my head that I wanted to write about.

My parents gave me a very generous I-Tunes gift certificate for Christmas, which has kept me entertained on these long nights by allowing me to purchase trashy television. (I love 'Friday Night Lights'!) But this morning, I decided to invest in my music library.

I used Peter's Mac to download the music and he has I-Tune's Genius feature turned on. Really, it should be called Evil Genius. It is so much more addicting and beguiling than Amazon's 'customers who bought x also bought y and z'. I don't exactly know how it happened, but somehow, it suckered me into spending $40 on the most random collection of music that I didn't even realize I'd been wanting: Mazzy Star, Jesus & Mary chain, Kanye West, Kenny Rogers, Pure Prairie League.

I loaded up my Shuffle and took the dogs for a walk to get myself in the writing mood. The music unleashed this torrent of memories. Although these memories are not exactly what I want to write about, they do provide overlap and inspiration and ideas that I want to use. I write Young Adult fiction (for reasons that I'll get into sometime) so these memories were from high scool and college.

Jesus & Mary chain - The rain-soaked Lollapolooza 1992 where I spent part of my time enjoying the music, part monitoring then 14-year old Youngest Brother to make sure he didn't eat any of our neighbour's vodka-soaked fruit salad, and part of the time wondering if flirting with a guy with a cold sore was really worth it. (No, probably not is the answer to that one.)

Toad the Wet sprocket - Ohio University, Athens, Ohio - Going with Alex P. to see them in a packed basement bar, which was inexplicably full of frat boys who seemed to think 'Hold Her Down' was more of a how-to manual than a protest song. Alex P. was tall and lanky with an easy crooked smile and a head of uncontrollably curly black hair. He introduced me to first-person shooters (Wolfenstein), made me laugh, and eventually broke my heart.

Depeche Mode - Driving my two best friends home from school in the Loumobile, a shit-brown Ford LTD that I think even had wood panels. I got the privilege of driving it to school exactly once - my last day of senior year. The song was 'Just Can't Get Enough' and I had great fun encouraging M. (the sweetest and most innocent person I've ever known) to sing the words as 'I just can't get it up', which caused her to collapse in a red-faced fit of giggles.

Dead Kennedys - The two skater boys from my German class, who used to make me mixed tapes that included Bad Religion and the Dead Kennedys. I can't even remember their names now, but I liked the dark-haired one, which meant, of course, that I spent more time talking to the blonde one. They were fun guys and I can't tell you why nothing ever happened with either of them, except maybe that I was terrified they were too cool for me.

When I got home from the walk, I sat down and started writing, letting the memories ease me into my book's world. It worked and I wrote five pages, which is pretty good for me. Now, I think I've earned a 'Friday Night Lights' break.

Comedy of Errors

2009-01-19T06:25:00.000Z

My basic philosophy when it comes to life in Ireland is to always go out, no matter the weather. If you let a little rain stop you, you'd never do anything here. I've played football in a sleety downpour and camogie in several inches of mud and water. We seldom get thunderstorms, so it's almost guaranteed that while you might be uncomfortable, you are going to be safe. I wouldn't go hill walking on a showery day of low visibility, but I wouldn't let that stop me from taking the dogs for a walk.

I've recently grown bored of our regular 2-mile walk up along the ridge near our house. We have to run the gauntlet of a few dogs that don't get along with Toby and it's both physically and mentally exhausting to handle two large dogs under these circumstances.

I've taken to loading the dogs up in the car and driving either to work or to a pull-in along the South Lake Road to have an amble around. Gougane is also an option, although with all the loose sheep, I find that I prefer walking on our picturesque and nearly always sheep-free country roads.

And so it was this Saturday. The weather was grey, but I thought we'd be able to have our walk and be back before it got too bad. It wasn't so much that I was concerned about getting wet, it was more that I was concerned about my car. On Friday, the windshield wipers pretty much stopped working. If I was lucky, they would drag themselves across with just enough velocity to barely wipe the glass clear. It was a calculated risk and I knew if it was too rainy, I could just leave the car in the village and get it when the weather cleared up.

I decided to park at work so we could explore a new road. Well, it was new to us, at least. We set off at a good clip and enjoyed our walk. In fact, we enjoyed it so much that instead of turning around after 30 minutes, we kept walking. And when it started to rain a little, we still kept walking. The dogs didn't mind the rain since they were absorbed in new sights and smells. I was enjoying the exercise. When the rain died down, the wind kicked up, but we still kept walking.

But when the rain came back and it was a piercing sleety sort of rain, like tiny icy daggers all over my face, I realised that perhaps I'd been foolishly ambitious with my plan. So we turned around and started the long walk back to the car. We were at least two and half miles from the car and the wind had turned bitter. The dogs had stopped having fun, both of them hanging their heads in an attempt to keep the sleep out of their eyes. My runners were soaked through as were my sweatpants. My jacket held off the rain a bit longer, but by the time we finally made it to the car I was thoroughly soaked to the bone.

At least, at that point, the rain had stopped. I piled the dogs into the car, wiped off the windshield and pulled out of the driveway. I wasn't even all the way through the village when the heavens opened up. Great big drops of rain slapped the windshield. The car limped through the village and I parked at the school. Decision time. I could leave the car and walk the mile home, which would be uncomfortable but at least we'd be moving. Or we could wait out the weather and then drive home.

The wind at this point was howling, a steady strong stream with periodic gusts that had to be at least 70 mph. The weather did not look like it was going to improve anytime soon and sitting in cold, wet clothes was not looking like a great option. If I'm going to be miserable, I at least want to be moving.

The mile back to my house was easily the most miserable mile I've ever walked and I grew up in a place that had blizzards and bitter cold. The wind was my enemy and I had to walk head-into it for most of the journey. All I could think about was the cup of tea and hot bath that would be my reward when we finally got home.

We ran the last quarter-mile and I think we were all happy to finally get inside out of the rain and wind. I went into the bedroom to change and flipped the light switch on since the storm had made mid-day as dark as dusk. Only nothing happened when I flipped the switch. Or when I flipped the fan switch for our bathroom. I went into the kitchen and sure enough, the Jesus light was off. We'd lost electricity.

Not only did this mean no tea, it also meant no bath, since the pump that moves the water out of the hot water heater (or maybe it's out of the boiler- I don't really know for certain) runs on electricty. And no hot water, of course, means no heat.

With my warm-up plans thwarted, I did the next best thing and had a nap under two thick duvets. It was something of a disappointment, but that'll teach me to check the weather radar before I go tromping out on an extra-long adventurous walk!

Can We Hurry Up and Leave Already?

2009-01-16T19:57:00.003Z

Remembering the Good, Old Poorhouse Days

2009-01-13T06:23:00.002Z

As I sit in our five-bedroom, three-bathroom, centrally-heated rental house, it feels like a lifetime ago that Peter and I were getting started on our life together in Dublin. Not our 2005 life, where we lived with his parents, but our 1995 life.

In March of 1995, I dropped out of law school and moved to Dublin to live with Peter, even though technically, we hadn't even had a first date yet. My parents, in a mind-boggling act of parental faith and love, gave me their tax refund check to pay for my ticket and living expenses until I found a job.

The first order of business was to find a place to live. We spent two nights in a lovely B&B, which I appreciated but I thought Peter was crazy for picking a place that cost 50 pounds a night when we could have gotten a double-room at a hostel for half that price. Then we spent several nights with a friend who was house-sitting.

The place we finally found was a ground-floor bedsit in a old house where Donnybrook meets Ranelagh. The bedsit was one big room that had the entrance in one corner, a double-bed with a saggy mattress in the next corner, a TV in the third corner, and a kitchen with a tiny fridge, small, sink and 2-burner electric stove/oven in the fourth corner. The other furniture consisted of two semi-comfortable relaxing chairs, which were in front of the TV, and a kitchen table with a couple chairs, which were in front of the drafty picture window. We also had a faux fireplace with an electric space heater.

What's missing in this description? Yep - a bathroom. The entire building (which had to have at least 10 bedsits) shared two bathrooms. The one on the ground floor had a toilet, sink, and giant tub that often harboured small creatures I called UCCs - Unidentified Creepy Crawlys. On the top floor was a toilet and sink in its own room and a shower in a separate room. To get hot water in the shower, you had to insert a twenty-pence coin into a box mounted on the hallway wall.

We were thrilled just to have found a place, especially since it only cost 55 pounds a week. Peter worked two days a week at a computer store and made 30 pounds a week. I soon found a job as a weekend nanny for 50 pounds a week. To say that we were poor would be a massive understatement. A big reason we were able to make ends meet is that Peter's parents did not cut off his allowance, which worked out to about 65 pounds a week.

The other reason we were able to make ends meet was that we became incredibly careful and draconian in our spending habits. I bought our groceries at the cheapest store I could find, even though it meant either a long walk or a bus ride. I used a list and a calculator to make sure I didn't go over our budget. We ate a lot of spaghetti and homemade garlic bread. We counted all of our pence carefully and often had to make decisions like walking instead of taking the bus so that we'd have change to take showers the next day.

It was a simple but happy life and I look back on those days with fondness. In the years since, we've gotten better jobs, earned more money, and been able to afford nice things and have adventurous outings. I still shopped with a list, but not the calculator. And I've never, ever had to use coins to pay for a shower. Our spending habits have relaxed although part of me will probably always be cheap and careful, even if I won the lottery tomorrow.

With all the economic doom and gloom, it's impossible not to feel pressure to rein in the spending, sock away savings, and hope that we have a cushion if things go truly pear-shaped. With that in mind, I've decided to undertake a new endeavour. My new blog Where Does It Go? is a spending diary. It's also becoming my economic conscience, as knowing that I'll have to account for my purchases makes me think twice about what I really need. I probably saved about 30 euro this weekend, just because I made myself think twice about every purchase.

Sighthound

2009-01-07T17:08:00.005Z

Before Callie, all of our dogs were sniffers. While none of them were hounds, they were all primarily scent-focused. Walking with Kodiak could take ages because he had to thoroughly investigate every smell (and sometimes take immediate action).

Toby's eyes are not great. He can startle easily if he doesn't see you coming. He once ran full-tilt into the garbage can.

Having a sighthound is a completely different experience to having a scent-motivated dog. The downside of having a sighthound is that you can never really let them off the leash, unless you're sure they are in a secure area. A sighthound can take off after a rabbit or bird and can end up miles away, running the risk of going missing or getting hit by a car.

In the woods near Gougane, we cannot let Callie off the leash because there are sheep in the area. There's also the occasional rabbit, so we wouldn't want her getting lost in hot pursuit of a bunny. But the main concern are sheep, since sheep hunting can be a capital offense. (Plus, I so do not want to be the blow-in who has to knock on a farmhouse door and 'fess up that my hound is a bloodthirsty sheep-maimer.)

I took the dogs for a walk last week in Gougane. Toby has off-leash privileges, although I will leash him when I see sheep, just because I'm so paranoid. Toby would rarely ignore Peter's calls, but he just might ignore me if it involved sheep. I realised that Callie serves as a great early-warning detection system for sheep. We were deep along a forest trail, on the upslope of a hill.

Callie suddenly perked up and got interested in the distance, so I kept Toby close. Further into the forest, near the top of the hill, I spotted a single sheep keeping lookout on the rocky outcrop of an adjacent hill. I don't know how Callie managed to spot the sheep, although I reckon it had something to do with the combination of sight - maybe the movement of fluffy white fur - and the scent in the air. Toby never even saw the sheep. He had no idea it was so close (yet so far). It saddens me that Callie can't chase after Toby in the forest, but the safety of both dog and sheep must prevail.

Happily, our landlord has many acres of fenced-in pasture land, which he allows us to access. I doubt I'll go into the fields so cavalierly when there are cattle on them thar hills. But for now, the cattle are safely in the barn and I'm free to take the dogs on wonderful walks over rolling hills, up to the marshy edge of Loch Allua.

It's so much fun to watch them romp and race. I've mentioned before how much fun it is to watch Callie run. It's also great fun to watch her explore. She's the only dog I've ever had who will actually look up into the sky and lock onto birds. She seems to have a fair judgment of distances too.

Yesterday, she spotted a heron out far over the lake, and she tracked its progress with interest, but made no effort to chase. This morning, she watched a graceful V of swans swoop in over her head, gliding towards a near point on the lake. And she was off after them. She's not a water dog though, so the lake's edge caused her to pull up short. But she still watched those swans intently, as though they might change their minds. She even found a lookout point to spy on their every languid movement on the lake's surface.

Watching Callie reminds me that it's important to look up at the sky, to take in the whole of my little world. So I joined her on the lookout point and was rewarded with another heron sighting.

Best Reads of 2008

2009-01-04T06:46:00.004Z

I had such grand plans for 2008 - it was going to be the year I read quality books. I was going to delve into the classics and emerge a better, smarter reader. I didn't quite manage to stick to my plan at all really. A disappointment and I still plan to read the nine remaining books on my dangerous list.

Disappointing is a good way to describe my year in reading. I aimed to read good books, but then stumbled and ended up reading even more trash than usual, a bizarre unintended consequence. I'm also disappointed in my numbers - I only read 48 books in 2008, which is probably half of what I read in 2007. Sure, I had a lot going on this year, but still, 48 seems awfully low for me.

The good news is that when I trawled through my reading reports for 2008, I didn't find any books worthy of a Worst Reads list. Patricia Cornwell returned with Scarpetta and the first 50 pages made me fear the book was destined for a worst list, but the book improved enough to squeak by.

The bad news is that I don't really think I have enough books for a Top 10 list. I have 7 solid choices, but then I feel like I would just be padding the rest with Laura Lippman books, just because she's one of my favourite authors.

7. Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer - I debated with myself for ages before adding this book to the list. Meyer's teenage vampire romance novels are both beloved and reviled and I found myself developing a love-hate relationship with them. The dynamic between Bella and her vampire love Edward is undeniably creepy, not because of the whole vampire thing but more because it has shades of a potentially abusive relationship and the sexual politics of the books are both confused and confusing.

But despite all of this (and the sometimes overwrought writing), I could not put these books down. They were compelling page-turners and I absolutely fell in love with some of the characters. Eclipse, for my money, was the best of the lot and was one of the most entertaining books I read all year.

6. By a Spider's Thread by Laura Lippman - Tess Monaghan's client, an Orthodox Jew, hires her to search for his missing wife and children. The story is subtle and layered as the agnostic Tess tries to understand her client, his relationship with his wife, and their religion.

5. The Ghost by Robert Harris - After British Prime Minister Adam Lang is unseated, he retreats to Martha's Vineyard with his former press secretary Mike McAra to write his memoirs. After McAra drowns in an apparent accident, an unnamed freelance writer (the narrator of the novel) is brought in to finish the job. In attempting to assist Lang, the writer discovers all sorts of unsavoury and frightening secrets about the Prime Minister and his wife. The book is a cracking political thriller, well-written and worth reading.

4. Year of the Fog by Michelle Richmond - After six-year old Emma disappears off a foggy beach in San Francisco, Abby struggles to remember what happened, recreate her memories, and unravel the mystery of Emma's disappearance. An atmospheric book about memory and loss that stayed with me long after I read it.

3. Moby Dick by Herman Melville - I read this as part of Reading Dangerously, and it was definitely my biggest success, even though it took me 3 months and I skipped the labourious whaling sections. I'm not going to say a lot here, since I posted a review back in March.

2. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris - This is definitely the book I wish I'd written - an insightful, hilarious look at corporate America in the wake of the dot-com bubble. I also loved that it was written in first-person plural, which seemed a bizarre choice, but served the story well. (Back in June, I posted about the effect this book had on me.)

1. Lush Life by Richard Price - My number 1 book last year, Ian McEwen's On Chesil Beach claimed the mantle because of its perfectly boiled down, precise use of language. Lush Life is also number 1 because of its language, but it's a different use of language than McEwen's. Where the language in On Chesil Beach is spare and stark, the language in Lush Life is poetic and rhythmic. It nearly provides a pulse for the book, a propelling heartbeat that carries you through the dark alleys and sweaty interview rooms as the cops investigate a mugging gone wrong. What both books have in common is how the language is a perfect representation of the place and time: the stark, crisp button-downed pre-Sexual Revolution England of On Chesil Beach versus the pulsing vibe of New York City. I can't say enough good things about Price and am looking forward to reading some of his other books.

My goal for 2009 is to get through my towering To Be Read piles, including as many of those 'dangerous' books as I can stomach. I'm going to make a huge effort not to add to my piles until I clear some of the back log. If I were looking for advice on what to read, I'd check out my friend Amy's Top 10 Book List for 2008. Amy is a much better reader than I am in the quality department (so I'm thrilled that two of my best books are also on her list). Happy New Year and Happy Reading in 2009!

August-December Reads

2009-01-03T06:30:00.001Z

It was only when I went to compile my best books list for 2008 that I realised I hadn't even managed to post the books that I read after July. So here are August through December reads, with a one-word description:

13. New Moon - Stephanie Meyer - Awful
12. Run - Jeff Abbott - Confusing
11. I See You - Gregg Hurwitz - Creepy
10. Scarpetta - Patricia Cornwell - Passable
9. Bones - Jonathan Kellerman - Okay
8. Breaking Dawn - Stephanie Meyer - Entertaining
7. Say Goodbye - Lisa Gardner - Heart-breaking
6. Twilight - Stephanie Meyer - Intersting
5. Keeping the Dead - Tess Gerritsen - Thrilling
4. Cue the Easter Bunny - Liz Evans - Amusing
3. Eclipse - Stephanie Meyer - Compelling
2. The Broken Window - Jeffrey Deaver - Chilling
1. Lush Life - Richard Price - Well-written

How Much Torque Does This Baby Have?

2008-12-27T17:09:00.005Z

When we were living in Wheaton, Peter bought a Mini Cooper S. It was a fun little car, like driving a go-cart, but the downside was the cuteness factor often brought unwelcome attention. After about six months, Peter decided his summer fling with the Mini was over and it was time to get a new car.

We spent about a week, visiting dealerships and going out on test drives. We quickly fell into a pattern on the test drive. Peter would drive and would ask the sales guy (it was always a guy) questions like 'The horsepower on this model is x, so how much torque does it have?' and 'Does this model have the super-updated whirzligger that I've read so much about?' (OK, I'm making that second one up because I can't remember all the questions, but he always asked technical questions about the car.) I'd ask the sales guy questions like 'Did you ever have a test drive where you were so freaked out by the person's driving, you asked them to stop?' and 'Did you ever have a test drive where you got pulled over by the police?'

I was always amused by this difference. He was completely interested and focused on the car. I was indifferent about the car, but excited by the novelty and the possible opportunity for collecting interesting story.

Peter now drives a Nissan Patrol, which is a giant SUV. I always feel like I have to justify this choice - it's because of his photography business. He needs four-wheel drive and also needs to be able to carry multiple passengers and bags of camera equipment comfortably.

I know the sterotype of short women is that they love to drive great big honking SUVs. Maybe it's just short mothers who feel that way, since the auto industry in the States has successfully perpetuated the myth that SUVs are safer than smaller cars. I have no interest in driving Peter's car, especially on twisty country roads or through narrow villages where cars are parked up on both sides of the street.

I'm not great at judging distances and don't have very good spatial relations skills. So driving a 3-tonne vehicle that feels about two feet wider than my car is nerve-wracking. So much so, that until yesterday, I had never driven Peter's car on the road. I had only driven it in circles around our house.

But yesterday, we had too many cars in Peter's parents' driveway, the inevitable result of Christmas guests who are responsible enough not to drink and drive. Peter wanted to return his sister-in-law's car and he wanted me to drive his car. I wasn't happy about this, in fact, I was down-right terrified. But the traffic was light, the trip was only about a mile, the roads were nice and wide, and I'd only have to navigate one roundabout.

Peter's parents' house is on a busy main road, so he was kind enough to back the car out of the driveway and get it pointed in the right in direction. All I had to do was get in the car and drive. So my worried face and I climbed into the car and first had to adjust the seat and all the mirrors. Then the next order of business was to get the car into first gear and out of the driveway. Peter stood next to the car, giving me instructions on how to manage his clutch.

I stalled the first two times I attempted it and then managed to blast enough gas into the system to propel the giant vehicle forward. The car seemed sluggish, but I chalked that up to its size and inertia. I shifted smoothly into second and felt like I was getting the hang of things. The shifting to third didn't go so smoothly and I was terrified of stalling, so I popped into back into second and slapped on the hazard lights, figuring I had to warn people that I was going to be abnormally slow.

I coasted up the roundabout and was able to time it just right so I didn't have to stop the car. I was in the correct lane for my exit and was halfway to it when a silver sedan screeched up next to me, the driver madly blasting his horn. My first thought was that my lane position was wrong, that I was misjudging the width of the car and squeezing in on him. But that wasn't the case.

I couldn't figure out what I'd done wrong, so I slowed down a little bit and made my way to my exit. I watched him take the same exit (from the wrong lane) and then saw him slow down and wait for me, so he could angrily beep his horn some more at me. I refused to make eye contact with him and just continued driving.

Wouldn't you know it, we got stuck at the next traffic light. He was in the turning lane and there was an empty lane between us, so I decided to sneak a peak. He rolled down his window and shouted at me 'Why have you got your hazard warning lights on?' (Um, to warn people that I'm a hazard in a three-tonne death machine?) I shouted back that it was to let people know there was a problem with the car (yes, the driver, but still) and I may have maybe perhaps called him a not so nice name. I was boiling with anger at that point - all that commotion and fuss just because I had my hazards on? For feck's sake, I was terrified that I'd accidentally hit someone and was dragging the poor sod, such was this fella's overreaction.

The next half-mile went without incident - I was even able to find third gear. When I got to my brother-in-law's house, I parked on the street, put the car in first gear, and went to pull up the parking brake. Only to discover that the parking brake was already on. Nervous that the parking brake was now well and truly banjaxed because of my stupidity, I took the brake off and then put it on again, pulling up as hard as I could. I was on an incline, so I put the car in neutral just to check it. Seemed like the parking brake was holding.

Peter pulled my sister-in-law's car into the driveway and met me at the curb. He asked how it went and I told him fine, except for the jerk who yelled at me. I was going to try not to mention the parking brake, but then Peter's next comment was 'What smells like it's burning?'I hung my head and 'fessed up to my sin of parking brake omission.

So, if anyone ever asks me 'How much torque does this baby have?' I can tell them from first-hand experience - enough to drive 30+mph with the parking brake on.

Hanging with The Nieces

2008-12-26T06:31:00.002Z

I'm not a big fan of holidays, but I did find yesterday particularly enjoyable. Probably because I spent most of the time hanging out with my nieces, who are eight and five. They're sweet girls, very polite, and I enjoyed spending time with them.

The five year old (whom I will call Niece 2) is a real firecracker - I don't think she sat still for two minutes yesterday. She was just a blur of activity and excitement. Her favourite present was a digital camera, a sleek black Fuji. 'A GROWN-UP digital camera', she would be quick to point out. (Peter called that a brave choice, but as hyper as she was, she really took good care of the camera and quickly figured out how to use it.)

Peter showed N2 how to make movies with the camera and she was off. Her two-minute movie is the best thing I've ever seen. She races around crazily with the camera, careening around corners and pausing only briefly to survey various items of interest, like the living room or a desk with a surprise drawer. She also stops in front of the mirror and sings to herself, before racing off again. It reminded me a bit of BarneyCam or CatcherCam.

Niece 1's best present was a Wii, which her parents brought over for entertainment purposes. Where N2 is a blur of action, N1 is poised and deliberate. She's a smart kid, into reading and writing. And she's great at video games and not shy about letting her opponents know it. She's also clever enough to claim the vaunted Player 1 mantle, which allows her to choose the games to suit her strengths. She's wickedly good at the game where you have to spot look-alike Miis, tiny little people with oversize heads.

When N1 and N2 play against each other, it's not really a fair match-up. N1 tries to be patient and help her sister, but she can't help that she wants to win. N1 soundly beat N2 at every game they played, until N2 managed, through some combination of luck and perseverance, to beat N1 at a game of pool. My sister-in-law (their mother) and I cheered so loudly for this accomplishment that I have a sore throat today.

We also played Mario Kart, which led to a bizarre conversation. N1 wanted to select the race through mushroom gorge, which I asked her not to do because I'm afraid of mushrooms. They thought this was the funniest thing they'd ever heard of, then N1 called me an alcoholic. I wasn't sure how she'd come up with that word, but it took Uncle Peter to unravel the mystery, asking why she'd called me an alcoholic.

N1 shrugged and said, 'She's afraid of spiders.' 'No, N1, that's arachnophobia you're thinking of. An alcoholic is something else entirely.' Then N2 chimed in with 'yeah, and besides, she's afraid of mushrooms, not spiders.'

I did miss The Kid and The Other Nephew a bit yesterday, but being able to hang out with The Nieces definitely made up for that. My best Christmas present? The memories, of course.

Happy Christmas

2008-12-24T19:45:00.006Z

My Christmas post was going to be about celebrating the imperfect nature of human love and why 'The Fairy Tale of New York' is the best Christmas song ever written. I was aiming for a tone that could have been the lovechild of Dorothy Parker and Dr. Phil. It would have been great, but I've just been too frazzled to actually sit down and put all the necessary words in the order I wanted.

Instead, have a Happy Christmas and enjoy these photos of my poor put-upon pups, who are probably plotting ways to kill me in my sleep for perpetrating this indignity. But comon, they're so damn cute.

They Don't Call It 'The People's Republic' for Nothing

2008-12-23T14:25:00.002Z

One of County Cork's most endearing nicknames is The People's Republic. In many ways, Cork is sort of like Texas - big, bold, and completely disinterest in blending in with the rest of the country.

I love the independent streak of the county, but the fact remains, it is still part of Ireland. A fact that seems to have escaped the planners of Dublin Airport. I wish someone could tell me why I need to present a passport and go through the Garda Passport Check when I've only flown from Cork to Dublin.

It makes me wonder what would happen if I decided to present my driver's license as my valid id. It's on the list of approved identification. But would it be enough to get me out of the People's Republic and into the Irish capital?

Maybe that's a test for next time. For now, I'm arrived safe and sound im Dublin and am killing time at the Internet kiosk, waiting for Peter to collect me. Perhaps I'll redesign the airport in my spare time.

My Treasure

2008-12-19T19:49:00.006Z

When we were living in Dublin the first time, all those many years ago, we scavenged the most brilliant piece of artwork. It was a large canvas painting done by someone with decent artistic talent and a good sense of humour. Reaching down out of the sky, was the God figure from the Sistine Chapel. His outstretched finger pointed to an apple. A perfect, shiny, bright red apple, which just happened to be in the hand of Snow White.

As much as I loved the combination of two cultural touchstones with the representation of Original Sin, I loved the colours even more. The 'classical' half of the painting was in the subdued cream and brown hues of the original. The other half was in garish Technicolour.

We carried off that treasure and hung it in our flat until the day I had to move back to Cleveland. Peter moved a few times during the time we lived apart and at some point, the painting was thrown out. (Although I like to think that someone else saw its greatness and rescued it.) I have few regrets in life, but a tiny part of me really regrets losing that painting.

So, when a painting caught my eye at the Civic Amenity Centre, I couldn't say no. For all its grand naming, the Civic Amenity Centre is just our dump/recycling centre. You have to pay to leave trash, but recycling is free.

Next to the main dumpster, there's a shed to shelter the poor county council workers who have to collect the cash. I don't know if these workers pull out treasures when they see them or if sometimes, people separate out their trash from their junk, but I often see items sitting next to the shed, waiting for a new home. Random, bizarre stuff, like a Virgin Mary wall-mounted holy water dispenser or children's board games or garden ornaments.

A few weeks ago, I spotted a treasure that I just knew I wouldn't be able to pass up. It was a painting, not quite as brilliant as God Meets Snow White, but charming and mesmerising nonetheless. When I got it home, I was a little disappointed to realise that it's not a hand-made painting, but is some sort of commercially manufactured print. Even so, it's just tacky and kitschy enough that I can't help but love it.

Thursday Three

2008-12-18T05:58:00.004Z

It's been a bit manic around here, since I've been putting in extra hours at work to ensure that I'm able to take the next two weeks off. So even though I've loads of blogging ideas swirling in my head, I've not much time to get them out.

Today, I'm stealing two ideas from two of my favourite bloggers. I'm taking the idea of the Thursday Three from the Rotten Correspondent and the theme is coming from Barbara, who subscribes to a theory I very much believe in. If you keep your eyes open, you will see things that can change your mood and improve your day.

I hate this time of year with a burning passion that only intensifies as I age. I hate the frantic pace of trying to finishing everything up for the holidays while all around me, the natural world is crawling to a halt. The dim drizzly days make me want to curl up in a ball and sleep until spring, but there's just too damn much to do. Recently, I saw three things that put a smile on my face and brightened my whole day. In all cases, I observed pure, unadulterated joy and you'd have to be even meaner than a grinch if you can see that sort of joy and walk away unaffected.

Three Observations of Joy

#1. The Visit with Santa. Irish store Santas are apparently way more generous than American store Santas. I was floored when Peter told me that the whole point of a visit to Santa here is that Santa gives you a festively wrapped present. It usually contains a cheap plastic toy, but you don't care about that when you're five years old. And all we got was a lousy Polaroid picture!

On Tuesday, I had a Christmas lunch in Ballincollig. Since I arrived early, I wandered through the shopping mall to kill some time. I saw a little girl, she must have been about 3 or 4, walking next to her mother. The girl had clearly just been to visit Santa, since she had a wrapped present. She was glowing with the joy of it. Her beaming smile made me notice her. It was the half-dazed smile of a girl who's just had something amazing and wonderful happen.

Then I saw the present in her hands. It was a thin rectangular box, maybe a board game. She held it with both hands and looked at it often, as though she couldn't quite believe she had it. I'm not a mind reader, but even I could see the thought bubble above the girl's head: "Best Day Ever!"

#2. The Car Wash. As part of the same trip to Ballincollig, I stopped on the way home to get diesel for the car. The prices were a whole cent cheaper than the petrol station by us, so I was already pleased. As I filled up the tank, I noticed the car in the car wash. I've always been disappointed here that Irish car washes are all out in the open.

Going to the car wash, through the dark tunnel, and then getting 'eaten by the car wash monster' as the big slappy roller washed the car was always one of my favourite activities. Even as a grown-up, I couldn't help but giggle and squeal.

So it was a great joy for me to watch another little girl, maybe 2 or 3 years old, giggle and squeal as the car wash monster ate her car. She started off huddled close to her mother, perhaps a little frightened, but was soon clapping her chubby hands in delight. It nearly made me want to get the car washed.

#3. The Running Irish Wolfhound. Callie running could be a comedy sketch. At the start, she's awkward and gangly, all long legs not quite acting in concert. Then she gets up to speed and finds her rhythm. Her long legs fall into the steady pace of a gallop. Her body lengthens and contracts as she covers ground at a rate that seemed unattainable when she got started.

What elevates her running from a comedy sketch to a day brightener is the absolute joy on her face. Her ears are flat back from the wind and her tongue is hanging out the side of her mouth, but you can't miss the grin on her face and the delight in her brown eyes.

A Tale of Two Baths

2008-12-10T01:35:00.003Z

After our joyous reunion with Toby and Callie, it was clear that a week in the kennels necessitated baths as a matter of urgency. Thus begins the Tale of Two Baths...

Bath One: Toby

We call Toby into the bathroom and encourage him to jump into the tub. He rolls his eyes and grits his teeth but complies because he knows there's a piece of cheese at the end of the bath tunnel.

Toby suffers through the bath in silence. He seems to enjoy the parts that involve soap and does not enjoy the parts that involve water. The only tricky part of the bath is turning him around to rinse his other side.

While we wash Toby, we leave the bathroom door open so Callie can see that this is not some big, scary, horrible production. See, Toby doesn't mind. Callie head-butts her way under our elbows and jams her giant face into the bathtub. She's curious about all the strange goings-on.

When the bathing part is over, Toby waits patiently while we towel dry him off as much as possible. He is eager for his cheese but waits until he gets the command to jump out of the tub. Once out of the tub, he gives himself a good shake and then runs off to the kitchen for his cheese reward.

Bath Two: Callie

We call Callie into the bathroom. She is immediately suspicious and edgy. We encourage her to jump into the tub. She looks at us like we're crazy. I stand in the tub in an effort to get her to join me. It's like a couch, only different. She doesn't buy it.

Peter puts his hand on her collar to drag her up into the tub. Callie collapses on the ground like a masked protester at a WTO meeting. Her body is transformed into 120-pounds of awkward dead weight. Peter crouches on the ground, trying to find a grip that will allow him to lift her the two-and-a-half vertical feet into the tub. I look at Peter's bent back and the slippery floor and see seven possible accidents, so I suggest dragging her into one of the shower stalls.

Peter agrees and first tries to lure her upstairs to the guest bathroom. While Toby dashes up and down the stairs, wondering where his cheese is, Callie cowers at the bottom of the stairs. Peter gives up and agrees the shower in our en-suite bathroom will work just as well and eliminate the need for stairs.

Callie follows us quite happily into our bedroom, and then collapses the minute Peter gets a hand on her collar. It takes both of us to drag her into the bathroom, Peter's pulling her front half and I'm pushing her back half. She makes a last ditch effort to splay out her back legs and brace them against the door jamb, but I disarm her. We perform a tricky move to get all three of us into the tiny bathroom and close the door to eliminate the chance of escape.

In the en-suite, Callie positions herself as far away from the shower as possible. It becomes clear that washing the dog without getting drenched is no longer an option. I turn on the water and climb into the shower. I take Callie's collar and pull her into the shower with me, while Peter lifts up her back end and shoves the rest of her in.

"You are the most recalcitrant, stubborn dog I have ever met," says Peter. I have to laugh and say "Yes, that's my girl." (When I later report this story to Middle Brother, he observes that Callie and I have been cut from the same cloth.)

We spend several minutes working on turning Callie around so she's more under the water stream. (I wish fervently the whole while that this shower would have the detachable head the way the bathtub does.) I'm part contortionist, part tightrope walker as I balance and twist my way around the giant huddle of dog at the bottom of the shower.

Finally, Callie is properly positioned and we're able to lather and then rinse. Slight adjustments to her position get everything rinsed except her underbelly. Peter suggests more turning. I tell him to get a bucket. I shut the shower doors and wait while he fetches a bucket. When he returns with a big, empty kitchen pot, I hold it high above my head until its full of water, then I carefully pass it over to him. He rinses Callie's belly, then hands me a towel.

After I've dried her, Callie is given the all-clear and she bolts from the shower. While I put on dry clothes and wipe up the water on the floor, Peter takes the dogs into the kitchen for the cheese reward. Callie gets hers first. As Peter is placing Toby's cheese into the dog's mouth, Callie muscles in to take it. Peter growls and both dogs back off, then Toby is finally properly rewarded for his bath.

Lessons Learned

According to Peter, we have learned two important lessons from this endeavour.

Lesson 1 - Next bath time, Callie's bath is going to be outside with the garden hose.

Lesson 2 - The next time we adopt a giant dog, it's going to be in puppy form.

Homepages, the Book

2008-12-09T06:05:00.000Z

Last month, I posted an essay that I was submitting to Homepages, a collection of stories and photos from Irish bloggers. All proceeds go to Focus, an Irish charity for the homeless. The book is now available on LuLu for 14 euro + shipping.

Catherine from Two Wheels on My Wagon dreamt up this fantastic project and I can only imagine the effort that went into it.

I'm especially thrilled because my essay is one of the selections for Homes Past. (I had a peek at the Table of Contents - page 41 is my lucky page.) This is the first time my writing as appeared in an actual book and I'm hoping this will provide a much needed kick-up the pants to get me focused on writing again.

Tactical Retreat

2008-12-05T10:17:00.005Z

After all of the agnosing and calculating, we've made a decision to pull back from the raw diet for the time being. The immediate reason is that the dogs are at the kennel for a week and we couldn't really expect the kennel owner to refrigerate a week's worth of raw dog food.

The secondary reason is that December is going to be a madhouse and not having to shop for and calculate the dogs' food ration is an item that I'm happy to have fall off the edge of the To-Do list.

We found a dog food called Real Nature that is probably better than anything we'd ever be able to assemble for them. Its primary ingredients are Angus Beef from South America, Barbary Duck, and some kind of fancy herring. Best of all, no corn and no wheat. I'd give you a link to the food, but it doesn't seem to have its own web site. It's made by a pet store company in Germany.

I was a little concerned about the propensity of kibble to expand with water, so I did an experiment and soaked a piece in water for a long while. Because of whatever special way this food is processed, it doesn't puff out the way regular kibble does. It just disintegrated over time. So it should be both yummy and safe in Callie's tummy.

Both dogs have taken to the food well, so we might just continue with it past the end of December. The downside is that we have to travel 30+miles one way to get it, but making that trip once a month wouldn't be bad. (Two bags should cover a month.)

I took the dogs to the kennel on Monday. It killed me to do it, especially leaving Callie for the first time. I hated leaving her after only 10 days, but it had to be done. She seemed fine with it, much more fine than Toby. He still hates going into the run, but I've perfected my technique and can get out of there before he's clamped onto my leg like a recalcitrant toddler.

The kennel owner, T, put Callie in the run and she trotted in with no fuss. T saw a problem though that I didn't quite understand, until she pulled up the outside dog door. Callie's too tall to fit through the door to the outside part of the run. The top of the door didn't even reach as high as her back. Oops. T assured me that she could take Callie outside a few times a day for bathroom breaks.

Just like prison, the dogs get play time in a fenced yard right behind the kennels. T is going to put Toby and Callie out for exercise together. This will double the amount of time they get and will also increase their exercise and burn off their excess energy. No matter how hyper he is, when Toby's outside by himself, he tends to chase his tail a little and then collapse in a heap of boredom. (Before we got Callie, I'd have to walk around outside to get him to run around at all.)

As much as I like my quiet, responsibility-free mornings, I really miss those damn dogs. On the drive up to Dublin, Peter said that it would be interesting if the dogs were able to send us texts about their stay at the kennels. The idea intrigued and amused me. So far, my imagination has gotten two texts from Toby.

The first simply said Suxors.The second said you broke my life. Maybe so. I'm looking forward to fixing it next week.

Upsides and Downsides

2008-11-27T15:36:00.007Z

After The Incident on Saturday afternoon that had Toby growling under the kitchen table most of Saturday night, I expected it would take weeks for canine relations at our house to improve. But the fragile peace of Sunday turned into the relaxed detente of Monday and Tuesday.

By Wednesday, Toby and Callie were chasing and romping, play-bowing and mock-growling. They mouthed at each other's necks as they pranced up and down our long, narrow hallway. And when they got tired, they adopted matching poses on the one bit of carpet we have in the sitting room.

The playful relationship that is blossoming between them has been a lot of fun to watch. But it does introduce two new elements of possible difficulty into our lives.

The first is the in-house rough-housing. Watching 200 pounds of hyper dog tumble and jump about a room with three laptop computers and a video projector is nerve-wracking. And once they hit a certain play critical mass, no amount of shouting or scolding can slow them down.

Another downside of this exuberant activity is when it occurs. This morning, Toby tried to initiate a play session right after breakfast. My trusty handbook on Irish Wolfhounds warns that it is important to keep the hound quiet for an hour before and two hours after meals. This is to reduce the risks of gastic torsion, a horrifying condition in which the stomach fills with air, seals on both ends, and then flops over. Because of their big barrel chests, wolfhounds and other large breeds like Great Danes, can develop this condition, which is nearly always fatal.

Peter thinks I worry too much, but here's the problem - I've totally fallen in love with this dog. (Peter also says I'm easy - that any giant dog with soulful eyes and a Kodiak-like personality would have run off with my heart.) If anything happened to her, I would be devastated. I worry about her getting the bloat, running out of the yard and getting hit by a car, or having a some other sort of random health crisis.

(It's times like this that I start to suspect I am not cut out for parenting human children. That the random vagaries of fate and the universe of outcomes outside my control would turn me into one of those half-crazed mothers who wrap their offspring in cotton wool and never lets them out of sight.)

The second potential area of difficulty is that I'm noticing the concept of monkey-see, monkey-do playing out in the canine world. Sometimes, it's a good thing. For example, Toby has an infuriating habit of saving up his urine like it's gold and he's living in a high-inflation gold standard economy. When he finally goes, the result is a urination session that would put Austin Powers to shame.

Callie is different. She will go every time you take her out, even if it hasn't been that long between outings and she doesn't have much to empty. I've noticed that Toby is peeing way more than he used to, and I can only attribute the change in behaviour to his observation of Callie.

But you have to take the rough with the smooth, and this copy-dog behaviour has some downsides. Callie loves to eat grass. The Wolfhound handbook says that as long as it's clean grass, this can be considered normal behaviour. But I still worry, especially since she seems to delight in eating grass on the run, like she's frolicking through a salad bar.

In the nearly two years that Toby was a single dog residing in our household, I could count the number of times Toby has eaten grass on my thumbs. But I've caught Toby eating grass four times today. I know that some dogs like grass and for some dogs, it has no emetic effect on them, but still, something about grass-eating weirds me out.

I suppose if a bit of roughhousing and grass-eating are my biggest complaints, I'm living a charmed life. The upside of two dogs far outweighs the downside. And sometimes, even the downsides can provide moments of entertainment.

Breed All About It

2008-11-26T03:37:00.000Z

Middle Brother recently asked me what Irish wolfhounds were bred to hunt. When I told him wolves, he groaned and called himself stupid. This is a regular thing with MB - he's not stupid at all, but school was tough for him and I think it gave him a complex.
Besides, only dog freaks like me can tell you the purpose of any dog.

I asked him if he knew what Great Danes were bred to hunt. I could practically hear his smile over the phone as he said "Danes." As I laughed, he continued in his droll, dead-pan manner. "What did they do? Send a whole pack of them up to Denmark and give the 'go fuck up their shit' command?"

When I'd recovered from my laughing jag, I warned him that this was going on my blog at my earliest opportunity. He replied, "That's okay, I'm willing to burn my bridges with the entire country of Denmark."

The State of Irish Alsatian Relations

2008-11-25T04:37:00.001Z

For the long car ride back to our house, we made the conscious decision to keep Toby and Callie separated. With Peter's Nissan Patrol, this was a simple matter of putting Callie in the way-back and Toby in the backseat. She often sat with her head hanging over the back seat, but Toby tolerated her well. I can only imagine that his little doggy brain was telling him that if he ignored her, maybe she would go away.

After we got home, our first order of business was to take them to the field next door for a romp. Toby tore around the field in giant circles, racing with wild and ecstatic abandon. Callie hung close to us, tentative and unsure. Her sister was gone, replaced by this smaller, furrier, faster stranger.

Back inside the house, the first several hours were chaos. Four house guests. One additional dinner guest. One slightly confused and put-out existing dog. One very confused and uncertain new dog. One exhausted and frazzled Ann. One exhausted Peter.

Toby and Callie were getting on okay. They'd sniff each other and would often bump into each other as they made their way around the house, jockeying for the attention of our many guests. I had some doubts about bringing a new dog into the house when we were entertaining guests, but I think it made it easier in many ways. We had a village to help us introduce Callie to the house rules and to make sure Toby didn't fall victim to the Shiny New Toy Syndrome.

Peter decided that the best way to deal with the introduction of Callie was to let the dogs work things out themselves. When I heard a growl or snarl, my inclination was to scold; but Peter thought it better to let things play themselves out.

After dinner, we retired to the sitting room. I was sitting on a desk chair with wheels, which was brought out because we had more people than seats. I put it on the only bit of carpet we have in the house, a throw-rug in front of the fireplace. Callie laid down on one side of me and Toby laid down on the other. When Callie stretched out and got comfortable, her head ended up on Toby's paw.

He looked at it quizzically and then looked a way. His paw was stretched out in front of him, so his head was a good foot away from her head. After about fifteen minutes, his curiosity about this new creature got the best of him. He leaned forward and began sniffing Callie's head, which was not a well-received move.

Callie showed her teeth first, then added a growl, then snapped, then jumped up and lunged at Toby. The resultant scuffle caused people to grab their wineglasses and try to safeguard the items on the coffee table. It was over in seconds and both dogs were fine, although Toby was rather rattled.

The problem with Toby is that we suspect he wasn't very well socialised with other dogs when he was a pup. As a result, he's pretty much a social retard when it comes to dealing with dogs. He doesn't know how to read their body language or predict what's going to happen. He doesn't know when to back off.

Toby spent the rest of the evening avoiding Callie. The morning was a new day and the dogs were back to tolerating each other. Two incidents in the late afternoon broke the fragile peace. There was a scuffle in the doorway, when both dogs tried to go through at the same time. The small row knocked over mops and brooms in the laundry room and even put a crack in our dustpan.

The second was worse, a full-fledged fight. Each dog was given an apple core. Toby gobbled his down and moved on to Callie's, because she was still sniffing it and deciding what to do. (She is the most deliberate, slow dog I've ever seen.) I didn't see exactly what happened to start the fight, but I gather that Callie took offense to Toby moving in on her food and went for him. It was a tumble of dog bodies. At one point, Callie seemed to rear up on her back legs, then take Toby down like a WWF wrestler. We intervened and got the fight broken up.

Toby was fine - no blood or injuries. He was seriously freaked out by Callie though, probably because she had him pinned to the floor in about two seconds. He spent most of the rest of the evening hiding under the kitchen table or behind the legs of a person and growling at her if she came close. I took him into the living room for some quiet time alone on the couch.

Sunday was a new day again, as was Monday and today. It seems that a detente has descended. The dogs tolerate each other. We're feeding them in separate rooms, so fighting over food has not been an issue. They can walk down the hall next to each other without growling or snarling.

When I got home from work yesterday, Peter was out with our guests, so I was alone with the dogs. I hadn't yet tried walking both of them on leashes by myself, but I really wanted to get them into the field for a romp before it got dark. I feared there might be some aggro, since walking on leads would require them to be in very close proximity to each other. They got on fine, though. The trickiest part of the whole endeavour was getting the field's gate opened with two excited dogs in hand.

Watching them in the field is quite interesting, but perhaps that's a post for another day as this one is already way too long.

And the Verdict Is...

2008-11-23T13:47:00.002Z

Thank you for all the excellent name suggestions for the dog. It was a difficult process, but in the end, Peter came up with something that suits her, has meaning to us, and is practical.

The new dog reminds us a lot of Kodiak, both in size and some aspects of personality and appearance. They both share the same laid-back nature, the soulful eyes, floppy ears, and a general ability to elicit empathetic responses from people. It's nearly a sadness, but not quite.

In honour of Kodiak, Peter went in search of bear-related names. The pickings were slim, but he read about the myth involving Callisto, a nymph who was a companion of the goddess Artemis. Because of some hanky-panky involving Zeus and an unplanned pregnancy, Callisto got turned into a bear, and then, eventually sent up into the heavens in the bear-form of Ursa Major.

So her name is Callisto, or Callie for short. She seems to like it.

The Kid Pauses to Think

2008-11-23T08:20:00.006Z

The quest for a name for RND continues. We've gotten loads of great suggestions - names that look great but then a funny thing happens between the brain and the mouth. The word just feels funny. Milly, Molly, Maddie....all lovely names, but it feels funny and sounds wrong. (Which is exactly what happened with Sarah, even before the whole unfortunate Palin business started.)

As luck would have it, yesterday was the weekly phone call with my family and it's The Kid's weekend with Middle Brother. The Kid has given such great advice in the past, that I thought he would be ideally qualified to help out with our latest dilemma.

Me: Hey, The Kid, I was hoping you could help me out with something really important.

The Kid: Sure I can!

Me: OK, well, do you know about my new dog?

The Kid: Yes. I saw a picture on the Internet.

Me: We need a name for the new dog. Can you help us think of one?

I waited for more than a minute. The Kid was thinking really hard, but it was unusual for it to take so much time for him to come up with an answer. Is it possible I finally found a way to stump The Kid?

The Kid: I got it! You could name her The Kid!

Me: But that's your name.

The Kid: So? It would still work for the dog. It's a VERY good name. In fact, I think it's a great name.

Me: I agree, it's definitely a great name, but wouldn't you feel weird knowing that a dog had your name.

The Kid: No.

I wish I was there, I can picture how he'd shrug his shoulders and open his eyes wide when he said that.

Me: OK, well, I'll put that on the list to tell Uncle Peter.

The Kid: Oh, I've got the perfect name for a girl...Butterfly.

Me: Butterfly's a pretty name, but she's pretty big to be called butterfly. She's nearly as big as me.

The Kid: Really? Then how about Big Heart?

Me: I kind of like that, but maybe we'd translate it into Irish. I could ask Uncle Peter what that would be in Irish.

The Kid: How about Molly?

Me: Molly keeps coming up alright.

The Kid: I gotta go.

Me: OK, have your dad email me if you think up any more names. Thanks for your help.

Now I understand the enormity and difficulty of this task, since not even The Kid could magic up the perfect name without thinking about it.

Blame It on Barack Obama

2008-11-22T06:30:00.002Z

It all started when I got caught up in the swirl of speculation surrounding the Obama puppy. A few days after reading Laurie's post about it, I got to wondering how hard would it be to find a so-called hypoallergenic dog in a shelter. (To find out why I say 'so-called', check out this NPR piece.)

So I toddled off to PetFinder.com to have a look-see. On the front page, they had a Happy Tail for Charlie, a 10-year old, blind, huge dog who bore at least a passing resemblance to my beloved Kodiak. That got me thinking about older dogs and special needs dogs, so I did a search for older special needs dogs and came across Reno, a 6 year old Great Dane in Findlay, Ohio.

My parents have been without a dog for about a year now. I know they both miss Kodiak terribly but I suspect they're relieved to no longer have the responsibility of his care. A big dog, especially a big old dog, is a lot of work. Even so, a tiny part of me has believed that if a Kodiak-esque dog found them, they'd open their hearts and home to him. I'd never push a dog on them, but I think Kodiak and they had a nice symbiotic relationship - they provided care and love, Kodiak provided company and a reason to go for long walks.

I sent my dad the link for Reno as a trial balloon. He agreed that it was a lovely dog, but gently made it clear that he was not in the market for a dog. Fair enough. But now my dog-seeking gene was activated and I began to idly troll the various rescue sites in Ireland. I didn't really expect to find anything of interest. Peter and I love big dogs, giant knock-over-the-postman-steal-food-off-the-counter-shock-passersby sorts of dogs. (Well, better behaved then to knock people over or steal food off the counter, but physically capable of it.)

As a rule, Irish dogs just aren't that big. Even the labradors over here are smaller and more barrel-like than US labradors. So I didn't expect to find a dog that would fit the size criteria. And even if I did, most rescue places here (even the SPCAs) require home visits, which Peter and I both find a bit intrusive. Sure, I understand why they do it, but I still find it unnecessarily intrusive.

But then I happened across Molly, whose owner's best guess was that she was a Wolfhound-Alsatian mix. Intriguing. When I got home, I showed the link to Peter, fully expecting him to say 'no'. That's how things work around here. I come up with wild, crazy, half-baked ideas and Peter has to be the grown-up and put the kibbosh on them.

This time, Peter said 'yeah, looks good to me, give him a call'. Now wait just a minute, I was counting on him to say no. Now that this second dog lark might become reality, I was overcome with apprehension. (Even when I initiate change, I still get a little freaked out and don't like it.) But I rang the guy, who was all the way on the opposite side of County Kerry, so logistics were going to be an issue. We made arrangements to meet half-way last Sunday, just for an introductory meeting between Toby and Molly.

For several days, my mind was a tumble dryer full of images of us with Molly. I was so excited to meet her. I loved the name Molly - there's so much you can do with it. Molly Malone. Good Golly Miss Molly. Mollified. Mollycoddle. How fast would Mollycoddle become Mollycuddle with all of the doggy-goodness that implies?

I'm the sort of person who likes to think things out, to picture the potential outcomes of a situation. I was thinking about meeting Molly, about what it would be like, about how we would know if she was the right dog for us. I asked Peter what he was looking for in a new dog. He turned the question back on me, claiming that I'd asked it in such a way that made clear I'd already given the matter a good bit of thought. I took a deep breath and answered with my heart. 'I'm looking for the reincarnation of Kodiak.' He nodded and said 'At least you're honest about it.'

After what felt like an eternity (but was only four or five days), Sunday rolled around. About an hour before we were meant to leave (and while I was at my football club's All-Ireland semi-final match), I found out that Molly had been hit by a car. She was okay but her paw was injured and she was having some discomfort moving around, so her owner wanted to see how she healed up before proceeding.

Disappointed doesn't begin to describe it, but it's a good starting point. I also began to have some doubts about Molly. Would her injury cause undo long-term trouble? She was already heading into middle-aged for a giant breed. How exactly did she get hit by a car? Was she a runner-offer?

Peter found the contact information for the Irish Wolfhound Club and sent them an email explaining that we were looking to adopt an adult dog. I was not convinced that this would come to anything because about a year ago, I emailed the Bernese Mountain Dog Club and got no response. (Which was frustrating because they post their website address in the classified section of newspapers, warning people to contact them first to learn about the breed and breeding lest you get taken by an unscrupulous breeder.)

But Peter was put in contact with a woman who does Irish Wolfhound rescue and she just happened to have a pair of two-year old, spayed females. (Everyone here quite happily calls girl dogs 'bitches', which I suppose is their proper name but it makes me as uncomfortable as when the blue tits visit our garden and I want to tell Peter about it.)

We drove two-and-half hours out to the far fringe of County Tipperary to meet PND, Potential New Dog. We were met at the gate by the woman's husband, who briefly showed us the two wolfhounds for rehoming.

Then he invited us into the house, along with two of their eight (yes, EIGHT) wolfhounds. Peter and I greeted the woman, who quickly ushered us onto the couch because she told us that if we didn't sit fast, Liam, their oldest dog, would take over the entire couch. We sat and Liam wasn't long in crawling up onto the couch, making a spot for himself between us, and flopping down to sleep with his head in my lap.

I often said that Kodiak had no idea how big he was. I'm nearly positive that Liam knows exactly how big he is and just doesn't care. It was grand though - very calming and cozy. We talked to the people for a long while about wolfhounds and a trip they had to the US. Then it was time to go outside and introduce Toby to his potential sister.

Given that Toby is sometimes unreliable in his reactions to other dogs, it went swimmingly. The size difference factor intimidated Toby a little bit, but only not necessarily in a bad way. There was a little bit of romping, a lot of butt-sniffing, and a good bit of newspaper reading. (Which is what Peter's sister calls it when dogs sniff certain areas for a long time.)

On the drive there, Peter and I discussed how we would make a decision between the two dogs. With his typical pragmatism, he shrugged and said that we'd just pick one. The dogs looked nearly identical, although one had a white-tipped tail and the other was slightly larger, maybe an inch taller. We watched them frolicking with Toby and I noticed that the larger one was much more outgoing and pushy. She was quite forward with Toby and produced two little scuffles.

When the time came to make our decision, Peter seemed to be leaning toward the larger one, so I quickly pointed and said 'The one with the white-tipped tail.' Right after that, the larger one came over and put her head under my arm, nudging me for pets. I had a moment of doubt, wondering if it was her way of saying 'no, no, I'm the right dog.' But I realised that this was just part of her forwardness and we would be better off with the more laid-back dog.

Two-and-half hours in the car later, we were back home with Real New Dog (RND) and Toby. We also have a houseful of guests, since four of Peter's friends are visiting, so it's going to be a busy and interesting couple of days.

RND does not have a name yet. The name she came with is horrible (Lily Lady) and we haven't happened on the right name yet. We were calling her Sarah last night, because I had a dream a few weeks ago (before I started looking at dogs) about us having a Toby and a giant dog named Sarah. But everyone was calling her Sarah Palin, which will not do, and Peter mentioned late last night that the name feels weird to him to say it, which is how I'd been feeling about it as well.

We've also eliminated Molly, Maeve, Wheaton, Danada, Wrigley, Sky, and Sundance. Aisling and Pluto were both debated and filed under 'Maybe', but I'd say that if you don't love a name straight away, it's not the right one. Any suggestions will be carefully considered.

My Other Brother

2008-11-20T04:14:00.001Z

Reading the stories about Middle Brother and The Kid, it's easy to forget that Middle Brother is called that for a reason. I do have another brother, Youngest Brother. He doesn't feature in my stories as much because I don't get to talk to or see him as much as MB.

I've been meaning to write about YB more, because he's a smart, funny guy who does interesting things, but I often find that I can't get a handle on what I want to say about YB. He's a little bit of a mystery to me. I once told MB that I had the feeling that YB was like a balloon and if we didn't hold onto him tight, he'd just float away.

Family dynamics are endlessly fascinating to me. In that silly pre-marriage class Peter and I had to take, we had to split into groups based on birth order and discuss what it was like to be in our birth order spot and what the other groups were like. I sat with the oldests and it really was like group therapy.

Being the oldest is the toughest - you have to scrap for every right and privilege. Your parents are younger and less well established, so there's not as much money as there is later. You're always the responsible one, always the one who should know better, always the one who has to compromise more.

And the youngest kids? Well they're spoiled and pampered. They're riding their bikes in the street and dating way before we ever were allowed. They have it so easy, it's not even fair.

Of course it's not that simple and your thoughts on it are always going to be influenced by where you are in the birth order. We had to share our group thoughts and the youngests had plenty to say about how it wasn't the cushy life to be in your 20s and still called 'the baby'. About how difficult it was to distinguish yourself when everyone else had already done everything first. About how they sometimes felt like afterthoughts or surprises.

The Brothers, my dad, and I were recently bantering on email. My dad sent a forward of horrible Olan Mills portraits with snarky comments; the subject line was 'You Might Remember Olan Mills'. I did, only because I remembered YB getting photographs there when he was very little. I made a smart remark about how YB got the fancy Olan Mills but MB and I had to make do with Sears.

YB answered back "My baby book is empty. I would gladly give up those bright lights at Olan Mills for a record of existence." I had a chuckle at that (because it's true - I think his name is on his baby book and that's about it while mine is full of extensive documentation of the headlines on my birth date and my first words) and filed the email in my Family folder.

The next day, my father provided YB with a touching and loving record of his existence that made it get a bit dusty in the room for me and MB.

Tightrope Walking Without a Net

2008-11-15T07:25:00.003Z

When we first adopted Toby, the vet talked to us about his nutritional needs. He ended up recommended a sort of mid-priced food, since it would have quality protein without breaking the bank. Since Toby was young, healthy, and the right weight, he didn't need any overly fancy or supplemented food.

That system worked great until the vet stopped carrying the food. So we upgraded top the next cheapest brand, a more nutritionally fancy food that was three times the cost. Plus, Toby hated the stuff. He ate it reluctantly for awhile and then he just refused to eat it altogether. A healthy dog will eat what it's given eventually, so we'd put down the food and then take it away after 10 or 15 minutes. We did this for a couple of days and although Toby still was in no danger of starving, the exercise was starting to feel a bit cruel.

So we headed to the grocery stores in Macroom and started reading the labels on the dog food. We managed to find one - Baker's Meaty Meals - that had 'animal protein and derivatives' as the first ingredient. Toby loved the stuff and so everything was good. Except that the cost of the food kept creeping up and we could only buy it in 3-kilo bags.

Peter came back from a trip to California last month and was telling me about a visit to one of his sister's friends, who have a very sweet Newfoundland. (How could you not ove a Newfie - they're gigantic furry teddy bears?) Peter said that he remarked to the woman about how nice and shiny the Newfie's coat was and she told him that it was because they fed the dog a raw diet.

This got us talking a bit about the merits and drawbacks of a raw diet. I asked the Internet to tell me all about it. I also emailed Laurie, who wrote up a great series on her blog about her foray into raw feeding. There's a lot of advice and opinions out there and it seems like the whole exercise can be as expensive and complicated or cheap and simple as you make it. But the basic premise boils down to feeding your dog the sorts of food he would eat if he was a wild wolf or coyote: raw, meaty bones; organ meat; and mashed up vegetables. (The idea behind the veggies is that they'd be in the stomachs of prey animals and dogs can't break down cellulose, hence the mashing.)

So yesterday, we started feeding Toby a raw diet. I bought some inexpensive chicken thighs from the Lidl and managed to score a 2-kilo chicken for 7 euro from our butcher, who was also nice enough to give me a couple of chicken carcasses. Because Toby's gnawed on cow femurs and great big joint bones before (obtained from the same butcher - it's not like he was doing this out in a farmer's field on an unwilling subject), we knew that his teeth could handle the bones and the he knew what to do with them. (Laurie's dog Bosco was a bit puzzled by whole chicken wings.)

At home, I divided up the chicken into a week's worth of meals, put each meal into a zip-lock freezer bag, and labeled it with the day and meal time (AM or PM). Then I bundled everything into the fridge, wiped down the work area, and washed my knife and cutting board (even pouring boiling water over them to be sure to be sure - MB got salmonella once and it's not an experience I want to have).

The whole thing took about 20 minutes. Cost wise, it worked out to be about twice as much as kibble, but I think my using more scraps, we can reduce that. (Plus, I think I overshot on portion size this time around. We're going to have to get a weight on him so I can do better calculations.)

The fun part of raw feeding is watching your dog be a dog. It's sort of awesome to watch him crunch bones and devour a whole chicken carcass. (In fact, if you do a search on YouTube for 'raw diet dogs', you will find loads of videos of people's dogs eating things like whole rabbits, whole chickens, and whole fish.) It's also fun to watch your dog handle something new. We gave Toby an egg, just to see what he'd make of it. He licked it for ages and then tried biting it, but it would roll out of his mouth. It took him a good long while to figure out how to brace the egg to get his teeth into it.

But there's also an unsettling part of feeding raw. I feel like I'm tightrope walking without a net. The bag of kibble is so much easier and requires no thought. You just scoop out the right portion and you're done.

Of course, anyone who's researched dog food at all knows that the number one ingredient in most mass-produced dog food is grains, which dogs aren't evolutionarily designed for at all. But there's some sort of security in packaging - like the thinking and tinkering has already been done and you can trust that the food provides the right nutritional balance.

All of the raw food web sites stress that the important thing is to achieve balance over time. When you think about it, it's how we eat. Does each one of your meals have exactly the right proportion of grains, dairy, protein, and veggies/fruit? Of course not, unless you're on some strictly regimented diet like Jenny Craig or something.

So, balance over time, while I'm tightrope walking without a net....that's the goal. (That and a shiny coat.)

I Love the Internet!

2008-11-13T05:26:00.000Z

Peter and I often ask each other, in tones of disbelief and amazement, 'What did we do before the Internet?' We usually decide that we laid awake nights, trying to place the character actor in a movie or struggling to remember lyrics to songs.

I rely heavily on the Internet for my recipe finding and meal planning. I understand that way back in the day, there were these things called 'cookbooks' that had recipes in them. I also understand that people kept recipe files with hand-written instructions for whipping up their favourite dishes. How primitive.

I swear by such founts of knowledge as Cooking Light and All Recipes. I especially like the search functions in Cooking Light, which can help me find a dairy-free, low-fat, bake-only, Italian side dish in less than twenty seconds. (Not that I've ever had cause to perform that particular search, but it's comforting to know that I could if necessary.)

The problem with Cooking Light is that they often act as though cost were no option and everyone has an ethnic foods specialty market in their vicinity. Irish retailers have come along way since the first time I lived here in 1995 and there was exactly one place to get bagels in all of Dublin, but the options still aren't as diverse as a place like Chicago.

Cost, particularly, has become a giant concern recently. As a four-time loser in the redundancy department, I get a bit edgy any time economic indicators start to take a swim in the toilet. Hearing that unemployment here is nearly at 7% and that the economic forecast is for limited to zero growth for the next year at least tend to result in an automatic stranglehold on my spending habits.

Today, in an effort to find cheap yet nutritious recipes, I stumbled across a site that I'm sure will become another of my go-to sources: the snappily named USDA Food Stamp Nutrition Connection Recipe Finder. This thing offers so many searching options, it boggles the mind (and shows that actual people sat down and thought about what actual users would want and need - which should be the standard MO for web sites, but somehow that important step is often overlooked).

At the top of the page, you can search by ingredient or recipe name. But wait, there's more. At the bottom of the page, you can select a general nutrition category (like high calcium or more fruit and veg), the menu item (like side dish or entree), the audience (like ethnicity or parental status), and the cooking equipment required.

And, here is the best part, you can also place monetary limits on the recipe. Like you want a recipe that is less than $1 per serving or less than $5 for the whole recipe. This is pure, simple genius. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a shopping list to plan.

Zoo Trip

2008-11-12T05:00:00.001Z

I love going to the zoo. I know these days, that's not a very PC-admission, but I don't care. Zoos play a crucial role in education and conservation. They've undergone great changes in management and design that have resulted in better lives for the animals.

I don't get to go to the zoo that often anymore. Fota Wildlife Park is a bit over an hour's drive from our house and I've been there twice when we've had guests of the child variety.

This summer, I went to the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo with Middle Brother and The Kid. They have a family membership, so they go to the zoo quite frequently. It wasn't even our first joint visit to the zoo. But it was the first summer time visit since The Kid was a tadpole.

Our plan of attack was simple - arrive at or before 10am to hotfoot it over to the Australian part of the zoo so we could feed the Rainbow Lorikeets. For the bargain price of $1, you can buy a tiny medicine cup that's about half-full of nectar. Then you go into the Lorikeet house, a mini-jungle where the birds fly free and unfettered.

It's essential to get there early so that the birds are still hungry. Otherwise, you just stand there like a dolt with your little medicine cup of nectar. But when the birds are hungry, it's a riot of green, yellow, and red. If you're very lucky and stand very still, the birds will land on you. I still get crazily excited to have a bird land on my hand.

The first time we took The Kid into the Rainbow Lorikeets, he was a very little guy and got a bit freaked out by the forwardness of the birds. Now, he's a junior scientist and is fascinated by and curious about everything. He listened to a spiel from one of the docents, and then asked how you know if a bird is a boy or a girl.

The docent explained that you would have to look into the cloaca to find out. Middle Brother, in what I thought was a genius move of comic timing, said "Yeah....we're not going to do that today." I later found out that he wasn't trying to be funny, he'd seen the look on The Kid's face and was heading off what he saw as an inevitable request to try it out.

After feeding the birds, we went to explore the rest of Australia land. We took turns going down the giant crazy tree slide and visited the donkeys and sheep in the petting farm. Then we passed the camel rides and it was decided, since it was a special zoo day (given that Auntie Ann was visiting) that a camel ride was in order.

A hand-printed sign in the ticket window read "Maximum weight per camel: 300 pounds." MB told me that he needed to be with The Kid, so I'd have to go alone. When we got to the camel loading zone, the guy told us we could all fit on one camel. I was flattered that the guy thought we were so svelte but MB told me later that he suspected the guys just didn't want to walk around two camels. (I preferred my explanation.)

The guy directed MB to get on first, then me, then The Kid. MB asked me to make sure I held onto The Kid, which I did like we were lost at sea on a flimsy lifeboat. The camel dutifully trod around the dusty track.

Getting on a camel is a lot easier than getting off a camel, but The Kid handled it like a champ. I was a lot less graceful and assured, but managed to haul myself back onto the loading platform.

After a brief stop for soft pretzels and slushies, it was time to feed the sharks and sting rays. Feeding the sting rays is completely unnerving. You take a bit of herring or some other smallish fish and hold it between your first two fingers. You put your hand into the water, palm facing up, so the fish is sticking up out of your hand. Then you wait for the sting ray to glide over your hand and suck up the fish. The sting rays were not as hungry as the Rainbow Lorikeets.

We had lunch at the new zoo food court. (Well, it's new to me, at least.) The Kid and I both ordered Happy Meals. After we were done eating, The Kid spent a lot of time playing with both the Happy Meal toys, identical Bumblebee Transformers. MB and I both found it interesting that the toys earned double the amount of attention and time from The Kid, even though they were exactly the same.

It was a good trip to the zoo. It's nice to remember an adventure on a warm, sunny day when it's currently a dark, cold, wet winter's day.

Homepages, the Book

2008-11-07T05:58:00.001Z

Thanks to a tip from Primal Sneeze, I recently found out about Homepages: Stories from the Irish Blogosphere. It's a collection of 80 stories from Irish bloggers, with all of the proceeds going to Focus Ireland, a charity that works on behalf of the homeless.

I was happy to have found out about the book, just before the submission deadline. Although Primal suggested some great topics about the position of being an expat and having two homes, I found that too much of my time this week was spent on election-related materials. So I decided instead to rework two of my blog posts about our little house in Wheaton. (Which apparently I can no longer call deep in the heart of Republican DuPage County.)

I'm about to email my submission, but I thought I'd also post it here. I'm calling it "Closing without Closure".

Yesterday, the movers came and hauled away all of our worldly possessions but I wasn't there. Peter had all the fun of selling our furniture, supervising the movers, selling the car, setting up our bank accounts for wire transfers, shutting down the utilities, tying up all the loose ends and attending the closing. And now Peter, like our computers and clothes, is on his way to Ireland.

For me, it's a weird anticlimax. I've waited seven weeks for the closing on our house. I should be excited, but I feel bereft. I remember when Peter and I started house-hunting, I likened the process to dating. Whenever we came back from another bad outing, I'd console us with the thought that we had to kiss a lot of frogs before we met our prince. The cute house in the bad neighborhood, the enormous 1960's era condo that reeked of liver and onions, the hundred year old farmhouse with the original scary wiring...they were all frogs.

I was confident our prince would come. One gloomy Sunday, we found two princes. The first was a Colonial that was a 10 minute walk from the train. It had hardwood floors and backed onto a school. The neighborhood was quiet, the streets lined with graceful old trees. The kitchen was a bummer, but overall the house was solid, clean, respectable.

The second was the most adorable house in the whole world. It had a rounded door, like a hobbit house. It had a huge kitchen with an island that opened onto a windowed conseveratory. It had a little coach house attached to the garage. The yard had paths that wound their way through flower beds. In a way, it was my dream house: little, cute, cozy. But it was a 20 minute drive away from the last train station on the line.

I told the estate agent that the first house was the clean-cut preppy boy that your parents would love for you to bring home. He's polite, has good table-manners and plays well with others. He has a good-paying job and although he might be a little boring, he's an all-around good guy.

The second house was the artistic boyfriend that you love with all your heart, even though you know you'll have to support him for the rest of your life. He's beautiful but rough around the edges and your parents are skeptical but you don't care because you're in love.

So, who do you chose? The solid, dependable guy or the exciting, attractive, flaky artist? We went with the solid, dependable house and it served us well for three years. I loved that house and I didn't even get to give it a proper send-off.

It feels strange, this closing without closure. I'm picturing walking in the front door, into the airy living room. I'm remembering how I insisted we get "grown up furniture": a matching couch and chair in a deep forest green.

I'm peeking into the kitchen, which was my biggest complaint with the house when we bought it. I'd dreamed of a kitchen with an island and windows. I got a hallway with appliances. But I learned to work with it, and I spent many happy hours baking in there.

I'm stepping down the single step into the family room. I'm remembering playing my arcade game, Operation Wolf, a tremendous birthday surprise from Peter for my 30th. I recall the work we put into the room last year: ripping up the carpet and skirting boards, painting, putting down a new floor, replacing the skirting boards.

Upstairs, I go into the library, a little anteroom off the master bedroom. It was a regular bedroom until previous owners put on the master bedroom addition. Then it became a weird walk-through room. We filled it with bookcases and a futon to create a cozy reading nook, even if the futon mattress was always sliding off the frame.

Another step down into the master bedroom. I remember how it got the richest, warmest sunlight in the autumn. I look out the window at the disaster of a backyard that I created with overly ambitious and under-researched prairie plans.

Back through the library and out into Peter's office. Before it was Peter's office, it was the bedroom of a 13 year old girl and was painted bright purple with a hand-made "hottie" sign on a window.
Peter painted it a nice manly green and filled it with computers, CDs, and games.

I remember Christmas in 2003. I'd just been laid off and had more time than money. My handy brother Patrick helped me construct homemade bookcases in my grandmother's basement in Cleveland. Then we disassembled them and loaded them into my station wagon. (They were very cleverly designed to fit into the car.) I had hoped to put them together myself, but it was obvious I lacked the necessary skills.

In a series of shrewd airline bumping-acceptance moves, Patrick engineered an overnight layover in Chicago and assembled the bookcases for me. I stained the bookcases and organized Peter's office into a brilliant showcase. Peter was very appreciative of the unique gift because it was the office he always wanted but never got around to making for himself.

Next, I look into our tiny guest room. I picked out the color - Van Gogh yellow - and I remember painting the room before we moved in. It was pouring rain out and the gutters hadn't been cleaned, so the rain was spilling over creating a loud yet comforting noise.

We spent three years in our solid, dependable house. It was a good house, despite the small kitchen, ancient wiring that we had to replace, and sewer main that broke just as the buyers made an offer. It was big enough to give us breathing room and escape space, but small enough to be comfy and cozy.

Goodbye, little house. You will be missed.

The Rediscovery of Faith and Hope

2008-11-05T09:02:00.003Z

When The Kid was four, he came out with one of those profundities that have given rise to the expression 'from the mouths of babes'.

Hope is the thing in your body that keeps you alive.

It's been hard for me to hold onto hope during the W years. At times, I've felt completely exhausted and utterly ground down.

Watching the 2004 election and seeing the Republicans successfully employ a strategy of fear-mongering to divide and conquer was a significant low point and drain on my hope resources. I vividly remember sitting home alone on the day after the election, watching Kerry's concession speech, and wondering how it could have come to this. How could reasonable people could look at the same set of facts and come to such radically different conclusions?

When I looked around at the America that George Bush and Dick Cheney had created, it did not look like the America I grew up in.

I did not grow up in a country where people were held for years without charges, trials, or even access to impartial courts.

I did not grow up in a country where a bogus doctrine of pre-emptive defense was enough to start an ill-conceived, improperly planned, and poorly executed war.

I did not grow up in a country where the Constitution was just a piece of paper to be ignored and circumvented according to the whims of the President.

These are not the reasons that I moved to Ireland, but they are part of the factors that made it possible for me to move. The damage done to the country helped unmoor me from my home. (I dug through my friend Dave's archives to come up with a post that he did shortly after the election, which included my thoughts at the time. For me, to read it now is to relive it.)

The last few weeks have been rough. It was hard for me to listen to all of the vitriol, the bald-faced lies, and the blatant attempts at fear-mongering. And as hard as it to listen to the bad stuff, it was sometimes even more difficult to listen to the good stuff: the positive polls, the soaring speeches, the reports that things were going to be different this time. Like a divorcee fresh from a bad marriage, I put up my defenses against the charming suitor at my door.

I knew what I wanted though. I wanted an election free from court challenges and voting issues. I wanted the popular vote and the electoral college vote to both say the same thing. I wanted a big, shiny, clear-cut Obama win.

Even though I had a flicker of hope burning in my heart, I just couldn't let myself believe. Even when the results started coming in, I was fidgety and superstitious. While colouring my electoral college map (a ritual I've done in every election since I was 8), I'd wait until the handy NY Times Election Dashboard showed a majority of media outlets calling the results the same way.

While Peter cheerfully coloured in Pennsylvania, I told him, "My heart is too fragile." The longer Ohio, Florida, and Virginia stayed in play, the edgier I got. It wasn't until they called Ohio that I allowed myself to say it out loud - "He's got a real chance. This is actually happening."

When ABC News called the race for Obama, my first feeling was relief, followed by the rush of excitement I'd kept bottled up for the last few weeks. The feelings just intensified, especially during Obama's acceptance speech, which was the perfect end to a well-run campaign.

One line of the speech stays with me, because it reminded me of something that I forgot. Something essential that I needed to remember:

For that is the true genius of America--that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

Unlike the day after the last election, today I am ready, excited, and hopeful for that next tomorrow.

Getting Ready

2008-11-04T06:25:00.004Z

Absentee ballot sent in...............................................Check.
Printed electoral college map...................................Check.
Red and blue crayons .................................................Check.
Wednesday requested off as a recovery day...........Check.
Computers ready to stream election results..........Check.
Alarm clock set for 23.30 GMT (18.30 EST)..........Check.
Loving husband to assure me it will all be OK.......Check.
Furry dog to comfort me if it breaks bad................Check.
US Passport and matches safely out of reach.........Check.

Right so, I think I'm ready for tonight. I feel like I do at my football matches: incredibly invested in the team and results, but completely powerless to do anything to help, except cheer and hope and come as close to praying as a lapsed ala-carte Catholic ever gets.

Going in Nature

2008-11-01T07:05:00.003Z

You want to know the number one skill you must have in order to be the wife of a landscape photographer? It might surprise you.

It's not the ability to wake up early for sunrise, although that helps. You might think it's the ability to read a map properly, but that modern miracle the GPS has filled that gap and probably saved countless marriages. You might think that the wife of the landscape photographer has to be patient, know how to amuse herself, enjoy spending lots of time in the car, and know how to deal with all sorts of weather conditions. And you would be absolutely correct. But you still wouldn't have gotten to the most important skill that the wife of a landscape photographer must have.

It is the ability, as we so delicately call it, to 'go in nature.' If you can't comfortably relieve yourself in any moderately sheltered outdoor area, you are going to be one miserable wife. I'm lucky because we went camping fairly regularly when I was a kid and even if a campgrounds had toilets, you weren't going to want to trudge all the way out to them in the middle of the night.

The only time I understand the concept of penis envy is when I'm looking for a place to go in nature. Peeing in the woods is quite undignified and ever since I started having to pull ticks off Toby on a regular basis, I've become a bit paranoid about picking up a parasitic rider.

The most memorable going-in-nature story occurred recently, when I was out with Peter in the area around Killarney. He'd found one of his favourite types of roads - the tiny little squiggle of a boreen that only shows up on the Ordinance Survey map. It's the type of road that is barely wide enough for his car, has grass growing up the middle, and potholes big enough to swallow a mid-sized dog. It's also the type of road that makes me ask Peter 'Is this a private road?" to which he always responds 'Probably!" and I sink down in my seat and worry about getting driven off by an irate farmer with a pitchfork.

We trundled along this road, which hugged a lake on one side and a steep hill with bits of scrubby forest land on the other side, eventually having to pass through a gate. We had a few stops for photography for Peter and romping for Toby and me, then eventually we came to a gate with a No Trespassing sign. So we turned around and headed back for the main road.

I hopped out to open the gate and told Peter I was going to have a pee. Next to the gate looked like the perfect spot - a dark little warren of trees and bushes. As I was picking my way through the stinging nettles and brambles, I saw a skull a little ways into the thicket. I squinted and checked the shape of it, assuring myself that I could see horns and that it had to just be a sheep.

The next thing I saw, just beyond the skull was a bright yellow rain slicker. I knew my imagination was going to kick into overdrive, so I went in nature as fast as I could and then bounded back into the car.

"There was a skull in there, but it was okay because I saw horns. But then the next thing I saw was a rain slicker. I'm just so glad I didn't see them in reverse order, because there's no way I would have stuck around long enough to look for the horns."

Happy Halloween

2008-10-31T12:49:00.002Z

Sweet Dreams

2008-10-28T06:14:00.004Z

When The Kid is concerned that he might have nightmares, he has a method to try to prevent them. He talks and thinks about all the good dreams he could have instead, and drifts off to dreamland with happy visions in his head.

One evening, Middle Brother and The Kid were discussing the various good dreaming options available. It was suggested that The Kid might dream about being Spiderman. A reasonable suggestion as The Kid loves Superheros and who wouldn't want to dream about acrobatically gliding and swinging through the streets of New York City.

The Kid considered this suggestion, but then expressed a concern. "But Dad, what if the bad guys come and I have to fight them? The bad guys might be so scary, it could turn into a bad dream."

Middle Brother had anticipated this concern and he offered The Kid a dreaming loophole. "Ah, but you could dream that you were on vacation. Think about lying out at the beach, in your Spidey-suit, drinking ice tea."

The image of The Kid, sunbathing in a Spiderman suit while on vacation cracks me up. I think I've also found a way to prevent bad dreams.

Undecided

2008-10-27T16:22:00.005Z

Middle Brother was telling me about his experiences working the phone bank at an Obama office near Cleveland. MB explained the general outline of the script, how you call and sort of feel people out. If a voter is undecided, then you ask them if they're considering Obama. Then you sort of ease into a discussion about what issues are important to the voter or what's holding the person back from voting for Obama.

One of the things volunteers can do is send out campaign literature on the issue of importance. MB told me that there's even an entire brochure just to state, perfectly clearly and once and for all, Barack Obama is a Christian. That amazed me, that you'd have to have an entire brochure printed up to dispel the Muslim-myth.

My parents have also decided to volunteer for Obama, on the phones last week and going door-to-door next weekend. My mom reported that she made a call to a woman, ended up talking to her husband instead. When my mom asked him who he was considering voting for, he reported that he was undecided.

"Have you considered voting for Barack Obama?" asked my mother. The guy said that he'd thought about, but wasn't sure he could do it. His concern was apparently having "jihad running around in my backyard." (My mom told me that she wanted to ask what a jihad was and why he thought it would be in his backyard, but instead she did the telephone equivalent of backing away slowly.)

I related this story to Peter, who first rolled his eyes at the guy's comment, then paused and said "Wait a minute, this guy is worried about having jihad running around in his backyard but he's still undecided? That says a lot."

Agriculture Advice from The Kid

2008-10-26T15:23:00.002Z

When my mobile rang this afternoon and the display said it was an Anonymous Call, I knew it had to be my parents. They call every weekend, around the same time, and hardly anyone else comes up on my phone as Anonymous.

I answered with my customary "Good Morning, Sunshine!" and was greeted with a confident "Hi, Auntie Ann!" What a pleasant surprise - a phone call from The Kid. I was excited to ask him for agriculture advice regarding my recent pumpkin difficulties.

First, he was bursting with news. He wanted to tell me that he was wearing his clone trooper costume because he was going to Boo in the Zoo. After a detailed description of said costume, I had an opportunity to consult my favourite expert.

Me: "Hey, The Kid, I need some advice on pumpkins. Do you think you could help me out?"

The Kid: "Sure!"

Me: "I'm having a problem finding nice, big, orange pumpkins here. Do you know what I can do to get a nice, huge pumpkin to carve for Halloween?"

The Kid: "OK, what you need to do is not pick the pumpkin so soon. Leave it on the plant for as long as you can, that way it will grow bigger."

Me: "That's great advice for when I grow my own pumpkins, but right now, I can only buy them in the store. And the store only has little pumpkins and most of them are half-green and don't look very nice."

The Kid: "Why don't you just go to a pumpkin farm?"

Me: "We don't have pumpkin farms in Ireland."

The Kid: "Really? Oh. Then I guess you will have to grow your own. Just make sure you leave them on the plant for a really long time because the longer they're on the plant, the bigger they'll grow."

This is what I love about The Kid. No matter the topic, he's able to come up with cogent, practical advice without any hesitation.

Do You Have Prince Albert in a Can?

2008-10-25T21:12:00.004+01:00

I have the Magic Internet Phone, which allows me to make international calls for free. Middle Brother and I talk at least every week. By some quirk of fate, his work phone number is only two digits different than the number one of my best friends had in high school. Memorising MB's work number was incredibly simple, he works regular hours, and nearly always has a few minutes to spare.

Youngest Brother (YB) is another kettle of fish entirely. He's not one for regular communication with anyone, as near as any of his blood relations can tell. My mother says that she's convinced he never checks his voicemail. He's prone to doing things like calling my parents from the airport to tell them on he's on his way to Honduras or Guatemala.

The last time I talked to him was when he rang me in July on my birthday. We talked for an hour and agreed that we should talk more often, maybe even make it a regular thing, but that hasn't happened. He's a busy guy with lots on his mind and we've got a five hour time difference between us, so it seems like I'm condemned to spend a lifetime leaving messages for him.

There's one other thing you need to know about YB. He's a bit of a trickster, especially when it comes to the phone. He once rang MB, pretending to be a printer salesman. MB bought the act entirely.

It was a combination of this lack of regular communication and his propensity for hucksterism that led me to make this embarrasing faux pas this evening when I tried to call YB. I was stunned when the phone was picked up after three rings.

Me: Hey! YB! I can't believe I got ahold of you.
Him: Who is this?
Me: It's your sister.
Him: You have the wrong number.
Me: No I don't.
Him: Yes, you do.
Me: Beardog! Knock it off, this is your sister.
Him: Who are you trying to call?
Me: My brother, YB.
Him: This isn't your brother.
Me: It sounds like my brother.
Him: Look, my name is Chris. I live in Saint Augustine, Florida and I'm a massage therapist.
Me: Oh. Shit. I'm so sorry. You're not my brother. But he's exactly the kind of guy who would pretend that I had the wrong number, just to wind me up.
Him: Nope, sorry, you really do have the wrong number.

I hung up the phone and double-checked the number I dialed on the Magic Internet Phone against the number I had stored in my mobile. Sure enough, I'd gotten the penultimate digit wrong. Ooops.

Boxer with a Death Wish

2008-10-20T06:41:00.002+01:00

One of the most unnerving things that I've had to adjust to when driving in rural Ireland are the crazed farm dogs who apparently think it's great sport to try to herd cars. Usually, these are bored border collies and they tend to have an unsettling way of running straight at your front wheel. Every once in a while, I meet a Jack Russell terrier with delusions of grandeur, but they're the exception to the border collie rule.

I've been told by more than one person that the best thing to do is to stay the course, ignore the dog, and hope for the best. It's the dog's responsibility to keep itself alive and the dog apparently has certain expectations regarding the traveling trajectory of your car. You're more likely to hit the dog (or someone or something else) if you swerve than if you just stay the course.

There's a pair of these demonic dogs on a road I travel with some regularity. They're border collies and I call them the The Twins, even though they probably don't look anything alike. The look like twins when I'm driving and I can see them lining themselves up on the other side of this stone gateway. Their butts wiggle and they hunker down like Olympic sprinters waiting for the starter's gun.

Whenever my car passes the magical line, they both lunge out into the road. Even though I can see them in advance and I know what they're going to do, it still freaks me out every time.

Last Saturday, I was finishing up my last graveyard trips for RAOGK. I was up near Rathcormac in north County Cork and was headed home. The quickest way would have been to hop on the M8, drive down around Cork City like the early spacecrafts sling-shotting themselves around the moon, and then head up northwest to my little corner of the Middle of Nowhere. But I'm sure you can agree, the quickest way is rarely the most run way and I instead set out to bumble along little squiggles of tertiary roads and rutted farm tracks.

With the help of my trusty GPS, I was quite happily rolling up and down hills past acre after acre of farmland. Toby was in the backseat, hanging his head out the window. My car doesn't have electric windows in the back, so I always roll down the window behind the driver's side for him. That way, in a pinch, I can reach back and roll it up if necessary. Plus, it allows me to see him in my side mirror. With his hair flying and his contented yet focused expression, he looks like an early aviator in an open-cockpit airplane.

At one point in this journey, we were on a potholed, single-lane track with grass growing up the middle. I came around a corner and started up a hill, only to find a boxer standing nearly in the middle of the narrow lane. I edged over as far as I could, but was still directly on course to hit her if she didn't move. I gave the horn a little beep, but she stayed her ground.

I slowed down, hoping that she would move. When I was close enough to see every fold in her muzzle, I knew she wasn't going to move. I crept over even more into the edge of the road, so that brambles were scraping the side of my car, and bought myself enough space to pass her. I could see her house on a small rise to my left and a chubby yellow lab was lumbering down the driveway to join the fun.

The boxer ran along side my car, barking and leaping. The lab joined and took a position behind the car. Toby was going nuts in the backseat, lunging to the side window to check out the boxer, then swinging around to look at the lab. The boxer then ran along in front of my car, tossing the occasional bark over her shoulder.

I didn't like that move at all. I slowed down and beeped the horn, hoping perhaps someone would come out of the house and call off the dogs. No such luck and I knew I'd have to keep driving and trust the boxer to stay out of my way. I accelerated slowly and the boxer drifted off to the right side of my car. I used her change of lane to reclaim more of the center of the road and sped up a bit more, figuring my best bet at this point was to outrun them.

I saw the lab fall back soon after. I couldn't see the boxer in my right wing mirror or in my review, but I could still hear her barking. My foot pressed down on the accelerator and I watched my speed climb to 20 mph. The boxer breezed in front of the car again like I wasn't even moving. She almost looked like she was skateboarding in front of my car, effortlessly moving forward while looking back at me and barking.

I slowed down and she again drifted off to the right side of the car. I saw her drop back in my wing mirror and then take up on my rear bumper. At least I think she was on my rear bumper. Toby had leapt up onto the back window ledge of my little hatchback. His entire body, hackles up, filled my rear-view mirror.

I took the chance to accelerate again, pushing the car close to 25 mph. And again that crazy boxer came up along the left-hand side of my car and crossed over in front of me. I was hoping this would play out the way the previous front-of-car encounters had. I slowed a bit, allowed her to drop off on my right side and waited until I knew she was on my rear bumper. Then I gunned the car, pushing it up over 30 mph. I kept my eyes glued on the road in front of me, which was straight, offered a lot of open space, and was blessedly clear of other cars and dogs.

When Toby collapsed onto the back seat, I was pretty sure we'd lost our boxer friend. Sure enough, when I checked my mirror a final time, she was standing in the middle of the road. I didn't know boxers had that much stamina and speed, to be able to hang in there for that distance at that pace.

I thought bored border collies were scary and dangerous, but I'd take an encounter with The Twins over the boxer with a death wish any day.

My First Foray into Political Debate

2008-10-18T18:37:00.003+01:00

My undergraduate degree was in Political Science. Looking back, it wasn't the most practical option, but it was a whole lot of fun to study. My parents took me to my first political rally before I was even born, so I suppose it should be no surprise that I grew up to be fascinated in all things political.

My first political memory is from the 1980 campaign, when I was an 8-year-old third-grader. I was in the school bathroom with a classmate and we were washing our hands. Looking back as an adult, I've no idea how we ever got onto the topic, but at the time, it was the most natural thing to discuss.

The classmate told me that she was for Ronald Reagan and so were her parents. I shrugged and said that I was for Jimmy Carter and so were my parents. The classmate's mouth dropped open and she looked at me with a combination of horror and pity. "But you can't be for Jimmy Carter! My parents told me that Jimmy Carter kills babies."

This revelation puzzled me. "How does Jimmy Carter kill babies?" Her response was a curt "I don't know. He just does." So I tried to figure it out myself. Was it like a Bible story, like when the Pharaoh decreed all the boy babies would be killed? Did he creep into nurseries and smother babies himself?

The thought of it, of Jimmy Carter killing babies, just didn't square up with what I knew of him from the television. He seemed like a nice man, a gentle guy. He had a daughter of his own, after all, who wasn't that much older than we were. He couldn't be so against kids that he would kill babies.

Maybe in this day and age, I would go on the Internet to fact check my classmate's claim. But back in the day, there was only one arbiter of fact at my disposal - my dad.

I know that I asked him, but I can't remember what he told me. I asked my dad today what he told me. He remembered my reporting the story to him that day, but he couldn't remember what he'd said either. Today, he said "I probably just told you that was absolute nonsense and that she didn't know anything and that you shouldn't listen to her."

I don't know what this classmate is doing these days. Her parents and my parents used to be friendly, but I think the last time I asked after her was at least 10 years ago. I think my mom told me that she was moving to Nashville to try to be a country singer. Looking at the election this year, I think her talents would probably be better spent as a maker of negative ads.

Life is Better Inside My Head

2008-10-15T18:51:00.003+01:00

A few miles outside Tralee is a garden centre and nursery called Ballyseedy. I'd driven past it a few times in my travels and always had a bit of a chuckle over the name. Last weekend, I was in the area and saw that they had a sign up advertising their "Halloween Howl."

My inner child perked up at the mention of Halloween in conjunction with a garden centre. One of my largest disappointments of life in Ireland is the lack of decent pumpkins and Halloween activities. I used to look forward to October for our yearly pilgrimage to Honey Hill Orchard. Now I spend the shorter evenings lamenting the pumpkin-shaped hole in my life.

But the Halloween Howl sign, it gave me hope. I pictured it perfectly in my head. It looked a big like Mapleside, the place my parents took me when I was a kid. Not as big or exciting as Honey Hill, but full of giant pumpkins and hay bales and all the accoutrement of Halloween. I knew I probably couldn't count on a roaring fire or hot apple cider, but I held out hope for big, gregarious pumpkins. If the Halloween Howl panned out, we might have a new tradition to look forward to each October.

I had a few stops to make before I went into Ballyseedy to check out the Halloween Howl. The place is much more posh inside than your average nursery and garden centre. I suppose that should have been my first clue.

My second clue was that the Halloween Howl was indoors and seemed to consist of a large tent filled with crappy costumes and cheap decorations. In front of the tent was a display of decorative pumpkins. They were tiny, sad little creatures, not much bigger than a baby's head. Half of them were still mostly green.

My final clue, the great big bucket of water over my imagination fire, was when I asked one of the workers outdoors if they had pumpkins. "Ah yes, sure we do. I'm only after seeing them on the pallets this morning." Then he proudly marched me inside, directly to the aforementioned pathetic display of pumpkin produce.

I stopped at the Tesco on the way home, but they were sold out of the large pumpkins so I decided to hold out for another week. Next year, I'm going to have to get off my butt and plant my own damn pumpkins. That's going to have to be my new Halloween tradition.

P.S. - If you're lucky enough to be in the Chicago area, you owe it to yourself to visit Honey Hill. You also owe it to yourself to visit Richardson Farm, home to the world's largest corn maze.

P.P.S - Happy Anniversary, Big B. I'd marry you all over again. In fact, I already have. :)

In a Grave State of Mind

2008-10-12T14:00:00.003+01:00

While we're on the topic of decidedly depressing thoughts, like retirement, let's talk about death. Yes, it's all fun, fun, fun here at For the Long Run.

Earlier this year, I signed up as a volunteer for Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK). As the name suggests, RAOGK volunteers help people out with genealogical research. I found out about them from a radio interview with the author A.M. Holmes and thought it sounded interesting. One of the volunteer areas is going to cemeteries to take pictures of tombstones. Since I'm not particularly interested in the X begat Y family tree aspect of genealogy, I thought that being a cemetery volunteer would be a better option for me.

I pictured this as a way to help someone out whilst exploring Counties Cork and Kerry. In my imagination, requesters would provide accurate and precise locations for their ancestors and then I'd zip out to take the photographs. In reality, this hardly ever happens. 85% of the requests I've gotten have been for assistance obtaining parish records or other genealogical research, which isn't my thing. 5% of the requests have been bizarre, off-the-wall, or indecipherable questions.

My favourite in the bizarre category was from a guy who wrote:

HELLO I JUST HAVE A QUESTION HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF WATERFRONT I HAVE TWO DOCUMENTS ONE SAYS WATERFRONT THE OTHER TIPPERARY MAYBE WATERFRONT IS NEAR THERE I HOPE YOU CAN HELP ME OUT PLEASE AND THANK YOU

I don't know why he was shouting at me and I don't know what he was talking about. My response was a puzzled (and I hope polite) "Sorry, I don't know of waterfront, though I'd be surprised if it were in Tipperary seeing as how the county is landlocked. Could you possibly mean Waterford, which is both a county and a city. County Waterford borders County Tipperary. Perhaps a Google search could help you?"

Only 10% of the requests I've gotten have been for cemetery visits and of those, only one person had the exact row location for the relative. It's been quite an adventure showing up at these small, poorly maintained, ancient cemeteries and stumbling through them, hoping to find a particular tombstone from 1829.

It's also made me think about things I've never thought about before. It's quite unnerving to see these poorly maintained gravesites, especially since the Irish tend to be quite reverential about their dead. One of the Christmas traditions here is to go to the graves of your relatives. When you walk through an Irish cemetery, the newer graves are always meticulously kept. I've even found some that were landscaped more nicely than our house in Wheaton.

To wander around and see graves from the turn of the century that are poorly maintained isn't particularly surprising. But it is odd and peculiarly distressing to see a recent grave in poor repair. It bespeaks a person who is alone in death and may also have been alone in life.

And all of this gets me thinking about what would happen to me if I died tomorrow. About how I'd have nothing to show for the last 35 years. No remarkable accomplishments. No great achievements. No children. Nothing.

I can push these thoughts out of my mind pretty easily. I'm relatively young, fit, healthy, and have excellent genes. My Nana Anna lived to be 90 and a half, after all. Unless I become 'carnage on the roads,' My goal is to live to at least 100. I still have time to make my mark on the world, to leave behind some passably entertaining books or something of lasting value.

But outliving everyone has its own sadness. What happens if you're the last one standing? If you've no children to bury you? If you've no friends to come to your funeral? I want to be cremated, but what happens if there's no one left to pick up my ashes?

Thoughts like this freak me out. Thoughts like this are the reason I will shortly be resigning my post as a RAOGK volunteer. I thought that this lark would be a great way to find interesting places in the surrounding countryside. I never expected to get a window into my own thoughts and fears about death.

Risk Adverse

2008-10-10T16:47:00.006+01:00

I don't really like thinking about retirement. Back when we lived in Chicago, I participated in a focus group for the Gallup organization. (I believe they were working on behalf of a government agency.) The focus of the group was retirement planning and 401(k) participation. The twelve participants had two things in common: all of us were willing to give up two hours of our time for $125 and none of us were actively saving for retirement.

I had a good excuse. I was only 26, fairly recently married, just in my first Grown-Up Job. I was more worried about paying my student loans than saving for retirement. We each had to go around and talk about what we thought of when we thought of retirement. Most people had grand, idyllic scenarios of golf and relaxing in warmer climates.

"When I think of retirement, I get quite anxious and I don't want to think about it because I know I'm not doing anything for it and I'm terrified that I'm going to have to eat cat food so that I'll be able to afford my medication."

Yes, it all came out in a big rush, just like that. Because when I get anxious, I talk fast and in a stream of consciousness. I want to get the thoughts out of my head as quickly as possible and then think about something else.

The upshot of this focus group was that I did start participating in my company's 401(k) program. Not very much, but at least it was something. Then I got a new job at a company that wasn't quite a start-up but was swimming in $24 million of venture capital. The slick HR guy extolled the virtues of maintaining an aggressive portfolio. He'd made something like 35% return on his 401(k) investment in the last year.

I rolled over my meager portfolio and selected the very aggressive growth funds from the prospectus. This was in February of 2000. By November of 2000, the company had imploded, I was out of a job, and I had lost half of what I'd put into my 401(k). In Joe Biden style, let me repeat that. I lost half of my actual 401(k) contribution, not half of its mystical imaginary money value.

It was a valuable lesson about risk. And it was much better to learn it at 28 than it would have been to learn it at 58. Fast forward now to March of this year. Just before Easter, I signed up for my company's pension plan. As near as I can figure the Irish system, there's a public pension, which is similar to Social Security, and then employers can offer pension plans, which can be sort of like a 401(k). You contribute a certain percentage of your salary, your employer contributes, and then you make designation for which funds you want the money to go into.

I was out the day that the kindly people from the pension company came, so I missed all of the Important Advice that they distributed. I can't remember the exact rationale I used when I made my designations, but I think my breakdown went something like 10% aggressive risk, 30% high-moderate risk, 40% moderate-low risk, and 20% safe. Whatever it was, I was pleased with my selections.

I spend pretty much all day, every day listening to NPR, either by streaming it online or by downloading podcasts to my IPod shuffle. At the time, the talk was dominated by news of financial difficulties due to the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, the soaring gas prices, the rapidly inflating prices of everything else, and the weakening of the dollar.

I'm no economist, but it didn't sound good to me. What particularly scared me was that because all of these credit-default swap and mortgage-backed securities and credit derivative thingies were pretty much unregulated and privately traded, no one knew what was on anyone else's books. I think it was Warren Buffett who observed that "you don't know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out."

After I made my designations for my pension, I pretty much forgot about it. Until the office administrator told me that a letter had come from the pension fund administrator. You might think that this letter would have been marked "personal and confidential" and addressed to me. Nope. This letter was addressed to the pensions contact person in our office and it acknowledged receipt of all the pension paperwork for the company. Then it went on to name me in particular and express concern that my portfolio was too risk-adverse for a person of my age, that it was a horrible mistake to have chosen such conservative allocations, and that I should contact her immediately to remedy the situation.

I was fuming mad. Not only had this person impugned my financial acumen, she'd also done the equivalent of posting the allocation in the company canteen. I boiled about it for a little bit and then thought about what she'd said. Yes, it was fairly risk adverse. And I'm old enough to be flattered about the 'person of my age' comment, in the given context. But I still felt that things were too unsettled, that too many smart people were saying that Bad Things Could Happen.

So I drafted a snarky letter about sharing personal concerns with an entire workplace, but I never sent it. To send it would be to invite a dialogue with this person and I did not want to have that dialogue. I did not want to think about retirement. I would not like to in a box, I would not like to with a fox. I would not like it Ms. Judgment, I won't think about retirement.

After the last two weeks, I could feel all smug and pleased with self for having a slight clue about the depths of the financial predicament. I could, except that I feel too depressed and unsettled and nervous. But at least I have a good glimmer of hope that should I ever be able to retire, I will not have to decide between medication and cat food, and not just because medication in Ireland is free if you're over 65.

If you're still confused about how we ended up in this dark place, I encourage you to check out the following NPR shows:

Fresh Air - Our Confusing Economy, Explained- from April, does what it says on the tin.

Fresh Air - Was Adult Supervision Needed on Wall Street? - from September, recorded just after Lehman Brothers collapsed

Fresh Air - The Wall Street Bailout, Conflict of Interest - also from September, a critical look at the initial $700billion bailout plan

This American Life - The Giant Pool of Money - from May, explanation of how the subprime mortgage meltdown effects the wider economy

This American Life - Another Frightening Show About the Economy - from last week, a truly excellent, in-depth explanation of how we got here

Travels with Toby

2008-10-06T16:30:00.004+01:00

"Hey Toby, do you want to go on a holiday? Who wants to go on a holiday?"

Toby's ears perked up but his face belied the confusion of a dog with a limited English vocabulary. He knew enough to know that 'do you want to go...' and 'who wants to...' usually result in the best things in life, namely food, walks, and car rides. But he also knew that sometimes these seemingly great things had bad side effects, like the car ride that ends at the kennels or the cheese that is only given after a bath.

Toby didn't know it when we asked him, but 'holiday' was going to get filed under the best things in life. The plan was to rent a cottage near Killarney so Peter could spend a week beefing up his photography portfolio. I'd go with him for the weekend and also take a few days off at the end of the week.

I asked Peter to look for a cottage that allowed dogs so that Toby could have his first holiday. Even though a photography field trip is not a holiday, Toby's a dog, so any day he's outside his usual element is a spectacular adventure. The place Peter found was perfect - an old farm cottage with a cosy stone fireplace. It was up in the hills, at the end of a narrow, pot-holed farm track of a road. (If anyone's looking for a cottage to rent in the Killarney area, send me an email and I'll give you these people's contact information.)

When I let Toby out of the car, he went nuts examining all of the interesting new smells. The stone outbuilding held a surprise, a sweet little farm dog called Rosie. She and Toby didn't quite know what to make of each other and seemed to eventually settled into a sort of doggie detente.

When we could, Toby and I accompanied Peter on his searches for good photo-taking locations. Toby took great joy in hanging his head out the window. He was especially mystified by the jaunting cars and would whip his head back to check out the horses. When we got to a location, Peter would scout it out and Toby and I would dutifully tag along.

Sometimes, Toby hit the jackpot and would get to romp and frolic off-leash. We especially enjoyed Rossbeigh Beach, a fantastic stretch of beach that includes an area of moderately high sand dunes, which give way to waist-high grasslands. Toby and I found a piece of driftwood and played fetch for ages. I'd toss the stick way up into the dunes and Toby would scramble after it.

Then I decided to scramble up after him and chuck the stick into the tall grass. Toby went bounding off after it, excited, but couldn't quite locate it. It took both of us stumbling around in the tall grass to find it.

Other times, Toby had to wait patiently in the car or on the leash for Peter to get his work done. Toby took these downtimes in stride, although his copious sighs and little whinges always let us know what his preference would be.

The best time we had was on our last day when we hiked into the Hag's Glen, near the base of Carrantuohill, Ireland's highest mountain. The hike had just about everything a dog could want - bogland to squish through, rocks to scamper over, sheep to watch, and rivers to cross. You may remember that we used to have trouble with Toby and sheep. I had grave reservations about using the shock collar to train him to stay away from sheep, so Peter took care of it.

The training didn't take very long at all. A few shocks and Toby quickly figured out that as fun as they looked, sheep were not worth it. He's now quite reliable around sheep. He knows exactly where they are. He knows exactly how much he wants to chase them. But he knows exactly how wrong that would be and that Bad Things would happen. I don't know if I'd trust him 100% if he were by himself, or even if it were just me and him, but when Peter is around, Toby knows where his place is regarding sheep.

About the only thing that the hike to Hag's Glen did not have was a supply of sticks. Toby searched for one, but since there are no trees, it was pretty difficult to find a stick. He did find a nice specimen of bog oak, but that was fairly big and well-rooted. When we got to the flat plains just before the two lakes in the glen, Toby found some burned up firewood that he thought would do nicely as fetching sticks. In actuality, well, not so much. The sticks just disintegrated and left black cinders everywhere.

In the evenings, Peter would build a fire and we would relax after a long day of work (for Peter) or scampering around being silly (for Toby and me). Toby enjoyed the warmth of the fire, but was quite suspicious of the sounds it made, especially the periodic crackles and snaps. And he really didn't like when the wood would give way and collapse.

This wasn't just Toby's first holiday. It was also our first outing with a dog. Sure, we'd take Kodiak and Caper to visit my family in Ohio, but that's not quite the same thing as a holiday or photography field trip. Having him around increased the fun of the outing exponentially. You couldn't help but feel happy when you saw the absolute joy he had running unfettered and exploring new smells and sights. I cannot wait until the next time we can take Toby on holiday.

Toby's New Friends

2008-10-03T04:48:00.000+01:00

Party Line

2008-10-01T14:14:00.000+01:00

I do not like parties. It's not that I'm a totally asocial hermit who wants to spend the rest of her life living in a cave, wearing moth-eaten sweaters and letting all personal hygiene fall by the wayside. I like having friends. I like getting together with my friends.

But I like to get together and do something with my friends. Bowling. Paintball. Running Around and Hitting Things with Sticks. I'm up for quieter pursuits too, like painting-your-own-pottery or going to the movies. But the idea of just standing around and talking to people for hours does not appeal to me one bit. I always end up feeling awkward and out of place.

The older I get, the less parties appeal to me. (Perhaps not coincidentally, the older I get, the less I drink alcohol.) Christmas parties are the bane of my existence, particularly the work variety. It's just a big staff meeting with drink and dancing. I enjoy my co-workers, but I already get to enjoy them 40-hours a week. Let's keep a little mystery in our relationship.

Peter seems to really enjoy parties. He enjoys all the conversations and debates. He's understanding though and he knows I have a limited number of social interactions in me. My party attendance rate has probably hovered somewhere around 50%. And since we moved to the Middle of Nowhere, it's become something of a moot point since all of our friends are back in Dublin.

This year, I have implemented a no-party policy. Up until this year, I've dodged and danced, come up with excuses, negotiated attendance. ("OK, I'll go to the party with you, but unless I'm having a fabulous time, I'm going to leave at 11.") The approach wasn't very satisfying for anyone. I hated coming up with excuses and I'm a terrible liar.

Like every policy in the world, this one also has an exception - weddings of close friends. I can't explain it, but I love weddings and have a great time at them. In July, Middle Brother and I had so much fun at my high school friend K's wedding. I even danced, which is something that rarely happens in public since I have to co-ordination of a drunken hippo on roller skates.

The first test of my no-party policy came last month, when my football team won the county final. It was easy, in that I was able to do send my regrets via text and didn't actually have to speak to anyone. The coach was understanding about it and a teammate called when the team was on the way to the second stage of the celebration, the parade into town. Unfortunately, at that point, it was 9.30 and my pajama-clad body was just about to go to sleep.

After seeing pictures of the team riding through town on the back of a truck and the celebratory bonfires, I felt like I'd maybe missed out on something special and exciting. But my dislike of standing around awkwardly and how miserable that makes me outweighs the regret I have about skipping the parties. (I found out later they were in the pub until 2.30 and then at someone's house until 6. I'd not have been able for any of that.) I realise this makes me something of an oddity - the only person in the world who will weasel out of parties while quite happily attending training sessions - but I'm comfortable with my decisions.

The first real test of the no-party policy will happen soon: the office Christmas party. I missed it last year because they had it the day that I needed to go to Dublin for the start of the Cox Family Christmas celebrations. I don't want to have to lie or invent excuses. I want to just be able to say "Thanks for the invitation, but I won't be able to attend."

Six Things in Six Years Meme

2008-09-30T16:31:00.004+01:00

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee recently tagged me to do a meme of six random interesting things about me. The problem here is that A.) I'm not that interesting and B.) I've been blogging for three years, so I've been tagged with this meme or a similar one several times. I've already posted Seven Random Things About Me and embarrassed myself by listing Eight Dumb Things I've Said, Done, or Thought.

I decided after those two that any X Things About Me memes would require a twist. I'd need to find a unique angle. (Hey, blame the magazine article writer in me.) This is how I came up with Seven Things About the Dearly Departed Kodiak.

So, I was trying to find my angle when I realised that my age is divisible by six, giving me the magic number six. (What's that called again - a square root or something. Like the square root of my age is six, maybe I'm a math moron.) I realised that my angle could be to pin the revelations to certain years, each six years apart.

1. 1978 was the year Youngest Brother (YB) was born. I was convinced he was a girl because I wanted a sister more than anything in the world. (OK, maybe I wanted a pony more, but not much more.) I already had a little brother, why would I want another one? So stubborn was I in my insistence that I get a sister, I refused to believe that YB was a boy. My mother had to prove it me.

2. 1984 was the year I made a terrible decision that dictated the course of my social life for the next several years, pretty much guaranteeing I would grow up to be the poster child for 'Sweet 16 and Never Been Kissed.' I got the world's worst haircut. Words really can't describe it, but if I had to put a title on it, I'd say it was a French Poodle's Afro Mullet.

3. 1990 was the year I got drunk for the first time (at a keg party in a little house off-campus from Ohio University). Not coincidentally, it is also the year that I learned that light beer does not mean less alcohol.

4. 1996 was the year I was secretly married, but you already know about that. What few people know is that it was the year of my first grown-up job. I worked at a law firm as a general purpose IT person. It paid well, was on the 82nd floor of the Sear's Tower, and I had my very own office with a window. I started after Thanksgiving and within two weeks, I was beginning to field all sorts of calls from creditors. They were for my boss and sounded Very Serious. (I was an employee of the boss's consulting firm, not of the law firm.)

Shortly after Christmas, I learned the boss was under investigation for fraud. He called me into his office and told me I had to commit 100% to the job regardless of the investigation or avoid having the door hit my ass on the way out. I had a long weekend to decide and chose the door, which resulted in a awkward 'you can't quit, you're fired' sort of conversation.

A month went by with no paycheck, so I researched the law and used my law school education to draft a scary-sounding legal letter. After getting the letter, he called and left a message on my voicemail, saying 'About your paycheck, you'll get paid after I've had a chance to double-check all of your time records because everyone knows you're a fat-assed loser.' Any sting that he hoped to achieve by that comment was allieviated by the payched that arrived the next day via FedEx.

5. 2002 was the year we bought our first house, the little house in deep in the heart of Republican DuPage County. Since we were living in an apartment, we were able to arrange with the landlord to break our lease and move out a few weeks after the closing. On closing day, I was very excited, but I was concerned. It did not look like the people were going to be out of our house before the close. We were told that they couldn't move into their new place until they closed on our place. After the closing, we gave them a few hours to move out. Our plan was to order pizza and have a picnic on the floor of our new house.

The people were not moved out of our house when we were returned, so we went out to dinner. When we went back again, they still weren't moved out. They had a pool table and hadn't realised that you needed specialised tools to take it apart. Although our real estate agent told us that we could charge them rent, we told them just to get it out as soon as possible. Two days later it was still in the house, along with assorted other boxes and furniture.

Our real estate agent said we were having our good nature taken advantage of. She issued an ultimatum on our behalf - the locks are getting changed on Friday at noon, move it or lose it. When I arrived on Friday, I expected to find the pool table still in the living room. It was gone. The house was at last fully, truly ours and we had our pizza party finally, just five days late.

6. 2008 was the most difficult year to think of something to write about, but I'd say it was the year I first exercised my right as an Irish citizen to vote. I cast a ballot in the Lisbon Treaty Referendum this past May. This is also the year that I'm voting in a US Presidential Election as an ex-pat.

TV Debut

2008-09-24T15:27:00.003+01:00

Tomorrow marks Peter's television debut. Well, sort of. He spent a lot of this summer working as the photographer and technical adviser for an Irish-language programme about photography. While the programme will feature Peter's car, photography equipment, and technical expertise, it will not feature the man himself.

Be that as it may, he still enjoyed the work and we're both very excited to see the final product. The premise is that the presenter meets up with an Irish-language celebrity, who names several places in Ireland of personal interest or import. They then visit these places, learn a little about photography, and take pictures. At the end, there's a presentation where the celebrity gets to pick from five photographs taken during the show.

If you're in Ireland, the show is called I bhFócas and is on TG4 at 8pm on Thursdays, starting tomorrow (25 September).

If you're outside of Ireland, you still may be able to watch online, although the timing might be tricky since 8pm Irish time is 3pm Eastern US Time. Visit the TG4 website and click the TG4 Live button at the top of the page or the WebTV TG4 Live button in the TV listings column on the front page.

And if you just can't wait, you can have a peak at the title sequence.

The Wire

2008-09-23T06:34:00.002+01:00

I recently became hooked on The Wire. I know I'm about five years behind the rest of the world, but then, if you know me, this isn't a surprise. The writing is fantastic - the characters are richly drawn, believable, full of the contradictions and foibles that make life interesting. No one is good or bad - every personality is textured and authentic.

The other draw of the show is that it creates a world so different from the ones I've lived in. The closest I've come to 'the urban crime environment' is Camden, New Jersey and I don't really think it counts since I was living in the cocoon of the Rutgers campus.

I did visit such a world once, briefly, when I spent a day with Youngest Brother (YB) at a construction site in a neighbourhood near Howard University in Washington, DC. YB spent two years in the Americorps program, building houses with Habitat for Humanity. The build near Howard was a bit of different for the program because they were renovating two row houses. Ordinarily, Habitat buys sites and builds from scratch.

One of the row houses was on the end of the row, with an alley running along its side. The local drug dealers often used this alley to stash their drugs, while they worked the corner about 50 yards up the street. I can't remember how long I was on the renovation site before I asked YB if that was really drug dealing going on. He sighed and shrugged his shoulders. It's apparently best if you don't notice too much.

I was fascinated by all of this. It was a regular neighbourhood, with kids playing on the street and neighbours sitting on their porches. But no one seemed to notice the there were drug deals happening right out in the open.

A few months later, YB told this story:

Two rich high school kids from one of the ritzier areas of Washington, somewhere like Georgetown, were sentenced with community service for a youthful indiscretion-type of misdemeanor. I think it was underage drinking or possession of a minute quantity of pot. So the Frat Boys show up at the Habitat site to put in their community service.

They were awful workers, skiving off and not taking anything seriously. They had an attitude of entitlement and acted like showing up was enough to meet the conditions of their community service. They were such bad workers, no one was really surprised when they called it a day and left the site early.

One of the drug dealers approached YB the next day and informed him that the Frat Boys had stolen their stash from the alley. YB apologised profusely, explaining that the Frat Boys were just some random volunteers who showed up to do some community service. YB didn't know them or anything about them.

The drug dealer was all calmness and reason. "Listen, I could take out what happened on y'all, mess up your houses or your people, but I'm not going to. I respect what you're doing, trying to help our community. But next time, man, you gotta be more careful about who you bring into our neighbourhood."

There's No Right Field in the GAA

2008-09-20T06:37:00.000+01:00

I was about ten when my parents signed me up for a summer softball league. I went to the first practise very excited to find out what position I would get to play. All of the other girls had been playing for several years and it didn't take me long to realise that I was miserable at it. No co-ordination at all. It was determined that I would be the catcher because no one else wanted to crouch behind the plate for half the game, wearing the sticky and smelly facemask.

It was a long summer and our team lost every game. I got a few walks because I was short enough to barely have a strike zone. My big victory came in the last game, when I actually managed to put the bat on the ball, resulting in a little dribbler in front of the plate. I could run fast and I did, managing to eke out my first and only base hit of the season. I played for several more summers, improving with each year until I ended up a versatile infielder and a dependable extra-base hitter.

Middle Brother, being a boy, got to play baseball. I was especially jealous when he moved into the league where they started throwing overhand. It was so not fair that girls were stuck playing softball while the boys got to play baseball, where they got to pitch like major leaguers and steal bases. If youth is wasted on the young, baseball was wasted on MB. It just wasn't his thing.

MB and another kid, who I will call Joshua Perkins (because I don't want to use his real name, but I cannot think of this kid without using his full name), took turns playing in right field, which is the leper colony of youth sports. It's the place to which you are exiled when you've no interest or ability in baseball. The right fielder is the kid most likely to sit down and play in the dirt. He's also the kid most likely to wear his baseball glove as a hat or just wander right off the field. (I'm not saying MB did any of these things personally, I'm just saying that these are the sorts of shenanigans that go on in right field.)

Joshua Perkins had something wrong with his muscles. His mother explained it to me once, but I don't remember the name for it. His muscles were like really tight rubber bands and that made it extremely difficult for him to co-ordinate and move his arms and legs. It gave him the shuffling gait of an old man, which, combined with his coke-bottle glasses that he wore strapped to his head, made him a target for all sorts of bullying and abuse.

But my memory is that Joshua Perkins really seemed to enjoy baseball. (MB can correct me on this if I've strapped on my own rose-tinted coke bottle glasses for this look into the past.) I remember him being quite smiley as he shambled out to right field or shuffled back to the bench after striking out.

I hadn't thought about Joshua Perkins for years. But then in the middle of the summer, during a particularly grueling football practise, I realised that I was Joshua Perkins, albeit without the muscle condition. In my case, it's my age and lack of speed that have me trailing along after everyone else. But I still go to practises. I still try my best but I'm not nearly as cheerful as Joshua Perkins.

There's only one problem with this analogy. There's no right field in GAA sports. I tend to get stuck in the forward line, since that minimises the damage I can do to my own team. But there's no place with quite the same lack of action as right field.

Last Sunday, I had the honour and joy of sitting on the bench and watching my team win the Intermediate County Football championship. I enjoyed the game immensely because the girls played great and the victory was an special achievement, since it was their third county win in a row. (And they've had to move up to the next level with each win, so it's an extra challenge to win consecutive championships.) After the final whistle went, I joined my team on the field, feeling every inch the Joshua Perkins - cheerful and smiley, part of the team but slightly apart, but somehow comfortable and content with that.

Too Smart By Half

2008-09-11T05:58:00.003+01:00

In the evenings, we feed Toby after we have our dinner. Toby is well aware of this routine and spends his evenings watching us, waiting for us to make a move toward the laundry room, where his food is stored.

Toby has excellent mealtime manners. He knows that he needs to sit and wait until he's told 'Go eat'. He's learned the difference between 'go eat' and 'gopher'. He's even able to sit and wait while we leave the room. (And sometimes, on rare occasions, Peter has forgotten Toby was waiting and the dog has sat there for minutes, which has to feel like lifetimes to a hungry dog.) In fact, Toby has so associated being well-behaved with eating, his go-to begging move is to sit down.

Yesterday, we went into the kitchen after dinner and Toby was alternating between prancing frantically and sitting, as if to say 'I'm hungry and I'm ready'. When that didn't work, he ran up to Peter and sat down, looking up with an urgent expression. Then Toby ran into the laundry room, ran out toward his food dish, then ran back to Peter, sat down and looked up at him with that same urgent expression. The message was as clear as if the dog had suddenly learned to speak English.

Peter looked at him with amazement and amusement. "Did you see that? Toby, that was great." Then Peter's voice took on a tinge of regret. "But you know, this means I'm going to have to wait a little bit longer, because I can't let you think you can tell me what to do."

Dividends of Labour

2008-09-10T06:17:00.000+01:00

I don't agree with much the Catholic Church does, but I do think they're onto a winner with their mandatory pre-marriage education and counseling course. We'd already been married eight years by the time we took the class, so the horse had well and truly bolted at that point, but I think it would have been quite helpful. The course makes you think about things like your family of origin (their phrase, not mine) and how your experiences have set up your expectations about marriage and family life.

Before my parents were married, my dad's mother took my mother aside to impart some very important information. "He knows how to use a washing machine and how to clean a bathroom. Don't let him tell you any different." As a result, my dad has always cleaned the bathroom and done the laundry. My mother cooked and ran the household, but my family of origin model included the man helping out (and in two of the least favourite areas.)

While my life experiences set me up to believe that the husband did an equal amount (or at least close to an equal amount) of housework, Peter's life experience was pretty much completely the opposite. His parents are quite a bit older than mine and they grew up in a completely different world. Peter's mom once told me that Tom had never changed a nappie, not with any of their four children. Housework was the woman's domain and having a job was the man's contribution. A woman might work outside the home as Noirin did, as a teacher, but that was a fairly new development.

When Peter and I were first married, we struggled with issues like the division of household labour. The pattern we fell into is that the place would get clean and then, like the House of Usher, it would inexorably deteriorate into chaos. We'd get it clean and then repeat the pattern. Peter's grand plan was to outsource the cleaning duties, but I was never comfortable with that. I was, however, completely comfortable with outsourcing the laundry, as I hated folding it and found the apartment's laundry room a little creepy.

So we've muddled along throughout our marriage, making things up as we went along. It works out pretty well. The big rule is dinner - whoever doesn't cook, cleans up. I've grown into a pretty good cook and Peter is a champion kitchen tidier. We both take responsibilities for tidying up and keeping the place ticking over in a decent state. Every few months, I go crazy and end up scrubbing the baseboards with a toothbrush.

However, we had two trouble zones - the laundry and the kitchen floor. We both hate folding laundry and for just having two of us in this household, we seem to produce an obscene amount of laundry. Maybe that's just my perception of it, because our washer is so small. When I was visiting Cleveland, I put what would have been a bursting load of laundry for us into my parents' washing machine and it didn't even amount to half a load.

The kitchen floor....well....it never looks clean. It doesn't matter how hard you work on it, it consists of some kind of off-white stone tile with a surface that's full of grooves and ridges, which act as dirt collectors. Add a big shaggy dog and a yearly rainfall that's measured in feet and, well, you have a constantly filthy kitchen floor. I once spent hours cleaning the floor with a toothbrush and a squeegee and it didn't even look clean after that.

I grew to hate the kitchen floor with a viciousness that seemed a little ridiculous, given that it's an inanimate object with no ill intentions toward me. The laundry occasionally piling up was an annoyance. The kitchen floor was a nemesis. Especially given the fact that Peter has students coming to the house regularly, so it needs to look presentable.

One evening this summer, all the frustration came to a boil. Peter had done laundry, but had forgotten to move it from the washer to the dryer. I had noted that he'd forgotten about it, but was curious to see how long it would take him to remember. The next day, he went to put more laundry in and found the washed load, damp and not exactly smelling fresh.

We had a discussion about the laundry, about how we both hated doing it, about what we could do to solve the problem. I offered Peter a deal - if he took full and complete responsibility for the kitchen floor (both sweeping and mopping), I would take full and complete responsibility for all of the laundry, including folding. He pondered the option, considered it, and raised an issue. What if he was really busy and wouldn't have a chance to do it before a workshop?

Easy, I told him, in that case, I'd do it for him, for the bargain price of just 20 euro. I figured it was a fair price - high enough that he'd think carefully about asking me to do it, yet low enough to be affordable.

This deal has been in place for a few months now and it's worked out quite well. Peter's been excellent about keeping up with the floor (it cracks me up when he says 'Look at my floor? What happened to my nice, clean floor') I don't mind doing the laundry, since it means that I no longer have the floor nemesis. I've been able to completely shut off how I feel about the floor. It's Not My Problem anymore. I'm only 20 euro richer so far, but I am so much more relaxed and happier. It was our perfect solution to our problem.

All Hail the Opposable Thumbs

2008-08-28T15:24:00.003+01:00

Peter and I have slightly differing levels of comfort when it comes to the topic of disciplining our dog. If this was actual child parenting we were talking about, he'd be more of a spanker and I'd be more of a time-out giver. In terms of dealing with dogs, this means Peter's more likely to go with physical corrections while I'm more likely to put the dog out of the room.

It's just a different style, but that style combined with innate personality led to a little problem in pack order with Toby. Without a doubt, Toby saw Peter as The Boss. But Toby definitely saw himself as the Assistant Regional Manager. No matter how hard I tried to explain to him that he was an assistant to the regional manager, he didn't quite get it.

With some dogs, this might not have been a problem. With Toby's sensitive disposition, it was a problem. Toby felt that if it were just me and him, then he was the boss. He made poor decisions when he thought he was the boss (like trying to protect me from old ladies and puppies.) He also didn't want to be the boss.

Being the boss gave Toby anxieties, which he funneled into chasing his tail and making high-pitched whining noises at me. It was not a pleasant experience for either of us. Peter kept telling me that I had to convince Toby that I was in charge, that I was more forceful than he was, but I wasn't willing or able to make the dog think I could hurt him.

There had to be a language that dogs speak, other than force. Turns out, there is.
Two weeks ago, I was listening to the Good Dog Podcast, which had an interview with Penny Locke, who calls herself a dog listener. Her specialty is acting as a sort of interpreter between dogs and their humans, to train the humans to understand how to communicate in a way that dogs will understand.

My big take-away lesson from the podcast was that dogs understand the idea of resources. Whoever controls the resources is in charge. We'd already implemented one concept of resource management purely as part of good canine manners. Toby only eats when he is told to eat. He only takes a treat from the hand when he's told to take the treat. I once dropped an entire glass pan of lasagna on the floor and sat there, drooling and sniffing the air, but he never budged.

Penny pointed out that another resource in a dog's life is the open door. She suggested standing in front of the door, with your hand on the door handle and just wait for your dog to sit. When the dog sits, start to open the door, but stop immediately if the dog even so much as leans forward. Don't say anything. Let the dog figure this out for himself.

I decided to start doing this with Toby. And not just with the door to the outside. I've been quite consistent in doing this with every closed door in Toby's life. Sometimes (like when I wake up in the morning) I nearly forget, but I've been concentrating hard on getting it right.

This small modification in my behaviour has caused a tremendous change in Toby's behaviour. He is so much more relaxed and calm. Peter was out of town one night last week and that was always a recipe for tail-chasing disaster. Not so, this time. Even though Toby spent most of the day by himself, he was still calm and manageable. He didn't whine for attention or chase his tail or pace around hyperventilating.

I'm so pleased that I've been able to find a way to tell Toby that it's okay, he doesn't need to make any decisions. I'm here and I'm well capable of looking after both of us.

Biting Off More Than He Can Chew

2008-08-26T16:55:00.006+01:00

Toby loves sticks. When we take him the forest park, he will chase a stick just about anywhere. He'll leap into water without much thought about how deep it might be. His focus is entirely on the stick.

I like throwing a stick into a pile of other sticks. Toby always comes back with the original stick. He will accept no substitutes. "Close enough for government work" is not part of Toby's vocabulary.

When Toby retrieves a stick, he's the King of the World. He prances with joy and pride. He's accomplished his mission and he knows it.

Toby especially loves large sticks. I'm talking about tree trunks, fence posts, and two-by-fours. He has a little routine that he goes through to get a handle on a large stick.

By lucky coincidence, I found small tree trunks from the landlord's hedge trimming project on the same day I learned how to use the video feature on my phone. So I dragged one out of the thicket behind the garage and put it on the grass. Then I let Toby outside and watched the magic happen.

(Just a warning, I need to work on my video skills. I'm trying to figure out how to rotate the clip so you won't have to turn your computer sideways to watch, but I haven't cracked it yet.)

First, he sizes up the task:

Then, he has a few 'words':

At last, success:

Sage Advice

2008-08-25T16:53:00.003+01:00

I was a little surprised when MB told me that he took The Kid to see The Dark Knight. It seemed a little dark and spooky to me, even before I watched it. MB told me that "unlike some adults I know, The Kid has a good grasp on what's real and what's pretend." (I think MB might have been talking about me, who had to leave the bathroom light on for a month after watching The Sixth Sense. I also had to leave the book Red Dragon in the car because I was convinced the character in it was so evil, the book would contaminate my house.)

After I saw The Dark Knight, I rang MB to tell him that The Kid was made of sterner stuff than I. The Joker gave me nightmares for three days and if Peter even pretends to lick his lips, I lose it. Part of me feels cheated that Heath Ledger's untimely and unfortunate demise means no more perfectly realised and downright terrifying Joker, but the other part of me is breathing a huge sigh of relief.

Today, I got snail mail from The Kid, a small envelope with an Obi Wan Kenobi stamp. Inside was a card with a cartoon of Batman on one side. On the other side, The Kid had given me this sage advice:

Dear Auntie Ann,
The Joker isn't real. You shouldn't be afraid of him. But if you're still scared, next time you see a Batman movie, close your eyes.
The Kid

The Kid is a fantastic dispenser of tips and advice. I think newspaper advice columnists around the world had better hold onto their seats, because if The Kid decides he wants their jobs, they are in trouble.

TBU Apple Pie Recipe

2008-08-24T16:45:00.005+01:00

I've spent the last few weeks inventing an apple pie recipe that I hoped would win a prize in the village show. This was my first time entering the contest, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect or what the judging criteria were.

The pies that won were quite beautiful. Artistic even. My pie was what I like to call Tasty But Ugly (TBU). Peter said it looked like a comic book pie, like it should be sitting on a window, with steam rising off of it, tempting a neighbourhood cat to steal it. But it wasn't quite in the same class as the spectacular pies that won.

So, lesson learned. It seemed like the pies were cut, but I don't think they were tasted. I'm fairly confident I've made a better showing had the judges tasted the pies, but that's okay. I'm happy with my recipe because it really is delicious and interesting. Don't believe me? Try making it yourself. :)

Tasty But Ugly Apple Pie Recipe

Crust Ingredients
1 cup plain flour
1 glass of ice water
2 tsp fresh squeezed lemon

1 cup powdered sugar
3 cups plain flour
1 tsp salt
1 cup Crisco

Filling Ingredients
6 apples, peeled and sliced (I go for between 1/2 and 1/4 inch in thickness of slices. I also like to use different kind of apples. I love Empire and Northern Spy but can't get them here, so I usually use Braeburn and Granny Smith)
4 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves
2 tsp fresh squeezed lemon juice
100 grams crystallized ginger, diced into tiny pieces

Preliminary Crust Instructions
1.) Put 1 cup plain flour in a small bowl.
2.) Add 2 tsp lemon juice.
3.) Add ice water slowly, mixing in between. You're looking for a slurry, sort of the consistency of cake batter. Try not to put in too much water though.
4.) In a separate bowl, combine 1 cup powdered sugar, 3 cups plain flour, and 1 tsp salt.
5.) Add the Crisco in chunks, mashing it in with a fork.
6.) Add the slurry to the Crisco mixture and stir.
7.) The dough should start to come together. Mold it together by hand if necessary.
8.) Separate the dough into 2 balls of roughly equal size.
9.) On a floured surface, smoosh one of the dough balls, aiming to get a flattened disc a big bigger than your hand. Repeat with the other ball.
10.) Take your two dough discs, dust with flour, and wrap in either plastic wrap or tin foil. (Or place in large freezer bag.
11.) Place dough discs in freezer for at least 10 minutes.

Filling Instructions
1.) Line a bowl with paper towels.
2.) Add apples.
3.) Add 2 tsp lemon juice, mix by hand.
4.) Add 4 tablespoons brown sugar, mix by hand.
5.) In small bowl, combine 1 tsp cinammon, 1/2 tsp nutmeg, and 1/4 tsp cloves.
6.) Add spice mixture to apple mixture, mix by hand.
7.) Add 100 grams crystallized ginger, mix by hand.
8.) Add 1 tablespoon flour, mix by hand.

Pie Assembly Requirements
2 chilled dough discs
Apple filling mixture
1 pastry brush
1 egg white, slightly beaten
2 tablespoons milk
a few teaspoons of granulated sugar
Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees

Pie Assembly Instructions
1.) On a floured surface, roll out one dough disc until it's large enough for your pie tin.
2.) Place rolled out dough in pie tin. Pull off extra dough. (In our house, someone is always willing to eat raw dough.)
3.) Brush dough with egg whites.
4.) Bake crust for 10-15 minutes.
5.) Roll out second dough disc until it's big enough to cover top of pie. You will have left-over dough.
6.) Remove crust from oven.
7.) Add filling.
8.) Place second rolled out dough on top of pie. Cut off extra dough, shape crust as you like it.
9.) Brush milk on top of pie and sprinkle with sugar.
10.) Cut venting hole (I like the X) on top of the pie.
11.) Bake for 20-30 minutes until top is golden brown. Keep an eye on pie, turning as necessary. Also be prepared to put tin foil over edges if they start to bake too quickly.

So, that's my recipe. I just tasted my pie and I think it's quite delicious, even if it's not the prettiest pie in the village. Sorry the cooking times are so non-specific. I'm working with a recalcitrant electric oven that uses Celsius, but isn't very accurate. You basically want a hot oven for 10 or 15 minutes and then a slightly less hot oven. I've found it usually works best of the pie is more towards the bottom of the oven, but your mileage may vary.

Enjoy!

The Metamorphosis

2008-08-23T06:42:00.006+01:00

I've been thinking the last few months that we need to either buy or rent a power washer and give the outside of the house a good blast. The swallows love our house and apparently, swallows show their love by pooping all over everything. Plus, we've spiders everywhere, mostly little spiders so I'm happy to let them work away. Houses over here don't have screens in the windows and since most of the spider webs are near or around the windows, it's like we have Mother Nature's screens keeping the insects out of the house.

Then I saw a biggish spider hanging around outside the backdoor. It didn't quite look big enough to rob my lunch money, but it was big enough for me to take a second look and start thinking about the power washer. About a week and a half ago, as I was locking up the back door, a dark grey thing caught my eye. It was attached to the window pane of the big kitchen windows, which make the kitchen more like a conservatory.

At first, I wasn't quite sure what it was. It didn't look like the snack-savers spiders use after they catch a victim. Then it dawned on me. I was looking at a chrysalis. If spider webs are Mother Nature's screens, then the chrysalis is her magical sleeping bag. I was excited, thinking we might get a butterfly out of the deal.

I sent a message to my friend the Science Teacher (ST) to ask him how I could tell if it was a butterfly or moth and when I could expect it to hatch. He cracked open his books and was able to tell me that judging from the time, it was most probably a butterfly and it would hatch soon, so long as it was dry and warm. Dry and warm. In Ireland, this summer, that's been a fairly unobtainable dream. I figured I might be waiting on this butterfly for quite a while.

A few days later, as I was working from home, I saw something on the side of the house, about 12 feet up the wall. I thought it was more bird poop, except that there was something familiar about its shape. Bingo - another chrysalis, another chance for a butterfly.

Last weekend, ST suggested that I get the chrysalises both inside, maybe put them in a box or a fish tank with a sponge soaked in sugar water. (A food source for when they hatch.) I made up my little chrysalis nursery in an old fish bowl. Then there was nothing to do but wait. And wait. And wait. ST was encouraging although realistic about their chances. The weather had been so miserable, they might be dead.

Even though they were in the house, it still wasn't what I would call warm. I had them on the kitchen windowsill, so if we ever got some sun, they'd warm nicely. But we had no sun. I worked from home on Thursday and knew I was going to be doing laundry throughout the day. The laundry room heats up nicely when the washer and dryer are on, so I put the fish bowl in there.

Thursday afternoon was gorgeous - sunny blue skies and warm. It was the nicest weather we've had in weeks. I put the fish bowl back on the kitchen window sill. Friday morning, when I was at work, I got a text from Peter, informing me that one chrysalis had hatched.

I raced home to see it. It was on the sponge, its dark grey wings folded up. Grabbing my handy Irish wildlife book (a birthday gift from Peter last year, one of the best gifts ever), I looked through the moths and butterflies pages. I was having a hard time determining which category it was, let alone which exact species. The body was furry, so that seemed to indicate moth, as did the dark wings, but I could only see the underwings. I couldn't see the antennae, since they were folded up and flattened against the top of the body. They looked sort of stripey, but I couldn't tell if they were clubbed or not. The insect also didn't seem to be eating, even though it was on the sponge.

I hazarded a guess that it was a Straw Underwing moth and sent ST another message telling him the great news. Then I went back to work, because, well, "my chrysalis hatched this morning" isn't really a viable excuse for staying home. ST rang my mobile to tell me that if it was a moth, it wouldn't eat sugar. A small slice of fruit would probably work. Then he told me more in 2 minutes than I ever knew about butterflies and moths, about their lifecycles and how their wings work. (The man's a good teacher - knowledgeable and able to impart information in a coherent and efficient manner.) ST said the insect would be flying around by the time I got home.

Six hours later, when I arrived home, I parked my car parallel to the kitchen windows that hold my plants and now my chrysalis nursery. I saw a fluttering near my chives and saw a butterfly, a Small Tortoiseshell butterfly, flapping its wings and bumping into the window.

Since we leave the backdoor open for Toby, it's possible that the hatchling flew out and a new guy flew in, but I'd say that's unlikely because the butterfly was completely flummoxed by the window. I spent about ten minutes trying to guide it to a window or the door, but it was always drawn back to the window. I gave up because I was afraid that my help was going to end up killing it.

My giving up lasted about five minutes, then I was back at it, this time armed with a pint glass and a piece of paper. I managed to get the butterfly into the pint glass and cover the opening with a piece of paper. Then I went outside and removed the paper, but the butterfly was sitting in the bottom of the glass. I shook the glass and then it was out, fluttering straight up into the sky. I watched it until it was just a tiny, nearly indistinguishable dot.

The other chrysalis, which may well be a few days younger, remains. I've been procrastinating washing the sheets and duvet covers for the guest room beds. Perhaps this is the day to do it.

UPDATE: I went to move the fish bowl into the laundry room (since I started washing the guest room sheets) and was pleasantly surprised to find a butterfly on the sponged. I can definitely see the clubbed antennae. The hatching happened sometime between 8.00am and 10.45am. I remain amazed that such a large creature can emerge from such a relatively small container. I spotted a caterpillar on the front of the house this morning, so I'm hoping I might get another chance at seeing a chrysalis hatch.

This is the Life!

2008-08-19T17:39:00.004+01:00

As soon as I realised the full implications of visiting Cleveland in the summer, I rang Middle Brother and asked "Can we take The Kid to Cedar Point? Can we? Can we? Please? Please? Pleeeeeeeease?!?!?!" Predictably, he asked "How old are you?" but my enthusiasm was not to be quelled or slowed by sarcastic hypothetical questions.

I had but one goal in mind for the Cedar Point trip - to ride The Big Swinging Boat as many times as possible. I wasn't worried about getting sick on the ride. I was worried about men in white coats with butterfly nets carting me off to the insane asylum after the Cedar Point workers became concerned about my unhealthy fixation and repetitive behaviour.

The Wheaton Fall Festival featured carnival rides, which they set up in the parking lot near the commuter train station. When I got off the train the day before the festival started, I scanned the lot carefully, looking for the tell-tale pieces of my favourite ride. When I spotted the sturdy mast, I could barely contain my excitement. The next day, I dragged Peter up there as soon as I was able to and bought a big old pile of tickets, intending to 'spend' them all on the Big Swinging Boat.

The operator was an enormous man who could have been Mr. T's long lost twin brother. Except for a more moderate hair cut, the man matched Mr. T in both looks and style. What I remember most is the large cobra pendant the man had on a thick gold necklace. The cobra was striking, fangs glistening gold, and its eyes were rubies.

I rode the Big Swinging Boat three times consecutively. On my fourth go, the man said to me "Girl, you must really like this ride." I told him I did, that it was my most favourite. "But why?" he asked, genuinely puzzled.

Because it gives me the most perfect combination of freedom and flying and floating, all rolled into one. It gives me the butterfly funny-tum feeling without being terrifying. It's like the ride on a swing you always wanted to have, but were afraid to pump too hard or go too high lest you end up wrapping yourself around the bar, Fred Flinstone-style.

If the Big Swinging Boat was a bowl of porridge or a bed, I would definitely be its Goldilocks. It's Just Right to me and not getting my yearly fix has been one of the few disappointments of living in Ireland. Thanks to the generosity of my mother and her economic stimulus check, I was going make up for three years of being without the Big Swinging Boat.

When we got to Cedar Point, I knew exactly where I was heading first. MB didn't think The Kid was going to go in for the boat, since they're both prone to motion sickness. Instead, they went off the Planet Snoopy, an installation of kids' rides quite close to the Big Swinging Boat.

It was everything I'd remembered and more. Floating and flying, funny tum and freedom, if I could bottle and sell the pure joy that ride creates for me, I'd be a billionaire. I rode the Big Swinging Boat six times in a row, unabashedly stepping off, trotting through the exit and around back to the entrance, daring the gatekeeper to call the men with the nets.

MB and The Kid stopped by just as I was having my sixth go. MB took a picture. I'm in the yellow shirt, in the top half of the boat, on the end of a row. (I wore the yellow shirt on purpose, so that I'd be easier to find in a crowd since I knew that MB and I would be splitting up from time to time.)

After my Big Swinging Boat-stravaganza, I met up with MB and The Kid. We had some cheese fries (thanks again, Mom) and then rode the Bumper Cars. After that, we headed to the Frontier-land area, with some vague notions of finding the petting zoo and the Mine Ride. Instead, we came upon Thunder Canyon. I was 12 when this ride opened and it was advertised as a thrilling white-water rafting experience. I'd never been white-water rafting and was quite excited about the ride. When I went to the park with my friend Betsy and her family, all of us kids were anxious to ride Thunder Canyon.

Since the ride was brand new, we expected a long wait. But it was a miserable day, just barely 60 degrees, with grey skies and a brisk wind. So the wait was nonexistent. Soon, we were sitting in the seats of the round raft, drifting down choppy water towards the waterfalls. Even at 12, I quickly realised that the ride was the equivalent of having someone dump buckets of slimy lake water on your head. It wasn't very thrilling and the only thing it did with any regularity was make sure you were soaked to the bone. I spent the rest of the day walking around in wet clothes and ended up with a sore throat that turned into strep throat and kept me sick for two weeks.

When The Kid proclaimed that he wanted to go on Thunder Canyon, the smart part of me told me to find a bench and enjoy the wait. But he was so excited about it, dancing around and waving his arms. I wanted to see what he'd think of it, wanted to be there to watch him. So I pulled my shoes off, stuffed them into one of the thoughtfully provided cubby holes, and trailed after The Kid and MB.

Because it had been raining in the morning, I'd put a ziplock bag in my pocket, just in case we needed to protect our electronics. The bag managed to hold two cell phones, a digital camera, a set of keys, and a pocket watch. Since I was wearing my hiking pants, I had a big pocket on the leg that held the ziplock bag. So we were ready, even if I was dreading the inevitable.

The wait was short, less than fifteen minutes, and numerous signs warned "You WILL get wet on this ride." Still, I stubbornly clung to hope that I'd be in the one seat on the ride that gets spared the worst of it. Soon, we were sitting in the circular raft, drifting to the first waterfall. The raft swung around and around and I knew within seconds that I was going to get the worst of the first waterfall. Buckets and buckets of slimy lake water cascaded over me and I reminded myself that my first instinct is nearly always right.

I looked up with an expression that MB later said made me look like an angry wet cat. MB and The Kid were laughing at me. I shook my head and smugly thought that they were in for it next. Sure enough, the boat swung around and MB and The Kid disappeared behind a curtain of water. When they came out, The Kid was shrieking and laughing, like he'd just had the best experience ever.

This went on for the length of the ride, me hating getting wet, The Kid loving it. I undoubtedly was the most drenched person to step off the ride. The Kid immediately asked to go again, a request that MB indulged while I went to find a sunny spot to start the drying off process.

After their second ride, we wanted to find Cedar Point's version of the log ride, Snake River Falls, which we discovered was like a log ride on steroids. Instead of a skinny log that can seat 8 people, their log ride uses very wide, very large cars. On the log ride they used to have an Geauga Lake, you could get through it pretty much unscathed if you ducked down when you hit the water. Snake River Falls, well, let's just say that they also have signs that claim "You WILL get wet on this ride."

The wait for the log ride was a little bit longer, but moved quite quickly. The Kid was still excited, still dancing around. When it was our turn, we sat in the back of a boat, the three of us sharing a bench seat. The boat climbed up and up a steep hill. I didn't mind the height of the hill - I like heights and like being able to see into the distance. After the hill, the boat floated around a bend and then made for the thrilling hill.

It sounds silly to say it, but I've never been so afraid on a ride than when we were hurtling down the 50-degree angle of Snake River Falls. (Not just a clever name, apparently.) Where the Big Swinging Boat makes me feel like I could fly, this ride was making me feel like I was going to be flung out into the abyss, where I would drop like a rock.

After what felt like an eternity of hurtling, the boat hit the water at the base of the hill, creating a spectacular tidal wave that undid any of the drying out I accomplished while waiting in the sun. When we got off the boat, The Kid was ecstatic, more excited than all his Christmases combined.

To get out of Snake River Falls, you have to walk across a bridge, which is built in such a way that it takes the brunt of the tidal wave created by the ride. I scampered across the bridge like a hare across a busy road. I was taking no chances on getting even more wet than I already was.

The Kid and MB lingered on the bridge, waiting to experience the tidal wave. When the wall of water came, The Kid shook his little fist in the air and shouted "This is the life!"

The Kid and MB would ride each of the water rides another time, while I checked out a brand new fast-high-swinging-in-the-air-ride that was just nowhere near as fantastic as the Old School Big Swinging Boat. Just before it was time to go home, I returned to my favourite ride and had four more goes, thinking that, as usual, The Kid was right. This is the life.

June and July Reads

2008-08-15T18:04:00.003+01:00

June was a fairly light reading month for me, since we had friends visiting and I was very active in both of my sports. I did manage to read these four books, listed here in order from worst to best:

4. Alibi Man - Tami Hoag - Self-loathing, whining narrator ruins decent mystery.
3. Bloody Mary - JA Konrath - It's probably a bad sign that 2 months after reading it, I cannot remember a single thing about it.
2. Butcher's Hill - As always, Tess Monaghan does not disappoint.
1. Then We Came to the End - Joshua Ferris - Hilarious look at corporate America.

What my reading lacked in June, I certainly made up for in July. Keep in mind I was on holiday for two weeks and took a round trip transatlantic flight (always good for at least 4 books in total). Plus, since I was in the States, books were cheap and plentiful. Listed in order of worst to best:

18. Fuzzy Navel - JA Konrath - Like a fifth-rate B movie, but not as enjoyable.
17. Reservation Road - Jonathan Burnham Schwartz - Overwrought
16. Darkly Dreaming Dexter - Jeff Lindsey - Perhaps I was ruined byt the US television series, which I thought was much better than the book.
15. Lady Killer - Lisa Scottoline - Yawn.
14. Compulsion - Jonathan Kellerman - Overly complicated plot with too little pay-off.
13. No Time for Goodbye - Linwood Barclay - Great premise but it falls flat and unravels about halfway through the book.
12. This Champaign Mojito is the Last Thing I Own - Ross O'Carroll Kelly - Enjoyable enough self-absorbed D4 satire.
11. Heart-Shaped Box - Joe Hill - Creepy ghost story, perfect airplane reading
10. Dirty Martini - JA Konrath - Fun little read (although it might make you think twice about eating out)
9. Daddy's Girl - Lisa Scottoline - Enjoyable with fun characters
8. Little Stalker - Jennifer Belle - Good if you can overlook the skeevy Woody Allen overtones and parrallels.
7. Dry Ice - Stephen White - A solid read.
6. Dead Time - Stephen White - A twisty and twisted page turner.
5. Fourth Comings - Megan McCafferty - Jessica Darling is back and better than ever.
4. Another Thing to Fall - Laura Lippman - Another exciting Tess Monaghan mystery.
3. Year of the Fog - Michelle Richmond - Atmospheric book about memory and loss.
2. Charm City - Laura Lippman - Tess Monaghan's humble beginnings.
1. The Ghost - Robert Harris - Fantastic, fast-paced thriller.

A Grand Day Out

2008-08-13T18:45:00.005+01:00

Since we moved to the Middle of Nowhere, there's one thing I've wanted to do more than anything else. Even more than getting a Great Dane puppy or seeing the Fastnet Lighthouse up close(ish - it's not open to the public and I'm not exactly sure how close you can get).

A trip to Skellig Michael has been my personal Holy Grail. I can't quite explain it, but something about its isolation and starkness appeals to me. Even though I think that anyone who'd make the journey in a currach is certifiable, I have a lot of respect for the monks in the 588 who did so. Think about that for a minute. Nearly 1500 years ago, a bunch of guys climbed into currachs, ventured 8 miles into the ocean to a jagged bit of rock, and built structures that are still standing.

Getting to Skellig Michael is highly weather dependent. If the seas are rough, the boats won't go. We tried twice last year and were shut out both times. My dad lucked out on his first attempt, but I stayed behind with my mother and aunts. I had another opportunity in June, when our Minnesota friends were visiting, but the weather was bad at the weekend. They got to go on the Monday, while I got to go to work. (No one ever said life was fair.)

Even though Peter had been twice this year, he was still eager to go again and we made plans for my birthday. Plans that had to be reshuffled because of his work schedule. I looked at the calendar and realised that if I waited on Peter for a Skelligs trip, it probably wouldn't happen until next year. I decided I would make a booking each weekend until I achieved my goal. Yes, it would mean going without Peter, but I'd gotten pretty good at solo outings in the last year. Of course, it also meant going without Toby, so it would be my first solo-solo outing.

I made the booking for Saturday and waited, hoping for decent weather. It's not been a great summer and the days leading up to this weekend made it look like the whole weekend could be a washout. It's a two and a half hour drive to Portmagee, and the deal is that you ring the boat at 8.15 to find out if the sea is passable. So in order to be on time for the boat, I had to leave the house without knowing if the trip was even going to happen.

I tossed my Lonely Planet guide into the backseat, figuring that at least I'd have it if I needed to develop a Plan B. When I rang the boat operator at 8.15, I fully expected to be told that the trips were canceled for the day. When the nice woman told me that it was a lovely day and I should be at the dock at 10, I was astounded. I had to ask her to repeat herself, just to be sure I'd heard her right.

I arrived at Portmagee at 9.20, which gave me more than enough time to change into my hiking boots, use the toilet, and buy extra water. There's something everyone needs to know about Skellig Michael - there are no toilet facilities on the island. I'm the sort of person who sits on the aisle in airplanes and movie theatres because I hate the idea of not being able to go when I need to. I'd carefully managed my fluid intake to ensure that I would be alright for the visit, but that I wouldn't be totally dehydrated. (This is when long distance running comes in handy. Water management is a key skill you learn when training for a marathon.)

After taking care of everything, I ambled down to the dock. It was a lovely day, warm with the sun and some patches of blue sky peeking out between fluffy clouds. I found my boat operator and was directed to his boat.

The boats used to transport people to the Skelligs are uniformly small, typically licensed to carry 12 passengers. If your only experience with boats are river cruises or other large vessels, these boats are a bit of a culture shock. They also require a minimum level of athleticism and grace when boarding. (No gangways here.) The boat I was directed to had nice bench seats and I settled in to read my book while we waited. Another boat, owned by the operator's brother, pulled up and moored alongside our boat. The passengers for the second boat had to board our boat, then climb over the railings of both boats to board the second one. Just before it was time to go, I was asked to move to the other boat, since I was the only singleton on the trip.

I managed to transfer myself, book in hand, over to the other boat. But I found that all the outdoor seating was occupied. I was a little bummed about having to ride in the cabin, since I love being out in the fresh air, especially on the sea. I have a weird relationship with the sea. I love it, but I'm absolutely terrified of it. Even on a flat, calm day, I still find its immensity and depth quite intimidating.

The captain unmoored the boat and off we went. The first part of the journey was through a sheltered harbour area, where the water was glassy smooth and we puttered along with no resistance. The captain encouraged me to sit up in the high co-pilot's seat, which I did. I was a little worried he would be too chatty, but he wasn't. Plus, the cabin was quite loud.

We sailed behind a few small islands and got to see basking seals. Then we left the shelter of the islands and headed for the open sea. It wasn't a horribly rough day, but it wasn't dead flat either. The waves were maybe 1 to 2 feet tall and sometimes the boat jostled hard off the crest of the swell. I loved it, especially the occasional feelings of funny-tum when the boat rose and dropped quickly.

We headed first to the Small Skellig, which is a protected bird habitat. It's home to over 50,000 gannets as well as some assorted other sea birds. It's a squat island with several peaks. If you'd told me Dr. Evil had a secret lair inside of the Small Skellig, I wouldn't have been surprised. The noise of the sea birds is deafening and we once again got to see some basking seals, including a mid-sized baby seal.

Then finally, we approached Skellig Michael, which has only one landing site. We had to wait while the passengers of another boat disembarked. I left the shelter of the cabin and discovered that I'd definitely had the best seat on the boat. The majority of the outside seating area was just a big, backless square, with a hand hold bar that would have been a bit lower that ones' knees. Plus, someone had puked on the trip over.

When it was our boat's turn, we sailed in and the captain tied up the boat, then helped us each off over the railing and onto a very narrow, very wet open staircase. I held onto the railing for dear life and scrambled up the cramped stairs. Then I was on a small concrete dock and was able to start walking up the road.

In the 1800s, they built two lighthouses on the island, which necessitated building a sort of access road. The road is narrow but well-paved with a wall on the open side. I was so excited to be on the island that I nearly skipped up the road. I was about five minutes into my joyous journey when I realised that I didn't know when the boat was going to return for us. I dashed back to the dock, but the boat was already gone. Ah well, I figured we'd have at least two hours and that if I saw someone from our boat, I'd ask them.

The road winds along the side of the island and terminates shortly after the lighthouses' outbuildings. (Then you get to scramble up the very stone stairs that the monks built all those years ago. The climb is steep and the views are breathtaking. You can still see the mainland, but it's a distant, hazy dream.

Skellig Michael is quite rocky and rugged with several interesting rock formations. But it also has a fair bit of grass and little spots where you can comfortably rest and take in the views. But I wasn't interested in resting. I was interested in scrambling up, up, up as fast as my little legs (and my heaving lungs) would allow.

It was surprisingly hot on the island and I soon had to take a break to remove some of my layers. Given the climb and the out-at-sea location, I'd expected the place to be a bit chilly. I later learned that the climate on Skellig Michael is quite mild and the monks were able to grow vegetables rather easily.

After my dad's visit, he told us that one of the most amazing things about the place is what it does not have: guard rails, danger signs, and other safety equipment. The island has a single sign that warns of "an element of danger". After that, you're on your own. On the way up, it's not that big a deal. You just trot (or trudge) up the grey stone stairs. The biggest risks on the way up are tripping on uneven ground or collapsing in a heap due to the exertion.

I don't know how long it took me to get to the monastery. I know I didn't rest very much, maybe a handful of pauses to soak in the scenery and catch my breath. I did marvel that my dad, he of the wonky knee, was able to climb the stairs. (Later, when I asked Peter how Dad managed it, he responded "He rested a lot.") Eventually, all my scrambling paid off and I reached my destination.

I walked through the entrance, through the monk's walled garden, and into the monastery proper, which consisted mainly of several beehive huts, a chapel, and a stone cross. A docent was giving a talk about the history of the island and people were sitting on a stone wall or stone embankment that almost seemed like it was purposely designed to act as amphitheater seating. (I missed part of the talk, so I doubt it, but it served the purpose well.) The sun was beating down on the place and I wanted to explore, not listen to some history lecture.

I ducked into a beehive hut and downed half a litre of water in what seemed like a single gulp. The hut was cool and dry and very dark, even after my eyes adjusted to it. I could picture living in it, although I don't think I would fare very well sleeping on a hard slab of rock. (I'm a Simmons Beautyrest sort of girl.)

After appreciating the construction of the hut and collecting myself, I stepped back outside and found a spot on the edge of the audience. The woman was great, very well versed in the history of the island, but I was still impatient. My ears perked up when she talked about an experiment they ran a few years back to see what the monk's garden could produce. It turns out that the soil is of very good quality and the garden gets an excellent amount of light. The vegetables flourished, much to the delight of the local rabbit population. (The rabbits were introduced in the 1800s as a food source for the lighthouse keepers and their families. Due to automation, the lighthouse keepers are gone, but the descendants of the rabbits live on.)

The other interesting point the docent made was that the monks were quite brave to venture out to set up their monastery, and she wasn't just talking about the journey. The island has no natural spring or other fresh water supply. The monks studied the topography of the island and built two cisterns to collect rainwater. I think she said that each cistern held 100 liters, but I could be wrong on that.

Finally, we were released to explore the monastery. I was quite taken with the walled garden. I don't know why, exactly, except that it was a cosy, sunny spot with great views. I also liked that you could look over the edge of the wall and see some other sort of lower habitation. (Since I missed the construction part of the history talk, I don't really know what it was.)

I smiled as I remembered a diorama depicting the garden, which I'd seen at the Skellig interpretive centre. One monk tended to tidy rows of vegetables. Laundry hung on a line. A pair of goats grazed. A cat lazed in the sun. And my favourite bit: a monk with an upraised club snuck up on an unsuspecting seabird that was perched on the wall.

Since I hadn't seen anyone from my group, I still wasn't exactly sure when the boat left. I decided not to linger too long. I knew I'd be back sometime and I didn't want to be responsible for holding up the boat. Plus, I had no idea how long it was going to take me to get down to the boat dock.

As a runner with wide hips, I can say with great authority that down is always harder than up. Up might be more obviously taxing aerobically, but down is a killer on the joints. And that's just on a normal road with a moderate pitch. Going down the steep sides of Skellig Michael is an adventure and a half. I'm not afraid of heights but I was unable to put the idea of falling out of my mind. As I made my way down, I was quite aware that one false step would lead to a painful tumble down the rocky embankments.

I took several rest breaks on the way down. I had a good long rest at the spot where you can see the hermitage. Clinging to the top of the highest peak, with only enough room for one person to sleep, the hermitage pretty much does exactly what it says on the tin. It's the place where a monk went to have some serious meditation and prayer time. I would have loved to have gone up there, but, for obvious reasons, it's not open to the public.

When I talked to Peter after my big adventure, he asked me what had surprised me most about Skellig Michael. I didn't even have to think about the answer. It's the way the island is able to absorb 200 people. It's amazing to think that the boats disgorge all of these people, who have to travel up and down the same narrow, steep path. But you have many moments were you swear you're the only person on the island. Because the path must twist and turn sharply up the steep incline, the sight lines are rather limited. This creates loads of places where you can sit and not see anyone. There might be 10 people within 10 meters of your resting spot, but you'd never know it.

Although I don't know how long it took me to reach the monastery, I can tell you that it took me about 30 minutes to get back to the boat dock. I was taking it easy though, creeping down the stairs like a toddler who has just learned to walk. My caution paid off, since I survived the trip down. (I did have one tiny nerve-wracking wobble, but I bet everyone does.)

Back at the dock, I soaked in the sunshine and read my book, taking periodic breaks to enjoy the scenery and watch the various boats pull in to collect their passengers. One boat really made me laugh. The crew consisted of a long-haired captain, maybe in his early 40s, and five dachshunds. After the boat tied up to the dock, the dogs stood on their hind legs, with their front paws on the railings, barking instructions at the passengers. I imagine they were saying things like "Mind your step! Careful now! Welcome aboard!" That's the boat I want to take next time.

If I have a regret about the trip, it's that I went down to the boat dock too early. I could have spent more time in the monastery or had a more leisurely ascent. The thought crossed my mind as I read my book, but I decided to forget about it. I'd had a fantastic visit and it was nice to have a little quiet time by the water. Next time, I'll remember to ask when the collection time is and I won't be so concerned about missing the boat.

Soon enough, my boat did arrive. I returned to my nice comfy co-captain's seat and enjoyed a last look at Skellig Michael. The ride back was smooth and I found myself drifting off to sleep (then jerking awake in a panic as I started to fall off the seat). Now I can say with great authority that Skellig Michael is absolutely something you must see when you visit Ireland.

A note on the pictures: the beehive huts and the last picture of the island are my dad's. Thanks, Dad. The rest are mine, taken with my mobile phone.

Smellovision

2008-08-11T18:11:00.002+01:00

Peter and I had big plans yesterday to see The Dark Knight. We'd tried on my birthday, but the timing hadn't worked out. The next weekend, he was away again, this time teaching a group workshop. We tentatively planned to see it during the week, but I got sick and wasn't up to evening outings, so that pushed it out to this past weekend. Friday night, Peter had a workshop and Saturday night, I had a football match. Finally, this Sunday looked nearly perfect.

I say nearly because Cork were playing Kilkenny in the Hurling Semi-Finals in Croke Park. To understand the importance of this pairing, think the Red Sox playing the Yankees in Game Seven of the ALCS and you're on the right track. The thrown-in for the match was at 4, which made movie timing a bit complicated.

Our choices were to either A.) go to the closer cinema for the 9pm showing or B.) go to the farther away cinema for the 1.10PM showing, listen to first half of the match on the way home and then hope that we arrived back in time to watch the thrilling conclusion. Option A was a non-runner, since I'm absolutely hopeless at staying up late. As much as it killed the Cork hurling fan in me, I knew this was our last chance to see the film until late September, at which point it might be difficult to find in the cinema.

We were out the door according to schedule and even the Sunday drivers couldn't keep us from getting to the cinema on time. We bought our tickets, purchased some snacks, and went in to get seats. When we opened the door to Theatre 2, the unmistakable smell of urine slapped us in the face. I looked at Peter in disbelief and he nodded his head in disgust. The message on his face was clear: No, you're not going crazy, it reeks like a pub urinal in here.

We chose seats about half-way down the aisle and waited for the smell to abate. Only it didn't. I was also disappointed to note that screen was rather small. With about 5 minutes to go before the start of the film, I left to use the bathroom. On my way back to Theatre 2, I noted that The Dark Knight was starting in Theatre 1 at 2.00PM. I toyed with the idea but reminded myself that the earlier show was crucial if I wanted to catch any of the hurling.

Back in Theatre 1, Peter leaned over and said "Do you know what I love most about going to the cinema? The smell of urine!" I told him "Maybe it's Smellovision. I bet this is exactly what a sleazy dark alley in Gotham City would smell like." Peter suggested changing our tickets for the 2.00 showing. One more look at the tiny screen and another whiff of the malodorous surroundings convinced me that I was not going to be able to enjoy the film under the current conditions.

I waited in the cinema's cafe seating area while Peter tried to exchange our tickets. It seemed to be taking an awfully long time. I became concerned that some bizarre policy might force us to pay for new tickets. Unreasonable and unlikely, but not outside the bounds of possibility. Finally, Peter returned with two fresh new tickets for the 2pm showing.

Me: What took so long? I was starting to get concerned.

Peter: Well, I had to wait for a manager. Then, when she finally arrived, it was quick and easy to change the tickets.

Me: So why did it take so long?

Peter: Because she kept insisting on telling me that I wasn't smelling what I was smelling.

Me: Then what were we smelling?

Peter: Popcorn!

Me (after taking a good sniff of Peter's medium popcorn): Popcorn, me fecking arse!

Peter: Yes, she kept insulting my intelligence by insisting that it was just popcorn and that the theatre always smells that way.

Me: But we've been here before and it's never smelled like that!

Peter: Exactly.

When it was time to go into Theatre 1, I went in with some trepidation. What if this theatre reeked as well? I didn't smell anything in Theatre 1 although Peter insisted he could still detect a faint odor. (It could very well be possible that he was smelling something as I'm still getting over my head cold. So you know that Theatre 2 had to have been really bad to have it bother me so much.)

Our cinema story has a happy ending. We were finally able to see the film and we both enjoyed it. (I think it has rocketed to the top of my all-time favourites list, even though The Joker terrified me.) My hurling story has a less happy ending. I was reduced to listening to the second half in the car and Cork were resoundingly defeated. Even so, changing our plans was the right thing to do. I don't think I would have enjoyed the film as much if I'd been distracted by the conditions.

At one point, I had to take a bathroom break during the film (2.5 hr film + tiny bladder = at least one and more probably two breaks). A few of the ushers had congregated near the stairs and I overheard their conversation. It went a little something like this: "I told her popcorn smells quite differently when it's burnt, but I don't think she believed me."

For The Long Run

A Message from the Birthday Queen

Tagged

A Poem of My Own

The Blank Page

so you want to be a writer?

By Charles Bukowski

The Country

By Billy Collins

Homage To My Hips

By Lucille Clifton

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why (Sonnet XLIII)

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

Be Drunk

By Charles BaudelaireTranslated by Louis Simpson

Dreams

By Langston Hughes

In Louisiana

By Albert Bigelow Paine

In April

By James Hearst

Some Days

By Billy Collins

Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio

By James Wright

Home Is So Sad

By Philip Larkin

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

By W.B. Yeats

Remember

By Christina Rossetti

Failing and Flying

By Jack Gilbert

Stealing The Scream

By Monica Youn

Dharma

By Billy Collins

This Is Just To Say

By William Carlos Williams

Little Gidding

By T.S. Eliot

My Shadow

By Robert Louis Stevenson

Fern Hill

By Dylan Thomas

Sailing to Byzantium

By W. B. Yeats

Novel

By Arthur RimbaudTranslated by Wyatt Mason

Another reason why I don't keep a gun in the house

By Billy Collins

anyone lived in a pretty how town

By e.e. cummings

One Art

By Elizabeth Bishop

Hay for the Horses

By Gary Snyder

Credo

By Matthew Rohrer

If

By Rudyard Kipling

A Psalm of Life

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Introduction to Poetry

Introduction to Poetry

By Billy Collins

Recharging

Basketball Diaries

Blog Share Feb 2009

Forgiving and Forgetting

January Reads

Top Tips for Exercising

Groundhog Day

Thursday Three: Why YA?

Pavement Surfing

An Evil Genius Helps Me Write

Comedy of Errors

Can We Hurry Up and Leave Already?

Remembering the Good, Old Poorhouse Days

Sighthound

By Charles Baudelaire
Translated by Louis Simpson

By Arthur Rimbaud
Translated by Wyatt Mason