Vanity

So here I am, when I am supposed to be cleaning or do the millions of other things that need to be done on a daily basis, wondering if I should color my hair.

I am a young 30ish woman who is slowly being run over with the grays. Normally I'd be fine with that. In my vision of my older years, I saw myself as a hip, white, thin, active, short-haired gal like they show in the Dove commercials. Of course my qualifications for "older years" was not the 30s!

So I went out and bought two big boxes of hair coloring. I'm now a brown/gray, curly, bit-past-shoulder-length gal and I'm going to go blond, curly, bit-past-shoulder-length. I might even splurge and get a new hair style. But that's another day.

Wish me luck!

Prayers needed for Dom and Melanie....

Melanie blogs here, and Dom blogs here. There is a huge bit of news that deserves your attention, and prayers over the weekend.

Melanie and Dom just lost a baby through miscarriage, and lab tests are giving them quite a scare for Melanie's health. They have to wait until Monday for conclusive results, which could be either a relief, or a tremendous blow to their hopes and dreams. Pray hard for them....

95 Books 95

My uncle and aunt died and left a house full of books. Art, architecture, history, nonfiction (even a few mysteries). My cousins have sold the house and invited us to take what we want. I went out there today and came home with lots and lots of books. It was like Christmas and my birthday all at once. If you can imagine being turned loose in your local B&N to take home as many books as you want for free--that is what it was like. Bookmania!
Many beautiful BIG books about art and architecture. One of my cousins is an architect and they were all bookworms. My uncle read voraciously, especially as he got older and less mobile. History was his favorite subject and I got a few nice books and biographies for my husband and myself. Our older boy got a beautiful book about Vivaldi--lovely photographs of Venice. Even the little guy enjoyed a Time-Life book, "Primates".
I could not abandon these books. Some I had wanted for years. I never buy art books because they are too expensive. We all enjoy looking at them though.
A brief taste of what I got--two volumes of Philippe Aries " A History of Private Life", five issues of "Granta" (I could have taken all of them, there must have been a hundred, but I had no room in my car or my house for them),the collected stories of William Trevor, an Escoffier, "The Cake Bible" by Rose Birnbaum, biographies by Claire Tomalin, Antonia Fraser and Jenny Uglow (why are so many biographies written by women?), novels by Henry Green, Kingsley Amis, Ngaio Marsh and Ruth Rendell. A few gardening books for my husband, "Elizabeth and Essex" by Lytton Strachey. You can see what a good mixed bag it was!
Best of all...I spotted a slim, green cloth bound volume at the back of the shelf.It was called "The Coloured Lands" by G.K. Chesterton. My uncle's signature was on the first page. It was published in 1938--he probably would have been graduating high school then. It is a wonderful collection of fantasy stories and imaginative illustrations by GKC himself! I look forward to reading it. It seems to bring my uncle close to me in a way he wasn't when he was alive.
Now to tidy up the dining room for dinner, then a perfect orgy of reading!

Agoraphobia? Snow-o-phobia? or just plain laziness?

My husband has been teasing me lately that I am turning into a housecat. It is true. I do a lot of running around during the day, but at night all I want to do is hang out, do a crossword puzzle, watch "Monk" with the big boy, read "The Magic Schoolbus" with the little guy, and drink tea. There are a lot of meetings I should be going to as a parent leader in my son's school. How much change we actually can effect, as parents, is a rant for a different place but the networking is valuable. It helps to show your face out there. Anyway yesterday was snow, ice, "wintry mix"--which always sounds to me like some kind of candy product. You know, starlight mints, red and green M&Ms, chocolate santas... I shoveled out a bit and Sir Edward put out plenty of salt. This morning it is sunny but very cold. My hair is soaking wet. I have nothing but decaf coffee in the house. B.Minor had an appointment at 9, not too far away. I went out and scraped the car and ran the defroster. Then...I felt I couldn't leave. I just want to stay home and keep warm. There were plenty of days in the past where I HAD to go out to work or school, trudging in the sleet to the bus, waiting on the corner, riding the ferry, trudging up Broadway. No doubt in the future I will be doing that again. So why not enjoy my flexibility now?
Off to help spin a spider web. We are getting hooked on spiders this week :)

Hooray, we can skate!

The pond has frozen! Well over a week of sub-freezing temps has led to a good thick coat of ice on Allison's Pond. The Parks Dept, still cautious, has plastered "No Skating" signs around the periphery. But the locals are ignoring that....
B.Major and I were thrilled to be skating on real ice. Most years our skating has been confined to the skating rink at Clove Lakes. This is much more fun! We found two branches shaped roughly like hockey sticks, and a chunk of a log, for a puck. We got to scrimmage a bit. Quite a new experience. B.Major began to realize that playing hockey on the ice is a far different thing than playing it on a computer game. Yesterday both boys and I skated. Then a hike into the woods, over the frozen waterfall behind the cemetery, and up to Goodhue Lake. Both boys broke the edges of the ice and got full of mud. A good day!

Ice thoughts

I was skating with my older son at our local ice rink. We arrived at the beginning of the session. The ice was like glass: freshly zambonie'd and as slippery as a mirror. It took him awhile to find his feet but soon he was gliding and swooping away in enjoyment.

I love to skate. I remember going to the small swampy pond near my house when I was a kid. Everyone hung out there. Even if you didn't have skates, you could slide around on the ice. We would stay til the sun finally sank and the cold grey air seeped into our fingers and toes. On Wednesdays (Catholic schools' half-day) we would go to the newly-opened rink, the same one I take my son to now. The plaza in front would be jammed with Catholic school kids. You'd see cousins, and kids you knew from playing basketball or scouts from other parishes. Clumps of girls would skate together, giggling and pointedly ignoring the boys who shouted and raced past, showing off.
Even there we felt the cold, despite the big "bubble" roof, but we could buy some hot chocolate (actually hot Swiss Miss) and burn our tongues while our mittened hands clumsily clutched the styrofoam cups.

The last time it was cold enough for long enough to skate on the pond near my house was four winters ago. I was heavily pregnant with my younger son and could not risk a fall. Ever since then I have longed to skate outside on a pond again. We are lucky to have the rink so convenient to our house, but there is something too close to being a hamster on a wheel...round and round, round and round....

Still, the last time we went to the rink, my son met up with a girl from his class. She talked to him for awhile and then on the ice, my son skated near (but not exactly with) her, and showed off some of his moves....it is nice to see that some things don't change. Even for seventh-graders.

Drowning in gush

Oh dear, I hope it is not disrespectful of me, but I am not getting on with St.Therese too well. The style is very sentimental, gushy and too too sweet. Perhaps it is the translation.
For now I have switched back to Susan Howatch's Starbridge series--an astringent antidote to all that sugar.

Or maybe I should just save the Little Flower for a Lenten penance.