In which Pooh tries to catch up with everything and everyone till he realizes he never will, so he might just as well go get some honey.
What a difference a week makes.. My sister Carrie, the baby of the family, got married this last weekend. It was a fabulous event, filled with all the drama every wedding has...plus some. Carrie married a great guy, who proved his mettle early on by not bolting for a quieter existence after meeting my family. The day was made more perfect as my brother Rick was able to attend. He even managed to play his horn a bit in our brass choir.
( A note of explanation is probably needed here for the non everyday readers of this blog.)
Everyone in my whole family is a professional musician. We ALWAYS play tons of music for our own special family events like weddings and anniversary parties and such ....even funerals. Singing, insrumental solo's, brass choirs, duets, trio's you name it. It may seem weird to you that we would play at each others and our own events, but playing music and sharing the gift of music with each other is a beautiful and intimate thing that we cherish doing. It only seems natural for us to play music together and for each other during all family events.
You can imagine then how emotions would be running if you start with my sister getting married and then add to that my brother being there and then playing a bit here and there when he felt strong enough to pick up the horn and blow a bit. Our whole family was a blubbering mess..It was unbelievably terrific!!
If you were there what you would have seen was my whole family working hard to hang on to it as we went from one song to the next...We are already an emotion family that is not afraid to show it..but we would swing from..."Carrie looks beautiful"..sniff sniff.. to, "she is getting married"..Bawl...to, "Rick is here"..sniff sniff..... to "no, he IS really here isn't he"..BAWL!!!
When it came time for me to sing Ave Maria, I thought I had a handle on it ..and I did, untill the 2nd chorus..Where I was positioned over to the side, most everyone was looking at me as I was singing. What I was looking at was my sister who at that moment was sharing a long look with my brother who was sitting over across on the other side. There they were, sharing a private moment in front of 200 hundred people. Carrie in her dress, beaming this huge happy smile, tears pouring down, looking right at... Rick, sitting 20 feet away, trumpet on his lap, looking right back at her, smiling, tears rolling down his cheeks.
The shared look.. the smiles.. the tears, it was all there. The oldest brother and the baby sister.....the wedding, the stroke.....the love...locked into this perfect moment....I'm singing Aveeeeee Mari.....and then I totally lost it.... complete wheels coming off lost it, quivering voice that quickly turns to quiet sobs right in the middle of Shubert's great refrain, lost it.....
It took me about 40 seconds and a nose blow to regain enough control to start back up again so I could finish.
Oh well, nobody (least of all me) seemed to mind, and I will never forget that incredible moment...ever.
It was a true celebration for my family. It was a wonderful day filled with the rites and passages of life, the music of joined hearts and so much love that even 6 days later sitting here writing and remembering, I am going to have to stop as I did last Saturday, to wait for my voice.
In which Pooh packs up the U-Haul and heads back home exhausted, but still takes the time to talk more about the neighborhood.
I am home in my own house.
Ahhhhhh!!! Dirty dishes and stacks of electronic and computer junk everywhere never felt so good. And...wait what's that noise??? Bwahahahahahaha!!! THERE IS NO NOISE...IT IS BLISSFULLY QUIET!!! As of today, my Sister in-law is done with school teaching for the summer.
Meso nosa hafta babysittee forsa leasta fewsa days-o boy-o.
Oh-Boyo!!!
(Can you tell I have been around 5 and 8 and 10 year olds too much lately?)
I have been away from the house for almost a month. (With occasional stop in's for mail etc.)
So besides the mice taking over my second story with some kind of marathon head banging cheese rave, and a rather disconcerting odor for which I cannot find the source, all is now right with the world. Rick is doing better everyday and as he has been going, so have the rest of my family and I been going.
Sooooo, I am going to try for a little more normalcy in my days.
(Me? Normal?? Bwahahahaha), But that means no more neglecting my blog. And so without further ado, back to the party, and it's guests.
Irish-Girl and Jeremy were there. I have already blogged in the past about these two quite a bit individually. You can go look up my feelings about them if you want to. I will paraphrase though and tell you this. They are both amazing people that I feel privileged to call my friends. Although being a couple defines only a small part of what they are, everyone I know who knows them, (with myself at the top of the list) thinks and hopes they are destined for great things together.
That leaves Mopsa and MJ to round out the party roster.
What can I say about Mopsa? First, like a number of my favorite bloggers I was introduced to her via Irish-Girl. Of all the new people I was going to meet at this party, I was probably the most excited to meet Mopsa. I have been reading her blog almost since I started blogging and I was really looking forward to meeting her. Her writing is warm and funny and something you don't often see on the web. It has an unguarded, vulnerable feel to it.... happy, sad, political, bitchy, irreverent, it all makes it to her pages. I find I connect to many of the things she writes about so much that I end up blogging about them. I find myself hoping we really hit it off together, as she is someone that I think would be wonderful to have as a friend.
Something else...Now I don't use the word hate very often. It is a narrow, brutal and dark word that gets used way to often in my opinion. But I hate people who, when they are on their own and away from their husbands, wives or significant others, trash or say disparaging things about them. It is dishonest, classless, unloyal and unloving. You know what I am talking about, it happens all the time. Conversely, for me the opposite is also true. I greatly admire those that praise or brag about the person in their lives when that partner is not there and will not know or hear about it. It is done not to score points or flatter. It is done out of love and a real appreciation for the person in their lives. Mopsa lit up when talking about the love in her life. I love that.
There are SO many subtle little things you can see in a person when you are sitting right next to them. I know we had a couple of real moments when we were sitting on the couch together. At one point, our eyes met and I knew what she was thinking and I thought there was an understanding that passed between us. If you are reading this Mopsa, I know you know what I am talking about. It was for me, a remarkably honest moment.
Now that my life has quieted a bit I really hope we will get together again soon.
Mj was a bit of an enigma. I had been reading her for only a short time so I knew very little about her. We talked Macs and music. Both of which she loves. If I were to say the names Charlie, Miles and Steven her answer would NOT be Sheen, Lord and Baldwin, but Parker, Davis and Jobs so of course I think she is a genius.
So that about wraps up the dish for the event now known as "The Party"
Great fun, great food, and the chance to spend time with great people...does it get any better than that?
It is a new day and I am going to spend it making lists for all the things I need to do to get caught back up with my life. I should be done in about 4 years so I'll check in with you all then...in the meantime ...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
In which Pooh talks about the neighbors.
One of the funnier lines delivered by my (then) 3 year old nephew...
When his mother, completely exasperated by the slow poke speed he used when finishing his lunch told him "to hurry it up we haven't got all day" his immediate response was " I only two hands Mommy"
And speaking of good humor..... Now it is time to talk about last weeks party. (Nice segue huh?)
Last weekend, I was invited to a little get together with some of my favorite bloggers. As I have written here, (ad nauseam) I have assiduously whittled down my circle of regularly read blogs to only those places that I really, really enjoy and admire. You can only imagine then how excited I was to finally put faces to the people I have been reading and enjoying so much.
I'll start with our hosts. Natalie and Andy. I have been reading Nat for quite a few weeks and Andy only a few times.....Live and in person? These guys are great!!!
After reading Nat I didn't really know what to expect on arrival but what I got was a house full of a what felt to me like Zen Commotion. (For those of you keeping score, Zen is a form of Buddhism often thought of as emphasizing thought and intuition....Commotion is a tempest a scramble or a rush.)
So we have a thoughtful scramble and an intuitive rush..... Yup, that sounds right, Zen Commotion it is...
Met at the door by Andy with, "If your name is not Jack you can't come in" I soon fell in with all the happy madness. Now I have a many theories about many things, but one of the things I truly believe is that you can tell a lot about people by looking at their kids and their pets. They can really reflect a ton about you. Without knowing these two very well ( I do hope to change that over time) I can say this. They have big dogs that are calm and not hand shy. They accepted strangers happily, and were simply gentled with a few pats and soft words. They have kids. They come in medium, small and extra small sizes. They were sweet natured and polite, the older two looked me in the eyes and although a little shy, they all were bright eyed and bushy tailed. Their oldest, a dark haired girl of about 10 or so with beautiful eyes, had thoughtfully hand made cards of welcome for each guest.
So what do I NOW know about Nat, who's blog I now read daily, and Andy, who's blog I am going to start reading a lot more, as people?
1) They are distinctive and interesting and contrast each other well.... (And yes Nat, I still pay you the compliment of saying you ARE NOT "normal")
2) They have casual parties where geeky almost complete strangers are made to feel right at home....
3) Arguing politics and religion and other "hot button" subjects is NOT a major moral meltdown and cause for immediate house expulsion.....(Not that I .....ahem....ever got tossed or asked to leave someplace because of political or religious ..ahem...disagreements.)
4) If I am ever starving and in need of a lot of good food, I now know where to go hang out.
5) In my book, if you raising kind, happy, considerate, mannered and sociable kids and gentle dogs that are not freaked out by a house full of strangers..... that tells me all I need to know. Because that doesn't happen by accident. Kids and dogs mirror what they see and how they are treated...they have to get all that good stuff from somewhere.....
Thanks for the kind invite guys. I hope we will have a chance to get together again soon !!!
(Now I just gotta get them turned away from the dark side and into using Macintoshes..... ;-).
Ok, it's REALLY late.... going to bed...more on the rest of the partygoers tomorrow....
In which Pooh offers an ex voto.
I have been away, away, away. Considering my promise was to use this blog as a place to purge my feelings and write all about my life, I have been failing miserably in the last month or so. Oddly, there has been so much going on in my life that I have had a greater need for this place than ever. Honestly, there has just not been the time or energy to do it. To those of you who have written or e-mailed or posted or called with good thoughts and kind words about my brother, I thank you. I will get to returning the calls and notes individually as things slow down, but I wanted to say how much I appreciate the support.......I appreciate the support....... that I can describe the gist of what I wanted to tell you in 4 words, "I appreciate the support" is ridiculous. It simply cannot covey the feelings behind the words. Those heartfelt feelings would take an hour to share.
So let me say again to you all, most gratefully, thank you.
As to my brother, he is doing fabulously well.
He is into twice a day therapy. One for physical, one for speech and reading. Both are going very well. If you had not known him before, I suspect you would not recognize anything different about his speech patterns at all. Those of us who know him, are aware he is still "searching" sometimes, but all in all we have no earthly reason to complain. The fact that he is here at all is a miracle, so the fact that he sometimes struggles for connecting words or has trouble reading the articles in Playboy seems like NOTHING.
I have been doing the Mr. Mom thing with Rick's 4 boys. My sister in law has 2 days left at school and then she is done teaching for the summer. WooWooo!! That gets me out of my full time babysitters job for the foreseeable future..They will still need our whole family's support for a good while yet, but it is starting to become more manageable.
Honestly, the no more marathon babysitting, is going to be both good and bad. I have really enjoyed having the boys, but it is exhausting. They are terrific kids and do all they can to help, but I am not used to cooking what I'm pretty sure is about 700,000 pancakes and 1.6 million eggs every morning. Add to that, the 400 loads of laundry every week and I am wondering how ANYBODY does it. (I kid you not, yesterday, they polished off a whole gallon of milk AND a whole gallon of orange juice before 10AM, plus I think the boys single handedly caused the US govt. to issue some kind of "tuna shortage" Alert)
I am beginning to think Rick's aneurysm was intentional. ANYTHING for a break... ;-)
All for now ....more later today. Parties, movies, I have lots to dish....