Happy New Year!

I don't often post personal photos on this blog.  I save the reminisces for "Empty Nest Evolution".  My husband and I said "Au revoir" to our sons the beginning of December.  We put them on a plane to Australia and we don't know when they will return.  They worked and saved to buy one way tickets and one year work visas.  We've heard from them once, Christmas Eve, and are happy to report they are having a marvelous time.

My sons (L & Ctr), their traveling bud (Rt) & their closest "girl" friend 
Dec 5th  Last night in Boston before leaving for Australia

Our farm house Christmas Day

Our yard Christmas Day

Creek running through the yard Christmas day

It snowed Christmas day and has continued since, great for our local economy which feeds 8 ski resorts and depends on tourism.  A white Christmas is always a plus.

Happy New Year to you and yours!

Diet, Exercise & The Best Intentions

I first started exercising to lose weight (as opposed to just having fun) when I was 24. I'd been married a year. I remember beginning a running regimen, calorie counting and eating Deserta(sp?) for sweets. It worked. In three months I'd lost 20 of the 30 lbs gained while backpacking through Europe four years earlier. My girlfriend and I spent three months travelling and eating mostly pastry, drinking mostly beer & just packing on the lbs. Carbs are cheap.

It came off fairly easily and I did not regain weight until I was pregnant and then only a little. By the time I reached my mid-forties, I was still a muscular 138 lbs, playing tennis four times a week, doing yoga nightly and I still fit into a size 6.

Those days began to slip away when I learned I'd need my first hip replacement at the tender age of 47. Five years later I had the other hip replaced. Now one knee needs replacing. It's been a slow but insidious weight gain ever since and I now top the scale @ 165. (I can't believe I'm admitting that!) I lost 10 lbs last summer to attend my high school reunion but I gained it all back over the Christmas holidays.

If I really had guts I'd post "Before" and "After" photos of my weight gain. In other words, the "before" would be me slim & trim. Not gonna happen. Can't deal with it. My husband is kind enough to photoshop my chin for photos we send out now. Otherwise, no one would have any.

I am, however, making another vow to exercise four times per week, 30 minutes minimum. I'm reducing, no eliminating, my alcohol intake. As for eating...well, I have to really curtail my favorite pastime: cooking. If I do all that, maybe I'll be able to lose the weight, get my knee replaced, go back to playing tennis, stop doing yoga for arthritics and start doing real yoga again.

Yes. And pigs will fly.

Loving Autumn

I have always thought Autumn to be the best time to decorate. There is such an abundance of choice: pumpkins, gourds, hay bales, corn stalks, scarecrows, chrysanthemums, Halloween creatures and such.

People in New England love to decorate with corn stalks, scarecrows and hay bales. You see a great many homes taking this last stab at color before the winter descends and turns everything grey and white. I have been planting chrysanthemums. I'm also buying the small colorful gourds and miniature hay bales to create a centerpiece for the table. We have a party every Fall and we're getting ready for it in advance.

Halloween is just around the corner and that is fun no matter where you live. Everybody gets into the act.

We once lived in an historic part of Richmond, Virginia, popularly known as The Fan. The Fan is a Georgetown-style neighborhood of brick town homes and row houses with tiny front yards and sidewalks. Every Halloween, one block up, was the most popular Halloween trick-or-treat street in the city. This particular block went all out to decorate. Ghosts, goblins and witches were strung across the street from one upper story to another, flying back and forth. Tombstones with every conceivable inscription were laid out in front yard squares, some with hands trying to dig their way out of the graves. Little white ghosts, made with Styrofoam balls wrapped in tiny white cloths that tightened and trailed beneath hung from the trees. My mother-in-law said these were "gumps" an old fashioned term for the decoration. Many neighbors filled lunch-sized brown paper bags with sand, inserting lit candles for a shadowy effect. Elaborately carved pumpkins decorated every porch, stoop and window. People dressed as witches, ghouls or dead people hid in bushes by their front doors to scare the be-Jesus out of visitors. One guy had an old fashioned cheap coffin in his yard, narrow at the foot and broad at the top. He was dressed as Dracula and would slowly raise the lid and sit up as people approached his front steps. I've never seen anything like it before or since.

Corn mazes seem to be the popular attraction now. Many farmers have their corn fields plowed into elaborate configurations and charge people money to find their way in and out. From the sky these mazes are quite beautiful. Great money maker for the farmer and alot of fun for the participant.

Here's to crisp apples, changing leaves, hot cider, cool nights, thick soups and crackling fires.

Travails of Travel

The plane trip last Thursday was your now all-too-common Jet Blue style clusterfuck. We boarded on time for a 5 1/2 hr flight to the West Coast. That was the last thing that was on time. We spent three hours on the plane sitting @ the gate. A Fuel line wasn't registering. They actually had to siphon all the fuel out of the plane and re-fill it to see if that would shake the fuel line into working. It took two hours. We were not allowed to deplane, order beverages (make that drinks) although we could use the lavatory. The plane was full.

Every once in a while the captain, whose voice could penetrate steel, would announce in a bit-too-bright tone "Hello folks. This is your Captain speaking. We're still waiting to hear from maintenance about the fuel line and it should be 'just about' fifteen minutes before we know when we'll leave." He must have done that five times.

And he was no Bob Uecker.

When they finally fixed the line, the airport shut down. T-strms in the west. No planes in or out. I thought people were going to go postal. I was sitting with a nice young couple and their 7 mo old baby. The baby kept me sane. He was a good happy baby and he loved me! Go figure.

Two hours & 45 minutes into this the Capt announced that we were hoping for clearance by 8:15EST as San Diego airport has noise abatement policies and they shut down@ 11pm PST. Honest to God, I never thought we'd fly out. I called AA to ask for a room. I envisioned spending the night @ Logan trying to sleep on a chair; taking a flight out the next morning; missing lunch with my high school boyfriend, etc. I stayed calm. Can't say that for many folks around me but what could anyone do?

Long story short, we left @ 8:15, arrived @ 11:20 and now all I have to worry about is the flight back next Monday.

Leavin' On A Jet Plane...today I hope

Okay, I feel better about going now that the day is here. This refers to my last post lamenting the mixed feelings I have about going to my high school reunion, etc. Plus, we're having thunderstorms today and I leave out of Boston @ 5pm...or not. Ugh. I hate the airlines, the terminals, the HSA bullshit you have to go through every time you hit the security scanner section. I've had both hips replaced and that alarm goes off like I've hit the lottery. Only, the lottery is always a full body scan by some hapless TSA official who, once, when I was wearing an underwire bra, had to pat me down around the bra just to make sure I didn't have a concealed knife or who knows what up there. Learned an important lesson: if you don't want your boobs patted down by TSA, wear a bra w/o hardware.