I love love love my dancing bear

To Jesus and All His Heavenly Angels...

The Bible says grief is like an adder. It slithers up and strikes when you've forgotten it's there.

I miss the puppy dog, sniffing the Christmas paper and bows, lying down to take a nap under the Christmas tree on my grandfather's quilt. It's hopeless this love that has piled up in me, with no puppy dog to share it with.

Merry Christmas Daisey. If the angels wire jingle bells to your collar, be a good sport like you were here. And enjoy the real Christmas and wait for me by the gate. And always, always,remember you were the answer to a little girl's Christmas letter to Jesus and all his Heavenly Angels.

Les Bicyclettes

Les Bicyclettes de Michelle

I dream I ride a turquoise blue bicycle,
And wear a straw hat with ribbons streaming behind me.
A red ribbon.
In one hand I hold the leash of Michelle,
A standard white poodle who knows sign language and has a sign that says "Don't pet me I'm working".
Michelle and I are taking a break from working.
She trots happily beside me as I pedal,
And we sing "Michelle ma belle sont les mots qui vont tre bien ensemble... "
And "Les Bicyclettes de Belsize".
Michelle, we will run away and join the circus.
Michelle, you can talk to the silent clowns.
Michelle, we will retire to the country and I will spend my pension on your extremely expensive grooming
Because you trotted beside me and I rode my bicycle and our ribbons flew in the wind.

Help! My Stove's on Fire! (or how the Fire Extinquisher Safety Course Came in Handy)

I recently took (make that suffered through) the required Fire Extinguisher Safety Course at work. I actually took notes, because I knew I was going to get quizzed on A,B ,C, D levels of extinguishers and which nasty fire to use them on. When I realized this, I actually started the course over and got out my pen and paper.

I was mocked for this.

"Abby actually took notes!" declared one coworker with amusement.

So last night, when I slid my potatoes au gratin into the preheated oven, little did I know that I should have brought that page of notes home.

I glanced over to the oven and noticed a marble-size white ball of fire slowly making its way along the coil of the bottom element. Weird, I thought. Must be some aluminum foil burning away (does aluminum foil actually do that?) As I watched, it grew to a ping pong ball size. Hmmm. Jenny came and observed. We yelled for Jim, who was upstairs.

The element is burning up, was his diagnosis. So we turned off the power. This did not stop the white ball of fire. As a matter of fact, something on the bottom of the oven flared up and we suddenly had a Christmas-morning-worthy fireplace scene going on.

We got the extinguisher (dusty and stuck in the back of the pantry) and suddenly I thought: you can't use this on a metal fire. Which is a class D fire. This extinguisher is ABC. Uh oh.

Understand: My ACTUAL STOVE was on fire, not what was cooking in it.

Here's something I learned. When you call the Fire Department, they respond with all they have. If you expect an SUV with some lights on top to come check it out for you FORGET that. Your entire neighborhood will be treated to the full power of the Henrico County Fire Department on display. Engines from two stations came. EMS showed up. All in all, our faulty stove merited 4 engines, an EMS vehicle, an SUV and I don't know what else, because it stretched as far down the block as I could see.

Men suited up with enough gear to go to the moon lept into action. Waves of them. By this time, the element had fizzled out and left only a blackened, charred cavern where my oven used to be. They fanned out and secured the upstairs by closing the doors. I felt suddenly like stopping, dropping and rolling right on the spot.

They were great. They declared "We've got a moderate level of haze in here" and suddenly all the windows were open and a big fan was blowing out the smoke. They pulled the stove out and unplugged it. Wrote down some important information (??) on a pad of paper, and gave us a fire extinguisher lesson.

Tap the bottom of your extinguisher with a hammer to break up the powder, and your 15-year old equipment should work fine. An ABC (check the label) rated extinguisher CAN be used on electrical fires. But when we cut the power and the fire kept going, we did indeed have a metal fire. Class D. We did the right thing in calling them.

I made 100% on the fire extinguisher safety course, and I am here to say I am mighty proud of that. But, let's hope State Farm is just as proud, because after the death of the washing machine, the truck, the dog and the furnace last fall, I need some back up. The life of appliances, dogs, and assorted other things seems to be about 10 years for us. Once I renew all the equipment, I should be good until age 61.

Remind me to retake the fire extinguisher safety course if I'm still working at Media General when I am 61. You just never know when you might need that information.

Gone to Heaven.

I hope Jesus stocked up on Milk Bones today because he's going to need them.

Remember, Lord, that she loves chicken and please have a big barrel of Kentucky Fried waiting. And after that, you will need to give her a treat before bed. And one before you leave in the morning.

She will never sleep on the furniture, at least when you are home. If you come home suddenly in the middle of the day she may be curled up on the sofa. Also, anything on the floor is fair game, like a basket you were going to use to put some gifts in for a friend. Or your dirty laundry, or a sheet of printer paper.

And if you have company, Dear Lord, warn them not to leave their suitcase open on the floor. She will crawl in and sleep. When you are wrapping Christmas presents, be aware that she will first sniff all the ribbon and bows, snuffling around the room, smelling the Christmas paper before curling up on you best -- and most easily wrinkled -- gold foil.

She will be great with the angels, because she loves string music. She will enjoy the harps...and even a rinky dink piano if you have one. But keep her away from Gabriel...she absolutely hates brass instruments. It was hard for her that both kids played trumpet and trombone, but she somehow made it through the high school band years.

There's a game you could play with her, called "Daisey in the middle." Basically two people sit on opposite sides of the room and throw a rope bone back and forth. Daisey's job is to leap into the air to try to catch the bone. If she get's it, you lose. She will run to the kitchen in great triumph.

She knows "sit" and "stay" and "lie down" (tap the floor with your finger) and "up". She also, incredibly, knows "Where are the birds?" and will run to the window and put her paws on the sill.

She's a certified Girl Scout, having sat with us in the Friendship Circle in the den. She joined of her own accord, and always was a friend to others.

She was some of your best work.

Thanks for lending her to us for a while. We loved her so much.

What fresh hell is this?

My biorhythms must be off. Or the world's tilting funny on its axis. Maybe both. Our washer broke. The truck died (ok, I helped a little by leaving the door ajar). My neighbor called me about her television being all in Spanish. The dog's got a bad tooth and howls all the time. There's a woodpecker pecking on our house.

Yes, you read that right. Each morning at 5:30 am a bird begins hammering on the front of my house. At first, I thought it was a bird trapped in the attic but upon further investigation the sound was coming from the outside. As I exited the front door, the varmit flew off into a tree, thus ending his morning repartee. Not witty, mind you, at least not to me.

The dog has just come off her 5:30 am rotation of whining loudly at the backdoor and has been replaced by this new hell on wings.

If you think you're in control of anything, guess again. The universe is out to get you.

Happy Father's Day

It's been so hot lately.

I closed all the blinds, pulled the curtains in the bedroom closed, and spent Sunday in the house. Something about this flipped a switch in my brain and suddenly all was quiet and calm. Outside the weed wackers hushed, the lawnmowers growled to a halt, and even the usual bark-bark-bark across the street went silent. The fathers were somewhere with the remote, napping on a couch or opening up drills or neckties.

It was a real Sunday, like years ago...years ago when my parents would spend Sunday afternoons sweating on the front porch of my grandmother's house. The electric fan would oscillate back and forth, a tall prim sentry on a black stalk rationing comfort with electrical objectivity. Various relatives would stop by. We'd look up and see a dust cloud coming down the driveway and a car would pull up, spilling assorted cousins, an uncle and an aunt. They'd pull up chairs, be given a glass of iced tea and sit. They might bring a cake. They might be expected or not. We'd peer down the road, trying to make out who it was. "Here comes Raymond and Hilda" somebody would say. And soon enough, we'd be making room, repositioning the fan. The talk droned on, the fan whirred unpartially.

My relatives still do this. When I go home to visit Dad, eventually they will all show up to gaze at me. Someone will say, look Abby's out at Carroll's. And one by one they will come by, make some very useless small talk...usually how hot it is, how the garden's doing...slide some indirect comments at me, ("Hey look what the cat dragged in!") and leave in about 15 minutes. Unless they submit to food, they usually don't even sit down. But they all come to see me.

I kept waiting for somebody to show up yesterday, but nobody did. They're 500 miles away. I also kept waiting for something else...like a clock was ticking away...like the time was precious. This puzzled me until I realized that dark, quiet rooms in the middle of the day were associated in my mind with children napping. I kept listening for rustling noises, for mysterious thumps and smothered giggling. I had a sense that the moment was about to be over, when "time was up" the inevitable race to the fridge for a snack would begin.

It was an interesting way to spend Father's day with The Bear. With the feeling that children were napping nearby, and relatives were drifting about like ghostly dust clouds.

What Sunday should be, afterall.

I've had it for today.

So I'm turning on my multipurpose, automated response system. If you don't find a response suited to your particular situation, please hang up and try again.

Gone Fishing! If you'd like to leave a message please hang up. For obsessive compulsive disorder press one repeatedly. The check is in the mail. I'll respect you in the morning. I didn't mean/say/do/inhale that. It just needs some oil. It looks fine in Firefox. That's one pixel off. Go to the Post Office and get that letter back. Just scrape the burned part off. I'm finished except for a few things. They're half your kids too. It was ok yesterday. It stopped making that noise now. She's got a bladder infection again. I'll put the mail on my back porch. I don't want any Amish Friendship Bread starter. I *swear* that door was locked. No, you can't have the car. I don't care if he/she's engaged to a loser/a bitch/sassing you/stupid/moody/uncooperative/having unnecessary surgery/living with the opposite sex without benefit of marriage/eating all the ice cream/peeing on the rug/coughing like a TB patient/shedding hair in the bathroom/leaving ice to melt on the floor after it shoots out of the ice maker/unable to find a ride. My cell phone is dead. This cell phone number is not a fax number. Maybe next payday. I don't do business with telemarketers/participate in surveys/want to save money. Yes it's very hot today. Yes this is a bad time. We're eating dinner right now. It will be done in 15 minutes.

Two Friends, that's not so bad.

Leave it to Garrison Keillor to stay current.

http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2008/05/10/scripts/mom.shtml

Happy Mother's Day

I know a lot of mothers out there, some new ones struggling to understand it, some wondering what happened to the years, others trying to wait out the storms. "It's not easy" is so inadequate, and sometimes so is "I love you."

But, if others could know our babies as we do, everyone would love them.

Memories. Compressed into the hard drive of my pc

Anybody sign up for the Olin Mills documentary program?

This 80's sales blitz was part of the "keep it forever" mentality that raged through that have-it-flaunt-it-keep-it-forever decade. At prescribed intervals (and for a steep sign up fee) you took your child to the studio to get photographed. 1 mos., 3 mos., 6 mos., 9 mos., a year. Those photos really added up.

This video reminds me of that whole frantic "Kodak|Hallmark" guilt trip decade. It seems everything had to be memorialized in plastic and hung on a Christmas tree or you would forever regret it.



Even digital photos often disappoint me. No matter how hard I try, digitally enhancing the grass only makes the grass unreal. Virtual perfection is not perfection.

I'm not an expert at capturing my Kodak moments no matter the technology. They are fleeting and rare, and so I live them and treasure them, speak of them, remember them. My introspective joys only get better in the process.

Happy Birthday, John. Rest assured your Kodak moments are pressed into the wrinkles of my brain, forever a part of me. Today is an introspective day.

Ten Things I Learned From My Mother

My mother died in 2001, and my mother-in-law in 1998.

Mother's Day is next month, but there are no cards to buy or presents to choose for the mothers in my life. No fretful shopping for yet another nightgown, necklace, bauble or trinket. No coffee cup emblazoned "World's Best Mom", no corsage to wear to church, no FTD bouquet to send. The time for that has passed.

Yet,ever mindful of the commandment "Honor your father and mother", I try to find a way to each year to honor my mom...who left bits and pieces of herself embedded in my psyche, both good and bad. Some of it is pure heartbreak, some is warm and fuzzy, some plain funny. There's some stuff I can never hope to understand.

We never seemed to speak the same language. But just as you would be tolerant of someone from another culture whose language you do not speak, just as you would invent ways to communicate and make yourself understood, just as you would not criticize them for their difference, I honor her best qualities and recognize the efforts she went to to relate to me. She was somebody before she became my mother. It wasn't all about me.

That being said, here are Ten Things I Learned from My Mother.

1) Always UNPLUG the iron (don't just turn it off).
2) Just because YOU dislike it, doesn't mean it's bad for your kids.
3) Old dogs are worth caring for.
4) You can do more than you think, with less than you want.
5) Getting out of the house is important.
6) Staying home sometimes is important too.
7) The best decoration for your wall is pictures of the people you love.
8) Sometimes the truth is simply what two people agree upon.
9) Don't spend the whole week's lunch money in one day.
10) Don't try to make the whole trip in one day.

Elliott Yamin sang on American Idol tonight and in the palm of his hand was written "We Miss You Mom."

So true.

Mirror, Mirror on the wall....

Don't get me wrong...I LOVED raising kids. I enjoyed the challenge of figuring out the workings of their unique and evolving personalities, loved watching them snap up witticsms like frogs eating flies and scorn advice. I loved the unfolding of their "selves." Our piano became of shrine of achievements by them. We had a "braggin' table."

But, guess what, parents? This ain't no little you. Here's the best advice I can give you. Get over the idea that this is you in a fresher version. When you put sperm and egg together, your control of what happens next went out the door. Sure, you can pave the way, you can make a healthy environment, you can offer love and support and opportunites to learn and grow. And you should. This is your job, along with food and shelter.

But,OMG. I am seeing some narcissistic parenting going on out there. What? What is that you say, Abby? I just want the best for my kid!

Honey, you can't always have the best. Emphasis on YOU.

This is what a wise person once said to me and when I accepted that, my stress level plummeted. She had wonderful, well adjusted children. I was about 8 months pregnant with my first, and I asked her how she did it.

"Always remember," she told me. "This is a human. This is not a pet. This is a human with a soul, who ultimately belongs to God only. You have been entrusted with this human by God. So raise your children as though you answer to God for them."

This takes "Me" out of the picture, doesn't it?

I read an article (actually, re-read it because I found it in file drawer the other day) about narcissism. A woman was writing about her mother's christmas presents, which were always disappointing to her. How she'd tried and tried to please her mother, but got only criticism in return. How her mother said over and over, I only want the best from you...er...for you.

Her mother treated her like an accessory. She got no pleasure from who her daughter was, only from the reflection of her daughter on herself.

So ask yourself: Are you looking in a mirror or at another person?

Mirror, mirror, on the wall..

Old Dogs and Children

Old dogs.

There's been a spate of old dog troubles in our neighborhood. The faithful companions who've helped us raised a bunch of kids are tuckering out. One of our neighbors had the dreadful task of putting down the matriarch of the neighborhood and it wasn't easy.

Now it seems Daisey has reached a certain age and has "old dog kidneys." Right now we're treating it as an infection and antibiotics seem to have triumphed for the time being, but I don't look for this to be an isolated infection.

So what's wrong with stopping by Wendy's and getting the puppy dog an order of chicken nuggets? It's a small pension for years of running the pack.

Song lyrics | Old Dogs And Children And Watermelon Wine lyrics

There's a doctor in the house.

I've taken my son's advice.

My son is in medical school trying to learn how to care for human beings. So far, he has been a good source of information about things I can't pronounce and didn't have the foggiest I possessed. He recently said we should wash our hands often and cough into our elbow. The flu vaccine did not work this year.

Yikes!

I think I was followed in Tar jzay today by influenza. Cough, cough...I think that's the guy who works upstairs from me! Ack. His germs float in a cloud above his head like fruit flies following bananas. I did my best to avoid him...but what about the elevator at work? Luckily he's on the floor above me, so I never push his button. The snack machine? I'll give up Doritos until the spring.

Maybe Victorian ladies who never left home without gloves had something there. Hats with veils...surely these kept our great grandmothers alive long enough to begat us?

I'm glad there's a doctor in the house, else I would have buzzed about smugly thinking I'm protected by my flu shot.

Eating Doritos with nary a thought to my health.