The Christmas Gift Trip

In a moment of “Oh shit, what do I give my parents, who need nothing, for Christmas?” I came up with the gift of trips to their childhood towns with me alone so they could show and tell me everything about their lives before I came along.  My mother jumped right on this specially designed present and scheduled our trip to start today.  Since she grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee and spent her summers in the Smokey Mountains at her family lodge her trip is more extensive than my Dad’s will be just going to Winston-Salem.  Much to my Mother’s liking her present involves overnight luxury accommodations and three meals a day, all thanks to her best son-in-law that will ever be.     

Finding three days to leave home is tough in the busy spring time so to maximize our time my Mom came down to Durham last night to spend the night at our house, arriving while Russ and I were off at the auction and Carter was celebrating her friend Ashley’s sweet 16.  Russ and I tiptoed into the house like teenagers who were late for curfew late so as not to wake my mother.  Still exhilarated from the fun of the auction I had a hard time falling asleep and the pressure that early morning would come soon to start the five hour drive to Tennessee was not helping.  

The drive was not part I was looking forward to, but the time slipped by as I peppered my mother with questions about family history.  Trying to figure out where some once rich relative’s money went when he died without a will brought us to the conclusion that the mistresses must have been well provided for.  Without even a chance to turn the radio on we were in Knoxville, right by the building that had been my Grandfather’s business.  

After checking-in to the hotel we walked the downtown tracing the route similar to the one my mother took every Saturday where as a child she would come downtown for the movies, shopping, mostly windows and a twelve cent hamburger lunch.  Amazingly many things are the same, the S&W cafeteria in the fabulous art deco building may now be an Aveda store, but looking through the windows the interior is the same as it was 65 years ago, just without the grand piano and the scary lady who serenaded customers as they dined on the finest of meals. 

Three major theaters are still in business on Gay street and we went into two of the to look around.  Without any advance planning we happened upon the East Tennessee Historical center and amazingly it happened to be free day.  Saving the four dollar entrance for senior citizens and five dollars for me thrilled my mother to no end.  I have to say that it is a really well done little museum which I wish we had more time to study, but my mother was able to show me a display of a railroad which my Great Grandfather was the council for since he was a big time lawyer.

Our only real plan of the day was a visit to see my Mother’s Cousin Sis.  We drove out to her beautiful house and had a great visit and got to watch the end of the Master’s together.  Since we all were thrilled about Jordan Spieth it made for a very happy visit.  It was extra nice for me since we hardly ever spend any time with cousins from my Mother’s side.

After a nice dinner outside it is back to our downtown hotel and sleep at last. So much more to see tomorrow. The good daughter points are racking up fast, but really it is the best present for me.  I am having a great time with my Mom.  We might have to take another reunion tour and go back to my childhood home. 

The Emerald City

I don’t know why I thought I could delude myself and think we could have a year without pollen. It must be because the long cold winter made it come so late. But the tardiness of the tiny green particles might have concentrated it to all come at once for today the air seems to have a thick green veil. The tree spores that are everywhere like ribbons of pistachio pudding makes it feel like I am breathing underwater. I am lucky, the pollen just annoys me, not taking me down like so many who have red and itchy eyes and throats swollen practically shut.

For the past two days we have had torrential rainstorms in the night filling buckets that had mistakenly been left outside over and over again. Despite all this rain the pollen persists. I can only imagine what it would be like if it had not rained creating green rivers running down the roads and into storm drains.

The places on my car that I touched with my hands appear like skeletal x-rays with extra pollen sticking to the oils left on the black paint. One dog walking in the yard and my navy blue Mary-Jane sneakers are aquamarine with the allergens.

The only good news is no trespasser or thief could get on to and back off our property without leaving an absolutely identifiable trail of footprints right down to the exact wear tread of their shoes. Of course that also means that I drag the green stuff into the house leaving footprints on every once perfectly clean floor.

It is going to rain again tonight. I wonder how many cycles of rain and pollen-producing sunshine it will take for us to be done with this seasons irritants? At least I have not had to dodge the green tumbleweeds of pollen that blow down the street when we go multiple days without rain.

I guess this is the price we pay for not having feet of snow like Boston or twisters like the Midwest. I’ll take a week of green and a box of Claritin any day. It certainly seems timely that tomorrow’s DA auction is called “The Emerald City.” I was hoping for the gems though.

In Praise of Great Craftsmen

For the last few years the end of our gravel driveway that connects to the road has been washing away. With each big rain storm and we have had more than a few, I can find large loads of our precious stone washed down the hill about fours houses and into the storm drain. I know it makes me unhappy and probably the city, if they knew. I like having a gravel driveway because the permeable surface helps with rain drainage everywhere except the end of the driveway.

Russ has a paying job, so driveway management really should have been my responsibility and most of the time it was. I have to admit I was not as quick as drivers in my family would like me to be and so the driver of the smallest car sometimes would shovel new gravel into the ever-increasing gully that the rain would make.

One day I went to a garden club meeting and met a man named Allen Gracey who seemed to be the answer to Russ’ prayers, someone who could handle the hard and landscape needs to fix the driveway. Since I was so bad at gravel management I knew that I should not wait a moment and hired Allen to make things right.

It was the smartest decision I made all year. Not only did he come up with a plan, but he also satisfied another customer who happened to be a friend of mine and wanted to sell a load of ancient Belgian block. The perfect solution. I would buy her block, Allen would bring the craftsmen who were fine stone layers and together they would fix my driveway, fill in the gulley that years of water had created, unclog my storm drain, move my mailbox and level and resod the grassy area. I got a new mailbox in a place that meant the mailman would not have to drive in my yard and a very fancy driveway connection to the road.

What I hope I really got was a way to keep the gravel I have in the driveway and out of the storm drain and a happy husband whose tiny little car is not falling in a hole Mother Nature created in my driveway. I did not have to lift a shovel, or carry a load of block, or push a wheelbarrow full of dirt. What a happy day. This inspires me on to bigger and better home improvement projects as long as I can find other great people to do all the hard work!

Night Time Grocery- Like A Zoo Visit

After dinner tonight Carter asked me if we had a healthy dessert so I made her the five-minute miracle of Sugar Free Cheesecake Pudding with sliced strawberries. I was instantly hailed as the best mother, well maybe not those exact words, maybe it was the best dessert that made Carter instantly happy. The only problem was I used up the last of the milk in the house to make it. After the dishes were put away I decided to run to the grocery so I could have cereal in the morning without having to get dressed and go shopping to do it.

Since I have the luxury of being able to grocery shop in the light of day I am usual there with people who know the layout of the store as well as I do and could probably all win as contestants on Super Market Sweep. What I discovered or rediscovered tonight is that people who go to the grocery store at eight at night are a whole different breed.

The first, and most common shopper there was the man-alone-sent-to-the store-by –his-woman. You can recognize this species by the lost and confused look in his eye, his lack of cart or basket and the cell phone up to his ear loudly saying something like, “I don’t see red ones, are you sure they aren’t orange?” This group appears to be larger because of their inefficient traffic pattern as they Chris-cross through the store looking for some foreign item, but staying true to their sex, not asking for any help from people inside the store.

The second largest group is the working woman with the large binder of coupons looking to maximize her shopping dollars by comparing the store sales to her coupon choices all neatly organized in plastic sleeves divided up by categories, like Salas, dressings, condiments. I like to steer clear of these people at the checkout because the use of so many coupons more than doubles their check out time.

The next group is the people who bring babies and small children to the store when it is clearly their bedtime. These obviously sleep deprived people leave little children unstrapped in carts and walk far away from them as they are search for something on the shelf unaware that their child may fall out of the cart at any minute. When I see this I try and pretend I am looking for something near the child just in case I need to stop any attempted escape. It is fairly easy to do since these parents tend to leave the cart with the unattended child right in the middle of the aisle so it makes passing them next to impossible. They may mistakenly think it is safer there since the child can’t reach any items on the shelf, but they don’t realize it just makes they want to stand up in the seat to get the brightly colored box of cereal.

Tonight I also so a rare breed, the How-to-shop-for-healthy-food class from a local weight loss program. Through out the store I could hear the nutritionist instructing people how to read food labels. Her advice was good and I wished she could just have been doing it over the loud speaker so all the other shopping novices could learn from her. Of course the other people in the store were having a very hard time just finding the exact items they were looking for so I’m sure that nutritional info would have fallen on deaf ears. Grocery Store sociology is very fascinating.

Happy Basketball Fatigue

Last night I stayed up way past my bedtime to watch my adopted hometown’s team the Duke Blue Devils tie up the win of the Men’s NCAA basketball tournament that has gripped the country in the month of March and one big carry over week of April.  The emotional roller coaster of watching two starting Freshmen get into foul trouble in the first half and the subsequent success of Freshman bench player Grayson Allen who changed the trajectory of the game when the team was down nine points practically caused me a coronary.  I had no skin in this game, no bets, no brackets, not even my school, so why did the back and forth of this final of final four keep me up way past the final buzzer?

Anyone who does not fall victim to the humanity of sports during major events like the Final Four, the Masters and the Olympics is some kind of troglodyte, you know, someone who lives in a cave.  You don’t have to like or even fully understand a sport to be sucked into the stories of the competitors and be in awe of their ability to rise to an occasion or buckle under pressure.

In the case of college basketball it is mind blowing to think of these young people performing with the eyes of the world on them.  So much credit goes to the coaches and staff who are able to keep them focused on the game while distracted from the hype.  I know that for so many of the stars the real goal is to not to graduate from college, but to get a lucrative NBA contract and play in the pros. I hate that there is a only a one year college requirement before they are eligible for the draft.

No professional team is going to take as good of care of these teenagers as Coach K takes care of his players.  I wish the Freshman stars would think of staying at Duke at least one more year so they can develop the life skills that being on this team gives them.  

Today, the Duke Men’s team has got to be exhausted.  I know I am and I just stayed home and watched them on TV.  They deserve a good rest and a few moments in the sun, like when they get to go to the White House and meet the President.  It seems like it is going to be a summit in life that will be hard to top, but I hope that this win is not the highlight of their lives, just a really good start on a life well lived.

Durham Driving Issue

Durham has been in talks to bring a light rail system to the triangle and I am all for that, reducing our need on cars is a good thing, but until we get that alternative we need to keep the roads we have.

If you live in the Hope Valley area and have tried to drive downtown in the last few years you probably encountered the “Forest Hills back up” on University when a transportation expert changed a two lane straight option into a one lane straight and one lane right turn only at the light East East Forest Hills Boulevard. Losing the second lane that could drive straight to a two lane road running in front of the Compare Foods shopping center meant that many times during the day and night traffic is backed up to Thai Café.

Experts want to further reduce the lanes that enable us to get to downtown, but this time on the Boulevard -15/501 business. The proposed plan is to reduce the two lanes running both directions from the Thai Café intersection up past Fosters to the Academy road on/off ramps to one lane and add parallel parking in front of those businesses. I can only imagine the back ups we will have on the boulevard when the feeding road is two lanes at 45 miles per hour and once you pass under the overpass of Academy Road forcing two lanes to merge into one and slow down.

One business that does not have enough parking on the property they own is in favor of this. Sure, they are taking our roads to add to their parking. I am not for reducing the lanes to add parallel parking. Most people are not good at that kind of parking to start so having them stop on the only lane we have to drive to try and park will be a nightmare.

If you are a Hope Valley or South Durham resident and ever try and travel on the Boulevard you need to come out to the Rogers-Herr middle school tomorrow night at 6:30 to 8 PM to make your voices heard.

The entire South Square area needs better city planning. Just changing the roads to reduce traffic is the tail of the dog. It will not reduce the traffic, just back it up where it is not backed up now!

Happy Easter and We Almost Don’t Have Your Table

He is risen, He is risen indeed! Easter is all about Jesus, but then after church and the fabulous brass playing Handel and the Choir singing and the preacher reminding us what it is all about it’s time for Easter to be about family.

As is our tradition my parents drive down from the farm to go to our church with us and have Easter brunch afterwards. It is generous that they forgo their Episcopalian ways for my Presbyterian practice, but as my mother said today at church, “It’s nice to see so many young people who obviously have jobs.”

This year one of Carter’s very best friends, Ashley and her Mom and little sister decided to come to our church with us. Of course the place was packed so we ended up not sitting together. Carter reminded me that Ashley was going to come to lunch with us. I had made a reservation at our traditional Easter spot two weeks ago so I called up this morning and left them a message adding one more to our table. Since we were originally a party of five I knew that making it six should not be an issue since they only have table sizes in even numbers.

Since my parents need aids to hear well I had requested the quiet, adult only room for lunch. When we arrived and the hostess started looking for our reservation it was quickly obvious that we were nowhere to be found. I told her the name of the room we requested and she gave me the, “You certainly don’t think we have room for you there,” look. If it were Christmas I might say we were offered the manager.

Having just left church with a charge to go out and do good in the world I held back and just took the horrible table in the loudest room that was set for eight with no name card on it, a sure sign it was a table for walk-ins.

After a very less than satisfactory meal, but well above average company we went home. Thanks to my making my reservation on my cell phone I was able to find the record of my call to make the reservation and let management know of the exact date and time. I see that in the future I am not only going to need to phone for a reservation, but ask for a confirming e-mail back about it and perhaps a registered letter. That is if I ever consider going back. I am getting very tired of mediocre food and lots of service excuses. Nobody likes when I have risen, because I’m not going to sit on the right hand of the father, but to instruct people how to run a successful food service business, and I’m no saint.

And The Basketball Madness Continues

As I watch Duke slaughter Michigan State (sorry Hannah) at the semis of the final four I wonder if anyone is left in Durham.  The camera pans over the crowd and I see so many friends and familiar faces.  It helps that I am watching the game on the Duke Team Stream channel so all the commentary is about Duke and the side bar interviews are with Duke supporters like Chris Collins, former Duke assistant coach who now is the head coach at Northwestern.

Watching all these talented athletes makes me feel really old.  As the young men fall down so gracefully as they are fouled and pop right back up and sprint down to the other end of the court I feel an imaginary pain in my own knees.  I can not imagine falling down at all, let alone getting up quickly.  If someone pushed me over and I fell on my ample butt I know I would sit there crying.

The most impressive thing about this team is how young they really are yet how focused they played.  With the eyes of 70,000 people watching live I can only imagine the sound it that stadium.  Carter asked me if they were playing in an aircraft hanger it is so big.  So much bigger than Cameron Stadium where they play the regular season.

Congratulations Coach K, all the other coaches and the players.  One more game to go.  It certainly takes more than a village to keep this basketball machine going.  Since half of Durham appears to be in Indianapolis I hope you all are staying until Monday to keep the Duke love going.

Everything Green Spring Salad

There’s this theory about all greens in nature go together that I took a little further to make a vegetable salad to take to a Seder we were generously invited to go to tonight at some friends house. Not wanting to make anything with any dairy so it could be served with meat in case kosher was an issue I followed the lead of the great UK chef Ottolenghi.

1 bunch of fresh asparagus 

1 pound of haricot vert

2 cups of cooked shelled edamame 

3 shallots thinly sliced

3 T. Sesame Seed

Dressing

Juice of 1 lemon

1 t. Sesame oil

2 T. Olive oil

2 dried red chillies

4 drop hot chili oil

2 t. Honey

Big pinch of salt 

Black pepper

Blanch the asparagus until just tender, about 3 minutes in boiling water and then shock in cold water to stop the cooking.  Do the same with the haricot vert, that’s small green beans in case you did not know.  Chill the vegetables and add the Edamame and the sesame seeds.

In a blender or jar using a stick blender mix all the ingredients for the dressing and pulse until the chillies are pulverized.  Pour of the vegetables and serve.

Appreciating Short Lived Seasons

When we built the addition on our house twenty years ago I was childless and had more time for gardening. One feature we built in was a tiny secret courtyard garden with a pierced brick wall. In that garden I planted Clematis that I trained to grow up the wall to soften the look of the brick.
I loved the year round green foliage when I chose it not knowing about the beautiful white blossoms that came with the spring. The first spring the plant bore a cascade of small white flowers with the most glorious aroma, but the plant was still small and the blossoms were few. Over the years the vine grew wide and tall reaching the roof of the second floor.

When spring came the flowers were so many that the gardenia like perfume from them almost seeped through the windows. That smell made me happy, over powering any real sadness that might be going on in the world.

About ten years after we built the addition we decided to paint our raw red brick house a taupe color. I hired a man who I wish I had liked more since painting fifty year old brick turned out to be a bigger job than either of us anticipated because it socked up paint like a Labrador who has been out playing in the yard on a summer day slurps up cold water from a bowl.

When the painter got around to the secret courtyard he announced that the Clematis vine had to be cut down so he could paint the pieced brick wall. Heavens no I thought, ten years of beautiful growth must not be destroyed.

So I told him I would build scaffolding that the vine could be draped on, away from the wall, but under no circumstances was the vine to be cut. He was wary that this would work, but I was determined. I did have to do some trimming, but with enough ladders and two by fours I was able to move the climbing vine away from the wall.

After the five coats of paint were out on the wall and allowed to dry I tried to place the plant back. It was in no way perfect. Some of it had not made the transition well, but the roots and major stalk of the vine lived and eventually flourished.

Today I went out back to sit on the patio and just suck in the air from the best smelling flower I have ever grown. The work of building the scaffolding was long forgotten and the joy that the vine brings me the few days of the year it is blooming is worth whatever it took to keep it. This plant reminds me that many things are worth working to save.

The Candy Barons Are To Blame

My friend Denise announced today that she was going home and make “Money Bunnies” for her grown boys as Easter presents since none of them needed any candy. I thought that was a brilliant idea because the last thing we need in this house is candy.

When I was a kid Easter, Valentines Day and Halloween were “candy holidays,” but I don’t think they were full of candy to the same extent when my parents were kids and certainly were not that way at all for my Grand Parents.

Easter was first and foremost a religious holiday that might have entailed a new hat and dress with some egg salad or deviled eggs thrown in at lunch. None of this overflowing amount of chocolate and certainly nothing in marshmallow existed. How in the world can we reclaim holidays from the fat increasers they have become?

Denise is probably on to the only answer; we have to buy them back. To counteract the money spent on candy we are going to have to fork out triple or quadruple the cost of Easter baskets in cash. The only hope is that the recipients do not go out the day after Easter and spend the money on half price holiday candy.

I am open to all creative ideas that are out there to decrease the candy in “candy holidays” but I don’t want more big present holidays either. I don’t think that Easter warrants a new iPhone, maybe just a new app.

Nothing is special any more. When I was a kid it was a big day in our house when my Dad brought home a Tiger Beat magazine and a Heath bar for us three girls to share. I can only imagine how big that would go over now. So send me your non-food ideas now, but an Apple Watch is off the list.

Random Lunch

Today I had lunch with a wonderful friend who I have known since well before Carter was born. We had been in a club together for years where we got to see each other once a month, but when that club disbanded we had less regular contact, but no less affection for our friendship. Our two-hour lunch could have easily gone on for another two hours, but we both had other commitments and had to promise to schedule another in a month or so. My friend had weathered some health issues, which she is now on the good side of so it was as much a celebration as a catch-up time.

I came away vowing to try and have lunch with someone different at least once a week. I am eating lunch everyday so why not do it with a friend at every chance? There is nothing I am doing that is so important that I can’t make time for friends ahead of most everything else. I can get my walking in before or after lunch. Laundry can be done while I sleep. Carter and Russ are busy more hours of the day than I am awake.

The big thing that has been on my list of things to do is clean out the attic, but I am looking for every excuse not to get that done and I think lunch with friends is the answer. As I started thinking about who I would like to invite to lunch the list got very long very quickly. In a matter of a half an hour I had three years worth of people I wanted to see and the idea of grouping them seemed the logical way to go.

That’s when I resurrected my random dinner party idea with a twist of doing it for lunch. If you don’t know what a random dinner party is it was a concept Russ and I developed to have more people over for dinner. We just put everyone we wanted to invite for dinner in a mason jar and when we had a party just pulled names out of the jar and invited people randomly. Our thought was if we like them, they would like each other. It made for some great dinners. Sadly we hardly made a dent in the jar.

Now I want to have a random lunch. No work for me, it will be at a restaurant and everyone will pay for himself or herself. Instead of me doing the inviting I am going to let people self invite. The first one is next Tuesday, April 7^th at 12:30. If you want to come send me a private message and I will take the first five people who respond. Once you have gotten a confirmation I will let you know where it will be, but it will be someplace in Durham. If you are one of my far off readers you are welcome to come, you just have to get yourself to North Carolina. The only rule is I am not going to tell any of you who else is going to be there. Let’s just see what happens.

Like Christmas Day

Today is like Christmas, Halloween and Easter, minus any religious connotations, all rolled into one for me – It is the day the new Mah Jongg card came in the mail. It is almost sad that I look forward to this day with such glee. Every year Ruth and the mavens in NYC who run the National Mah Jongg League keep this monopoly going by creating a new set of hands that they deem as the winning hands for the year and require the whole nation to buy a new card. The set day is April 1, that everyone in America who plays Mah Jongg their way is “required” to start using the new card.

I woke up this morning think that my “New Card” might come in the mail today since April 1 is two days away and sure enough I was right. I quickly called some other enthusiast and had some friends, run, not walk to my house to play. No sooner had one group left to pick children up at school when another group, whose children are all grown, showed up to play. Two rounds of Mah Jongg with the new card, what could be better?

Just as my second group was leaving Carter walked in the door with flowers for me and a movie for us to watch tonight since she had finished her homework. How could this day get any better? I had already made a big pot of white bean soup for dinner, had folded all the laundry and gotten all my steps.

A great day is going to turn into a better night. Movie with my girl and needlepointing — Even better than Christmas day. I hope your day was as good.

It’s All About Perspective

Today is Palm Sunday, the start of the big week on the life of Christians.  As I sat in church today rehearing the very familiar story of Jesus’ last few days I was struck by the disciples lack of realization about what was happening to Jesus despite the warnings.  As I thought more deeply about it I considered that I was coming at the story as a middle aged woman who had the advantage of having had religious scholars, teachers and preachers connect all the dots of the story with the advantage of years of perspective.  It made me think about how little a vision I ever have of a situation that I might be right in the middle of.

Now I am certainly not likening anything in my life to those of the disciples of Jesus, but I am certain that I have ignored signs or important messages that foreshadowed coming events, good or bad.  Maybe, after the fact I might have put two and two together, or more likely gone on blissfully unaware.

Where I am going is that I have come to appreciate time in helping focus one’s point of view and understanding of the world.  A few years back I learned to consider that all situations do not revolve around me more deeply than the way a toddle does.  This came after a painful interaction with someone who was once a close friend.  After a few soul seeking months trying to figure out why this friend had been so cruel, it dawned on me that it was not about me, but about the pain she was in and I was just an outlet for her frustration.  

If I had better perspective of the whole scenario I might have seen the pain my friend was in before she lashed out at me and been able to offer help, rather than just being a punching bag.  But then again, maybe not.  

There is no way that one human can see all points of view over time and certainly never in real time.  Knowing this gives me a lesson I wish I had learned much younger in life, no matter what is going on it is a good idea to stop and take a breath and wait before acting or worrying or even celebrating too loudly.

My younger self was a fixer, see a problem, offer a solution.  Only now as my older self do I realize I did not always really understand what the problem was I was sure I could fix.  I am now learning not see the world as problems and solutions, but more as complex stories of different journeys, none right or wrong.

The one thing I am sure of is that no one will study the path of my life and connect all the dots and missing information or foreshadowing that shows where I went wrong and what I might have done well.  Knowing most of my mistakes will go away when I do makes me happy to keep trying and making them.  I am sure I will always be a fixer, but hopefully I am gaining a better perspective.

When Binging Became Acceptable

Not so long ago if someone admitted to binging you might worry that they were eating or drinking too much.  It certainly was not ladylike to say, “I went on a binge,” unless you were talking about buying more than three pairs of shoes at a time.  Now a days if someone utters the word “binge” more often than not they are referring to watching multiple episodes of a TV show all at once and not to eating thirty-two cupcakes in a sitting.

I am now here to say, “hello, my name is Dana, and I am a binge watcher.”  Normally, I don’t think of binge eating or even binge shoe buying as being contagious, but I am promoting binge watching as the way of the future, even saying that it is the best possible way to watch TV.

My latest addiction is an original show on Netflix called “Bloodline” that stars the very cute Kyle Chandler, of “Friday Night Lights” fame.  It is the story of a family, that I don’t need to describe as dysfunctional, because all families on TV are, that live in the Keys in Florida and run an Inn.  Sissy Spacek plays the mother and Sam Shepard is the father.  I don’t want to give away any of the plot line, but trust me, once you watch an episode or two you will keep watching it to see where this story is going. 

This binge watching plays perfectly into my two at home obsessions of walking on my treadmill and needle pointing, both of which I can do while I am watching a good show.  The only thing that gets in the way of finishing the series is sleeping.  I started watching this show yesterday afternoon and after seven episodes I decided it would be OK if I stopped and went to sleep because that meant I would still have six more shows to watch today.  

Now I am down to one show left and I am sick that in an hour my short lived obsession will be done, at least until a new season comes out next year.  In my defense, or really justification for watching so much TV is that it was not fattening, I still got my family fed during this time and i had the bonus of  never being confused about what was happening on the show because I did not have time to forget who a character was or what the story was since I did not have to wait a week to see the next episode.  

So let’s redeem the word binge from the shame it has faced in the food and drink world to be the great thing it is in the television on demand era.  Who says we need variety in our viewing everyday?  There does not have to be any shame in engulfing yourself in the world of television characters for a day or two.  This is only a problem if you can’t discern the fictional people from the real ones in your own home.  Thankfully I don’t think I am closely related to anyone as bad as these characters, but it is really fun to watch for a day or two.  

I wish I had never seen any Downton Abbey, because I would have loved to have binge watched that show and pretended to be engulfed in their world.  I wonder if I would have imagined myself upstairs or downstairs?  I guess I’ll never know.  But now back to the warm weather of the Florida Keys and my last Bloodline episode.

Herb Weiman Memorial Tuna Fish

When I was a kid I did not really like the tune fish salad I was served at home. The large chunks of too much celery added to stretch out too little fish swimming in a pool of mayonnaise just never really hit the right notes with me. Then in college I met Herb Weiman, and his skills with a can of tuna changed my outlook.

Herb and I met when we went to school in France together what was the summer between my freshman and sophomore year and his senior year and first year of law school. We became fast friends and shared a lot of cooking between us. The best part was that Herb, who had the best sense of humor, was in law school in Carlisle while I was finishing Dickinson and he often retold the most outrageous cases he was studying with me while we shared dinner.

Herb had learned his special tuna salad from a diner in Ventnor, New Jersey where his family spent their summers. He even had a giant painted plywood menu hanging in his kitchen that had been discarded from the diner when they needed to paint a new one with higher prices.

Herb was always fastidious in the preparation of the tuna salad and impressed on me not to skip any of the important steps. I was more of a seat-of-my-pants-cook relying on my natural instincts rather than learning from great master of the diner culture. I have to admit that to this day when I make my tine salad the Herb Weiman way, not straying from the tried and true recipe I am immediately transported back to those happy years in college at my first bite.

Sadly Herb passed away at the much too young age of 40 from a brain tumor. His laughter and wit are still missed by so many. I do my best to keep him alive in his famous tuna salad.

1 6 oz. can of the best tuna in water you can afford – Herb swore by black diamonds

2 T. sweet pickle relish

Squeeze of half a lemon

1 T. mayonnaise

2 t. Dijon mustard

½ t. dried oregano

Salt and Pepper

Herb insisted that you must drain the can of tuna the best you can and then rub the tuna between your thumb and fore finger breaking it up into the tiniest bits you can, making it light as a feather. Mix in everything else adding only enough mayo to make it “Not dry” which is completely different than wet. It is best made a little in advance so the dried oregano can blossom in the salad.

No Photos So The NCAA Does Not Come After Me

I love March madness. I don’t have any guilt about doing nothing but watching TV while getting my steps on my treadmill since I am sure that half of my town is also watching our home town team make it to the sweet sixteen round.

I’m not going to mention any actual team names or describe anything about the great games I watched since the NCAA announces the very threatening copyright rules. You know what that is, “This game is for the private use of the audience and no photos or description of the game can be used without permission of the NCAA.”

This blog is my private use since I don’t make any money on it, but I am not about to put it past the NCAA to go after even a little blogger like me. So I can’t post a photo of Shay Shay standing next to me while I’m on the treadmill watching the game. She normally does not care a thing about what is on the screen, but for some reason this dog is interested in basketball.

It seems like during March, basketball is about all that half the country is talking about. I would think that the NCAA wants people to describe the games and post photos of it. I certainly think that plenty of people who are at the games are doing that. Is the NCAA going after them, or are they just acting like a big bully and threatening those of us watching on TV?

There is only one thing I want the NCAA to do and that is change the shot clock for men’s basketball to 30 seconds from 35 seconds. I think that games get very slow at the end when one team is up far above their opponent. There is good reason to run out the clock and not give the other guys a chance to score, but it makes it more boring for the spectators.

I don’t think discussion about this is in violation of the NCAA copyright rules, but I’m sure the NCAA does not want anyone discussing them and their rules. For right now I am just going to celebrate that I can walk nine miles in a game and a half. That means I can sit down and needlepoint during the rest of the games.

St. Patrick’s Day is Not Made for Me

I don’t know what the original intention of St. Patrick’s Day was, but it has certainly turned into an excuse to drink beer. The way I see it, people who like beer don’t really need an excuse to enjoy it. Almost anything can be a good reason to pop open a cold one. Celebrating March Madness, have a beer. It’s a warm spring day, have a beer. Hard day at work, have a beer. You are just plain thirsty, have a beer. Not Irish, but want to celebrate the like you are, seems like the way most people do that is to, you get it, have a beer.

Well, what if you don’t like beer, or shouldn’t drink beer, how can you participate in the celebration? You could always eat Irish food — that is not really as much fun as having a beer. Nothing about corned beef and cabbage screams party. There is just not much in the Irish diet that is well, very dietetic, so I’m out on that account.

I guess that leaves Irish dancing. You know the river dance type thing where people with really good posture bounce straight up and down while wildly moving their feet. Yeah, that seems like it is a really good work out, maybe that is heading in a direction I should go, but then again, no. I think that if I were to try and bounce up and down that hard with my aging breasts I might give myself two black eyes. I guess I need to leave Irish Dancing to prepubescent little girls.

What’s left? A pot of gold, maybe a bowl of lucky charms, searching for four leaf clovers… Just not anything I am really interested in. So I just wore a green sweater today and tried to seem like I was fitting in without really having any Irish fun. I’m glad we don’t have one of these holidays for every country on earth. I can only imagine how little of Russian Day I would be interested in.

Thanks To The Food Bank



Tonight I had the pleasure of attending the Food Bank’s annual Evening of Appreciation to thank those businesses and organizations that give most significantly to the Food Bank.  The highlight of the evening is the Hunt-Morgridge Service Award that recognizes extraordinary leadership and dedication to hunger relief efforts.  This year the honoree was a man I highly admire, Ashmead Pipkin.

When I first came to sit on the board of the Food Bank it was as an ex-officio member representing the Durham branch.  I had served on other non-profit boards before, but they paled in good governance compared to the Food Bank.  It became very clear to me in the first or second meeting that Ash, a Duke lawyer by trade with a Harvard MBA thrown in for good measure was the guy to learn from.  If ever there was a question about by-laws or regulations Ash was the authority to turn to, but he was so much more than just the rule enforcer.  Ash was always thinking about what was the right thing to do to help feed hungry people in the most efficient and productive way.

I was lucky enough to serve on the board with Ash for at least five years.  When it was finally time for his mandatory retirement from the board, thanks to the term limits he wrote into the by- laws, I was worried about how we would continue without his wise council.  Thankfully about that time another wonderful man sent me to Harvard to hone my non-profit governance skills.  In almost every case I studied at Harvard an issue was discussed about how highly effective boards should handle situations.  Time and time again in that course I would hear Ash’s voice in my head guiding my instincts to come up with creative, but sound answers to the kind of problems all non-profits face.

I know I was lucky to get to sit at his side and learn from Ash through all the years we served together.  It thrilled me that the Food Bank recognized his great contributions in this way, although there is no way we can ever thank him enough.  

Tonight I sat in the audience with my friend Jane Cox who had been the President of the Food Bank when I first joined the board.  It feels just like yesterday I got to know her when we opened the second Durham Branch, but I think Carter was two years old, so that means it was fourteen years ago.  I am so thankful for all the wonderful people I have had the honor of learning from who serve the Food Bank from both the staff side and the board side.  I count my hours spent helping hunger relief as probably the most satisfying work I have ever done.  I know tonight was an evening of appreciation to thanks others, but it really made me think how much I appreciate the privilege of working with the Food Bank.

Goodbye Italian Vacation Food, Hello Arugula and Chicken

One of the joys of traveling is discovering new foods, well maybe in the case of Italy is not so much discovering them, but allowing myself to eat them.  I have to say that the Roman diet is almost as unvaried as my at home diet, except that there it is full of pasta and bread and here, well, not so much.  

To me it is amazing how quickly I can get sick of pasta, which once was probably in my top five favorite foods.  Now Russ proved that he could eat Carbonara almost everyday, it is and has been his favorite food for a very long time.  On my last count he ate it seven times while we were away, of course it helped that he had a trio of different Carbonaras at one restaurant.  I did not know there were different ways of making what is basically a bacon, egg and cheese pasta dish, but I am wrong.  

As fun as it was to try gelato in interesting flavors like stracciatella, which is a vanilla base with tiny bits of chocolate, somewhat reminiscent of chocolate chip, but not the same since the chocolate is little flakes like angel wings in cream.  Describing it was almost better than eating it because I knew that I would have to pay the piper as soon as I got home.  

Do I think that the gelato combination cup of almond and dark chocolate was worth it?  Maybe, but ask me in three weeks when I am still trying to work off the vacation weight.  Overall taking a break from the salad life is good in small doses, but in no way can I live a vacation eating existence full time.

I had to get back in the groove right away.  Russ ran out for milk and blueberries first thing this morning so I could enjoy my regular cereal.   Salad for lunch, and salad for dinner.  I actually missed all my greens.  I also came home to a DVR full of missed shows, which made getting my steps easy while doing the vacation laundry.  Treadmill laundry folding should be a new Olympic sport or at least a good you tube video.

So goodbye artichoke paninis and hello grilled chicken.  I’ve actually missed you and am happy not to be reading menus and being tempted by descriptions of yummy sinful food.  Thank goodness we have no waiters at home placing bread baskets on the dinner table, actually thank goodness we have no bread at all.

Code Share is No Share





When I booked our flights to and from Rome I picked Delta based on the great long haul flights Russ and I had to South Africa this summer.  Getting to Rome on Delta was not a problem.  I had lots of different flights to choose from so both our flight from RDU to JFK and the one to Rome were all on actual Delta planes.

Interestingly the return options were greatly limited.  I don’t know why Delta thinks so many people need to get into Italy, but don’t need to get back.  This meant I had to pick one for Delta’s code share partners to get back to the US and then use Delta to get back to RDU.

When Delta was selling me the tickets they did their best job at hiding the fact that the flight from Rome was actually an Alitalia flight.  They have a Delta flight number but outside that code sharing number nothing about the flight has anything to do with Delta.

The trauma of this fact started when we got our email reminder from Delta yesterday in Rome to check in for our flight.  Yes, they sent us the e-mail that linked to Delta’s automated check-in website, but once there we got a message saying we had to log-in to Alitalia’s site to check-in.  That site did not work on our phones so Russ said he would do it from his computer once we went back to the hotel.  Russ is definitely an automated check-in expert, but even he was frustrated when he logged in to the Italian airline’s site and they said that they did not have any record of our tickets, despite us having the confirmation and ticket numbers.  Three phone calls later we find out we can’t check-in online because Alitalia can’t issue us boarding passes for the Delta last leg of our trip.  What the #%€£!  This code share thing may only work for selling tickets, but not for the customer experience.

This meant we had to get up and hour and a half earlier this morning to get to the airport three hours before our flight since we had to check-in in person.  Many people in Italy told us nightmare stories about inefficiencies at the airport and warned us not to take our chances.  So we didn’t.  Of course since we were there so early there was not one person in the Boston flight line.  By then we had gotten an email from Delta telling us our RDU leg was going to be taking off on time, but landing two and a half hours late.  What the €%#?!  How could our two hour non-stop flight suddenly change to a five hour flight?  Did it become a bus?

The good news is our Alitalia flight got to Boston.  It was no Delta.  The service stunk, the food was crazy bad, four starches, no fruits or vegetables for lunch, the attendants were more like prison guards.  Once we were stateside I checked with a Delta agent about what the story is on our last leg and she said it was a mistake sent out by the computer.  Hooray!  We are about to get on our last flight and get home to see our sweet baby Shay Shay!  Loved Italy, love getting home.

I wrote the above at Logan Airport before our RDU flight was delayed over an hour due to mechanical issues.  I never should of written any thing about a flight until it was over because I am sure I jinxed it!

Arrivederci Roma



You know it is getting to be time to go home when Carter, who loves history starts to be bored by guides and is having more fun visiting with the local horses.  That and it’s time to get a little variety in our meals.  Last night after a week of all Italian food and I mean mostly all Roman food, all the time, we revolted and went to have sushi.  Carter was ecstatic and made me go and tell the sushi chef how great it was.  Of course she was mostly concerned that there were not many patrons in the place, but we eat on the early side for Rome. By nine o’clock when we were leaving the place was beginning to come to life.

To me a week away from home is perfect.  You get a chance to see someplace new, but you are sad to leave.  Staying too long makes me unhappy.  I am always happy to get home to my own bed, but I want to have great memories of a trip.  I think I will be most excited to get home to different shoes, iced tea and salads as my main sustenance.

I also will be happy to not have to have discussions with my family members over which is the best way to get somewhere.  Not having to follow a map will be a bonus.  For Carter I think going back to unlimited data will be what she likes best.  Even though Russ buys her the biggest data plan there is for international she still uses it up well before the trip is over and then is relegated to wifi which is usually nofi in most places.Not having to say no to “selfie stick” salesmen every few feet will also make me happy.  

Arrivederci Roma.  We loved spending time here, but still liked the countryside best.  

Potential Double Travel Disaster Adverted



For the record I am a a fairly seasoned, somewhat savvy, well researched, experienced, intrepid traveler.  Started young, and did it so regularly for work and fun that not a lot throws me.  I have lost suit cases and survived for days, arrived in foreign cities with no hotel reservations during peak holiday travel, missed planes, driven the wrong way down one way streets, been spit on by camels, survived high fevers alone in countries where few spoke English, been thrown off mopeds, broken multiple bones on an island with only a vet/doctor and a 1954 X-ray machine, slept nights on the local train that that stopped every fifteen minutes, been thrown out of youth hostels for being too loud, found enough cash on the street in France to live for three weeks, out bargained an Egyptian bazaar owner and gotten a lost suitcase back while I was naked.

So far this trip things have gone fairly well.  I made everyone pack in just a carry on bag so there was no chance of the airline loosing our luggage.  The hotels I picked from online reviews have been incredibly nice and the strong dollar that keeps getting stronger while we are here helps a lot. The tours we have taken have been great.  Carter says that Pompeii was the best so far.  The food we have eaten has been, well Italian, need I say any more?  Of course I will be paying for that part next week.

Today, two things happened that could have been huge disaster.  The first was this morning in Positano we wanted to get an early start on our three and a half hour drive to Tivoli to visit the Villa d’Este and it’s incredible gardens with the hundreds of fountains built over five hundred years ago.   

The hotel bellman went to retrieve our car from the hotel parking, where space for cars is at a premium.  He pulled it up in front of the hotel on the skinny space barely wide enough for our car and the huge busses driving both ways on the street.  After he put our luggage in the way back I got in the driver’s seat and he stood in the street to stop any traffic coming in either direction so we could pull out.  As we did a funny sound went off in our rental car, but stopped as soon as we turned off the flashers which the bellman had turned on.  

If you have never driven on the Amalfi drive let me give you a small description of what it is like on a good day.  The road, singular, is a thin strip of asphalt carved out of the cliff with a sheer three hundred foot drop to the sea on one side and a solid rock wall on the other.  It is either climbing uphill or dropping steeply down hill with a hairpin turn every few hundred feet.  The natives drive fast and close, the German Buses are too big to pass side by side with one another, the tiny three wheel workman’s wagons don’t have enough power to make it up the hills at any reasonable speed, people pass cars going the same direction with no where near enough space to see if anyone is coming towards them, but they don’t care, often if a large bus or truck is coming toward you, especially at a curve you have to stop and back up to make room so that someone can go.  

This morning as we were trying to get out of Positano we encountered at least two big busses coming at us that gave us pause, a couple of slow work men’s vehicles and a native or two who passed us.  We had gone about five kilometers when suddenly we noticed a fast motor bike starting to overtake us on the drivers side.  I looked over and noticed it was the bellman from the hotel.  We stopped as a big lorry was blocking the road and the bellman reached out his hand to my window and passed me the key fob to our rental car.  “Sorry,” he said and then turned the motor bike back the other way.  Since our car was keyless and the bellman had started it we were able to drive off without it, but if we had stopped the car we would never have been able to start it again.  We decided that was the alarm sound the car had made as we drove away and it was just coincidental that the alarm went off when we turned off the flashers.  It was incredibly lucky that we had two big busses block our progress as we got out of town, and that I had told the desk clerk where we were going.  The most lucky part is that motorbikes are able to make greater progress since they skip all the traffic by driving in the middle of the road, passed stopped traffic.  Disaster one adverted.

The second potential disaster came after a wonderful visit to the Tivoli and the successful return of our rental car.  We got an uber car to bring us to our hotel,  Since the road was being worked on that the hotel is on we got out and walked with our little rolling suit cases the two blocks to the front door.  As we walked in the tiny boutique hotel Carter said she got a feeling something was wrong from the look on the desk clerk’s face.  Apparently I had booked the hotel for two nights starting tomorrow, not today.  Rookie traveler mistake.

Amazingly enough they happened to have the suite of rooms I had booked free tonight and only our rooms.  The sweet clerk showed us our rooms with a lovely outdoor terrace and Carter announced it was a strong finish to a great vacation.  Lucky day all around.

  

Bar Bruno





The first time I came to Positano I was just three years older than Carter.  I had spent the first half of the summer in school in France and then came straight to Italy to go on vacation with my family before going back to my parent’s house in London.  Those were the days.  Carter would love it if she could live that life today.

My youngest sister Janet was only eight years old that summer we spent here in Positano.  We were staying at Le Sirenuse, a lovely hotel right in the middle of town.  During the day my other sister Margaret would sun by the pool, I would explore, and Janet would disappear.  My parents were fairly laid back even for those times, and never really knew where Janet went everyday, all day by herself.  The attitude was as long as she showed up for meals everything was fine. 

I remember one night at dinner after we had been here for a few days my father asked Janet where she went everyday.  She said that she would show him the next morning.  So after breakfast I went with my Dad as we followed Janet out of the hotel and up the street to “Bar Bruno” a dark bar with a bead curtain for a door and a couple of old Italian men drinking early in the morning.

I was horrified that my sister had been hanging out in a bar during the beautiful Mediterranean summer days.  What kind of bar let an eight year old kid in any ways?  Then Janet who was the consummate Tom boy showed us her reason for coming to this bar.  There in the corner of the small dark bar was a car driving video machine.  How Janet discovered it I can’t remember.  But I do recall that she had figured out that the machine took a lire coin that was about the same size as a 2p piece, which she had plenty of.  In fact, I think she had jammed a coin in so that she could just continuously play this driving game.  Apparently none of the old men who hung out at the bar realized what was going on.  

This morning when Russ and I left our hotel to go explore in town I discovered that Bar Bruno was still open in the very same place.  The beads on the door were gone as well as the video machine and old men drinking at nine in the morning.  Today Bar Bruno is also a restaurante and in honor of this being the first hangout bar in Janet’s life we ate lunch there, sitting at a table overlooking the sea.  Sorry Carter, we don’t live in London or let you hang out alone in bars, but we do bring on vacation to Positano, one of my favorite places on earth.

You Can’t Be Afraid to Drive Yourself





It was probably easier for the Italians to find Pompeii, 1,700 years after it was buried in 79ad by Vesuvius erupting covering it in 21 feet of ash than it was for the Lange family to find the Hertz desk at the Termini station in Rome.  That being said, we eventually did stumble upon the tiny and off the beaten path car rental center and got our car for this leg of our trip.  

Of course finding the desk was just the beginning since we then had to find the parking garage where the car actually was a few blocks away and seven floors up from the street. Just as we had the car located and packed a young American woman came over to us and asked for help, since she said her husband was too embarrassed to ask.  They had a manual car and could not figure out how to get the car into reverse.  Russ volunteered me as the manual expert and once I got in their car I quickly discovered the locking ring on the gear shift.  

The young couple who probably were on their honeymoon were very thankful and drove off in front of us.  At last we were on our way to Pompeii.  We started the winding decent down the very tight corridors of the parking garage until we were blocked by the honeymoon couple who had stopped because their GPS was not working and they did not know how to get out of Rome to go to Assisi.  Russ volunteered us again to lead them to the ring road where we would get the AutoStrada south and they would go north.     

Driving in Rome is stressful enough with other drivers apparently not really following any road rules, add to that driving without a real map and only with Google maps my least favorite way to navigate since I am a visual driver, then the pressure to ensure a less confident manual driver is able to keep up with me as the Romans are doing their best to separate us.  Carter, who for some reason felt very responsible for the happiness of this newly married couple kept watch on them as we maneuvered traffic circles and trolley crossings, telling me, “Mom, slow down, they are losing us.”  Finally we reached the ring road and even though they were not behind us I had to tell Carter that they were going to be fine that we had to go a different way to get to Pompeii.

Since Carter had been studying Western World in history I thought it would be fun to go to the oldest place I could take her.  I had debated if we should go to Herculaneum or Pompeii, but Carter insisted on the later.  Knowing that ruins can begin to look like just another bunch of rocks without a good guide I decided this was the place to spring for a private guide.  After much research I booked one through the Internet last week and we met Dino who thankfully showed up a half an early just as we were arriving.  

Dino, an archeologist who gives tours since there is not much digging going on in Italy due to lack of funds, not lack of dig sites, was the perfect match for us.  He brought Pompeii to life for us and I know that Carter will never forget all the lessons she learned, especially the more racy aspects of the “Las Vegas of Italy” as Dino described it.  

Three and a half hours of history flew by and before we knew it we had to be back in the car to make the hour long drive along the Amalfi coast to Positano.  Since I was already the Italian driving expert and I also was the only one with the experience driving the winding cliff-side coast road and I am the worst back seat driver, I took the wheel while Carter tried not to look over the side of the road into the Mediterranean as giant German busses tried to push off off the side.  Since it is low season the traffic was not too terrible and we made it to Positano in one piece.  My lesson of the day to Carter was the importance of being able to drive yourself in a foreign country.  We never would have been able to do what we did today by public transportation. Carter happily announced that Pompeii was the favorite part of the trip so far–that makes it all worth while for this mother.

The Napping Way of Life



When Carter was a baby she started to refuse taking naps before her second birthday as well as wanting an adult to sit in her room with her until she fell asleep at night until she was very old.  Oh, how times have changed.

Today we had to get up extra early for people on vacation because we were taking a tour of the Vatican before it opened to the public.  Carter did not understand why this was necessary  until we left St. Peter’s four hours after we went in and saw the thousands of people lined up waiting to get in.

One could spend a a week at the Vatican museum and still not see everything, that one would not be in my family.  Knowing this I planned the very small group private tour that just hit the highlights.  Thanks to Carter’s interest in history we were able to keep her fairly engaged and interested, but all those people eventually zapped the energy out of her.  Even a good lunch that included her favorite meat did not fully restore her so back to the hotel we went for siestas.

I have to admit I have quickly come to embrace an afternoon nap.  Rather than spending the afternoon packing in as many sites as we could see, we snoozed away, spent time on the roof top terrace of our hotel and went out for a most fabulous dinner that included lots of truffles.  

After living a life of limited pasta, bread and sweet options for almost the last three years I think I have lost my stamina to eat so many carbs.  I am already tiring of pasta and am looking forward to going to the Amalfi coast for some fish and vegetables.  Tomorrow we will leave Rome for a couple of days, but I hope when we get back we can make more progress on being tourists and less life as Italians taking naps. 

Welcome to My World















When you have family in Italy you get to be Italian, if just for a while.  We started our day with a wonderful visit with my cousin Kennon, her Italian husband Pietro and their darling son, Franceso.  Kennon, who’s mother was my grandfather’s sister, has lived in Italy since 1980.  We keep up through Facebook and when I said we would be in Rome she generously made time to see us.  

We met on a corner by the river and after all the kissing and hugging they drove us up to Piazza Garibaldi, the highest point in Rome with the best panoramic view of the city.  This was great because we never would have known about it or gotten there on our own.  After seeing so much of the city we headed down to the Trastevere neighborhood to meet up with Francesco and his friend.  The last time I saw Francesco he was a high school student doing in cannonballs into my parent’s pool, now he is a 27 man studying Philosophy in London.  It was great for Carter to get to meet her only Italian cousin. 

We walked the neighborhood, talking and stopped into a beautiful church just as the service was starting.  Since we had missed Wilson’s funeral yesterday Kennon lit a candle in the church for him.  Carter impressed me with her art history knowledge she had learned in her Western  World class as we looked at the paintings in the various chapels of the church.  Too quickly our time was up and we had to say ciao.

We ventured off to lunch in the ghetto upon Kennon’s recommendation.  I had the multi artichoke meal which made me very happy, but required a lot of walking afterwards through ruins and up to the capital, through more tiny alleys and finally back to our hotel for a small rest.  It was all I could do to wake Russ and Carter in time for our walk up the hill to the Borghesse Gallery for our appointed entrance time.  

All that art really drives Carter’s need to sit and relax somewhere and since it was too early for dinner I thought we should stop in at the famous Harry’s Bar on the Via Veneto and have a drink just like I did with my parents back in the seventies.  The only difference is that back then everyone in my family drank so going to Harry’s made sense.  We were seated at a nice table outside, Russ looks at the drinks menu and says, “Now that I have given up alcohol I don’t know what to order.”  Carter piped in, “Welcome to my world.”  For the record Carter had a Shirley Temple and Russ had the most decedent hot chocolate that came with a whole bowl of whipped cream.  Despite the lack of Campari and soda it was fun nonetheless.

Roman Holiday



Travel for fun is so much better than travel for work.  Last night, when all the other passengers on our delayed flight to Rome were losing it as the gate agent kept pushing back the departure time, 10…15… 7 minutes and finally an hour late, we were just chillin’ with no place we absolutely had to be. Vacation mode came to us quickly.

We arrived in the eternal city and since it is low season our hotel not only upgraded us to a better room, but had it ready for us early.  Purposely I had not planned for us to do anything today so we would have no guilt easing into our vacation.  The lack of plan turned out to be the perfect plan.

After unpacking and taking in the view of the Spanish steps from our balcony we went out for a walk looking for someplace to grab lunch.  We happened upon a rustic restaurant where we were seated beside a multi-century old fireplace where the smell of smoke permeated the ancient stones.  I happily had a small plate of the vegetable antipasto, Carter a pizza and Russ the first of his two spaghetti carbonara for the day.  Perhaps this trip should be renamed “Russ Lange’s carbonara tour 2015.”

After lunch Carter opted to walk back to the hotel alone to start her afternoon siesta while Russ indulged my pocketbook shopping and walk through the neighborhood.  I purposely had not brought a purse on the trip as a good excuse to have to buy one first thing.  My justification was that the dollar had never been this strong and I was never going to get such a good deal again.  Russ did not need any of this malarkey and just went along and cheerfully bought me the bag.

After strolling for a while the bed was calling me for a nap so we went back and I passed out for a good three hour restoration.  I think Russ might have worked the whole time, but it certainly did not bother me.  

Post nap showers and fresh clothes and we were all finally human again and ready to walk to dinner.  We picked a route that would take us by the Trevi Fountain. Sadly when we got there we discovered it was drained, covered with scaffolding and surrounded by a glass wall for restoration. We continued on our meandering way and arrived at our destination and old Roman restaurant.  Although we had not planned any activities for the day we had talked about all the roman foods we wanted to eat on this trip as well as a no diet talk rule. Tonight I Carter and I both had stuffed squash blossoms which was very high on our list and Russ had his second serving of carbonara for the day.  Carbonara is Russ’ favorite food, but the problem is that he compares each version to the one I make and seems disappointed in his selection.  I don’t know why, I tasted both his plates today and they were equally wonderful and different from each other.  I do hope he gives up searching for the best carbonara and try’s some other things soon.

Half way through our dinner a group of six men were seated at the table behind us.  As they were enjoying their dinner Russ leans over to me and says, “I bet they are from Philly.”  After we payed the bill I got up and turned to ask them if they were from Philadelphia and they say yes with a roar. Not only were they from Philly, but one of them was Rusty Shunk’s nephew who was the head of admissions at Dickinson and admitted me and all my friends since he worked there for about 30 years.

Russ quickly did the math, and the people of the city of brotherly love only make up 0.07% of all the people in the world and in this one small room in Rome where there were just three tables of diners seven were from Philly, with Carter and I being honorary Philly-in-laws it would be nine.

There was not enough walking today to make up for Italian food, but there was not too much eating considering we are in Rome.  Tomorrow we will get to work showing Carter the city, but for today we just were on vacation.

Rome Bound



In true comparison of our personality differences Carter and Russ chose to sit as far in the corner of the Delta Sky Club at JFK on the tall uncomfortable stools looking out the window so no humans were in their view.  I on the other hand plopped myself down on the comfy chairs in the six person pods and made friends with my neighbor across the way from me when his phone rang with the Odd Couple theme song.

This is how we differ as family members, not just while traveling, but always.  I take great joy in talking to strangers and learning their stories while Russ and Carter would rather be in their own worlds observing more than interacting.  Even though we all are different, the fact that we all love to travel is our family theme.

I leave on this long planned trip for Rome with a heavy heart since it means that we are missing my Uncle Wilson’s funeral tomorrow.  It almost never fails that I am going to be out of the country when a relative I love passes away. But since I come from a nomad group they all say, “of course you should go on your trip.”

I talked to my Dad today and he is doing exactly what he does best during times of sadness and family gatherings, he is hosting two big dinners where he is doing all the cooking.  I guess that I inherited the cooking grief gene from him and that is why I fry chicken when someone dies.

As I would expect many Carter and Michie cousins are coming for the funeral and I am going to miss all the story telling that is certainly going to happen.  If we were there I would be smack dab in the middle of the action and most certainly Carter and Russ would be off in a side room.

Not that they would not be listening to the stories, or interested in visiting with the family, just not in a big gang, more one-on-one.

To my family, I miss you all this weekend and send virtual hugs and kisses.  You get plenty of my stories everyday, but I will miss hearing yours.  Someone take notes and lots of photos so I can share in the celebration on Wilson’s life, as I am sure this weekend will be.  For us Lange’s we will toast Will in Rome and try and take photos worthy of his great eye, eat food he would have loved and visit churches he might have been suspect of.

How Much Is That?

When I was a kid I was really good at guessing the right prices on the TV show The Price Is Right. One of Bob Barker’s beauties would wave her arm model style in from of a new Amana Radar Range and I almost always guessed the price better than any contestant on the show. This was the case from the time I was about nine or ten. I was good at guessing the value of everything from a bottle of Windex to the total of the better of the two showcase showdowns.

I had no reason to have bought any of the items featured on the show. I can’t ever remember doing any appliance shopping although I did help my mother with grocery shopping. I must have just picked up the cost of items from watching other games shows that told the values, like Let’s Make a Deal. I also ran errands every Saturday with my father and I always was interested in how much things cost.

Today Carter’s advisory went to the Habitat ReStore to do their community service time. As one of the mother’s who has a more flexible schedule I drove half the class to and from the store.

Since I had never actually been in the ReStore I went inside to retrieve the kids at the pick up time.   I encountered Carter and her friend Amelia wearing blue habitat vests with a price tag gun, hanging hardware on a pegboard.

“What work did you do today?” I asked.

“Mom, we did the craziest thing,” Carter said. “We priced things.”

“Was it fun?” I asked.

“It was scary. We did not have any guidelines about how much things should cost and they told us just to price stuff.”

Then another classmate came up and basically reiterated the same thing. “I had no idea how much this giant window was worth, so I just put $200 on it.”

It made me chuckle. These kids have most certainly never strolled the aisles of Home Depot studying the prices of new doorknobs or kitchen sinks, how in the world would they know any value for a used door or ceiling fan? I doubt any of them had ever watched the price is right. Understanding the value of money, goods and services is a long-term study that starts with understanding how hard it is to earn the money in the first place.

Carter did say the volunteer supervisor did say at the end they had made the prices of some cabinet knobs too low at .50¢, they should have been $1. Seems like that was info she could have told them up front. I guess if you are in the market for some underpriced used hardware now is the time to visit the Durham Habitat store. With teenage pricing schemes I’m sure you can find a deal.

And Then There Was One

After three years of illness my Uncle Wilson, my father’s only sibling, passed away around noon today. He suffered too long and was in too much pain, but he stuck around as long as he did because he was so loved by so many and hated letting anyone down. I am thankful that my sweet cousins, Brooks, Leigh and Sarah were there with their mom as they always were in the beginning, the long middle and the end.

Will was two years younger than my father and for their whole life it always was the two of them. Growing up in a tiny house on Lockland Ave. in Winston-Salem they shared a room where Will would lie on his bed and read his comic books. When my father was about ten he decided that he would like to have a room of his own. Since it was only a two-bedroom house my Dad asked his father if he could dig out a basement room under their house.

Since my Dad had both a morning and afternoon paper route I’m sure my grandfather did not think my Dad would actually do it. I always wondered who’d let their kid dig a room under their house, cement block it and pour a cement floor? No one much came down to see what was going on until the day my father announced it was done and he was moving out of the room with his brother and down to the newly created basement.

My Uncle Wilson, who had read a lot of comic books while my Dad had been digging came down to see where his older brother was going. He looked around at the much bigger room with a shower in the corner of the room and announced that he too was going to move in with my Dad, and so he did.

That was the way they were together for their whole lives. My Dad went to Chapel Hill and Will came too. My Dad married someone named Janie my Uncle Wilson did too. Our families would spend summers at Pawley’s Island together, My Uncle Wilson, Aunt Janie and my cousins would come on vacation wherever we were living, be in Wilton or London. When my Uncle Wilson retired from the church he came to work with my Dad. Both brothers moved to retire at their grand parent’s farm.

They differed in their politics, but never let ideologies divide them. They both love each other’s children as their own. To me Uncle Wilson was much more than an Uncle, he was my father once removed. As an Episcopal priest he preformed the marriage ceremony at my wedding and at every wedding in our family. As a Jungian physiologist he analyzed and explained us all to each other. But mostly as a father, an Uncle, a grandfather and a great Uncle he loved on us.

But it was as a brother that he was always there. My grand parents were not the easiest couple nor ideal parents. I think that my father and his brother were always there for each other when things got tough. I’m glad that Uncle Wilson’s suffering is over, but I am sad for all of us who won’t have him to turn to for wisdom and advice. I’m sad for my Aunt, and my cousins, but mostly I am sad for my father. He lost the person who has been with him all his life that he can remember.

The Importance of Sisters

It was Winter Athletic Awards Program tonight. Given that Swimming had lost a team member Grame Kirven this year and Boys basketball had three players badly injured in a car accident with Ryan still out of school doing rehab it made the ceremony more emotional than a normal sports awards night.

Although Carter’s girl’s basketball team did not have the same direct hit as the other teams they were greatly affected by what their brother team was suffering. With no seniors playing and only two players returning the team did a remarkable job of coming together as a family. At first they looked like a group of odd balls, but together they made a beautiful work of art.

As Carter’s coach, Krista was talking about each player she often noted their scoring or rebounding, but when she got to Carter she said, “Carter said my favorite thing I heard all year from the team, “I never had any sister’s before I had this team.’” That is the way Carter thinks about her teammates and that is far more important to me than stats.

Having a team to lean on when times are hard is helpful. Inside jokes, silly songs, pushing each other to try harder, celebrating successes, offering condolences all part of belonging; and on this team everyone belonged whether you were a starter, or someone who was put in to give another player a break.

It was a tough year with injuries, but these girls never gave up. Nicole Ripple a freshman who started the first game got hurt in the first half and was out for the rest of the season, but she was at every game and according to the coach most practices. Kenan Little was injured the week before the season started, but she stayed on to manage. Grace Drewry did not even try out for basketball but was recruited by her friend Abby to play JV. When the varsity team got down to six healthy players Grace was drafted and she played both JV and Varsity most of the season.

Carter was not a starter, but she had the advantage of learning all the lessons coach Krista was teaching as she talked on the sidelines during games. Being a good listener was Carter’s big job, that and using her loud voice to repeat the names of the plays Coach was calling. It was hard to miss Carter’s distinctive voice as she screamed out “Syracuse” so her teammates could hear it.

The girls basketball team was the smallest team being honored tonight, but as the auditorium watched the slide show of all winter sports the girls basketball team was the most vocal in celebration of their teammate’s, or should I say sister’s photos being flashed up on the screen, Congratulations girls, you make a wonderful family.

The Smell is Getting to Me

I think I can speak for all mothers in our area when I say I am looking forward to kids going back to school tomorrow. Not that I have little or even multiple children who have been at home wanting to be entertained; and not that I lost my power and needed to keep small people warm and un-electronically entertained or fed; and not that we have missed even a third as many days as our friends in places like Boston where “winter camping” became the inside norm.

No, but my child and her Spanish classmate took over my kitchen today to make food for a class presentation tomorrow, which involved using a large bottle of vegetable oil and frying up plantains, chicken and making guacamole. The house smells like we are running a French fry stand or other frying empire.

I did my best to stay out of the kitchen because I don’t think I could bear to swim through the tiny oil droplets flying through the air and landing on every surface in the kitchen. On the other hand, I appreciate my child learning to cook with her friend. I did not get one question about how to do anything. They studied the techniques and executed them without instruction from me. Proof is their need to use a whole bottle of oil. I am sure the outcome is more authentic than my lightened up version would have been.

Now my issue is I am going to have to spend some of my childfree day tomorrow riding the house of the smell or I am going to open a funnel cake stand in my kitchen and capitalize on the already stinky space.

It is amazing to me how sensitive my nose is to fried food now. Just the whiff of overly hot oil makes my stomach turn. I guess that I have actually broken myself of ever wanting to eat fried food again. Now I need some olfactory overload of baked goods so I can gross my brain out on the smell of the things I really crave.

I wonder if Carter could get class credit for making 10,000 chocolate chip cookies? I am guessing that is about the number I might need to be baked in my kitchen to make me sick of the smell. Now that I think about it that number is probably low by a factor of 10. 100,000 cookies, that might make me never want to taste one again. I don’t know, that number might be low by a factor of 100…

A Hard, But Good Day

Last night as I was about to doze off the text on my phone buzzed. Russ was already asleep since he was going to be getting up early to fly to Philly to visit his younger brother who is home recovering from a serious heart attack. Carter was down in her room so I almost did not bother to rummage around on my bedside table for my reading glasses to see who was texting me so late at night. My normal mode of thinking is no late news is ever-good news and bad news can wait until the morning.

Something made me break habit and I turned on the light and looked at the message. It turns out that Carter had read a message on Facebook from my cousin saying that her father was nearing the end. I have known for a while that my poor Uncle Wilson had suffered enough with cancer and the pain was bad, but apparently in my effort to deal with my own grief I had not fully informed Carter of how bad it was.

“Mom, I need to go see him tomorrow.” She was right. Since my Uncle and Aunt live in the house next to my parents on their family farm they have been a fixture in Carter’s life, more so than most people’s great Aunt and Uncle. After much late night texting back and forth I begged her to go to sleep and we would go and see him in the morning.

Carter got up for her normal Saturday job at her barn, cleaning stalls and caring for horses and I texted my cousins. What I learned was that Wilson had finally decided it was time to go to Hospice and leave his beloved farm. I texted Carter that she needed to leave work and get right home so we could rush up there to see him, having no idea if he was lucid enough for our visit.

We got there before noon and found Wilson to be in great spirits and very awake. Aunt Janie Leigh was sitting on the sofa in his room with his bags packed and told us the EMS just called saying they had an emergency and were delayed in coming to get Will.

Uncle Wilson opened his arms and I was able to go and give him a hug and as the words, “I love you,” were coming out of my mouth the tears started flowing. He strongly replied, “I love you too, sweet girl. Thanks for coming. This stinks, doesn’t it?”

Stinks is not a strong enough word. Uncle Wilson and I have shared a lot of the same loves. He is an avid game player and at the beach in the summer we would carry on massive games of Risk. He was my first real photography teacher and he is the only grown up I knew when I was a child who openly proclaimed that dessert was important.

Carter got a good visit and felt better about seeing him while he was still in his own house. My cousin Brooks and his wife Sherri came in and it was like regular times telling stories and laughing. Then Will asked for some pain meds and soon after that the EMS showed up.

The hardest part was watching as they shut the door on the ambulance taking him from his beloved farm. My Dad, Aunt Janie, Brooks, Sherri, Carter and I stood teary in the driveway knowing this was the end of his long walk home. This was absolutely the right way for Carter to get to say goodbye. I’m still in denial because I have 54 years of memories of my life with Uncle Wilson and I know he will always be with me no matter what.

Car Troubles

I try and not use this blog as a venue to endorse or oppose businesses too often, but sometimes my life is just a little too dull to write about and the mundane happenings of the day are what you get. Despite the non-commerce philosophy of the blog I feel I owe it to AAA to give them a mention today.

For you foreign readers or people who live in New York City and may never own a car this blog is probably not for you. AAA stands for the American Automobile Association and is probably the best club I belong too, sorry Costco, Hope Valley and American Needlepoint Guild. Years ago when I was a traveling sales person I got a AAA membership and I can not count how many times they have saved my butt.

Just in the past week I have called them twice, once to tow Carter’s car to the dealership to fix a major problem and again today. After being stuck at home from the snow storm for the last two days I thought Carter was going to lose her mind if she did not get some teenage friend face-to-face time. Her friend Ashley wanted to go to the mall, get pedicures, do some girl shopping and have dinner. I was all for that happening since too had been stuck in the house with Carter.

Off she went in her recently fixed VW on roads that were now nothing but slush. I ventured out at the same time to the grocery since I had refused to go right before the big storm when the store had lines that wrapped the frozen section with people trying to check out. Just as I was pulling in our driveway, looking forward to starting my “House of Cards” binge watch walking on the treadmill session I got a call from Carter that the “low tire pressure” light came on in her car and she found a big screw stuck in her tire.

At the previous call to AAA just days ago I had gone ahead and gotten Carter her own membership, but her card had not arrived yet. I told her that I would call AAA to come and meet her and change her tire. “Please can you come and help me?” I heard over the line from a voice that was more reminiscent of pre-school than high school. Since she did not have her own card I said yes thinking that I would probably be sitting in my car at the mall for the next two hours waiting for help.

Boy was I wrong. I called the main number and asked for the service, got in my car and drove the ten minutes to the mall. Before I could even get there the nice man from Dave’s towing called me and said he was waiting by the car. The whole fix took ten minuets and he taught me all the secrets about the lug covers and lock that both Carter and I needed to know in case we ever had to change a tire ourselves.

The only way I ever see that happening is if we have driven the car deep into the woods where there is no cell reception because I can’t see owning a car and not having AAA. Yes, Carter learned how to change a tire herself when she went to defensive driving class, but doing it at the Mall on very wet pavement seems completely unnecessary when there is professional ten minutes away that is free since we already belong to that great club, the American Automobile Association. If you belong and want to add your child to your membership it is only $25 a year. That is the best piece of mind I can have because I know that I am not always going to be around the corner to help my new driver. Now that she has learned how easy it is she can call them herself next time.

Snow Days and The Desire to Eat

I don’t know about you, but there is something terribly bad for me about snow days and being stuck in my house. It is not that I have lots of little children who need to be entertained. Actually it is quite the opposite, yesterday I tried to get Carter to play a game with me and she said absolutely not.

My problem with snow days is that I seem to lose all will power to not eat carbs when I am stuck inside. Now there are plenty of days when the weather is perfect and I am choosing to stay home voluntarily and I eat my regular diet of salad and salad and salad.   But let the smallest amount of frozen precipitation come out of the sky and I start searching the house for chocolate, cookies, cakes anything I have put in the freezer to keep from eating it and I just eat it frozen.

I have no excuse not to get my exercise since I have a treadmill, so on snow days I still get my steps, but then I negate all that walking with eating what I would not normally. Perhaps I am not the only person who has this problem and that is why when southerners hear it is going to snow they rush to the store and wipe the shelves clean of bread and frozen pizza.

I know of other friends who say that a snow day is the only time they bake and make cocoa. Yes, a hot drink is a nice warm-me-up when you come in from sledding, but why not a good ginger tea? What is it about snow that screams, “I need marshmallows melting on top of a creamy chocolate drink?

I guess that wearing all those layers of winter clothes hides the reality of my real body. Somehow I need to break this cycle because I don’t see the snow stopping any time soon. I may not have any control over the weather, but I do over my eating, I think. I am yet to hear any scientific evidence that snow really changes a body’s need for calories. If it did, then sunshine should have the opposite effect, and I am really no better at dieting in the summer.

Is There a Nice Ranking For Colleges?

Tonight Russ and I have to go to college night for parents of sophomores at Carter’s school. It seems hard to believe that it is time for me to have a more meaningful role in where Carter goes next, but it also seems like we have been talking about college ever since she was in pre-k.

When I was a kid I don’t think I really knew what college was about. I just remember one day I would have a baby sitter and the next they were gone, where and how and for how long and are they ever coming back were questions that were never answered. Every once in a while I would just here the word, “college.”

Where I went to college was a little haphazard, although I think it was a great place for me. I remember going on a couple of college tours with my whole family in tow while we were on vacation. A memorable one was at Wake Forest when I must have been a sophomore and not really ready to think about what kind of school was right for me.

Here is the background, my father had grown up in Winston-Salem and had gone to Chapel Hill so he had a definite opinion about Wake. He asked our tour guide, who was an awkward young man, “What do you do for fun around here?” Now as an ex-college tour guide myself I know that questions like that coming from fathers are a minefield. Little did this guy know that my father thought having fun at college was very important, so as he hemmed and hawed for an answer that he thought a father of a daughter would like to hear, my father leans over to me and says, “You are not going here, they don’t know how to have fun.” (For the record, I know that is not true.)

My mother and I took a trip alone to look at colleges in Pennsylvania and it was a chance encounter with a professor at breakfast at Fay’s country kitchen that sealed the deal for me to apply early to Dickinson. That and the fact that three girls I had gone to Walker’s with had gone there and loved it.

The one thing I think that made Dickinson perfect for me was that I went to school with the nicest group of people. I totally credit the admissions office for choosing people who were generally nice. My friend Tommy Hurdman who went to a different, but very good school, used to come to visit and complain that his classmates were in no way as nice as mine and he wished he had gone to Dickinson. That is how his little brother happened to come to Dickinson.

Now that Carter is about to embark on her search for her next school I wish there was a “nice ranking.” Yes, we want academic rigor, or at least her father does, but I am probably more like my father and want to know, “what do you do for fun around here?” At the time my father asked that I was completely embarrassed, but now I see I have turned into him.

What Underwear Are You Wearing?

Since today is Academy Awards day the most asked question is, “What are you wearing?” Of course celebrities have been given the designer clothes they are donning on the red carpet so they are obligated to do their best job telling the world who designed and made the free things they have on.

Really the what are you wearing question is the safest thing for any journalist to ask. Imagine what a mess it would be if any one of the 1,600 worldwide journalist were to ask a real question like to Julianne Moore, “How on earth do you feel about going up against Meryl Streep for her 18^th best actress nomination?” What could the poor woman say? If she said, “I think since Meryl has won three times she should give someone else a chance.” No way. No savvy nominee is going to say anything juicy before the statues are given out so discussing their clothes is about all we will get.

Given that premise what I wish the TV people on the red carpet would ask is, “What undergarments are you wearing?” I can figure out the dress on my own since we can see it, what I want to know is what foundational items are under the dress and how uncomfortable are they?

To me the secret to a great look is one that is as smooth as possible and not all those bodies are naturally smooth. Also give us the inside scoop on how those boobs are staying in place, up high with little chance of wardrobe malfunctions. So you think there is any body tape left in Hollywood? What if someone sweats a lot? Could that make the tape slip off? These are the real questions.

While we are on the subject of questions they don’t ask on the red carpet I really would like to know what kind of hair products are used on these women with perfect hair that is left down. Now I know the updo girls can get sprayed to within an inch of their life and that complex braided bun ain’t goin’ nowhere. But what about the star who where her hair down and long and flowing, how does she keep it looking camera ready?

Please take note Good Morning America, Kelly and Michael and Jimmy Kimmel and ask these things next year. The Guccis and Armanis of the world get more than enough attention at Oscar time, I want to know which model Spanx is making it’s way up to collet a gold statue.