Baby Love

I spent some time today holding LMJ, watching her face roll through a cascade of expressions while dreaming that would have made Marlon Brando proud. She has this Taxi-Driver, "you-talkin'-to-me?" look, and there's also this face of absolute sweet peace borrowed from napping Golden Retriever puppies. There's this expression of profound puzzlement, as if she were calculating pi. She also has this look of relief, the kind most of us have in the morning after a satisfying bowel movement (hey, don't make that face, you know what I'm talking about) during which I'm sure she having a most gratifying poop.
Then, there's the signature smirk, half smile, half lips pursed ready to say, "you putz", genetically remastered from her father. That's my favorite.
Most strong women have a smirk (LMJ's dad, I'm sure, got it from his mother, a fierce and powerful goddess I adore). Xena, Warrior Princess, wore a perpetual one, suggesting to sword wielding gangs to "run for your miserable lives," a line I would kill to use at one of the many unpleasant IEP meetings in my career. Siguorney Weaver had one all during Alien Resurrection as the cloned Ripley straddling the line between human and alien, flame-throwing her way past all manner of monsters. All the women of Battlestar Galactica have big frakkin' smirks. Judabear has one when she describes the relentless exploits of her cat, Hansel, an animal who's part Ninja and part Pepe LePew.
So LMJ resides in good company wearing Papa's smirk, one of her many dreamy faces, as she sleeps through her baby days.

Wednesday

I love being home, it's true, I am an ubber-homebody and happy to admit it. When school is in session, being at home takes on a Ground Hog Day quality. It's a lot of the same same on schedule. In the summer, though, schedules are spanked and put in the corner, to-do lists wait patiently for my moods and lots of wallowing in nothingness becomes the order of the day.
So, this is some of what I did on Wednesday.
In the early afternoon, I napped for 45 minutes while the musical stylings of Soundscapes (channel 835 on Comcast) played in the background. Harps. Sounds of the rainforest. Some birdcalls. Eerily melancholy flute melodies. If heaven has a waiting room, this is the music that's piped in.
Later, I watched VH-1's 100 One Hit Wonders hosted by William Shatner. I'll watch anything hosted by Shatner but the guilty pleasure intoxication was amplified by knowing that I had five great books on my night stand just waiting to opened and there I was watching the Safety Dance video by Men Without Hats. If I would have had some S'mores in one hand and a pint of Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia in the other, it's decadence even Lindsey Lohan would have appreciated.
In between all of this, there were long periods of time where I stared appreciatively at my toes.
I'll explain.
The day before, I joined my pal Andrea, her husband Mike and her 16 year old daughter Kenna for a family pedicure at a local nail joint. The pedicure was a necessary antidote for having spent most of the day with my animal control guy, Jeff, plotting the ultimate demise of the opposums who recently made my attic their permanent address. After hours of hearing about assorted animal feces and the fatal diseases that spring from their molecular tango and the infestation history of the invincible Norweigan Wharf Rat in Jacksonville Beach, I felt a little pampering was needed. An hour of scraping, scrubbing and firm massaging left my feet feeling softer than Scooter Libby's conviction and when the dust cleared, my toenails emerged a Wicked Witch Apple Red. Glorious.
Yeah, summertime. It's all good.

Kingman, Arizona

I spent most of last week in Kingman, Arizona with Judy and her family. Kingman was a work detour on the Goulds on the Run Pacific America Tour '07. Judy and I spent three days with the teachers of the Kingman Learning Academy in a bit of writing training. There's a remarkable mix of energies that churns during these three days. I tell ya, it's not work when you have teachers like these who were open and engaged during all our sessions. When you're a teacher who just finished the school year and you agree to three full days of training at the start of your vacation, that's dedication that should garner more print space than a spoiled hotel socialite going to jail.
These teachers were cool.
We wrote, we laughed and we cried and I'm talking the good cry not the "oh-mah-ghad-I'm-listening-to-Michael-Bolton-accompanied-by-Kenny-G" cry. My favorite thing about writing training, besides marveling at the silky smooth delivery of one Judy Gould, is discovering the layers of lives of our attendees. You want to talk family values? Then you should listen to the way these teachers talk about their children and their wives and husbands, words wrung from memories, sacred, fragile and affirming.
We heard about triumph and loss. We heard the truth come out in verse and song and priceless prose in alliterative anthems. We heard about backyards and porches and new borns and books yearned for and enemies defeated. There were people who approached author's chair the way most of us look at jumping out of a plane with a parachute. As they read, I hope they felt like they were floating because that's how a spirit learns to soar, with acts of bravery, in a room full of people who have their arms extended to catch them.

Thank you Michelle

I hate to fly. I know I'm not alone in this feeling, but I hate it nonetheless. It has become the most loathesome way to travel. Recently I read an article, on a flight no less, that the airline industry has a customer service rating just below the IRS. Okay, sit with that one a bit. The Internal Revenue Service offers a more pleasant customer experience than the airlines.
So this is what happened on our trip home from Dublin to New York. We walked into the Dublin Airport, searched for the Delta counter. Got in a line. A long one. War and Peace long. A lifetime later we stood in front of the Delta rep with open passports, handing over our prayed-over luggage (hey I will invoke the help of any and all saints to keep my bags in the same hemisphere as my plane) and answering quite sincerely that our bags have indeed been cemented at our sides the entire time and that no, no one has slipped anything that looks like a nuclear warhead in my Samsonite carry on.
The gal at the counter typed our names into her computer calling up our boarding passes and then before she handed them to us, she said something I will never in my entire life forget: "I've upgraded you to business class. You'll be boarding at gate B32."
Immediately my mind made the Scooby Do confused sound. My alter-ego, Yolanda who enjoys dressing like Carmen Miranda, whispered, "COMO?" In reality, I began to weep uncontrollably and grabbed the rep's hand, kissed it repeatedly, blessing her unborn children in a mixture of Yiddish and Spanish. In an instant, we had won the flying lottery. Our long seven and half hour flight had been instantly transformed from something resembling rowing the lower decks of a gladiator troop carrier to scoring an Oprah spa vacation.
The minute I got to my seat, I turned into Ellie Mae Clampett when she first views Uncle Jed's Beverly Hills mansion, "Sha-zam!!" Overstuffed, roomy seats that, wait for it, recline. Really recline. Not that centimeter of recline that in take-off and landing is the difference between life and death in coach. No, I'm talking all the way back, with a footrest that is controlled with a touch panel resting comfortably by your side next to your glass of champagne. Real meals are served in real portions, not hamster portions, on real plates. Hot towels are passed to soothe and refresh you. Ice cream sundaes are served for dessert, as well as fruit and cheese. If you want, you can have both. Movies, all kinds of movies are there for you for free. I saw two of them, The Namesake and Children of Men. Both excellent, especially Children of Men. I sobbed the big ugly cry the last ten minutes of that one. I got another warm towel for my face. Truth be told, the only thing that kept me from putting in a permanent change of address form for seat 4G was the absence of a vibrating feature on my chair.
I know people travel like this all the time. I also know that in the case of emergency, business class does not dislodge from the main cabin and transform itself into a James Bond mini-jet with the pilots leading us to safety, but it sure felt like that. Did I suffer from Business Class Remorse, a sense of nagging guilt knowing that the coach passengers were packed like coffee grounds in a cappuccino maker, sucking on a barely salted peanut all the way to New York? Yes, I did. They were having that "I hate flying" mojo and here I was nibbling on a piece of Brie on a fresh slice of mango. Was I in the other camp now? Those people who still insist they LOVE to fly? Maybe it was the fresh oxygen that was piped in that helped me think clearly but I remembered that this was a gift. It was a spectacular gift from the travel gods and that my lapsed Catholic upbringing should not wave in the guilt. Because when you have fortune smile on you, you should always smile back and enjoy the ride.

Ireland: Day 1

Trans-Atlantic jet lag is not to be triffled with. To simulate at home, take a cast iron skillet and hit yourself over the head repeatedly. I'm still not feeling in sync with my body and I have no idea what day or time it is, but I suppose when you're on vacation, that really doesn't matter.
Ireland is green, very green and being from Florida, it feels a little like home except for everyone driving on the left side of the road. It rained all day here and so there wasn't much time for exploring once we arrived at the hotel his morning. We are staying at the Clontarf Castle Hotel, a real castle refurbished with modern touches (internet access being one of them). I look for specific things in a hotel and this one isn't disappointing me in any area. A selection of great teas and electric teapot was waiting for us, as well as fluffy bath towels and a coma-inducing King bed with soft linens and a luxurious comforter. The room is spacious, so we can spread out as a nice antidote for 8 hours elbow to elbow crossing the ocean.
Folks here are helpful and friendly, not just the people working at the hotel. We met two local sisters, Ann and Celine Kennedy, at the hotel pub tonight and we chatted like old friends. They gave us great tips for our trip to the Dingle Peninsula and some suggestions for touring Dublin tomorrow (hit the Guinness tour early).
This will be a short post since the exhaustion comes in waves, and rest beckons. I lost sleep either yesterday or tomorrow. The time space continuum is no joke when you cross that international date line and I will feel more like myself when all my sub-atomic particles on the cellular level realign themselves after 10 hours of uninterrupted slumber.

Seven Little Known Things About Me

LJ tagged me a while back and this took a while to think through. The worst feeling was knowing that the reason it took me so long to come up with seven little known things about myself was that I reveal everything to everyone regardless of connection to me or whether or not they are even registering a pulse. But here they are in all their peculiar glory.

1. Each and every time I speak in front of a group, I am terrified. It passes, true enough, but right at the start it's absolute terror.

2. I never put syrup on my pancakes, only butter.

3. I haven't visited Disney World since 1978. As a Florida resident, I could do jail time for that.

4. My favorite children's book is Little Women because when I was 10, I read it in installments. Growing up poor in the South Bronx, I wasn't allowed to check out books from the library for fear I would lose the book or worse, be fined for returning it late. I hid the book in another section far from the children's stacks and every Saturday I fished it out and picked up where I left off. It was the first book that lifted me to another world, the book that made me fall in love with reading.

5. Even though I've seen it about 200 times, the last 7 minutes of Defending Your Life starring Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep always always makes me cry.

6. There is not one shred of doubt in my mind that Captain Kathryn Janeway could easily kick the asses of Kirk, Picard, and Sisko. The fact that I've thought long and hard about this should be embarrassing, but I love it that I don't care.

7. My favorite home remedy for getting over a nasty cold is chicken soup with 4 cloves of garlic, Cuban toast, real Coke over ice and repeated viewings of Aliens.

Don't Forget to Breathe

I joined a gym the day after my 50th birthday. At this age, I know my character flaws intimately so I attend group classes in strength training. Left to my own, I'd skip through a set of biceps and triceps and perform four half-hearted lunges and call it a day. My one hour Power Pump class keeps me honest plus the comraderie of pained expressions is a welcome bonus. I am bothered, however, by the conspicuous lack of cursing in that class. I seem to be the only person in there letting expletives fly like a jaunty Teamster. Not that anyone can hear me above the mandatory dance-infected, hip-hop mottled, techno-chunked soundtrack obviously designed to drown out the desperate cries of those bearing down on their one millionth lunge.
I'm quite fond of the Saturday morning step class. It is led by a powerfully built ebony god of an instructor with loads of personality, energy and the ability to cue and spin his funky self at the same time. After fifteen minutes, my arm pit stains are down to my waist. After 35 minutes, I'm soaked with sweat and start to halluncinate which would account for those around me sprouting scales and unicorn horns. After 50 minutes my heart shoots out of my chest like a cannon (thank you Herman Melville) and up ahead, I see a bright white light. It's about this time that the cool down starts and by the time we're stretching, I'm just a babbling puddle of middle-aged flesh tonguing the last drops of water from an empty bottle of Evian. Trust me, it's my most graceful moment.
Now all of that hour may not seem like a victory to you, but my triumph is just keeping up, because when you're fifty, that's enough.