A weed is just a plant growing in the wrong place

We were unloading the car after our trip to The Wilderness Center on Saturday (see Jim's blog) when I heard Jim say "Oh no" in the understated tone he usually reserves for major emergencies. I looked around, expecting to find the birch tree on its side (or worse).

The actual cause of the distress:

The view from my kitchen

Because life is not interesting unless we're deep in some home/yard project, I decided it was time to paint the living and dining rooms. After all, it's been seven years, and what was a pleasing soft blue now is at odds with the carpet color, which has definite under-tones of black. Not to mention that the stripes painted in flat paint have faded to an off shade of bluish pink. After much deliberation I decided on a color, just as Jim's spring break began. Such good timing!

But before we could paint, I had to pack, and pack -- I had forgotten how much glassware and dishes I had stuffed in those cabinets -- and move some very heavy furniture. Jimmy did most of the heavy lifting.

Then there is the patching and the sanding and the priming, which is where we are now. And that's just the dining room. The process starts again in the living room. And when we're done, I'll probably rearrange the furniture three or four times before finally settling on the same old layout.

Jim at work . . .

The latest attempt to tame a pesky crack . . .

Bunnies and Pots

Spring is in the air. The bunnies are all lined up, ready to take their places in the yard. The pots are waiting for their assignments too. This year I'm aiming for the "less is more" approach. But I say that every year, and each time I go to the garden center and get seduced by all those flats of beautiful flowers and end up buying way too many plants. But that's all part of the fun.

Opening Day

No, not the Cubs (or the Tribe). The temperature was 60+ and the sun was shining brightly on Wednesday, so it was time to fire up the grill. It might have been simply the fact that they were the first of the season, but those burgers were tasty!

It's a dog's life . . .

Because we don't have enough pictures of the dogs, we took some more.


Fred has turned into a lap dog.

Bob loves his #1 human.

I ♥ Barbie

I wasn’t planning on using this blog as a place to rant, but I can’t help myself. Another instance of some well-intentioned but common-sense-deprived lawmaker trying to save us from ourselves has popped up.

It seems that a West Virginia state delegate is trying to introduce a bill that would ban Barbie™ from the state. The basis of this law is that those kinds of toys have an undue influence on the development of young girls and teach them that physical beauty is more important than intellect. Good grief. We’re talking about toys here, not state-mandated grade school curriculum. And more importantly, this is something that is (or should be) within a parent’s ability to control.

And why stop at Barbie? If he really is interested in the issue of self-image of girls (of which I am very skeptical – I smell something more insidious afoot), then why not hold the cosmetics and fashion industries’ feet to the fire? And don't forget the car ads that equate hot cars with gorgeous women as the ultimate man-prize. And don’t get me started on the anorexic moviestar/faux celebrities that tout themselves as role models these days. No, the self-image of young girls is under attack from far more sinister sources than a doll.

People don't realize that Barbie’s creator, herself the mother of a young daughter named Barbara, developed the doll as a response to an absence in the American toy market: the vast majority of toys suitable for girls at the time were baby dolls. There were no representations of adults in the doll market, other than paper dolls. So role-playing was pretty much limited. Barbie™, and all of her many outfits with their implied lifestyles, was created to show young girls that there was a wider world out there. Today, thanks to a lot of courageous, pioneering real women, our daughters and granddaughters have options some of us could never have imagined, well beyond anything that a fashion doll could inspire. But in 1959, Barbie, the Teen-age Fashion Model™ was a very big deal.

Besides, she is just plain fun.

The good news is that this legislator couldn’t get anyone else to sign on to the bill, and it got sent to committee, hopefully to die in oblivion. The bad news is that it takes the focus away from real solutions and positive actions for something that is in fact an important issue.

By the way: Barbie™ turns 50 this month. Happy birthday, girl. May you have many, many more.

Has it really been that long?

Seven years ago today, we stood in an empty house, waiting to hand over the keys to the new owners. Outside, the van and the Escort station wagon were filled to the brim with an eclectic assortment of items that we were going need right away or that didn’t make it into the moving van. After saying goodbye to Jimmy and Sarah at their grandma’s house, we hit road, just as the second snow storm of the day descended upon the area. My recollection of the drive to Ohio is pretty much a blur: slipping, sliding and skidding through Illinois and northwest Indiana; the snow/sleet turning to rain, heavy rain, relentlessly pounding on the car, keeping Fred on edge (he paced in the car for all but the last 30 miles of the trip) and adding to the surreal nature of the day; standing with the dogs outside a rest stop along I-80 (in Indiana, probably) in the rain, waiting for Jim; and relief when we finally tumbled into the extended stay hotel, about to begin a new chapter in our lives that we never imagined just a year earlier.