Memorial Day

My family has always admired a good cemetery. I suspect my grandmother started it. I frequently accompanied her and Grandpa on Memorial Day treks as she would visit family graves and adorn them with foil-covered tins of peonies.

Grandma had Grandpa drive me past a cemetery with no family members once just to show me the tombstone with a cat on it. She said that the community had erected it as a monument to a woman who roamed the county with a cat in her arms looking for her dead children. I tried to find the cemetery after her death, but no one else in the family knew of its existence.

My paternal grandparents both died before I was 25. They were the only grandparents I ever knew so they were my favorites, and I was theirs, but like most people do with families, I took them for granted. I knew they would always be there when I got ready to visit. Always more than ready to welcome me in to their home for an hour, or a week. Always.

Sometimes always doesn't last forever.

I want you back,
Waiting for me
To step in to your lives.
How could I not have known
You would not last forever?

Notorious

I watched Hitchcock's Notorious yesterday. It's one of those classic movies I thought I'd seen, but apparently never did.

It takes place during WWII and was first released in 1946. In 1946 it must have been a scandalous movie (hence the title) as it starred Ingrid Bergman as the daughter of a convicted Nazi traitor and the sort of woman you-wouldn't-want-to-bring-home-to-mother. She's recruited by an American spy (Cary Grant) to spy on Nazis in Brazil because her mother was American and she (Ingrid) remains loyal to the USA. Cary and Ingrid fall in love (of course), and the movie contains a love making scene that would have been censored except for Hitchcock's inventive directing.

Love making 1940's style. It may be hard to believe, but in 1946 prolonged kissing was considered too risque for the general public. Hitchcock got around this by having the couple alternately kiss and nibble each other during a 3 minute embrace.

But then, in the course of duty, she marries one of the bad guys so she can spy on him better. Cary stands by and lets her do it when just one word from him can save her from sacrificing herself (which I gather she did many times long before meeting Cary, but that's no excuse.)

Eventually her husband and his Mother, who's more Nazi than her son, find out that she's a spy and begin slowly poisoning her. When Cary finds out, he rushes to her side and daringly rescues her by half-carrying/half-dragging her down the stairs right under their noses.

It's a Hitchcock film so the ending is left to our imagination. Sometimes I find this unsatisfactory. Did she live? Did we win the war? Did they live happily ever after? I know the answer to one of the three is Yes so I'm going to assume that the answer to all is Yes. Because I like happy endings.

TV Updates

ABC is cutting the detective show Eyes without giving it a chance to succeed. First, they scheduled it on Thursday night against two strong competitors, including the last season of E.R. (which is several seasons past prime time.) Then they pre-empted it for sweeps month. Third, due to poor ratings, this funny and intelligent show full of good looking people is being cancelled. There must be some hidden strategy for such stupidity.

I probably could ask Paul Lee, the ABC Family president that's scheduling hilarious new family comedies for the summer. “Let’s throw away that notion of the ’50s family, and embrace the contemporary family with all its humor, passion and dysfunction,” Lee said.

Believe it or not, one of these new shows is called Pizza My Heart - ooh, isn't that a catchy title; it's about two pizza empires in New Jersey. I probably should say 'New Joisey' with rocks in my mouth because I bet that's the way at least one guy and/or gal will talk. And they'll have an IQ of 70. (For those who don't know me, I was being sarcastic when I said, "hilarious.")

Reality shows are big this summer. They make a nice change from re-runs which seem to start somewhere in September. Some of my favorite titles for new shows:

Hit Me Baby One More Time (Domestic disputes?)
I Want to Be A Hilton (Just give me the money,please)
Real Gilligan Island 2 (I get to be Ginger)
Brat Camp (Survivor losers?)

There's a new reality/game show premiering June 7 that I think I could win - Fire Me...Please.

The premise is simple - two people start work on the same day and do everything they can to get fired by 3 PM the same day. The person who gets fired the closest to 3 PM without going over wins $25,000.

The hardest part would be lasting till noon.

Team Building

I'm thinking of going back to school to be a psychologist like Dr. Phil.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m taking some business type courses as well as writing courses. One of the courses is titled, “Building Relationships to Get Better Results" and offers strategies for team building. While I was reading through the lesson, it occurred to me that the three steps for building a stronger team could be used to create stronger personal relationship. If you are contemplating a life of eternal bliss with your one-and-only, the two of you should sit down together and explore the following steps before you invest too much time in establishing a disjointed union.

(1) Identify common goals. How many times have you heard an unhappy couple lament, “We have nothing in common any more.” “We just want different things”? “We were so much in love, I just assumed we wanted the same things.” At least if you know that you want 12 children, but he wants 12 dogs, you can discuss it and reach a compromise before the fights extinguishes all that love or cut your losses early and move on.

(2) Establish each partner’s responsibilities. How many times have you heard “I do all the work, while ol’ lard butt just sits around watching TV.” or “I’m tired of being the only one to balance the checkbook… the only one to do housework… the only one who cooks?” If you know ahead of time that neither one of you does housework, you know you need to hire a maid and if neither of you can afford that, decide if you can live with a messy house or if you need to find someone who cleans. Remember it's the little things that get on your nerves.

(3) Recognize the need to celebrate accomplishments. Being in love is an accomplishment. Cleaning the bathroom is an accomplishment. Sometimes just making it through another day without killing that stupid jerk you love is an accomplishment. Make appointments to celebrate those accomplishments; be specific about what, when, and how you are celebrating. But also, reserve enough time and energy to celebrate spontaneously when the occasion arises and look for those occasions. Knowing that your partner celebrates you, just might keep you from kicking ol’ lard butt’s butt out the door in a few years.

Time Flies

One of the courses on writing for business that I just completed emphasized the importance of word order in writing sentences. The title of this posting is a prime example. Time Flies means nothing similar to Flies Time. You might be thinking that’s just silly. “Flies Time” has no meaning.

In my mind’s eye, I can see a large housefly sporting an even larger wristwatch. He’s wearing Elton John glasses so that he can see the watch better and he’s urging some unseen creature to, “Hurry! Hurry!”

On the other hand, the course also gave instruction on distinguishing between plural and possessive nouns. “Flies’ Time” is as different from Flies Time as it is from Time Flies. I imagine that a fly’s time involves a frenzied attempt to annoy as many people as possible during their month-long life span. I have known some people who live in flies’ time, but for years, instead of days.

Time Flies. When you see this phrase, do you think of (1) an alarm clock with wings, (2) a digital clock gone crazy, (3) a kitchen clock sitting on an airplane waiting for takeoff?

When you read "a digital clock gone crazy", did you think, "The correct term is "LED digital clock", or did you see (1) a digital clock with wildly rotating LED numbers, (2) an insane clock wielding a chainsaw, or (3) a digital clock telling jokes at the local comedy club?

The White Rabbit Syndrome

I haven't posted anything for a week. I'm behind one lesson in my writing course - and we've only had two lessons. There's a pile of dirty laundry in the middle of my bedroom floor and a sink full of dirty dishes in the kitchen. I think there's a story there, but I'm too busy to write it.

Survivors

The only long term plants I have are those that thrive on neglect. The oldest plant in my home is an Aralia. It was one of three plants I bought for a dollar more than 15 years ago, but it is the only survivor. It came with me when I moved from Florida and has lived in 8 different towns and cities in two states.

I usually call it my "rare Ming Aralia". I do that because (1) it was sold as a Ming, but doesn't match the pictures of any Ming Aralia I've ever seen, (2) it managed to survive under my care, and (3) everybody that sees it asks why I'm growing a carrot. In reply, I stick my nose in the air and say frostily, "THAT is my rare Ming Aralia."

That may be the key to its success. I have convinced it that it is special, a rare and beautiful thing, but allowed it to draw upon its own strengths to grow and thrive.

That might be a good way to treat your friends, family, and co-workers.

My garden

I planted my garden last week by the light of the patio lightbulb. I mention the lightbulb because there are some plants that are suppose to do much better when planted under a full moon. Hopefully a lightbulb will work just as well as moonlight.

My international garden consists of one Roma tomato plant, four Habanero pepper plants, and a Greek oregano bush, all surrounded by marigolds which I believe come from Africa.

So far my garden is flourishing. I can credit my green thumb, the lightbulb, or the guardian marigolds, but it's probably due more to frequent showers and a mix of warm days and cool nights.

Happy Nurses' Day

Today is National Nurses’ Day 2005. I mention that because (1) nobody else seemed to have noticed and (2) I’m a registered nurse.

I was only 17 when I started nursing school at a large county hospital. It seems an impossibly long time ago. I don’t practice clinical nursing anymore, but for almost 20 years I was on “active duty” caring for the sick and wounded in hospitals and their homes. (I think I read that in a book somewhere – sounds noble doesn’t it?)

I can’t remember what I wore to work yesterday, but I can remember many of the patients I took care of years ago. Not always their faces or names, but their spirits, their essence. I want to tell you about some of them. Not necessarily the most memorable, but the ones I’m thinking about today.

I remember the mother, dying of cancer, who wouldn’t let us contact her son in Viet Nam because she didn’t want him to worry. “They’ll bring him home,” we urged, but she passed away without seeing him again.

I remember the young artist who lived at our hospital because he was quadriplegic and because his mother was a nurse there. (You can’t do that anymore.) I remember him for two reasons: he always took all of his pills at one time and he painted beautiful pictures with a brush held between his teeth. I was jealous of both talents.

I can never forget Flo. Her name was actually Florence, but we called her Flo because she wasn’t as long as her name. She was only a few weeks old when she was first admitted to our pediatric unit, but she was fussy, demanding, bossy, and totally adored by all of us on the nightshift who spoiled her rotten every chance we got.

I remember the young couple who began their married life living in a car. She came from a very large and very poor family. Apparently she had slept in the same bed with several siblings most of her life, but after she married she slept in the back seat of the Ford and her husband slept in the front. Since it was the first time she had ever slept by herself, he bought her a stuffed bear to keep her from getting lonely. They shared that story with me when he brought the bear to her as she lay in traction after breaking her leg. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but I rejoiced with her that her husband loved her that much.

In the same hospital, a mother proudly showed me the red cowboy boots that her children had given to her for her birthday. She didn’t care that they were a size too big, and that they looked a little silly on her scrawny legs. She was beaming because she had always wanted red cowboy boots and the children remembered. They were grown before they could afford them, but they remembered. And I agreed - the red boots were beautiful.

I remember the patient who mentioned one morning that she woke up every time I made my rounds during the night. I apologized for disturbing her, but she protested, “Oh, no, I’m not complaining. I would wake up enough to see it was you and then go right back to sleep because I knew you were taking care of me.”

And that’s why I did it for 20 years. So Happy Nurses’ Day to me!

A place to call home

I don’t have a home town. You know one of those places where you remember old Mr. Grayson and he remembers when he used to yell at you to get off the lawn and the only thing you have in common is remembering his wife’s chocolate chip cookies, but you always stop to say hello to him anyway. I never had one of those places.

My father had a home town where he grew up, where he is buried, where people from his past came to his funeral and remembered him and his family, were his family. The town isn’t there anymore. The corner grocery store his father owned was torn down years ago. Only echoes of the Baptist hymns are heard in the church his family supported through several generations. The town still has a spot on the state map, but it began disappearing years ago.

I wonder if it’s too late for me to find a home-town. I could be the crotchety old lady that keeps the half-haunted house at the end of the street. The one that yells at kids to get off the lawn, and keeps their errant baseballs, and scares them so bad on Halloween they wet their pants. Yeah, that would be fun.

Roadtrip!

I was going on an old-fashioned road trip this weekend. I was going to a place I’ve been over a half dozen times in the past 14 years, but only once in the last five. A little town in Illinois that never seemed to change. The same stores, the same restaurants with the same menus of hometown favorites, the same little flower garden in front of that well-kept home on that street whose name we could never remember but the town was small enough we could always find anyway. The kind of town that proudly advertised their French restaurant was in the bowling alley. Kind of a Mayberry type of place.

I was going to a doll show there, but the show has been cancelled because nobody comes anymore. For the past 15 years, the show has been the opening event at a roadside tourist attraction called Rockome Gardens. I just read the place is up for sale and the doll show cancelled. Rockome Gardens is going the way of so many of the old attractions that used to lure the traveler to spend a few hours and a few bucks. Nobody stops anymore.

Nobody stops to see the real Amish farmhouse beside a house made of Fresca bottles. No one wants to ante up the extra buck fifty to go through the haunted cave and see the “baby rattlers” or a quarter to see the amazing trained chicken play a piano. You couldn’t drag the kids into the Quilt Store to see the old ladies actually having a quilting bee, but they didn’t mind stopping by the bake shop to get some freshly made, still warm cinnamon rolls or plunking their butts down in the world’s largest rocking chair, if they had to be there anyway. Nobody wants to drive 25 miles off the highway anymore to sit in a chair, no matter how silly.

The town’s probably changed along with the rest of the world in the past five years. Family owned restaurants replaced by the usual fast-food hamburger joints that are the same no matter where you go. The downtown variety store turned into a dollar store. The people with the lovely garden retired, moved to Florida, and sold their house to a bunch of kids so there’s only a pile of rocks in the front yard.

So I’m not going to go. I don’t want to know if the town has changed. I already know the secret of the “baby rattlers” and if you’ve seen one Fresca bottle-house, you’ve seen them all. But I'm glad I saw it once.

Here's to new seasons

This is an exercise in imagery. It started out to be something else, but I'm very good at adapting to my moods.

It’s springtime in Indiana. A time when nature tries on new finery, casts it off and retrieves the old winter coat, then explores another, brighter outfit, only to return to the comfortable old coat again and again. This cycle continues several weeks before she finally settles into warm weather attire and is ready to face a new season.

On another, similar note, Mike became a home owner today. As I read on a Hallmark card this evening, "There's no place like home - especially when it's your own place." Congratulations, Mike! I hope you have many happy years in your new home.

The Dog Walker

As I wrote previously, one of the uncompleted assignments for my writing class was writing dialogue. We didn’t have to submit the assignments so I just did it my head and actually, that’s daydreaming, not writing.

Last week Mike told a story about Wes that I thought would make a good dialogue. It had a beginning, middle, and end, and was entertaining. I wasn’t there to record the conversation when the incident happened so I’m going to use the liberty that all writers take and make some of it up.

The Dog Walker

It was one of those rare spring mornings in Indiana with no rain in sight and Wes took the opportunity to work outside, attending to some of the home owner's chores that lay dormant through the winter. He studied the sprinkler heads carefully, cleared them of debris, and adjusted them away from the sidewalk. As he bent over the sprinklers, calculating the spray angle, he noticed a dog on the sidewalk. A beautiful red Doberman.

“I’ve always wanted a red Doberman,” Wes thought to himself as his eyes wandered across the dog, up the leash, up the arm that held the leash, and on to The Dog Walker.

“Hmmm, I’ve always wanted one of those,” Wes added at the sight of the pretty dog walker. “Go for it,” his inner voice urged. “Be friendly to your neighbor. To your good-lookin’ neighbor.”

“That’s a beautiful dog,” he called.

The Dog Walker smiled and stepped off the sidewalk to approach him. “Thank you. His name is Buster.”

He patted the dog while they chatted about the Doberman (Buster), Indiana weather (unpredictable), her career (teaching), and the world in general. Too soon, she said, “We’ve taken up enough of your time. Come on, Buster. Let’s finish our walk.”

The inner voice advised, “Be cool! Don’t blow it!”

“Well, maybe I’ll pet your dog again sometime.”

“You blew it! You moron!” the inner voice screeched as Wes morosely watched The Dog Walker and the Doberman walk away. He was still banging his head against a wall when Mike arrived ten minutes later.

“What’s up?” Mike asked rhetorically in way of a greeting.

Wes told him about the red Doberman and The Dog Walker, “I didn’t get her name or her phone number, and all I could say was, ‘Maybe I’ll pet your dog again sometime’. I’m such an idiot.”

Mike rolled on the floor in laughter, immensely enjoying his friend’s embarrassment. “You are an idiot,” he concurred when he could finally speak. “Maybe I’ll pet your dog again sometime! That’s the stupidest line I ever heard.”

The inner voice just sighed.

The End

Luckily, Wes is a good sport and doesn’t mind us making fun of him. If The Dog Walker (or any single female between 22 - 28) should read this, you could do a lot worse than Wes. Email me - we'll talk.

OK, let’s get a little chatter going here. You don't have to use your own name to print your comments. We can talk about Wes first then critique my dialogue.

The ending was hard to write - did the dialogue end successfully? The instructor would say I used too many !’s. What do you think?