Taking some time off

Things have become very busy at work, so it's time for me to take a rest from blogging.

As Garrison Keillor says "Be well, do good work and keep in touch".

Amarilla mia bella

Too pretty not to share.

Good word

I was doing a crossword puzzle this morning. The clue was "speak evil of" for a seven letter word. The answer was "traduce". I can't remember the last time I heard or read traduce. It brought to mind the vocabulary workbook Wordwealth, aka WW, that we used in high school. I think it was meant to boost our SAT scores. Traduce is definitely a WW word and obviously a crossword word too.

Of recent book and music discoveries, I have no cause to traduce. Thanks to family members of good taste and who also know me pretty well, I have enjoyed some fine reading. I just finished the novel "The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss. In the middle I wasn't quite sure just where she was headed with the story. All the threads were unraveling and it was a bit confusing, but it ended wonderfully, reminding me that love comes in many forms and it is often in disguise.

"The Uncommon Reader" was a delightful welcome diversion from work. It's about the queen of England who late in life becomes an avid reader. She wants to read a good book instead of cutting one more ribbon or attending one more royal function. I found myself remembering when young Amy Carter was criticized by the press corps for having her nose in a book at a White House dinner. I'm sure whatever she was reading was a lot more interesting to a kid her age than the adult conversation going on around her. Hmm, not unlike a preacher's kid.

Now I am reading "Little Heathens" by Mildred Armstrong Kalish which is the story of her childhood growing up in the depression in a small town in Iowa. I find it has tapped wisps of memories from my own childhood of great aunts and uncles who I met on rare occasion who still lived on the farms and small towns of rural Ohio. She referred to her family members as "hearty-handshakes Methodists". I knew exactly what she was talking about only mine were hearty-handshakes Presbyterians. To this day I feel awkward hugging my own brother. I bet he'd feel a lot more comfortable with a hearty handshake, don't you know.

My music choices gone to something old and something new. The something old is the first violin concerto by Max Bruch. I turned on the radio recently and came in on the middle of the second movement of the work. I was simply transfixed. I knew the work but couldn't place it. The announcer said Isaac Stern was the soloist and I had indeed heard him play that exact work in concert a jillion years ago. I went to iTunes and (thank you son) downloaded Shlomo Mintz playing the Bruch with the Chicago Symphony. It is a wonderful work.

Something new is the husband-wife duo "Over the Rhine". I'm going to use the new blogger music gizmo to share some information on their album "Snow Angels" :

----------------
Now playing: Over the Rhine - Snowed In With You
via FoxyTunes

I've been wanting to try this out, so now I have it out of my system.

Fill in the blanks

Christmas is packed away for another year. I dusted and tidied as I removed the Christmas knick-knacks replacing them with the items they had displaced. Every year I pull out less stuff because the undecorating always falls on me. Hubster took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather yesterday to fell another tree and to split it up for firewood. I took down the outside lights only in shirtsleeves.


There's something about January that leads me to pull the poetry anthology down from the shelf to reacquaint myself with old poem friends. Most recently I reread some Housman, whose "Loveliest of Trees, The Cherry Now" never fails to move me. I also enjoy doing crossword puzzles particularly this time of year. My post-Christmas tradition of many years is to buy a new book or two of NY Times crosswords in the spiral back format which is easy to use and easy on my poor eyes. Last year I tried a book of Wall Street Journal puzzles for a change. They frustrated me endlessly. The clues were bad. The answers were inaccurate and at times just plain wrong. Will Shortz's editing makes all the difference in the world and turns puzzle solving into a relaxing pleasure.

So what draws me to crosswords and poetry now? My first thought was that after the excesses of Christmas, that the precision of these forms is refreshing. Instead of a sensory glut, there is the single carefully chosen word or turn of phrase. There's some truth to that. But I realize that there is a strong unconscious factor too. When I think of crosswords, I picture my Dad doing the daily Times crossword...in ink, he'd remind me, as if those of us who used pencil were rank amateurs. Son-in-law, to my delight, is also a fan of crosswords.

Dad and Mother were both English majors in college, but it was Dad I remember quoting poetry or reading aloud a passage from Yeats, Tennyson or Gerard Manley Hopkins. I don't know who bought us "The Just-So Stories" by Rudyard Kipling, but I know I learned the delight of alliteration from hearing "the great gray-green greasy Limpopo River all set about with fever trees". Dad's birthday was January 13th. Do you think my picking up a book of poems and doing a Times crossword are just random occurrences? In my field, it is said that all behavior is unconsciously motivated. As I tell my patients, there's the good reason and there's the real reason. Never confuse the two.

First day of the year

In honor of the new year:
1. I'm wearing new jeans.
2. There's a new scrubber at the kitchen sink,
3. A new sponge at the kitchen sink,
4. A new calender on the refrigerator, and
5. Four new page-day-box calendars sitting on the kitchen table.

The four box calendars are all funny ones. This year I've added Non Sequitur to Zits, 365 Dumbest Things Ever Said and Close to Home. In 2006 and 2007, my Non Sequitur calendar lived at the office because I wasn't sure Hubster would always appreciate the cartoons which occasionally poke fun at the current administration. Since any administration is fodder for cartoonists, I decided to risk bringing Non Sequitur home to Fox country. What the heck, it's an election year.

Well, this morning Hubster picked up the new Non Sequitur calendar with interest. Upon examing today's cartoon, he muttered in disgust "Liberal!". I said I thought it was funny because depicted the little girl, Danae, telling her ghost uncle Reginald why she's not scared of him. There are things lots scarier, she explains, like Bill O'Reilly. I gather that Hubster is not alone in believing that if one thinks Bill O'Reilly is, shall we say, a jerk then one is (gasp) anti-conservative. That's one serious accusation.

Last day of the year

For me the year 2007 is exiting in an ordinary way. There is laundry to do. Work clothes have to be pressed. I need cash to fill my wallet and food to fill the larder. While in town, I'll stop by to see my mother. I missed going out yesterday because I was taking youngest daughter to the airport. It was a nice drive and a sweet farewell. She's a very good person.

I am enjoying reading Christmas books, listening to newly downloaded (son gave me a most generous iTunes gift card), and watching a few movies. One daughter is an artist, the other daughter is a trained actor, so they look at film as an art form. I look mostly at the film's story and whether it has a something that might prove helpful to my patients. For example, "The Final Cut" with Robin Williams did not garner great heaps of critical acclaim nor will it make any one's list of all-time favorite movies. The movie is technically awkward in places but what it says about the nature of human memory is profound, i.e. that what we think we remember has frequently been distorted by our emotions. What may appear to be a clear cut memory may be a composite, a screen memory which blocks more emotionally intense memories, or even a complete confabulation.

This week I watched "The Ref". Embedded in this fluffy Christmas comedy are the themes of taking responsibility for one's own decisions and to stop blaming everyone else for your own misery. I lent it to son and once he's done, it will go out to some couples I work with.

Christmas memories

-As I waited for daughter's plane to arrive, I watched one traveler after another pulled into welcoming bear hugs and kisses. Delighted parents asked their weary daughter and husband how their trip went with their three small children. "It was hell" replied the harried young mother while her little sugar plum of a daughter literally danced and twirled through the crowd. A nervous Dad was reunited with his equally nervous gangly daughter, who probably had grown several inches since he last saw her. One Mom was there in a Santa hat to greet her twenty something son. A reserved Japanese girl let out a muted squeal when she saw her family. One young woman traveler just looked totally exhausted. A college student after exams or one of those delayed by the Midwestern storm? Maybe both. And finally my own lovely daughter arrived, twenty minutes early no less. What a blessing!

-Singing along to The Messiah with daughter on the long drive home and seeing the brilliant full moon with Mars nestled next to it like a mini-moon.

-Watching"It's a Wonderful Life" with the family on Christmas eve. I hadn't seen it in five or six years, so it was fresh and inspiring again. It's my favorite kind of Christmas service.

-Visiting my dear old mother at the nursing home and seeing the tears in her eyes and her face light up when she saw two of her grandchildren. My gratitude is great for the men and women who work on Christmas while the rest of us have the day to be with our families.

-The wonderful, thoughtful presents I received. And the strange, "what-were-they-thinking?" presents I received.

-Son and the Hubster burning up all the Christmas wrappings and a t-shirt I gave to Hubster. He hadn't seen it in the box. Son noticed it when something burned oddly. Memo to self: don't wrap items inside a t-shirt, even if it were inside a box which was wrapped with paper.

-My sister-in-law is a fabulous cook. Her daughters and son are also excellent cooks. All of the above create an amazing Christmas feast. My contributions were two pies, the classic green bean casserole and a big green salad. I spent all of Christmas eve afternoon baking. My body still aches.

-Other daughter calling during the family dinner and passing the phone around so she could wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

-Closing the tailgate of my car after loading up the presents and dishes to return home, I looked up at the stars in the clear crisp night sky and said with all my heart "Thank God, it's all over!"

2:21pm
Agenda for today:

Drink fancy coffee and mess around on computer(done)
Finish crossword puzzle (done)
Take a walk (done)
Eat leftover coconut cream pie (done)
Drink fancy tea from Dean&Deluca (doing)
Take a nap (next thing to do)
Drink more fancy coffee which daughter brought from place which roasts beans on premises (the next next thing to do)
Do another crossword puzzle (optional)