Hell has frozen over (emphasis on the frozen!)

1. The New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl. (The good part of the list is officially over now.)
2. Two feet of snow in twelve hours.
3. A tree in our back yard split in half under the weight of the snow.
(Thank God no one was hurt, and the clever tree managed to fall right in the five feet between our house and our neighbor's house, so neither house was damaged.)
4. Our furnace started groaning and moaning and then conked out completely this morning.
5. It's 12 degrees out right now.
6. I'm cold.
7. I don't like being cold.

There. I'm done now.

I hope to write more soon when my fingers aren't frozen!!!!!

She-Devils on Wheels!!!

I stole this from Mean Dirty Pirate, but how could I resist these bad bad girls?

Give

Hospital Albert Schweitzer, 40 miles outside of Port au Prince, is one of the few functioning hospitals in the area. If you want to help them, please visit
Hospital Albert Schweitzer
The money will go directly to the hospital to pay for medical supplies and pay for the doctors and staff who are working around the clock.

Here's a link to their blog:
Heal, Grow, Celebrate

No man is an island?

I was snooping around, as one does, in the profile of a new internet contact. I discovered that he is a successful artist and graphic designer. No jealousy there. 'Yay him!' I thought to myself and 'How interesting. Must find out more.' Which was when I discovered that he lives in Palma, Spain. Which I had never heard of, so I went, as one does when casually stalking someone, to google maps. And that is when jealousy bit me hard. You see, Palma is on the island of Mallorca, and Mallorca is smack in the middle of the Mediterranean. I always imagined that when I grew up I'd live overseas - somewhere sunny and warm and with access to an ocean. Not much to ask since I'd spent most of my childhood in precisely that kind of situation.

And then fate, with her wry sense of the absurd, intervened. I met and fell in love with a man who, despite being part French and speaking near-fluent French, wanted more than anything else to stay in America. I chose to ignore this, assuming that like a strange virus, it would pass with time and love. Then, when he was deciding what to be when he grew up, he asked me "Should I go to law school or grad school in art history?" To which I said, "Who needs the money and security that a career in law would give you? Go to grad school in art history young man. Follow your bliss, etc." And I thought to myself, 'He's part French. Mais biensure he'll choose French art. We can go to France, live in Paris for a while. Go to Aix where his family has a house which is not far from the coast....' Mais non, mes petits ! Oh la tristesse ! He said he wanted to go into American art "because I wouldn't have to travel or live overseas." This I was less able to ignore, but we were married by then so I was screwed.

Now, twenty-five years later, here I sit in the middle of America, a long long way from any coast, it's 21 degrees outside, and I haven't seen blue sky in God knows how long. So looking at the map of Palma, Spain, then looking out at the frozen tundra of my backyard, I had a weak moment of feeling this was not my plan! THAT was my plan!

Now, I do know that where you live physically is not really that pertinent to how you live emotionally. (And if I didn't know that, Willym would be sure to remind and or bitch slap me!) So I took a last longing look at the Mallorca - dotted with palm trees, surrounded by the shimmering Mediterranean - and closed the computer. Because, truly I know that when I stepped into the stream that was the beginning of my love for K, he became my island, and the life we've built together my coasts and oceans and sunny plazas. I really do know that.

I wonder if he'd be willing to wear a palm tree on his head once in a while?

Oh Momma...

Here, for your delectation, is my mother's #1 corker of the visit (and possibly one of her top corkers of all time):

Elizabeth (explaining why she is interested in writing a book about her great great grandfather, a white man who was chief of the Eastern Cherokee): "I'm not so interested in him as a 'Great Man.' I'm much more interested in his contradictions. For instance, he championed one minority - the Cherokee - while buying and selling another minority - blacks - like they were sacks of corn."

Elizabeth's mother: Looks at Elizabeth questioningly as if to say 'And your point is?'

Elizabeth: "I mean, I think it's fascinating that the Cherokee who were themselves oppressed, owned slaves!"

Elizabeth's mother (in a very genteel Southern accent): "Oh yes, they were much more sophisticated than all the other Indian tribes...."

Twenty-nine and a half years ago, a tall skinny blond guy walked in the door of the apartment I was living in - he was the cousin of a roommate - and the moment I saw him I thought, "That's the man I'm going to marry." Oddly, I was dating someone else at the time, but the heart, or mine at any rate, pays no attention to such things. Unfortunately, his did. After pining for him (and even breaking up with the boyfriend!) to no avail, I filed my odd little first thought about him sadly away in the circular file marked 'Idiotic thoughts and dreams I've had.' It's a big file and very full.

After some ascetic years for me spent in the serious pursuit of art (in artfully paint-spattered clothes of course), and some seriously misguided relationships for him (he dated a sorority girl! They had nothing in common. Go figure!), the wisdom of the heart prevailed. Four and a half years later, dear reader, I married him.

That was twenty-five years ago today. Looking back now, it seems like we were babies who hardly knew each other. But I know him now, and I'd do it again.

Ms. Muddle

"My dear, I am worried about you. It seems to me that you are in a muddle... Take an old man's word; there's nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror--on the things that I might have avoided. We can help one another but little. I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now, and all my teaching of George has come down to this: beware of muddle."
(Mr. Emerson to Lucy Honeychurch in A Room With a View.)

I haven't been writing here much lately because, honestly, I'm in something of a muddle. I thought I'd sort things out, get through it, and be able to start writing sensible and thoughtful posts again, but it seems to be a fairly big muddle I'm in. The kind of muddle that is so deep that getting out of it changes who you are. So here, because you are all so sweet and deserve an explanation, are the basic issues I'm trying, inadequately, to sort out:

1. Lately, my husband has been more fatigued than is normal for him. Finally (after much hounding from me) he went for a check up. The doctor said that his liver function is somewhat compromised because of lack of circulation. Which means that, down the pike, we may be facing a liver transplant. When K. was first ill, we spent a lot of time in the transplant clinic, in waiting rooms full of transplant patients. Most of them were either desperately sick from organ rejection or bizarrely bloated from steroids. It's not a road I want to go down, but of course I will if I have to.

In three days we will have been married for twenty-five years. He is the pillar that holds up my sky, and all I want is another twenty-five years with him.

2. My mother is, it's clear to me, in the earliest stages of alzheimer's. She is still functioning pretty well, but I see that in the not-too-distant future she won't be able to live independently and will need to come an live with us. Which is as I want it to be, but it's a big change, the idea of caring for the parent who always cared for you.

3. My special-needs daughter is going through a seriously rough patch, crying and screaming a lot. She's gone through worse, and she always comes out of them, but it's exhausting when you're in the middle of it.

There I am in a nutshell (emphasis on the word nut). So if I'm writing less, calling less, visiting you and/or your blogs less, and am just generally not my usual peppy and voluble self, I hope you'll understand that it's not you. It's me and my muddle.