Blue moon dog

I love every dog that's come through my house. Foster or otherwise. But anyone who's had dogs knows there are one or two that somehow manage to be more amazing than the rest. And that's the case with my Springer Spaniel, Brittany.

We don't call her Brittany much anymore, in fact, we never really did. She-of-a-thousand-nicknames has always been way too silly to be called such a prissy name. Her names run the gamut from Snuggles to Psycho. Poopyhead to Wigglebottom.

We adopted Brit when she was 2 (or so the vet guessed) and had come into Springer Spaniel Rescue after being hit by a car. Her family didn't want her back and didn't care that she was a) in pain, and b) would likely be euthanized.

Luckily a local vet in CT where she was found did some major surgery pro-bono because she was so special. The ACO that brought her into the vet called Springer Spaniel Rescue who then called us (the recently approved adopters). We were so taken by her personality that her inability to walk after surgery did not scare us away.

Brit was our first dog together. Ron had cats when he was a kid, but never dogs. I had dogs but my mom was always the main caretaker. Adopting Brit - especially given her issues - was a huge leap of faith that has changed my life.

She was a lot of work when we got her. Traumatized both physically and emotionally, we struggled to get her well. She rebounded from her hip surgery quicker than she did from the terrible anxiety that overwhelmed her at times. Even today she doesn't do well with change and seems to still fear, 10 years later, that she will be ditched again.

At heart, she is a fun, silly, happy, affectionate, and intuitive dog. The only "trouble" we've had with her is her love for chasing (and sometimes even catching) little furry creatures outside. An invisible fence kept her contained but two years ago, her hip started to act up again. It was then we found that her knees were an issue also and surgery isn't an option.

Most of her days are spent inside now. A retired racehorse of sorts. We take her on walks when her joint issues aren't too bad. We control the pain with meds and she is on a regimen of holistic treatments to attempt to keep her comfortable and rebuild some strength in her hind quarters.

However, lately some of the positive effects from treatments are being lost and we are faced with the reality that her mobility and pain may result in a life-ending decision. We thought that since our unhealthy Springer Alex made it to 15, surely Brit would too.

It's been hard for me to come to terms with this reality. Brit is my best friend, my constant companion, and "my little girl". Lots of emotions are tied up with her and I'm dreading the day when a decision has to be made. I also wonder if I will be capable of making one since letting go of her will be the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

Last night, when she was dawdling with her dinner, I thought it was due mostly to her not being able to stand for long to eat. So I indulged her by sitting with her and feeding her by hand until she was tempted to start eating on her own again.

As always, she was as interested in me as anything else in front of her. She'd take one bite of food for herself, then lick my face. Another bite, then lick my fingers holding the bowl. She seemed to figure out early on that I love her as much as she loves me. And that will never change between us.

I've decided that I will continue to let her know just how much she means to me until I have to let her go. Don't say dogs aren't tuned in to how you feel. They know you better than you know yourself because they're not fooled by the words that come out of your mouth.

They read your heart and judge you by your actions. At least my Brit does.

One that didn't make it

I shopped this column around and no one was interested. It took me a while to write so I thought I'd share it here so ya'll can read it. Enjoy!

The movie Julie and Julia seems to be spawning a new generation of kitchen dwellers. I’ve always loved recipe wrestling. It all started in my 8th grade home economics class with Miss Wagner. We made a tomato rarebit once and some apple muffins. I still make the muffins today.

Once Miss Wagner got me interested in white sauces and the importance of filling the water glasses three-quarter’s full, I started watching and studying The French Chef. After all, there wasn’t any other way to learn my way around a gourmet kitchen. My mom is a great cook and entertainer, but she wasn’t exactly making soufflés. And, after spending an hour a week in my home ec class, I had become a food snob. I would have none of her beef stew, or something I affectionately called “Irish spaghetti”.

To this day, I love to experiment with food and make things my husband, Ron, and I love to eat. But these experiments often drive the taste-free eaters who frequent our home to ask for something “normal” – food that is topped with things like French’s yellow mustard and a half-shaker of iodized table salt.

After seeing Julie and Julia, I cracked open “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” by Julia herself. Ron gave it to me as a gift before the movie even came out but I hadn’t done anything more than read it. Yes, you need to read it before you cook from it. Trust me. Not only does it read better than most novels, you also need to understand Julia’s reasons for following the directions to the letter.

Since I had a good four hours in my kitchen while I prepared a main course, side vegetable, and dessert, I really got the feel for Julia’s love of being in the kitchen. And I reflected on how she has helped women and men rediscover the delight of cooking from scratch. It’s sad but it took a movie to make butter the new margarine. Finally, food has a place in the kitchen again. And although we can’t discount all the other foodies that came after Julia, and the Michael Pollans who made us see that there’s nothing scary about real food, it did take a chick flick to get us to embrace kitchenhood.

What other movie has had that sort of effect on us? Sure, there are plenty of movies that have memorable kitchen scenes, but did any of them get us off our couches and inspire us to make, for example, Chicken Divan? I often wondered about that recipe. Does Chicken Divan translate to “chicken served on a couch”?

Stripes changed how I looked at spatulas and invented the term “Aunt Jemima treatment”. But, other than that, I struggled to remember kitchen movies or even kitchen scenes. 9 ½ weeks? The kitchen scene happened, in, y’know, a kitchen, but it wasn’t about food, per se. It did probably get some moviegoers to rediscover the wonders in their refrigerators, but they weren’t using the contents to do any cooking. Well, not any, y’know, real cooking.

The lobster scene from Julie and Julia was a ripoff from the lobster scene in Annie Hall, except Woody Allen and Diane Keaton made the art of boiling crustaceans alive a lot funnier. And that takes some talent. Looking back, I believe that may have contributed to my vegetarianism.

Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life: Not a food scene so much as an incentive to start that diet or at least take the first step by passing on the after dinner mints. Not so with the dinner-sharing scene from Lady and the Tramp. I always wanted to try that single-strand-o’-spaghetti thing with my husband. I’m just afraid it would turn into a 9 ½ Weeks kind of moment, and, at our age, watching 9 ½ innings of the Red Sox is exhausting enough.

Rocky’s pre-workout breakfast in his little kitchen did make me want to cook when I left the theater. Strangely enough, though, only eggs. That was the pre-cholesterol days and consuming raw eggs wasn’t looked at as unhealthy so much as just plain gross.

A Christmas Story’s kitchen scenes were mostly funny. I think the mashed potato thing was overdone – or maybe it just reminded me too much of the mashed potato mountain on Richard Dreyfus’s plate in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I do like the turkey-stealing dogs and the “Fa-ra-ra-ra-ra” food scenes in A Christmas Story, but not enough to make me a carnivore again. Maybe if some mai tais went with the Chinese meal, or a mashed potato mountain.

I'm back, sort of

To my faithful followers (hopefully), it's been TWO weeks since I posted anything here. I know that. Had a lovely week's vacation to the MD/DC area for my cousin's wedding and things have been busy with work.

There are lots and lots of things running around my brain that I will share shortly. Hope everyone is enjoying the summer so far...

The write stuff

I created this blog to get/keep me writing something besides technical documents. I'm not doing much tech writing lately (though I am doing some technical editing) but I am doing a fair amount of creative writing.

If you don't see me post here, it's because I'm chasing down opportunities. Two months ago I started contributing to my local paper, The Westford Eagle, as a correspondent. The money isn't great but the experience is priceless. And, although I am still writing and pitching columns to bigger news outlets, this job has been more challenging.

All the creative writing I've done so far is in first person - like this blog. Writing as a journalist is a very different skill. You walk a fine line between injecting your own opinions into a story, and not making it personal enough for people to care about the subject.

With help from my editor, I've been learning the ropes. I prefer to write human interest stories because I feel that all news events have people at their roots. Think the BP oil spill is about oil? Nope. It's about people - people who created the problem, struggle to correct it, or are affected by it.

I'd love to do a Person of the Month spotlight for the Eagle and need to pitch that to my editor. I've met so many amazing people in town since I started my correspondent gig. Even though I'm interviewing someone for a particular story, I always feel that I'm just scratching the surface. There is so much unspoken because of the framework of my questions.

Joyce, if you're reading this, I'll be in touch...

A touchy subject

I read once that women experience the world through our sense of touch. When we're clothes shopping, we tend to touch the fabric before we look at the price. I've noticed that I walk through clothing stores with my hands touching everything as I wind through racks. When I see a little kid, my first impulse is to run my fingers through their hair (I try not to do that with complete strangers).

Today was my day to get all my annuals in their summer homes. I bought $175 worth of plants and sweated (is that a word?) my way through the trays until they were all done. There's a lot of time to think while you're planting but mostly I thought about how I love to work with my hands.

I never wear gardening gloves, though I have tried them. I like to be able to feel the dirt in my hands. Connecting to the earth isn't something we do much anymore and I revel in those moments. Plus I like to know when the soil "feels right" for the plant. I'm its caretaker for a few months, after all.

When I wanted to learn how to quilt (something I wanted to do for many years), I decided to make them all by hand -- hand-sewn and hand-quilted. Yeah, it's a long process, but I love the feeling of the fabric in my hands and the needle and thread between my fingers. It makes the final product just that more personal - especially when it's being given as a gift.

I'm not sure how chefs and food preparers can stand having to use sterile gloves. I've worn them when serving food at our church fundraisers and they are so uncomfortable. Plus, it disconnects you from the product. When I cook and bake, all my senses are used to get it right. I can't imagine not being able to feel a garlic clove as I chop it, or test the temperature by sticking the tip of my little finger in (there's still no better way to test temp than that, in my book).

I use my hands all day by typing on the keyboard but I don't really feel anything. Not the way nature intended me to. I'm very conscious of not replacing touch with electronics. Virtual hugs on Facebook are nice and all, but they'll never be as magical as the real thing.

How long to sing this song

It was almost 25 years ago that U2 sang Bad at Live Aid but it still seems like yesterday. That's probably something everyone my age says - "seems like yesterday".
 

Live Aid was an amazing moment in musical and social history. It was to be my generation's Woodstock, only better. Better security and a better cause - money into the hands of the starving instead of money into the hands of concert promoters. All the acts played for free and there was a feeling of change and empowerment among  those of us who saw it on television, listened to it on radio, or experienced it live. I think I still have the t-shirt somewhere. Too sentimental to throw it out.

I probably still have my U2 concert t-shirt from months before that, too. My little sister, Lisa, and I went to see U2 at what was the Worcester Centrum in I believe the spring of 1985 (pre-Live Aid). I was 26 years old and working as a customer service clerk in a rather large company. I would meet my future husband a month after Live Aid.

Lisa and I were huge MTVers back then and became hooked on bands like U2 and the Police (to name a few). My sister was in her teens and I used to take her and her friend Sara to concerts when the parents allowed. Because I was working, I couldn't get to the ticket office (this was pre-internet days, remember) and stand in line the day tickets went on sale for the 1985 gig. So my mother went for us.

That's how cool my mother was and is. I can just see her standing in line with all the leather jackets and high-heeled boots wearing her white sneakers and windbreaker. She got great seats for us and Lisa and I were ready to rock.

U2's album "The Unforgettable Fire" was released in the fall of 1984 and the Worcester gig was about 6 months later. It was and is still one of my favorite albums. It was a break from the previous "War" album that produced some hard-hitting, banner-waving songs like "Sunday Bloody Sunday". Unforgettable Fire covered many more emotions and did so beautifully - both lyrically and instrumentally.

Lisa and I had seats at the stage-right corner and about halfway up the stands of what isn't a huge venue by today's standards. We were surrounded by teens and twenty-somethings like ourselves and we all seemed to know that we were going to experience a once-in-a-lifetime event.

When people asked me then and even now what that concert was like I say it was "a spiritual experience". I've never been to a concert like it since. Ron and I saw U2 in 2005 and, although it was an unbelievable show, we saw it from private box seats and never really felt part of the whole vibe. The seats were great and we were blessed to have a good friend offer them to us but it didn't compare to the 1984 experience.

If you watch the 1985 video I've embedded, ignore the fashion and the hair. Just focus on the performance. Bono doesn't perform so much as he welcomes the audience into a very personal space. There is no way you can stand in the middle of a U2 audience and not feel like you're high. And that has nothing to do with the waves of pot smoke floating around. This was uncommon back in the 1980s when there were a lot of "hair" bands and overly produced video bands (remember Flock of Seagulls?).

U2 was a breath of fresh air and seemed almost too good to be true. We know now that they really are who they say they are, but back then, they were ground-breaking.

The concert Lisa and I saw was amazing and I remember so much of it in great detail, but it was the ending that really stuck with me.

Bono and the boys ended the concert with the song "40". Bono leaves after he gets the crowd chanting the line "How long to sing this song?". Then each musician left one by one leaving the crowd still chanting. 40 is a song that is both sad and hopeful at the same time and I've always loved that dichotomy. Sort of reminds me of the Book of Psalms.

There was no applause at the end of the concert. The house lights came up and our section, along with others, filed out almost-silently singing "How long to sing this song?". None of us wanted the concert or the feeling to be over. We chanted until we were out of the arena.

There aren't many bands who can affect an audience like that. I'm glad that U2 decided to stay together and continue to produce such amazing music. It was music that we all needed to hear after the me-generation of the 70s when we thought we'd lost our sense of community and connection to a greater purpose.

25 years is a long time to remember the details of a concert especially when I had been to so many before and after that. I hope that current and future generations find the kind of uplifting and personal connection in music that Lisa and I did. And that U2 doesn't retire until I'm gone - or at least until I can get lost in the live experience with them again.

Music hath charms

I belong to a small singing group made up of fellow church members that sings (hopefully, well) at local nursing homes and assisted living facilities. We call ourselves the Voices of Light Chorale.

Everytime we perform, I get a lump in my throat. It's hard to stand in front of a room full of people for whom this event is a big deal. We sing songs they know so they can sing along. We sing songs of the spirit. Sad songs and foot-tapping songs. All of it appreciated.

On the way home from today's performance I found myself wondering about my future. I have no kids and a husband who is five years older than me. I always swear that I will "check out" before I get to a point where I need to be institutionalized. But, if I don't get that timing right, I may be part of that audience some day.

My thoughts changed from sadness and fear to downright laughter when I tried to picture what a chorale would sing in a nursing home for my peer group. Now, we sing a lot of old Broadway show tunes to mirror our audience's younger days.

If that trend continues, then 30 years from now, chorales will be performing some very different music in nursing homes. Personally, I don't want to hear Michael Bolton songs when I'm being held captive in a home. That's akin to torture to me. But can you picture a chorale belting out Nirvana and Pearl Jam songs? How do you harmonize to Cobain's screaming?

I'd give my right arm to hear a church chorale sing Prince's "Sexy M.F.", wouldn't you? Now that's a nursing home I could live in.