Crazy Like a Fox OR What is a Fennec?

This isn't my beach blog, but I want one of these!



It's a Fennec.
What's a fennec?
To tell you the truth, I had no idea 'til I looked it up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fennec_Fox

Life's a Beach Every Day -- Blog Rained Out (please check again tomorrow!) :-)

I was going to post a blog about our beach adventures today.

Here's Iz in beach mode.



Oh, and if you ever wondered if the weather report could be totally wrong, well, YEAH!

We were expecting thunderstorms this afternoon, and to give those weather people credit, this is the way the sky looked when we were heading to the beach today.
Ominous but lovely, yeah? :-)



K, but it never rained at all today.
So, a shout out to those weather people at http://www.boston.com./
HELLO?!?!?!?!?! :-)

Anyway, all the photos on my Blackberry are taking their time own sweet time coming to my laptop, so today's adventure is postposed for lack of illustration, k? :-)

Sufficed to say, we spent 4 hours at the beach, left at 4pm, encountered horrendous traffic on Rt. 128 South, and didn't make it home 'til 7pm or so.

And, to make matters worse, (please, someone, get out a small violin!), I had to put up with these questions on the way home.

Iz asked me if a 16-year-old girl could really have a baby and how that was possible, then she asked me if Nathan, because he was 16, could get pregnant, and finally she asked me why she couldn't marry Nathan.
I like to call these the "brain hurting" questions. :-)

P.S. Crane Beach feels just like Penn Station.
No bathing, k? :-)

LIVE...from Amtrak train 164 (NYC to Boston)...it's me, AGAIN!

As one of my friends says, “Every now and then, it’s good to change your zip code.”
And, he’s right.

I was rather in a funk at home, and on a total impulse, which is probably one of my weaknesses not strengths, I decided to go to NYC to see one of my favorite performers, James Maddock.

I’m on the train home now; I left Penn Station around 1pm.
God, how I love my laptop (thanks for helping me pick it out, Jeff!) and my little blackberry cell phone when it pretends it's a modem! :-)

Tangent Penn Station Notes:

Funny, but we can put astronauts on the moon, but the people who run Penn Station can’t figure out a system to get 200 people on a train in some sort of orderly fashion.
It’s a total free-for-all, and it’s probably the MOST stressful thing in the scheme of the whole trip!

Also, did you know that the bathroom at Penn Station has a posted “Rules of Conduct”, one of which is “No Bathing”.
Brenda, remember at work when Facilities posted a sign like that in the bathroom?
We surmised that some person was probably washing her feet in the sink, which was really ridiculous considering there were showers 5 feet away.

Tangent Movie Note: Remember that scene from “Desperately Seeking Susan” when Madonna’s character dries her armpits using the bathroom hand dryer.
Hmmm, I wonder if that’s legal in the Penn Station woman’s room? I’ll have to try it next time and see if I get busted. :-)

Anyway, back to our story, last night, was, as usual, tons of fun.
I saw James perform at the Rockwood Music Hall, a great little venue, for two hours.

My brother-in-law first introduced me to a CD called “Songs from Stamford Hill” back in 2000 which was by a group called Wood.
This was James’ group.
Unfortunately, they have disbanded since…such a GREAT band!
I highly recommend you buy this CD or at least give it a listen on iTunes or MySpace.
Come on, you can buy it for .01 from Amazon!

http://www.amazon.com/Songs-Stamford-Hill-Wood/dp/B00000K4I3/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1246818007&sr=8-3

Anyway, if I were stuck on a desert island (err, with electricity and a CD player or my iPod), and I could only listen to 10 CDs, this would be one of them.

Anyway, in 2006, I was wondering what had happened to Wood, and I came across James on MySpace.

http://www.myspace.com/jamesmaddockmusic

Here we are at the 11th Street Bar at 1am.
Hey, the evening doesn't begin in NYC ‘til at least midnight. :-)



"You Make Me Feel Bad" (Wood)



"Together"



Last night, he played with two other fabulous musicians…

Freddie Stevenson

http://www.myspace.com/freddiestevensonmusic

Oli Rockberger

http://www.myspace.com/olirockberger

I rolled into bed by 2:30am or so, which wasn’t bad considering the last time I was there I stayed out ‘til 4:30am.
Yeah, kind of crazy, but at least now I can stay that once in my life, I pretty much stayed up all night. :-)

It was so much fun to be in a different place and better yet to be surrounded by such talented and lovely people.
I shall have to do this more often, um, when I get a job!

We just passed through New Haven, and it's time for a snack.
Speaking of snacks, do you know what’s worse than being on the train next to someone with a loud iPod or having a loud phone conversation?
Sitting next to someone who has brought raw celery, carrots, and every other very audible crunchy veggie to eat for lunch!
Yes, she’s sitting next to me now, doing a crossword puzzle, and going “Crunch…crunch…crunch!”
“Oh, no, please! Not another carrot stick! Uncle!”
There should be a law against eating raw veggies on the train!
And, I SO bet you can’t eat raw veggies in the Penn Station woman’s room either.
Right under “No Bathing” it probably says “No Crunching”! :-)

Off to the snack car...I am not sure what I want to eat, but I think it will be EXTRA crunchy. :-)

LIVE...from NYC...it's me!

I should look this good when I am in Massachusetts. :-)

This is one of the only cities I know where women carry their little dogs around like purses.
I noticed it the minute I got off the train at Penn Station.
You know, kinda slung under their shoulder and supported by their arm.
Monty would so bite me in the ass if I ever carried him like that and then tried to stick my lipstick in his ear. :-)

Brenda, Nancy, and Sarah: You'd appreciate this.
Remember when I (sniffle...sniffle) worked, and I kept the Shout supplies in my cube.
Well, in my purse, I have a Hello Kitty bag (Hello Kitty? I know. How shocking!) which contains a nail file, nail clippers, a small sewing kit, um, female time-of-the-month things, Tylenol, and Shout wipes!
Well, the Shout wipes came in handy today when the woman next to me on the train spilled coffee on her jeans.
I said, "Oh, no! I SO hate when that happens. And, I just happen to have a Shout wipe! Would you like it?"
She thankfully accepted it.
Wow, it's so kewl be Wonder Woman in a potential fashion disaster. :-)

That's Not My Name!

Blog soundtrack:



Besides scents, another one of my favorite things is names.
This blog comes as a result of a botched trip to the dentist last Thursday.

No, the dentist visit wasn’t botched.
That is, I’m in no pain or agony.
The whole visit was botched, as I showed up early for my appointment.
Yeah, but not by minutes, hours, or even days.

Am I usually an overly punctual person or timely in any way?
Um, not really.
It seems that since I am not working, um, time has become irrelevant to me, unless it involves picking up Iz or Nate.
I actually kidded a friend a few weeks ago when he was doing mortgage refinance papers on a Wednesday night. And I said, "Oh, that’s exciting stuff for a Monday night."
He said, “Monday?”
Hey, I’m unemployed, so most every day is the same to me – a holiday! :-)
AND, thus proving, a mind is a terrible thing to waste on unemployment, and that's why I have a blog.
(And, thanks VERY MUCH to my friend who suggested I be a blogger.)

So, when I walked into the dentist’s office, Kathy, the receptionist, saw me and said, “Oh, hi!”
She then paused for a millisecond and said, “Oh, no, wait! You’re not supposed to be here.”
“I’m not?” I asked.
She then told me she’d check, and sure enough, I was THREE weeks early.
Prior to this visit, I had gotten a postcard, and when I checked it later at home, it clearly stated, “JULY 30th at 11:00”.
Oopsie.
Kathy said, “I’d try to squeeze you in because you’re here, but we’re booked solid. It’s a shame you had to come all this way.”
I told her it was no problem and then said that I’d go visit my parents while in the neighborhood.

I have been going to this practice for 20+ years.
It used to be run by Dr. Healy, but he sold it to Dr. Cohen.
I don’t like Dr. Cohen nearly as much as I liked Dr. Healy, but I figure, even though the practice is a good 30 minutes away from my house, I can always drive around town (the town I grew up in) and go see my parents.
Seeing my parents involves driving through the cemetery.

It’s nice, because I stop my parent’s headstone, sweep off leaves, brush away branches, right the pole of my Dad’s Korean War medallion, and then reposition my angel and cat statues.
For the longest time, the angel and cat statue covered a specific part of the headstone.
It is the part under my Dad's name that says “Friend of Anne”.
Anne was my Dad’s girlfriend of six year when he died.
She hid upstairs in my Dad’s bedroom while I sat next to him on his hospital bed and was with him until he died the morning he passed away.
I finally got over that, and I uncovered her name.
Well, every once in a while, if I linger at their headstone too long and I see “Beloved Wife” under my Mom’s name and “Friend of Anne” under my Dad’s name, I get the urge to slam that kitty and angel back together to cover up “Friend of Anne”.
But the urge subsides, and then my conscience says to me, “Get a grip, Jean!”
:-)

Anyway, I love the cemetery.
I love cemeteries in general…so many people…so much history…sad times…happy times.
If you think about, perhaps really hard, cemeteries are full of life, just life that is no longer here.

I love headstones; well, primarily for the art of them.
And secondarily, I love names.
Sometimes I think that’s an odd thing about me.
But, maybe it’s not if you consider I’m a writer.
Okay, so I love names and headstones, and sometimes you can find the most interesting names on headstones.
Oh, I also save names, well, interesting names from obituaries too.

You know, maybe part of my love of names comes from the fact that I feel I have such a boring one.
Jean Marie.
ZZZZzzzzzzz.
How Gidget is that?!?! :-)
My mother told me that she named me "Jean" because:
1) All the girls she knew named Jean were the nicest girls. (I was going to be James if I was a boy) and
2) Our surname was Szymczak; therefore, my Mom felt compelled to give my siblings and I all short and easy-to-pronounce first names.
By the way, in later years, my Mom divulged that she was thinking of naming me Leacadia (Polish name), but she wimped out, because apparently in 1962, it wasn't cool to be ethnic, especially when you had a surname with very few vowels. :-)

Here’s a name from the obituary of a local woman who had five surnames appended to her first name.
Okay, while the five surnames thingie was phenomenal, the obituary was written like a TV-movie of the week!

Ruth was 93 when she died; her full name was…drum roll, puuuuhhhhleeeeease…

Ruth Christine (Hansen) Cutler Breest Smith Cornwall Bauernfeind

This quote from the obit is my favorite: "Ruth, a flamboyant and generous lady, had a real zest for life. She had five marriages that spanned the coasts of America."

And, I loved this part…"In the late 1950s, she married Cal Smith of Massachusetts, in a together-apart relationship that lasted until his death in the 1970s".
A together-apart relationship??!!
“She met and married widower Paul Cornwall of Westford in 1974. This was her one true long-lasting marriage, spanning 14 years.”
The whole obituary is like a soap-opera.
It mentions that her first husband had died, but the obituary made no mention of how he died.
For a moment, I sensed he might be buried in Ruth’s backyard given all the marriages, and that Ruth might have been a card carrying member of the “Black Widow” society, but I figure any woman who makes it through one man, and then goes back for seconds, thirds, fourths, and fifths, well, she LOVES men, plain and simple.

Okay, so here are a few of my favorite names…
Virginia Pynn
(Doesn’t it sound so George Eliot?!)
Subrahmanyam Satyanarayana
(Say this fast ten times with Doritos in your mouth whilst thinking about rubber baby buggy bumpers.)
Juan Gerardo de la Fuente Tovar
Ziggy Wesolowski

I remember one time about 10 years ago, my friend, Randy, asked me if I wanted to go into Boston to a club to see a band he was working with.
The club happened to be right next to the Boston Ramrod, which then was a gay mens club.
I remember listening to the band, and while doing so, saw two men, who were in front of me, kiss passionately. It was the first time I had ever seen that.
I remember thinking how happy and in love they look, because at the time I was really, really single.
And, one glass of wine later, I was dancing with both of them!

So, I told Randy, I’d go only if he called me “Lee Sinclair” the whole night.
Yes, I wanted to be someone else for the night.
How long did that last?
Well, Randy was great, introducing me to people as Lee, but as the night wore on, it became apparent to me that it didn’t really matter whether your name was Lee or Jean Marie.
The music sounded the same when I was Lee, I danced the same (quite wonderfully) when I was Lee, I still met nice people when I was Lee, the wine tasted the same when I was Lee, and after two glasses of wine, I had forgotten all about responding when people called me Lee! :-)

The name saga continues…

In March, I went to Nantucket and there is a lovely cemetery nearby.

My favorite headstone is there.
It’s a headstone that marks where three friends are buried together.



This will be VERY similar to my headstone, but it’ll be me and two cats.
“Here lies Jean, Fluffy, and Tigger.”

Actually, I love this one also, and I want this statement to be on my headstone.



AND, I also want these on my headstone, too.

"But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully hidden lives, and rest in unvisited tombs."

~George Eliot (Middlemarch)

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassions, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”

~Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Yes, of course, I will have the first billboard headstone.
And, I'm surprised no one's thought of that yet!
Hmmm, must be cemetery zoning laws or something like that, huh?

So, as I went through the cemetery in Nantucket, I came across these name gems:

Tabitha Turner Dumper Krauthoff
I love this name, and here's her headstone.



And there was also…

Klingelfuss
Goggeshall
Erwin Rumsey Hilts

Tangent Name and Headstone Note:
Francis Wright Davis!
Who is he?
Weren’t you saying to yourself the other day, “I SO love my power steering. Hmmm, I SO wonder who invented it?”



Well, it was the ONE and the ONLY Francis Wright Davis, AND he’s buried on Nantucket to boot!
I bet you never thought that my blog would be a learning experience, did you?
Well, when you answer that question correctly on a game show one day, you will buy me a pair of shoes to thank me for it, k? :-)

So, collecting names is not a lucrative thing like the kid I saw on TV the other day who collects Pez dispensers.
Wow, that must have been a small fortune he had in his bedroom at his parent’s house.
Surely, his collection could pay for his retainers when he needs them, huh? :-)

In a way, these names amuse me, and I like to think that they may motivate me to write stories in which I can use them all.
Um, but that hasn’t happened yet! :-)
I mean, think about it.
Can you envision the scenario that will unfold when Ziggy Wesolowski tries to get a date with Tabitha Turner Dumper Krauthoff? :-)

To Everything There is a Season...and Some Thyme. :-)

To everything there is a season
A time for every purpose under the sun.
A time to be born and a time to die;
A time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill and a time to heal ...
A time to weep and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn and a time to dance ...
A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to lose and a time to seek;
A time to rend and a time to sew;
A time to keep silent and a time to speak;
A time to love and a time to hate;
A time for war and a time for peace.

~Ecclesiastes 3:1

Every year, I plant a garden.
Well, it’s not this massive patch of horticultural wonder in my backyard, and I in no way need major farm machinery to care for it.
Um, I only need just a hose to water it with. :-)

Funny, but my gardening aspirations have never taken me further than five feet beyond my backdoor.
My garden is spread throughout 7 or 8 planter boxes on my back porch.
And, actually, I grow more herbs than anything else.
Yeah, yeah, catnip, of course!

For what it costs me each year to start my garden and for what I yield in produce, well, I’m in the red from the moment I enter the Groton Nursery & Garden Center in early May.

Tangent herb fact: DID YOU KNOW that there are like a bazillion different types of thyme?
Well, yeah, there are time zones, time travel, GMT, time in a bottle, and time bombs.
Oh, um, yeah, not the same "thyme". :-)

Tangent time-related musing: These are all words related to time...indefinite, interval, interregnum, season, chronology, chronic, dusk, astrolabe, heliochronometer, pelekinon, gnomon, equinoctial, sundial, twilight, dawn, matins, compline, retrograde, serendipitous, vespertine, aphelion, perihelion, equiluxe, midnight, noon, celestial, eclipse, ecliptic, nocturnal, zenith, solstice, equinox, diurnal, sidereal, nadir, post meridian, ante meridian, precambrian, anthropocene, hadean, epoch, archaen, eocene, holocene, pleistocene, neolithic, paleolithic, mesozoic, tempus fugit, antediluvian, orology, era, millenium, century, aeon, pre-cambrian, singularity, fleeting, and soon.
Gawd, are most of those SO like SAT words…words I didn’t get right on that test, I’m sure. :-)
Use them in a sentence...um, k!
I’m leaving at dawn to go visit my Ante Diviluvian in Vespertine, Arkansas. Gnomon on the bus better try and pick me up, cuz I’ll hit him over the head with my heliochronometer if I don’t have my pet pelekinon, Doris, [she is a large water bird with a distinctive pouch under her beak, k? :-) ] bite his ass first!

But, back to my story...
There are a bazillion different types of thyme, and, of course, I wrote down all the types when I went to the Groton Nursery & Garden Center in early May.

Hey, you never know when you might be asked (on a job interview, going through airport security, or on a date, well, if you’re dating a horticulturalist) if you can name at least five different types of thyme.

Red
White Creeping
Pink Creeping
Pizza
Silver Edge
Gold Edge
Oregano
Silver Lemon
Lime
Mother of
Variegated Lemon White
Lemon White
Lemon Common
Doone Valley
Pink Chintz
Lavender Wooly
Lemon Frost
Highland Cream
Golden
Bressingham
English

Yeah, the pizza thyme smells just like pizza!
I would know. I have pizza thyme.
Hey, who doesn't always have time for pizza? :-)
K, that was lame.
One lame comment allowed per post, k?

You know, that’s probably the biggest reason I like my garden.
The smells.
Well, there IS that Hippie-Chick-Earth-Girl aspect about me.
Yeah, believe it or not, though I like shoes, clothes, Sephora, the color pink, and Hello Kitty, I do have strong leanings toward that whole hippie chick genre.
Come on...these ARE my favorite jeans!



I’m a zealous recycler, and I’ve often thought about how I could live without a car, well, unless it was an Alfa Romeo Spider convertible, cuz then I couldn’t live without it!

I don’t know if everyone is like this or if it’s just me being me, but I strongly associate smells with events and people.
I love smells in general, err, well, good ones.
I absolutely hate the smell of HOT wet cat food...just in case you're wondering.
(And, how does one ever smell HOT wet cat food you ask? Well, this occurs when you rinse the can out, cuz you're gonna RECYCLE it! Yeah, I rinse out all the recycle stuff, too. Is that odd?)

Anyway, I love perfume, too.
I have Spring/Summer scents, and I have Fall/Winter scents.
I wore "Pleasures" by Estee Lauder all the while my friend Bitsy was dying .
After she died, I put it on, and I just couldn’t wear it anymore.
It was like whenever I put that scent on, I was watching a bad movie (um, like let's say "Baby Geniuses") all over again.
So, I gave it away to someone who could love it and think of "The Sound of Music" while wearing it. :-)

In my garden, I have cherry tomatoes and basil.
For me, I guess this alone justifies my garden’s existence in my mind.
I love a basil, tomato, and mozzarella salad.
It could be my favorite salad actually.
I think I figured if for the months of June, July, and August I grew my own, well, I would somehow be saving tons 'o money.
Not!
Of course, since it’s rained almost like every day in June here, my basil is stunted and droopy, and my tomatoes flourished but now have some kind of strange spots all over their leaves.
It must be some kind of tomato fungus.
Um, yeah, now would be a good time to be dating that horticulturalist. :-)

K, so, err, here is my FIRST tomato.
Isn’t it a beaut?
Proud Hippie-Chick-Earth-Girl here!



I also have lettuce.
Err, enough for maybe two salads, ah, not to mention the fact that I probably could have bought the same amount of lettuce at the store for less than what I bought these plants for. :-)



I have parsley and the previously mentioned stunted and droopy basil.



I have rosemary and oregano.



I have mint (peppermint and spearmint) and THYME (only four kinds though, and most of it has drowned with all the rain!)



Oh, back to smells...

Dill has always reminded me of my grandfather, Stanley Szymczak.
He always had a garden, and he pickled his cukes and grew the dill for those cukes with wild abandon.
Unfortunately, there must be some secret to growing dill because mine died on me last year.
And this year, it looked like it was SO gonna be my dill year.
It was green.
It was growing.
It was smiling, well, if a plant could smile.
Then came the rain, and then so died my dill.
Ah, there’s always next year. :-)
Every time I smell dill, I think of Dziadzia.
Sometimes, when I'm not even cooking fish or making a tunafish sandwich, I just open the bottle and smell it to think of my grandfather.

I love rosemary.
Rosemary could SO be a perfume!
Well, if you’re a Hippie-Chick-Earth-Girl it could be. :-)
I bring my rosemary plant in in the Winter.
In the middle of January, I love to take a leaf, crush it in my hand, and then bury my nose in the scent of it on my palm.
Um, if you really want to win me over, bring me rosemary foccacia bread, yeah, it’s even better than shoes!
Yeah, I can’t believe I just said that, but carbs are my food vice.

I love mint.
K, mint could be perfume, too.
Mint always reminds me of the iced tea my Mom used to make from tea bags in the Summer.
In it, she’d put the mint that grew outside the house.

I love basil.
See the aforementioned favorite salad and the currently stunted and droopy plants.
Ah, basil could be a perfume, too!
K, maybe not, but in a pinch, it could be. :-)

I am not a big parsley person, but I grow it every year, cuz Nate and Iz like to pick it and munch on it raw.
Ewwww.

Which reminds me, every year, I must go over with Iz, upon first planting everything, what’s edible and what’s not.
She goes around the porch, points to things, and then asks, "Can I eat this? Can I eat that?"
She definitely knows that tomatoes are okay, because for the last two years, I have come down in the mornings, and found her out on the porch eating all my cherry tomatoes right off the plants.
Yeah, she usually eats them all before they make it into one of my basil, tomato, and mozzarella salads. :-)

While my garden will probably never make it beyond the back porch, it gives me a huge amount of consolation most days.
Not that I’m saving money by growing my own produce or anything like that.
It’s the scents, the growth, Iz stealing all my tomatoes...it’s just the joy of being able to grow something, care for it, and then see it reach its fruition...hmmm, much like parenting, I think. :-)

"I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green."

~Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from and Old Manse

P.S. And a shout-out to one of my most devoted readers...that guy who plays a mean sax and is married to that woman who I adore and run with...not naming any names this time, Steve. Oops! :-)