the Great Cow Harbor Race Day....sigh

The Native Americans that once lived here called this place the Great Cow Harbor. Some days I wish they were around to see what they started but they are all busy kicking our collective asses at the many casinos nearby. Today is the 10k race and tomorrow is the even bigger horror....Cow Harbor Day. Now don't get me wrong. Many years ago someone had the brilliant civic and business minded idea to have a festival in the fall here and bring out all the neighbors and PARTY... DOWN...BABY! There is a very big parade and stuff goes on all day at the harbor park. The Rotary has a big Italian sausage & peppers-burgers and hot dogs stand. There's kiddie rides and games and folks end the boating season by decorating their sailboats and speedboats with all kinds of stuff. I think there are fireworks tonight or tomorrow. There is craft stuff in the park and raffles for a quilt which I have entered for 900 years and never won a thing. Up until this year there was a contest called cow patty bingo. The grass is chalked into a bingo grid and nature does the rest with the help of the real Dairy Queen, Nelly. Not sure what happened to Nelly this year and not sure I want to know-whoa Nelly!

If all of this sounds like fun-in some great ways it is-in some worse ways...not so much! The first thing that happened a while back is that the local politicians took over the floats of note with a bunch of political crap like we don't get enough of that already. Then they planted themselves at the foot of Main St. with all manner of crappy leaflets that they shoved at you and you immediately shoved back. This caused a major paper jam at the end of the block that takes street sweepers all evening(on overtime)to clean up. Then around the same time the real estate folks, or as I refer to them, real estate slime, began the same thing and they also had big fat floats to remind us of their ugly presence in the community. This was in case you only have three brain cells left and can't already see how much mess they've made with the McMansions and deforestation of or Village already. Around about then, the Village govmt. decided it would be great to advertise our little celebration and announce the great, quiet, country fair quality of it. I don't need to tell you much about that. I'll just leave it with the one famous anecdote that summed up my last appearance at Cow Harbor Day. I was walking home elbow to elbow and shoulder to shoulder with people I've never seen before and this humongous guy with a very, very, thick Brooklyn accent says to the misses-"Ain't it effin great to be out in the country? Looka all these GD trees" That was, for me, the day the charm ended.

Today I had to go and pick up my new glasses a couple of towns over-First, since it's RaceDay-we are not allowed to drive on our roads between 8:30 and 10. Then, because all of the ten thousand people who descend here for the race have to park and then leave after it, it takes 25 minutes to go 5 miles. Anyone who lives here and is not a politician or real estate person dreads this day. It's fine for the kids who don't mind being shoulder to shoulder and such but you rarely see anyone who really has lived her for any time get out in it. It's really scary out there. Like driving bumper cars and since a large number of people come out from the city you are more likely to get the finger than a friendly wave. It is, my friends, the worst of times....Oh well, I suppose you think me a curmudgeon and cranky but it just seems to me that they need to make Cow Harbor Day about the local residents again-and that ship has sailed.

We are leaving on Monday morning on the Cross-Sound Ferry to Bridgeport, Connecticut and places north where we will, undoubtedly, assume the roll of the UGLY NEW YORKERS that piss off the local Maine population. As for me, I just want to eat a boatload of effin Lobster and see some GD New Englandahs...Ahoy Mateys...see you in a week or so with the quilt shop booty.....harrrr

For those of you that were kind enough to wonder-James thinks the interview went well but they aren't making any decisions for a couple of weeks. I'll keep you posted and thanks for the good thoughts.

Driving Ms Dee

Once upon a time I really loved to drive. As soon a I was able I bought myself a really sweet little red VW Bug. I loved driving stick shift and through a series of friends in the sports car business, I soon came upon THE automotive love of my life. My MGB. I don't know who these people are-I got the photo off of E-bay but this is the exact adorable little red zoom zoom I had such a great time in. A little while later and in another lifetime, there was another car that caught the fancy of my, then, partner.

This was the second sweet ride that we purchased. It's a Triumph TR4. I'm happy to say that it left with said partner, leaving me with my MGB and a little piece of mind. The TR4 was the biggest pain in the ass ever. First and foremost, for short little me, it was designed for the taller people in the world. I could barely touch the clutch and it did not make for smooth shifting. It also liked to have lots of attention paid to it in the form of a tune-up every time you drove it for a couple of days. I think it thought it was a Jaguar-it certainly was as long as an e-type.

Anyway, me and my little red MGB toddled off into a new life of single hood and stayed that way for nearly 12 years or so. By the time I was married to Roger, pregnant with James and selling it for money to help get a mortgage, it needed to be restored. Roger sold it to someone at work who's son restored it to its former glory and I shed a few tears privately. With the MGB went the Dee I used to drive it. Long, gypsy-like, hairdo(anybody remember that?) size 8-tight jeans and convertible Dee was now Big pregnant, cut the hair short for ease of kidcare, stop wearing perfect make-up, carefully applied.... MOMMY. Don't get me wrong-I wouldn't trade anything that happened. I got a wonderful loving husband and a kid that I'm very proud of and I wouldn't fit in the MGB comfortably anymore anyway.

I say all this by way of telling you that today my son is going for a job interview with a very prestigious car firm-a British car firm. I think he first started to get his love of cars from my endless prattle about sports cars. I am nervous, happy, and proud. He got all dressed with a tie even! Haircut-new pants, shirt, shoes, yadda yadda. I so want this for him. It's a great opportunity. So won't you please join me in a little quiet contemplation for a moment. All together now...Dear Lord, I know you're busy with really important things but if you could just take a second to shine your kind and loving light on James it would be really great, Thank you, Dee

With any luck at all my kid might wind up behind the wheel of this perty baby!

can you say...Aston Martin...Bond....James Bond. Whoop whoop!

For the Birds

As many of you know, the bulk of our, shall we say, disposable income(Heh!)goes into the fund to purchase thistle seed for these bickering little babies. We used to purchase a bag of Black Niger Seed here and there but that was then and this is now. Roger loads up the back of his car with a trunk load of 25 lb bags several times a season. It's funny how your life changes and yet some things stay the same. He used to go to Toys R Us and load up the back of our Bronco with diapers, wipes and Enfamil in much the same manner. Our son is a man now and yet, he still has babies to lead up a car trunk for. This year he even bought himself a special pitcher to hold and pour the seed easier. Anyway, just as it is with life in general, the babies are having babies and eating up a storm. We have learned to call a halt to this in a few weeks because they need to go and find a warmer climate to winter in. One year we just kept feeding them and they never really left. I worried all winter that it was too cold and icy for them. They just changed color from yellow to all goldish green parrot-like colors and hung out with us anyway. That was an expensive year. My favorite thing to see is when they fight for space at the feeder-they do this amazing dance in mid-air-twirling around and around until the winner settles in whatever perch they are fighting over. We have four feeders, so some days it's a visual party. I miss them when the winter comes and each year it's a thrill to see them return.

Well, on an un-avian related topic-I've got nothing going on wight now since we are sort of packing to leave for Maine. James has decided to stay home and spend the week with friends and his girlfriend. I can't say I blame him but I also think he would have enjoyed it. Some other time. It's alright though since it will allow us to piddle along from small town to small town on the coastal road north Rt 1. It's a great ride through lovely villages and beautiful seacoast towns. Not sure when we are leaving-we're just kind of casual about this and it allows us to land in some pretty places. This time of year it's quiet during the week and it's not yet leaf-peeping time. Very peaceful. Probably leaving on Sunday.

Anyway, I'm off to do some trip shopping and prep. I need a sweatshirt or jacket. Maine is a bit nippy at night sometimes. I love it! Hope you have a great day

Into the Light.

Today is better than yesterday. On the 11th-One has to find other ways to be busy-ways that do not include television-radio or any other media. As a New Yorker, I often wonder if the horror of that day will ever go away. Recently, I saw a piece on t.v. in which some family members of those lost that day said they didn't want to be disrespectful of their lost loved ones but the yearly, visual horror-filled reminder just never lets them be at peace. There is, for them, no closure. Some of the women say, that they just get their children back to sleeping normally and functioning in school when it's time to re-visit the pain again. I get it. Last night I had the t.v. on while I cooked dinner and I began, after 5 minutes, to find it unbearable. I'm tired of crying and so I get what the members of these families were saying. I think, at some point, it becomes unhealthy to spend a year trying to forget only to find oneself at that awful place again, and again...forever.
People in Manhattan are, in great numbers, very sick. They inhaled the horror and now they find they cannot breath properly. I live out here in the island and I smelled it-it was awful, caustic, frightening smell. The horrible smell of that day will take many more victims with it.
I hope I don't offend anyone because it's easy for me to talk about a nightmare that did not directly affect me but I think of all those children who lost parents and just about get their lives back to something that resembles normal-only to be faced with a day of endless, utter sadness. They need to find a way out of this darkness.
For me, that day was the beginning of a year long journey into a deep & frightening depression. In retrospect, I think it was the loss of control over what happens to your life. That's an unusual thing for Americans to be faced with. We are so fortunate to be able to go about our days with the idea that we can, pretty much, do as we please. We can orchestrate our lives and be comfortable in knowing that each day generally unfolds in a pattern that we have made for ourselves.
On Sept. 11th, 2001-I became so depressed and afraid that I couldn't do anything but sleep, eat too much, and drag myself through the endless abyss that I fell into. I never really told anyone in my family for months. I would get up-do the morning thing, make the lunches, kiss the boys goodbye, smile like a Stepford wife and then go and sit on the couch and stare and cry and be silent with these awful dark thoughts. I became house-bound. Only out for things I couldn't avoid. Agoraphobia big time! Eventually, I learned a bit about the computer(didn't have to go out for that) and I discovered that there were people who liked quilting and art and wrote about it. Enter..You! In a way, among the people that made me feel alive and vital again here, I found a wonderful, artistic, amusing, giving, group of women. I guess the moral of the story is-life unfolds in strange and wonderful ways before our eyes, even when we are nearly blind with pain and fear.
What a great gift.
I hope your Sept. 12th is a beautiful day-we all deserve it.
Off to do some errands...

Empty Nest

The house is soooo quiet. All the boys are off to work and it's just me, me, me!

Here is what I was working on this weekend. I made some blocks from the Mistletoe Manor fabric I had in the closet. I'd so love to have a Christmas quilt to put on the wall for this Christmas, hmmm.

Added some more blocks to the nine patches I already had and made a couple of little basket blocks.

It was a quiet weekend and I got a lot sewn. We are deciding what we will be doing on our vacation in Bar Harbor, Maine in the next couple of weeks so there was discussion on that. James is coming with us. He's never been to Maine and his boss is closing the shop so he has a week off that just happens to coincide with ours. He spent the weekend gathering new clothes for his job interview on Friday. It's a very BIG job interview with great potential. Please say some prayers for him. This would be a fabulous opportunity. I can't really say too much about it but when the interview is over I'll tell more. Think really good thoughts for James. I'm a little superstitious about saying too much and jinxing it.
Anyway, he needed new clothes and shoes so that's what he went looking for this weekend. Got some nice things at Macy's. He cleans up real well.

I need to go and get some food shopping done and a few of the endless laundry things taken care of. Hope you have a good day and just to make it a little better to start with here's a little inspirational photo of the day. Sigh....