Books by the bedside

I love to read and I love to collect books. Here is the current stash that I have next to the bed. They are scattered about in a cluttered hodgepodge, in, around and on the nightstand. There is 'Il Quadro che Uccide' that I am currently reading, that I ordered from the Italian Internet Bookshop a few weeks ago and under that is 'Soluzioni a practical guide to Italian grammer' a new addition to my monstrous collection of Italian self education books. Next to those is a stack which include 'Food for Love', 'The Middle Window' (by Elizabeth Goudge a childhood favorite) and a collection of plays written by Natalia Ginzburg. I can't wait to get started on 'Food for Love' as it is about an art historian studying in Rome that decides that she will only go out with a man that can cook...intrigue to follow. At the bottom of that pile is 'A Kiss from Madalena', a book that I am almost done with, but kind of stalled out on. I plan on finishing it, but the descriptions of Italy during the war, as the Germans were pulling out and leaving destruction behind them got a bit too tedious and so I moved on to my Italian thriller dective story as a brief respite.

On the floor is 'L' Affair' by Diane Johnson. I don't know if this will be any good, but I had a gift certificate to Barnes and Nobles and I liked the cover and the description on the jacket so I am anticipating a good read. Under that is 'Firm up in 3 Weeks', a book of proverbs written by Benjamin Franklin (we were just in Philadelphia visiting his house or more precisely the musuem occupying the space where his house used to be) and 'Il Codice da Vinci' (the Italian version of the Da Vinci Code).

The basket to the side is filled with various and assorted Italian grammar books and magazines. Roberta, my friend from Milan gave me the magazine 'Focus' which is filled with amazing factoids about science, human behavior, and weird historical tidbits. Behind the basket is a pen and ink scribble I did of Sargent's Madame X, way back in graduate school.

Inside the nightstand is 'Casa Rosa', a rather depressing, but interesting book about three generations of women dealing with a tragic family secret. Behind that is a Sidney Sheldon novel in Italian. Amongst the rest is Peter Mayle's 'A Good Year', Harry Potter books and 'The Miracles of Santa Fico', a book I read last spring. From the photo I can't tell what the rest of the mish mash of journals and books are, but they have been well loved during the amount of time that it took me to read them all.

Keeping company with my stacks of books, is a paper weight that I bought in Venice, one of the scented candles my friend Stacy gave to me in a collection of six, my alarm clock which hasn't been used all summer long, but is about to returned to service starting next Thursday, the first day of school. And last but not least, is a picture of my grandmother Edie, taken on her graduation day from Swathmore College sometime around 1907. And that's it. There you go. Go grab a book and get reading!

A visit from Intuit

The other day I got a call from Intuit. They were calling to ask if I would like to participate in a product development interview. At first, I was a little dubious and as I was really busy that day I almost gave the woman on the other end of the phone the brush off. I get a lot of junk calls during the day and unfortunately, I have hardened myself to random and weird telephone calls. Like the guy who called looking for broken harddrives, as if I were to have those hanging around, the woman who wanted to sell me barrels of wine in bulk, and don't get me started on the thousands of refinancing-your-mortgage calls! But, I liked the sound of this woman's voice and her delivery, so I continued to listen for a few moments more. She asked if I infact used the software Quicken and if it would be okay if three program software developers were to come to my office and discuss the merits of Quicken. She was even willing to pay me for my efforts. I thought, hey great. This might be kind of fun. They come to me, ask me a bunch of questions, let me demonstrate a couple of things that I do with the program and then give me money. What could be better.

It was after I arranged the meeting that I began to think twice about my decision. I started to actually regret the pending interview, especially when I received the email that asked if I would mind if they video taped the session. Panic set it. While I am an avid user of Quicken I realized that I am just a basic user. Quicken is my electronic checkbook and I use it to link to my bank and download transactions. When I first became a Quicken user a million years ago, I was distracted by the flashy graphing, forecasting and budget planning features and used to play around with them frequently. But, these days, I don't really use any of that anymore. I am just so darn busy and only use the program to keep balances, input checks and keep a general pulse on our finances. I thought, great! They are going to come all the way out to my office, they will plug in their camera and then we will all just sit there smiling at each other, and I will have absolutely nothing to say.

But, I perservered and didn't call to cancel the appointment. In the end it actually all turned out pretty okay, that is after the initial weirdness of having a camera focused on me. I got a chance to meet part of the software development team and I have to say they are pretty normal people, and I even got them to crack a few smiles here and there. They were really interested how I used the program, what I liked about it, what I didn't like and what could be done differently. We had a good session. Turned out I had more to say than I thought. I always do, sigh.

Now, if I could just get someone from Macromedia to call me...now, that is the software development team that I would REALLY like to have all to myself in my office for an entire afternoon! I am taking calls...

Eureka!

Eureka! We have been to, seen and conquered Eureka. Now for all of you out there that haven't a clue as to where Eureka is...here is a little geography lesson. Okay, so, do you see those two big dots on the map of California? The green dot is our general location in San Francisco. Do you see the big red dot that is pratically sitting on the California Oregon border? That is where we spent the weekend. We drove twelve hours so that our son Michael could play four hours in the Humboldt Bay soccer tournament. The exiting news is that his team took first place and won the tournament!


How did we pass the time near Humboldt bay, when we weren't jumping up and down & screaming ourselves hoarse on a damp soccer field outside of Eureka? Well, to begin with we ate breakfast at the Samoa House, an old fashioned, all you can eat, "we-don't-give-you-a-choice-what-we-bring-to-the-table-in-great-big-platters", kind of place. Then we walked around town and enjoyed the overcast views of the bay. We were amazed by the giant hammer outside the local hardware store, and as Eureka is basically a logging community,
we gazed upon stacks and stacks of lumber piled up all over the place. On the way home we drove through the Valley of the Giants, a stretch of old 101 that winds between the biggest red wood trees that I have ever seen. We stopped and looked in amazement upon the 1000 year old "Immortal Tree".

If you ever get the chance to drive 101 north up the coast of California, I highly recommend it. But, now that this has been my third trip north this summer, I am done for a while. The drive is breathtaking, the road twisting and turning and delightful....well, twisting, turning and delightful until you get to Willits and Ukia. At that point, the yucky bay area weekend traffic starts to rear its ugly head. We slowed down to a crawl outside of Hopland where there was some kind of hippy-solar engergy-organic-vegetable-fest occuring. Then we came to a screeching halt outside of Santa Rosa where we ditched the traffic for a stop over at the local In-and-Out burger. We crossed the Richmond bridge at dusk and were treated to a foggy view of San Francisco's lights, bay bridge and just the hint of the Golden Gate. We were home checking e-mail and doing laundry by 9pm. Another successful road trip. And now I can say that I've been to Eureka and back!

Cartwheels, rollerskating and standing on your head

This morning Kyle took time out from eating breakfast and started spontaneoulsy turning cartwheels in the living room. We all looked at him a little dumb founded as he performed his amazing gymnastic routine. Then my husband, after cautioning him forcefully not to crash into the tv, said that he thought that Kyle was the only one in the family that could do that so well. And then I said, "but I can do that too", and proceeded to turn a couple of cartwheels in front of the family, much to Kyle's great delight and my husband's disbelief! When I was a little I used turn cartwheels all day long on the front lawn. I turned a cartwheel this morning, and I liked that I still could.

This afternoon we went roller skating. Kyle had never been. Half way around the rink the first time, after falling down five or six times, he screamed out, this stinks! But, he didn't give up and by the end of the first half hour, he was proficiency on wheels. I joined him skating around and around and around, trying to maintain my equilibrium, balance and of course, grace. I had forgotten how freeing and how mindlessly entertaining roller skating can be. I didn't work or worry about paying bills this afternoon, and I liked how that felt.

On the way home from the roller rink I asked the kids, "what can we do now to top cartwheels and rollerskating". "How about standing on our heads?", one of the boys giggled. Okay, so we gave it a try. Looking at the world upside down was fun. The floor became the ceiling and the ceiling became the floor. My head started to hurt a bit and I got a little dizzy, but, I viewed the world from a new angle, and I liked what I saw.

So you want to be rich and famous?

Used to be that fame and noteriety came about only through the traditional means of Hollywood, controversial books and rock bands. But these days it seems that people can be catapulted from total obscurity to stardom by means of reality tv, pod casts...and yes, now through blogging.

I discovered this just the other day. Oh, not to me personally be assured, but to another lucky soul, who it appears was born to blog and as a result is reaping great benefits and face recognition on the streets of New York city. Now as I was saying, I discovered this tid bit of news, as I was flipping through my Italian Gossip magazine (brought to me by my friend who was in Rome recently, remember...you just have to stay up with my blog guys!) Well, scattered in amidst the pictures of famous people, actresses and socialites in their bathing suites (for better or for worse) I came across an interesting article on blogging. But, fascinatingly enough, it wasn't an article about an Italian blogger, but an article in Italian, about a New Yorker by name of Stephanie Klein. The heading read: "Ciao, I am the most clicked on woman in the world."

Okay, it is pretty amazing that this woman's blog has not only become the most clicked on blog in America, but that she is now getting press in Italian magazines, just blows my mind. Her on-line journal called Greek Tragedy, is so popular, that it is being touted as Sex in the City chic and book publishing worthy. In fact, she actually HAS a book deal pending all based upon her little ol' blog. I couldn't resist. I had to google her blog and read a couple of her entries. And kind of like the celebs in their bathing suit, I found, for better or for worse, she more or less, lets everything hang out. No topic is tabu. I kind of decided I liked her when I read her comment "I hate when people use LOL". Makes me wince and cringe too, Stephanie.

So, I got to thinking, what would it be like to be catapulted to celebrity stardom based upon a blog. To have people recognize you on the street and have the paparazzi follow you and snap your picture...just because you write a blog? What would that feel like? Let's all take a moment shall we, and think about that....hmmmm, well, I guess I am pretty okay with my low, low profile status. Too much fauning and attention might make me fingers freeze up and paralyze my brain. On the other hand, all you fellow bloggers, we now have something to aspire to. May we all live long and prosper. And may the minutia and insights our blogs provide to the world bring us all fame, fortune and happiness. Maybe someday I too, will have an honorable mention in an Italian magazine....well, I am not about to go and hold my breath and turn blue, so don't worry!

Sideways

Last Friday night we watched Sideways. It was an okay movie, despite all the negative hype I had heard about it. "What dogs men can be" and "it is such a downer movie" were pretty much the headliners I had heard going in to the movie. And, well, they were pretty much confirmed after viewing the film. But truth be known, I spent the first twenty minutes going crazy trying to figure out where I had seen Thomas Hadden Church before. I knew he had been on some dumb TV show somewhere back in time and couldn't quite place him. I finally had to stop the movie and do a google search to figure out that he had been a regular on "Wings". Such relief to finally place him as the goofy mechanic Lowel Mather and be able to continue on with the movie.

As doggy as Church's character was, just as depressing, was the the passive aggressiveness of the character of Paul and the hyper neediness of Stephanie, played by Sandra Oh. Sandra Oh, by the way, I find to be an interesting actress to watch, and think she is pretty funny in Gray's Anatomy.

My father-in-law asked over breakfast the next day why I thought the movie was called Sideways. His take was that the characters were not moving forward with their lives but rather moving sideways and not getting anywhere. I on the other hand, think the movie's title has more to do with self examination and reviewing the quality of one's life. When one examines a glass of wine, one not only smells it and tastes the wine by letting it roll around ones mouth, but one tips one's glass sideways to fully examine the color of the wine. Viewing the wine sideways you see how the color extends to the rim of the glass. The more color, the stronger the character of the wine, rendering it more exceptional. The weekend trip, for the character of Paul at least, was a catalystic moment in which he evaluated his life, fully excepting his failures, professional and personal. In the end, by viewing his life sideways, he saw what was lacking, dull and weak. I like to think that he offloaded some of his negative baggage and was finally able to start a new relationship, and move forward with his life.

Charmed lives

My friend Amy over at Amy's Alsakan Antics brought up an interesting point the other day in her blog. Is the grass always greener in someone else's blog? Do we really know what is going on with someone else or are they just telling us what they want us to know and keeping the sordid details a secret.

True, true. But, in my humble opinion, it seems that blogging, if you are being honest with yourself and what you post, is actually a great way of cutting to the chase and finding out what makes others tick. For me, it is a great place to air out things that are going around in my head; things that sometimes my friends I meet face to face might not even know about. So, in light of truth and honesty...here are some recent charmed things to know about me.

I tried on a pair of my favorite Gap khakis back in May and was ticked that they were suddenly too tight. Ever since, I have been on a massive control diet. Doesn't seem fair to have to go through this with all the exercising I do. When you are in your forties, (there I said it!) your metabolism just doesn't operate the same as when you are in your twenties. Those were the days when I could consume an entire bag of oreos and not gain and ounce. Not so much anymore. Good news is that I have lost eight pounds but have reached a plateau...Drats!

Ryan tanked in trig last year. Yes, he failed the class. He needs to retake the class but couldn't do it this past summer because he told me about this way too late in the year. On top of that, his Spanish teacher is not keen on him going on to Spanish II...sooooo, I found a tutor and have been paying mega bucks for him to be ready to move on. Arghhhhhh! We are hoping that studying becomes more of a priority this year in school.

I am kind of ticked with my husband lately. We have a mutual standing agreement that whoever gets out of bed last in the morning makes the bed. But, recently he read an article that said if you make your bed right away, without airing it out, the likelyhood of incubating dust mites increases. All, well and good, but he now conveniently has stopped making the bed in the morning and now I have to do it even if I am the first one up.

Our best friend's dad died a few days before swim championships. We took care of all three of our friend's kids when they were in the hospital, while he was in a coma in the hospital. It was an emotionally rough time for us all, and the reason I was clerk of the course for Championships. I took over Stacy's responsibilities that day.

We went to Sonoma today for a fun getaway. Grandpa Jack is in town for the week and we thought it would be great to drive up to visit Chateau St. Jean, one of our favorite vineyards. I felt a bit queasy this morning before we left. I felt increasingly worse as the day wore on. That I had caught Kyle's flu bug was confirmed around 5:30 pm when I dashed out of the Kenwood Restaurant where we had stopped for dinner and proceeded to throw up in the parking lot. And NO, it was not from drinking wine. I had craddled Kyle in my arms just days before as he threw up all over the bathroom floor, conveniently missing the toilet! Such a charmed life I lead. : ) Excuse me as I run to the bathroom.....

It all started with a slow dance

So, here I am sitting in my office with Green Day blaring in the living room. There are about 15 kids hanging out in our backyard messing around. Now that we area back from vacation, my son is having a belated birthday party. The kids have already watched Godzilla and Anchorman, and have consumed burgers and chocolate cake. Nothing too out of the ordinary, except that there are GIRLS at this party. In particular one, Miss Jennifer Mitchell.

I am not sure when it happened but, my shy, quiet little boy has turned into this gregarious, exceptionally funny confident young guy. And girls are noticing. Most of the kids are all on the swim team together and know each other pretty well from practices and meets. But, I started noticing the looks and the bashful flirting going on a while ago between Ryan and Jennifer. The mutual attraction fan club was pretty much confirmed when, Jen's mother called me up two weeks ago and said the girls wanted to come over and fill Ryan's room with balloons when he wasn't around. There they all were, a bevy of girls, complete with air pump, standing in my son's room filling it with colorful balloons. What an impression it made on Ryan later that day when he returned home. How cute he looked diving into the balloons that those girls had left for him to find.

And then, there was the end of the year swim team party. After the awards ceremony and the potluck dinner, there was a DJ and dancing. The kids all did group dancing and hung tight together, being silly and challenging each other in group line dancing manoevers. But, then, a slow dance came on. I turned around and my jaw dropped. There was my son slow dancing with a girl...not just any girl, but, Miss Jennifer. Where did he ever get the nerve? So plucky, and confident and cheered on by his best guy friends. Oh, you can believe that we have been teasing him mercilessly ever since, but, apparently he doesn't even seem to mind (which kind of takes the fun out of it!)But, with that slow dance, a threshold was crossed. Time to hang on loosely and allow him become more and more independent. Kind of exciting and scary for me at the same time. The times, they are a changing. Happy 15th birthday Ryan!

Painting pottery, the Prince of Savoia and being missed

My friend Jenny called me up yesterday and wanted to know if I would go along with her to this new shop that has opened up here in town where you can paint your own pottery. I had driven by the place a couple of times and thought it looked like fun, so I said sure. Turns out there were a bunch of friends going and food and wine were involved as well. Sounded like a lot of fun! We got to the place around 5pm and picked out the ceramic pieces we wanted to decorate and then filled our palattes with paint and then set to work. Jenny is just back from a trip home to England and a sideways trip down to Rome, so we had a lot to talk about. She also brought me back the magazine "Gente" from the Rome airport, so now I can get all caught up with controversial news about Italian actresses like, Sabrina Ferilli and how Emanuele Filiberto (prince of Savoia) spent his summer vcation. Sweet!

It was quite nice to paint, chat and not have to worry about kids and fixing dinner for anyone...as a result we all stayed until the shop closed at 9. As I was leaving I noticed that I had missed four phone calls all placed from home...and then the phone rang again. It was my six year old calling a fifth time. Kyle has learned by heart my cell phone number and takes great delight in calling me when I am not with him, even if I have only left him momentarily for a quick trip to the grocery store. If I don't hear the phone ring and pick up, he leaves me messages like these. "Hey mom, ummmm, I was just wondering where you were. I hope you are having a great time. I miss you. By the way, this is Kyle. I just wanted to know when you were coming home. Okay, bye. Oh, just one more thing...(sound of him blowing me a kiss on the phone)...Okay. Bye. See you soon."

I just like going away, so I can get messages like these. It is nice to be missed.

Vacationing in New Jersey?

We spent the last seven days on the East Coast visiting my parents. Southern New Jersey to be exact. I am here to tell you that it was hot. Not just regular hot, but more precisely, sticky, muggy hot. How soon one forgets living here in California, how humid the summers are on the East coast. One also forgets how green and lush summers can be in the mid-west and on the east coast. My parents have recently relocated back to New Jersey after having retired twenty years ago to Florida. I think my mom and dad are the only two people who are doing a reverse commute back to where they came from! You may well ask, how can you go from palm trees, lakeside property and a short jaunt to Disney World, back to the delight that is Trenton New Jersey? Go figure! Any way, this was our first trip back to the east coast to visit my folks in their new house.

We enjoyed a pretty typical family visit, landing on my parents in a complete whirlwind of high energy. The boys were excited to fly across the country and were absolutely wonderful travelers, enduring the long lines at check in and the 5-1/2 hour flight from Oakland to Philadelphia with ease. Our week at grandma's was filled with sight seeing trips to Philadelphia to view Indepedence hall and the liberty bell, a day at the Jersey shore and a car trip to visit old stomping grounds - "Bellvue Farm" where my mother grew up. My aunt also lives nearby and so we had the opportunity to reconnect with her. She is no fool and when she saw she had some able bodied helpers she set us to work in her garden stringing up the green beans, staking up the tomatos and picking zinnias for the dinner table. But, the best part of the entire trip was simply hanging out, catching-up and watching the kids interact my grandma and grandpa.

When I was a kid, I had my fair share of hanging out with my grandparents. Every summer, because my dad had summers off from teaching college, we would pack up the car and spend two days driving to New Jersey where we would land on my grandparents for an entire month. It took us two days to drive from Iowa to New Jersey. We would leave early in the morning, when the mists were just rising up over the corn fields. The car trip was always a close bonding experience, how could it be anything else, what with three kids, the dog and the luggage crammed into the back and trunk of the family Buick! We were loaded down with puzzles and books and for the most part my brother and sister and I would maintain a sense of decorum, but every so often, the teasing and the bickering reached a fevered pitch and my father bellowed out the obligatory..."If you kids don't settle down I'm going to pull over to the side of the road and one of you is going to walk the rest of the way..." We would drive on, with the windows rolled down, because the air conditioner didn't work very well, stopping at every Howard Johnson's between Cedar Rapids and Philadelphia, consuming cheeseburgers, chocolate milkshakes and clam rolls for every meal.

I loved my summers at Bellvue Farm. The old house had been in my mother's family for generations and was steeped in history and intrigue. Along one hallway hung framed letters written by ancestors describing their journey from England to the new country, along with framed portraits of distant aunts and cousins. As children we cavorted around the hay loft and trepidatiously walked past the dairy cows in the stalls that lined the cow barn. We played on rusty tractors and made doll houses in the corn crib. We ran through the back meadows and hid in the gardens and ate corn on the cob fresh from my grandmother's vegetable patch. But, the best fun was had exploring the farm house that was filled with antiques and odd collectibles, narrow back stair cases, and hidden attic rooms.

So, this past week, we made a family pilgrimage to visit Bellvue Farm, and in addition to that, the Friends meeting house where my parents were married in 1948. This is the first time in almost twenty years that I have been to, or even had a reason return to the Farm and New Jersey. The farm house was sold in 1986 after my grandmother died, after having lived to the ripe old age of 99 and a half. The house still stands but is occupied by a different family. The barns have all been torn down and the color of the old house has been changed. Interesting to return, but difficult to fully recapture the place that I carry around in my head and heart still, after all these years.

Anyway, we all had a great time. We came home rested and relaxed and re-energized. I really needed a change of scenery, even if the scenery was of New Jersey! And...to my extreme and infinite relief, the fish were still alive and kicking when we got home.