Emily P's Recital

Last night I had the pleasure of hearing Emily P play the violin and piano at her "unofficial" senior recital, which took place at her church. She has been taking violin lessons since the age of three, and piano since the age of eight, of course she is very good at both. She is a member of several honor orchestras and has played in our city's symphony. Her mother is a violin teacher, though she did not teach her daughter. That never works very well.





Emily played seven pieces, and had all but the last one, "Tarantella", a duet with her mother, memorized. I really like that piece, but my favorite was "The Entrance of the Queen of Sheba". It struck me while mother and daughter were playing together, what a blessing it is for them to share the gift and beauty of making music together. To create something at the same time, to blend in perfect harmony. It is certainly something rare and precious in this day and age, a mother and daughter bonding through classical music.

Pastel Mints Medicine

I bought a box of pastel mints today that were marked down to half price. I am not in the habit of buying candy or keeping it around the house, mostly because I have no self-control when it comes to sweets. None. Two of my boys still live at home. At Halloween, I buy candy early while the selection is good, then I give the unopened bags of candy to them for safe keeping. LOL I buy their favorites because they get to eat whatever is leftover, and anymore, we don't get many Trick or Treaters.

On a sidenote, Youngest Son was disappointed that Halloween fell on a Friday last year since he didn't get to dress up and go beg for candy because he had a football game to play in. Just as well...people look a little askance at a 6'2" 'kid' Trick or Treating.

Anyway, back to the story. Mom bought me a crystal candy dish some years ago. I have it filled with dried hollyhock flowers. My mom never kept candy out in the open either. She'd hide chocolate up in a kitchen cupboard. But my youngest sister aka a Chocolate Bloodhound, would find it. When we were very young, and one of us needed a St Joseph's orange flavored baby aspirin, which we LOVED, she would open up another aspirin bottle for the "well" kid. It held pastel mint "medicine" and she gave one mint to the well kid. We knew it wasn't medicine, but it kept everybody happy.

Here's a picture of my sister and me at about the ages of four and two, when we were given "pastel mint medicine". I'm the dark haired one on the right.




P.S. I've eaten almost the whole jar of mints while typing this...that's 130 g of sugar! Ugh! I'm getting a headache and going into a coma now. Goodbye.

Thirteen Minutes

Number One son flew into the Big City early this afternoon and took an airport shuttle to our town where I picked him up at the bus stop drop off. A few mintues after we arrived home he said he wanted to get a hair cut and he thought he would just run to the hair salon because it was such a nice day (40 degrees and sunny). The hair salon is basically a 1.75 miles round trip, straight down the street that intersects ours, in a strip mall. One and three-quarters of a mile,...remember that. It takes me about twenty mintues to walk each way, or at least it did when I last walked it years ago. I guessed I had about a half hour or more to get a few things done before he arrrived back home if he didn't have to wait at the salon. I figured mid afternoon would probably be pretty slow there. He wore blue jeans and a t-shirt and took off with his long strided jog. He stands well over six feet. THIRTEEN MINUTES later I look out the front door glass storm door and see him jogging up our sidewalk ...and I can see his hair has been cut or rather shaved in his case. He wears a very short military type cut. He did run cross-country in high school, but never even made varsity team. I said, "You only left THIRTEEN MINUTES ago!" He just chuckled and said,"Well, I just ran into the salon and she took out the hedge trimmers, cut my hair, I paid, and ran back home. But now what do I do?"

Gee, I don't know, why don't you negotiate World Peace in the next fifteen minutes.

Past, Present and Future

Number Three Son...this 18 year old child of mine...some days, next Fall when he goes off to college cannot come soon enough...he argues against or puts down EVERY single thing I say and according to him, every reason I have for doing something is beyond STUPID. He has always been the child who talked to me the most, shared the events of his day with me... and nowadays is so contentious that I don't want to try to converse with him because I know it is going to stress me, something I really don't need with my health issues. It just makes things worse. But I miss the young boy who was easy to please and thought I was smart and capable.

Last week, he slipped up when he asked me for some information and I replied that I did not know (it was something along the lines of how many hours HE worked last year or some other activity where I was not present, information he needed for filling out a scholarship application). Anyway, I said, "How could you expect *me* to know that information, *I* wasn't there, you were." BTW, I was sitting at this computer in one room, and he was in his bedroom. And I heard him answer quietly, "Because you're a genius." I'm sure he didn't think I could hear him since he always accuses me of being deaf. I said, "WHAT did you say?" "Nothing, nothing." LOL

Somedays, it takes all my self control not to grab the iron skillet and whack him upside the head as hard as I can. But then there is his fun-loving side that he shows everyday, such as this. He is obsessed with the movie and character of Forrest Gump. He walks around the house quoting all the different kinds of shrimp in his best Forrest immitation. It drives us nuts and my DH and I end up shouting "Shut UP!" He has worn a crew cut hairstyle since second grade and has worn it extra high and tight lately, resembling the Forrest Gump hairstyle.

And yesterday,...he came home for lunch and changed clothes. He put on his Bubba Gump Shrimp Company baseball cap and dressed in white slacks, an old short sleeve plaid shirt of his dad's, a belt, and running shoes...
and went back to his fourth block class...AP Calculus.

Forrest Gump in Calculus class. LOL
He said his teacher, Mr Z, just looked at him and couldn't stop laughing.

I will miss him terribly when he leaves home. And sigh with relief.

I am in mourning for one of my favorite actresses who died. Five years ago. Only I just found out last week. Hope Lange. She was only 72 years old when she died on 17 Dec 2003.

I first saw her in "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" TV series, which to this day is the most romantic series I've ever seen. It ran for two seasons, 1968 - 1970 and Hope Lange won two Emmy's for her portryal of Mrs. Muir. It was the ultimate "we can never be together story line"...a living woman and a dead man's ghost. I fell in love with both the Captain and Carolyn Muir. Mostly their voices. And they had some great dialogue. Feisty and funny. I loved their chemistry together.

I was a teenager when the series ran, straddled between childhood and adulthood, with all the conflicting emotions and desires a teen feels. Carolyn Muir was a strong woman, a widow with two children, a boy about 7 and a girl, 9 years old. She supported herself as a writer, (though logic would suggest that she had a good size inheritance also, as she employed a full time housekeeper/cook, Martha Grant).

I was drawn to the Carolyn Muir character on several levels. On the one hand, she was the kind of mother I wanted, but didn't have. Strong, healthy, energetic, happy even in the face of adversity, spirited, able to stand on her own ... a wonderful role model. (This is not to disrespect my mom, who had many wonderful qualities.) And she had a career as a writer. Something I wanted to be but never voiced. Then there was the teenage girl in me who wanted boys to like her, be attracted to her and looked forward to being in love. The captain was so male, so handsome and so interesting to be around and converse with, and had such a sexy male voice. How could any female not fall in love with him? So I wanted to BE Carolyn Muir as well. To be the object of Captain Gregg's intense fascination.

Of course I have searched the internet for all the information I could find about the cast of the show. Edward Mulhare, the actor who played Captain Daniel Gregg is dead also (1997). So is that like dying twice? But I was fortunate enough to find some Wave files with dialogue from the shows which I loaded onto my iTunes...where I can click on Repeat and the clip will be played over and over and over...when I'm alone, lest I drive my sons crazy. How wonderful it is to hear their voices again. Be still my heart.