Summertime, and the livin' is............MUGGY.

New England summer weather has arrived. The mornings have been starting off beautifully. I wake up to those lovely mornings full of promise where the breeze is gently blowing the curtains. The coolish air smells like warm damp earth and fresh mown grass. I love to lie in bed and let the breeze ripple over me. The morning sun makes long cool shadows on the grass. It's the kind of summer morning I love. It's the kind of summer morning that makes me so glad that I'm not waking up in a house closed off to the outside world because of central air conditioning.

As each day has progressed this weekend it has grown progressively muggy and hot. The sun will be out one minute and then the sky darkens and a shower breaks out. It is so warm that you don't mind staying out in the rain. From time to time we will hear some rumbles of thunder. We've been doing lots of outside work this weekend but the heat and humidity have been slowing us down. Paul pulled out a lilac bush and a Bridal Wreath bush. We planted them so carefully years ago but things have become so overgrown that we felt the need to "open up". I think my petunias in my window boxes are enjoying their new view to the sun that the lilac bush was blocking. I am trying to weed my garden since it has become a virtual lawn. It's a long process.

Tonight after our walk I settled down in the Belly Acres Room with a book as the sun went down. What bliss to sit there in the cool evening air with the chorus of tree frogs in the background. What a racket they make! I heard another very strange sound outside in the dark. Paul thought it sounded like a baby coyote. I thought it sounded like some type of water bird.

We have a severe thunderstorm warning until 3am. I best close the windows before I go to bed. I dislike running around the house in the middle of the night to close windows in the middle of a storm. I would just rather lie in bed and enjoy the ruckus.

Is a smell all in the "nose" of the beholder?

Several weeks ago, on Administrative Professionals Day, one of our teachers left a lovely pot of petunias for me in the library. I left them sitting on the desk because they were a lovely vibrant pink and made the library look so cheery at a time when we were all yearning for Spring to present herself in full force.

It wasn't long before I had to move them to the back room because the girl I work with said the smell was making her sick. When the teacher came back to the library later in the day I thanked him for the flowers. My co-worker said, "I made her put them in the back. I can't stand the smell of petunias". "Yes, they do have a rather punky smell", he answered.

Punky smell? Smell that makes you sick? Isn't that strange. I have always completely and totally loved the smell of petunias. It is one of my favorite smells of summer. Now I'm wondering if they really do smell nasty or do they smell good to me simply because I have such good memories associated with them.



When I was a small girl I had two aunts (we called them "aunts" but in reality they were more along the line of second cousins) named Mary and Margaret. Guess who I was named after. They lived in a lovely Victorian house in Lakeville that had been built by their father. Several times during our summer vacations my father would drive my sister and I to their large and serene home, where my mother had been raised, to spend a few idyllic days. Like most Victorian homes, this one had porches. There was a very large porch on the front of the house with plenty of rockers and a porch swing, just right for reading on a summer afternoon. In the back of the house, just off the kitchen, was a smaller porch, shaded by climbing roses. It was on this porch, at a wooden table, that my sister and I often would eat a simple supper of jelly sandwiches made with thin Pepperidge Farm bread (a real treat for us) and a bowl of blueberries and cream. Sometimes in the heat of the day we would sit on the steps sipping a bottle of Pal orange soda.

I don't ever remember seeing them but there must have been petunias planted near that porch because every time I smell a petunia my brain instantly rewinds to those days on that back porch. When I smell a petunia I can think of nothing else but those wonderful moments.

I plant petunias in my window boxes every summer so that I can enjoy the petunia smell when the breeze blows through my windows. When my living room and dining room are filled with that smell I feel so close to Aunties and their back porch. Now, what I need to know is: Do petunias really have a bad smell? Do they only smell good to me because I associate them with something very pleasant?

How do you rate their smell? A really good odor or something rather nasty?

Celebration time

Sometimes it's nice to stretch the celebration out. Last Sunday was our 40th wedding anniversary. We had planned on going out to dinner to celebrate but I wasn't feeling up to it after spending a couple days doing hospital runs. A week later but a week healthier, Paul and I went out tonight. We have a place that we like to go to for very special events. We save it for very special events because it is VERY expensive. We went to the Mayflower Inn in Washington, Ct., a Five Star restaurant. It is expensive but every once in a while it feels so good to pamper yourself. When I come to the end of my life I don't want to say "I wish that just once I ate at a really top of the line restaurant". I want to look back and remember the times that I did.


They sat us at a window overlooking their lovely Shakespeare garden. Paul and I both ordered a grilled steak which was by far the tenderest and most flavorful steak I have had. It was served with dainty fingerling potatoes and tiny, succulent mushrooms. I topped off the meal with two scoops of light and cool homemade sorbet, kiwi and strawberry. It might have been fun to stretch out the celebration even more with an overnight stay at the inn, but with prices starting at $450 for one night..........I think not.


When we came home we took an anniversary picture in our lawn chairs as the sun was going down. We said, "We have to do this again in 40 years". By that time I'll be 101 and Paul will be 106. We might be able to sit down in those chairs but I know I'll need some help getting back out.



There's more to celebrate this month in this family. Yesterday, the first full day of spring was Ellen's birthday. She is just as special to me now as she was when she was born. How lucky I am to have a sister who is also a good friend. Happy birthday to Ellen, my sweet and funny sister.


Happy Anniversary today to Hank and Lauri. There was no doubt when Lauri met Hank that she had found the right one. And what are the chances of two sisters ending up with husbands whose personalities are so much.....alike!! Happy Anniversary you two. I hope they keep coming and coming.

A good replacement

A couple of years after we moved here, when the land around our house was in need of trees, my father arrived on the scene with a little tree in his car. "I brought you a tree", he said. A little Catalpa tree, a descendant of a larger one in the yard, had been growing near his foundation. Most people would have pulled up the darn thing and thrown it in the compost pile. They are rather like nuisance trees and drop their seedlings all over. My father was not one to waste anything in the plant world so he dug up the little tree and brought it down to us.

After showing him where I would like the tree planted he carefully dig a hole and then asked me to run to the goat house for some manure. Like a dutiful daughter, I did as he asked and watched as he carefully put the manure in the hole. His big hands tenderly spread the roots of the tree in the bottom of the hole and then he covered it with soil and watered it. He stood back and looked at it with satisfaction. Done! The tree was planted.



And it grew and grew. Every year when the big white flowers bloomed in June I thought of my father. But lately Paul had been complaining about the tree. "It's ugly", he would say. "It's getting too big and is going to grow right into the maple". Paul really wanted the tree to go. I kept resisting. "My father planted that tree". He was probably right. The tree was pretty when it was blooming for that short period in June, but it was always the last tree to leaf out in the spring. The big leaves turned an ugly gray color in the fall before they fell. It grew giant pods which littered the lawn. And it was crowding out my maple tree.

So a few weeks ago I reluctantly gave Paul free rein with the chain saw. "Go ahead", I told him. "But there are conditions". I told him I would let him cut down my father's tree but he had to do two things for me. Number one was that he had to have the stump man come and grind the stump. Paul has a habit of cutting down trees but leaving the stump. The second condition was that he had to prepare a little garden for me in the same area where the tree was so that I could plant a flower garden that would remind me of my father.

Paul agreed to my conditons. The tree came down. The stump man came. And now I'm waiting for my "gardener" to begin working. I was hoping that I might be able to begin the garden on Father's Day, a very fitting time. But Father's Day weekend this year was spent with Paul escorting me back and forth to the hospital as I tried to rid myself of a kidney stone.

My father's tree is gone but I'm looking forward to making his garden. I still have a small amount of his ashes left. I now know where they should go. I want to look for a small metal cow to place in the garden. The tree was nice but the garden will give me something I can lovingly tend to each year, just as he would have done. As my small hands move the soil around I will think of how I watched his large and calloused hands doing the same thing when I was a little girl. Yes, the tree is gone, but I think I'm going to be very happy with it's replacement as I sit in my Belly Acres room and look at my father's garden.

Special thoughts from special people

A couple of weeks ago we began receiving a few anniversary cards in the mail, then a few email greetings and even a special surprise gift. Many of these were accompanied by memories that people had of Paul and I. We even received a lovely set of scrapbook pages with memories and pictures. I kept scratching my head and wondering how in the heck these people knew it was our 40th wedding anniversary. The puzzlement grew with each greeting we received. I got the feeling that something fishy was going on!

Then Kara told me how she and Brett and Damon had wanted to give us a surprise party for our 40th but the logistics of it were too difficult, especially with Damon in Germany, which was probably a good thing since the party would have fallen on the weekend that I was struggling with a kidney stone. She told me how they had sent an email, using the bulk email addresses that I had used the month before to notify everyone of our address change, asking that our friends take a few minutes to send us a letter or card as we celebrated our 40th. (Of course, there were some people on this list who were probably scratching their heads, too, like the tutor in school who is in charge of collecting weekly lotto money who I've only known for a few months!)

I want to thank all those who took the time to send along a card or your memories. Each one made me smile, BIG! I was very touched by the thoughtfulness of everyone. It was so much fun (and a bit baffling at first) to have something new coming in every day, either in the mail or on the internet. They will all be saved and treasured as a reminder of the special people we have met in our lives.

The best thing by far to come out of our 40 years together is our three sweet and caring children. Thanks, kids, for doing this. You're tops!

Zing went the strings of my heart.

I remember the first time I saw him.....or maybe I should say the first time I REALLY saw him. We grew up in the same town but were five years apart in school so I never really knew him. The only thing I remember about him is that he scared me a little bit. He was one of the older, tougher(in my eyes) boys and if he was in the back of the bus and I happened to be riding on his bus I would make sure I sat up front, far away from him. I would sometimes play at his house with his sister but I never saw him. He was always working in the barn.

It wasn't until he came back to Falls Village after his 4 year Air Force stint that I REALLY saw him. I, my sister Lauri and a friend of ours were attending a PTA meeting at school. At this meeting they introduced the man who had been hired as a life guard at the recreation center for the summer. He stood up and ZING went the strings of my heart! This could not be the same rascal that I was so scared of when I was little. Not this man with the beautiful smile.

Needless to say I did a lot of swimming that summer. Towards the end of the summer he asked me out. To play tennis. TENNIS??!! I had never played tennis in my life. I kept him pretty busy running back and forth out of the tennis court to track down my errant balls. After we played tennis we stopped at the Snack Shack in Canaan for an ice cream cone which I accidentally turned upside down and dropped the ice cream right out of the cone onto the ground. I was sure that this was probably the dumbest date he had ever been on and would never ask me out again. But he did. Again and again. And I was falling.

September came and I went to college. So did he. But we were 12 hours apart. We dated others. We wrote to each other........frequently. Eventually we were writing every day. We saw each other at Thanksgiving, Christmas and summer. Sometimes long distance relationships do work. We stopped dating others and by the spring of my Junior year we were engaged.

And then married.

Exactly 40 years ago today...June 15. A perfect day. Bright blue sky. Gently breeze. I don't remember being nervous. I only remember being happy. Very happy.


My sisters, my room-mate, my cousin and my good friends from college were all there with me in their yellow polka dot dresses and garden hats.



We dodged a flurry of confetti and rice and took off in Paul's little Sprite to begin our journey together.

Our first home was a cabin in the woods. No electricity. Screened-in porch. One big room with a fireplace. Outdoor shower. Snuggling down in bed at night in front of a crackling fire in the fireplace. That was nirvana for a newly-wed couple.



Our next home.......a basement apartment in Ithaca. This is where Kara was born.


Then Paul graduated from school and we moved to a little condo in Canton, Ct. Our housing situation was improving.




Until this. Our housing situation took a little bit of a down turn when Paul decided to build his own practice in Torrington. We bought 13 acres of land with a "cute house we can fix up to live in". Paul's idea of cute and mine were very opposite. This is where Brett was born.



Six years later we built our own home where we have happily stayed for 30 years. This is where Damon (the spoiled one, as Kara used to say) was born.


It may be an overused and trite phrase but it is so true. "I can't believe how fast the time went". Forty years passed like the fast forward on a video. There were joyous times. Sad times. Difficult times. Fun times. Stressful times. There were things that weren't on the "job description" when we signed the marriage certificate. That's life. He is my best friend. He is my rock. He makes me laugh...........and yes, sometimes he makes me angry. I know what he's thinking and I can finish his sentences for him. Over the years we have weaved our own little dance and he has become more like me and I have become more like him. We have finally become one.



Forty years of living with Mr. Good Times! It's been a wonderful ride. I hope we have 40 more.

I've had better days

Yesterday certainly won't make my list of the ten best days of the year. Far from it. I spent most of the afternoon and evening in the emergency room with a kidney stone. In my eighteen years of working I have never left work in the middle of the day because of illness but I had no choice yesterday. I hope I never have to face a kidney stone again. I have always heard people say it is the worst kind of pain. It is. Yes, it is like being in labor but worse because it is so unrelenting and constant. Coupled with the horrific nausea that goes along with it, I was not a very happy camper at all yesterday.

Sitting in the cold little cubicle waiting and waiting and waiting for someone to see me gave me lots of time to observe things. Like how absolutely filthy dirty the room was. How can a room in a hospital be so dirty? The floors looked like they hadn't been washed since the building was built. I saw a little bug scurry along the floor. I limped across the floor in my misery to step on it. I can't think of a good reason why there should be bugs in a hospital. I noticed how the level of professionalism has stooped to a new low over the years. The young lady who came to take my blood and start my IV was chewing and popping a huge wad of gum. Gum with a distinct fruit flavor. One thing you don't need when you are nauseous is the smell of fruit flavored gum wafting your way. If my nursing professors had ever seen me chewing and popping gum in front of patients I would have been severely reprimanded.

One young lady (it's hard to tell who is a nurse these days) got me settled on the gurney. She then chucked three blankets on the counter on the other side of the room and said, "Here are some blankets if you want". Hardly able to move under my own power I had to slide off the gurney and hobble across the room to grab a blanket. Where are the days when a nurse would gently cover you up and make you feel so good? Not one of these girls even cracked the tiniest smile the whole evening. Don't they teach bedside manner anymore?

I must have looked like quite a site when I left. I was pretty well inebriated with morphine, percoset, phenergan and a third pain killer. Walking was a unique experience. I got dressed but really didn't care how well I dressed myself. My blouse and camisole were untucked and hanging out of my pants(which I'm not sure I zipped). My jacket was hanging off me in a very haphazard way. As I stumbled and weaved my way out of the door and into the parking lot to wait for Paul to pick me up I was hoping no one I knew saw me in that condition. They would think for sure that I had just been picked up and brought to the hospital for public intoxication

Still Steaming

Did I say it was H_O_T??? The mercury hit 99 humid degrees today. For the second day in a row we had an early release from school. Now THAT is nice! Who wants to spend a full day in school during the last week anyway??! It really was uncomfortably hot in school. So what did I do when I came home? Sit in the shade sucking on a lemonade? Of course not. I worked on my gardens in the hot sun. That was yesterday. I just couldn't do it for two days in a row in this heat so today I wandered aimlessly about trying to think of something to do. I should have gone down into the cool basement and ironed my ever-growing pile of wrinkled clothes.

We had some tornado watches today which means relief will be here tomorrow. Thunder storm warnings tonight but it looks like everyone around us got pummeled while we were spared. I really do enjoy thunder storms so I was a little disappointed in the lack of one tonight.

Four and a half more days of school...........too long!

It is HOT

It is "hotter than Dutch love", as my mother always used to say. They tell us that tomorrow will be in the upper 90's. The superintendent has told all the schools that, as an energy saving method, the air conditioning will not be turned on at all. Even during the summer. On top of that is a suggestion that all micro-waves, mini fridges, coffee pots and FANS (oh gasp gasp) not be used. Last week when the outside temperature was in the low 70's the temperature in the library was 88. What will it be like tomorrow? Maybe we will have an early dismissal because of the heat. It happened once before. Kind of the reverse of a snow day.

Friday was little Eamon's 5th birthday.......already. He invited his entire nursery school class (20+) to a karate party at a local karate studio. Paul and I drove up to watch him celebrate his 5th with his friends. It was wild and crazy and the kids loved it. The karate instructor with the bulging muscles and gold ear rings led the kids through some very active games (better him than me), gave them time to eat some cake and then did a magic show that had the kids breaking into fits of wonderful giggles that only little kids can do.


After the party we drove back to Kara's house and watched Eamon open his birthday gifts, with his pretty little assistant Elizabeth. He has enough new stuff to keep him busy and happy all summer long.

Eamon had a surprise birthday telephone call from his Uncle Damon in Germany. Damon is such a thoughtful man. Whoever ends up with him will be very lucky.


We were on a rather tight schedule so we had to say good-bye a short time later, leaving Eamon and Elizabeth happily surrounded by a mass of new toys. HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEET EAMON!!!!

On the way home we stopped at my sister Liz's house where she was having an open house to celebrate the graduation of my oldest niece, Leta. Leta will be heading off to Idaho this fall for college. She is beautiful, sweet and smart and any college would be lucky to have her as a student. She also has lots of friends because Liz's house was PACKED! After enjoying good food and conversation we left for home where Lauri and Hank were spending the night with us. It was a long but happy day.

Today was spent trying to catch up on yard work. HOT yard work. I still have "miles to go before I sleep" on my outside work. I got caught in a pre-thunderstorm downpour while I was mowing the lawn. Boy, did I rev up my motor, put the pedal to the metal and spin around that yard in record time.

Turtle delivery

The angel trumpet plant that I started from the seeds my dear high school friend from Florida sent me has been doing really well. This is surprising because I do not have a really good track record when it comes to indoor plants. I have coddled it all winter and I carefully planted it outside in my garden last week. I have been checking it every day. It has been surviving and looking healthy. Last night I went out to do my daily check and couldn't believe my little gardner's eyes when I saw this......................................



..........a gigantic turtle backed right up to my plant. That greatly pregnant shell had dug a hole in the ground and was depositing her eggs right where i had planted my precious plant. AAAARRRRGGGHHHH! I wasn't about to pick this thing up and move her so I left her there, hoping her moving and digging and laying were mostly finished. The plant was still mostly intact.


I checked her after our walk and found that she had moved from her original location and was now digging anew under another one of my plants. There was evidence that she had tried to get into my vegetable garden. Thank goodness that is fenced in. Do you know if turtles lay eggs in just one place or do they wander around a site, dropping a few in different locations?


While she was busy "bearing down" in her new location Paul and I quickly stuck some bamboo poles around the poor little angel trumpet plant in case she decided to come back. Today it looked like she did try to go back to the scene of the crime because there was more soil dug up in that area. It will be interesting to see what hatches.

The times they are a-changin'

I stopped by Cumberland Farms the other day to buy a gallon of milk. As I was at the counter paying for it an SUV drove up to the gas pumps. A woman jumped out of the car, ran into the store, handed the clerk a handful of money and said, "$50.00 on pump one, please". $50.00???!! And she wasn't even filling the car up. That kind of car has such poor gas mileage that $50.00 wouldn't take her very far. What percentage of her paycheck does this woman have to put towards gas each week?

Times have really changed so much. I can remember when I used to drive up to the gas pumps........and always over the little rubber hoses that would "ding ding" to let the gas man inside know you were there.....and flap a dollar bill outside the window saying "a dollar's worth, please". Back then a dollar's worth would buy me 4 gallons of gas. With my little old Volkswagon I could drive forever on that dollar of gas. Not only would that dollar get you 4 gallons of gas. You also got your windows washed, your oil checked and the gas pumped for you. You never even had to get out of your car.

But I also was bringing home $65.00 a week as a nurse; some nurses today make that much in an hour. Our electric bill was only $7.00 every two months and steak was $1.00 a pound. We paid $118 a month to rent our apartment. A doctor's visit cost $5.00. And NEVER, in my wildest nightmares, did I think that anyone would EVER have to pay $50.00 to put gas in their car.

Times really have changed.

Late peepers

After an unusually cold spring the weather is finally starting to warm up. Plants have been slow in coming because of the cool weather. I remember hearing peepers once in April. Just one evening during a rare warm spell. Then silence. But tonight I heard a chorus of them peeping their little hearts out. I don't think I have ever heard peepers as late as June. Has anyone else ever heard them this late??