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Archive for December, 2022

Nestivus for the Restofus

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on December 27, 2022| Leave a Comment »

We’re betwixt and between winter holidays. The New Year approaches full of expectations, affirmations and regret. Let all the dreaded diet and exercise programs begin!

I came across the Festival of Nestivus on an anxiety blog Instagram account. It’s a cartoon of a cloud-like blob of anxiety that lets people know they don’t have to be the Do-everything-BE-everywhere Elf this season. Or any season actually. It reminds us to rest and recharge and retreat to our home nests whenever we want. The problem is, the Bride and Groom’s flight back from visiting the VA Grandparents was one of thousands cancelled this morning by Southwest.

Not that Nashville was all that comforting this week. We woke Christmas eve to minus ONE temps, so even if we wanted to go out for Chinese food and a movie, everything was closed. Our little Crystal Cottage grew ice crystals on the inside of our windows, and since we had a rain, turning to ice, turning to snow storm, I wasn’t stepping one foot outside!

For the first time ever we experienced “rolling blackouts.” Every few hours the power would suddenly go off for 10-15 minutes, it felt like we were living in a real banana republic. Once, I had simultaneously turned on the gas flame to heat up some homemade vegetable soup, when all the lights went out and the house turned dark. At least we had hot soup. The first time it happened we were panicked. The heat in this 80 year old house was barely keeping up with the outside temps.

Sometimes the inside thermometer hit 61!

One of our neighbors lost their power completely while they were away, and had a dog-sitter who couldn’t keep their dog at her house. So we rescued the cutest little Shih Tzu for a few days. Ms Bean welcomed her graciously, but wasn’t too happy about her sleeping on the bed with us. I loved having a sweet, lap dog in the house. And I must admit, Bob truly stepped up to the task of keeping the home fires burning…

…and the water running – all sinks were kept at a steady drip. Cabinet doors were left open. Outside spigots were insulated and a small heater was trained on the new shower wall. NO bursting pipes for these old New England geezers! I whipped up an Irish lasagna on Christmas Eve. What’s an Irish lasagna you might ask? It’s made with turkey and a cream sauce and we’re still enjoying it.

I must admit we binged a little Three Pines on Prime. I’ve only read one Louise Penny mystery, the one she wrote with Hillary Clinton, “State of Terror.” But the Prime video series is about her award-winning books featuring the French Canadian detective, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. I’m totally in love with the village of Three Pines and its quirky residents. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/11/alfred-molina-three-pines-best-role-of-his-career-interview

Bob and I also caught the final January 6 Committee Report, did you? https://january6th.house.gov/sites/democrats.january6th.house.gov/files/Report_FinalReport_Jan6SelectCommittee.pdf

Mr T let his mask slip, he’s been exposed for the con man that he is – a calculating, malicious miscreant. He must never be allowed to run for public office again. I truly hope our Attorney General does the right and proper thing and indicts him.

Meanwhile have a very Happy and Healthy 2023 everyone! Don’t climb any ladders, but do dance like no one is watching. We’ll be nesting here for the duration and I’ll be knitting, which makes the introvert in me extremely happy.

Here is Ms Bean telling the newcomer it’s too cold to go out!

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A Little Light Music

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on December 20, 2022| 3 Comments »

To prepare for the Festival of Lights, we watched the new Pinocchio movie by Guillermo del Toro with the Grands. https://www.netflix.com/title/80218455

At the very end of this stop-action masterpiece of a movie, which does not end in the way we all think the fairy tale ends, the Pumpkin said, “Well that’s a cliff hanger!” Spoiler alert, the conclusion keeps us guessing. Del Toro weaves a dark story – Pinocchio’s father drinks too much, there are monsters in the deep sea and poker-playing rabbits keeping watch over the rainbow bridge to eternity. It’s not simply an allegory about lying and noses growing. It’s an homage to love in all its purest forms.

Kate Blanchett, who voiced the endearingly ugly monkey, Spazzatura (a name that means “garbage” in Italian), said this about the film: “Del Toro is “able to somehow Trojan-horse these really big discussions about fascism and humanity into a really entertaining movie that’s going to spark conversation,” Blanchett said, according to Netflix press materials. “I think it’s about curiosity and humility and the death of innocence, the loss of innocence, and about the deep love, the abiding love between people and it’s a real true adventure.” https://www.npr.org/2022/12/13/1142418925/academy-award-winner-alexandre-desplat-scores-del-toros-pinocchio

Tomorrow is the Winter Solstice; it will also be the fourth night of Hanukkah. We Jews are in the middle of celebrating a little night magic – the oil in the Temple banishing the dark for eight nights, instead of one. I’ve placed my ‘vintage’ electric menorah in the living room window, while neighbors have felt the need to place signs reading, “We stand with our Jewish neighbors” on their lawns. We talk with our grandchildren about a little wooden puppet who wasn’t afraid to be different.

Starting tomorrow, the days, the light, will be getting longer. The temperatures are due to plummet to single digits. And by the grace of God, Merrick Garland may summon the courage to indict an ex, twice impeached president. As we say in the South, “He might could.” The January 6 Committee has shown us in stark detail what Mr T did for over three hours while a violent insurrection was happening at the Capital. He wanted to overthrow the will of the people, he was hoping for a coup, he did nothing to stop his base of proud boys and feckless women. He watched as one woman was shot in the face, and a police officer was crushed and beaten to near death.

I’m old enough to remember a time when Republicans actually stood up for their country above their party. We cannot compare the Nixon White House to the Trump years, although Intellectuals, Ivy Leaguers, and Jews were all equally despised. But we Americans found it in our hearts to forgive Nixon, or at least accept the Ford pardon for years of deceit. We found out about his shenanigans because he taped everything, probably for his library. Nixon too thought he was above the law.

“The Jews are all over the government,” Nixon complained to his chief of staff, H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, in an Oval Office meeting recorded on one of a set of White House tapes released yesterday at the National Archives. Nixon said the Jews needed to be brought under control by putting someone “in charge who is not Jewish” in key agencies.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/oct99/nixon6.htm

Every single election denier was defeated last month. Truth cannot be subjective, there are no alternate versions of the Holocaust. And I can still believe in miracles.

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Swaps

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on December 12, 2022| Leave a Comment »

We all barter with ourselves. I’ll order the salad instead of fried calamari to start. If you pass this test, you’ll reward yourself with a night out. It’s our own personal sense of economics – guns vs butter, small decisions we must make, day in and day out. Which is why I find the Republican reaction to the Brittney Griner swap for Viktor Bout so enlightening.

Let’s preface this with my American flight home via Miami. Usually, I will read a good book on an airplane. Have you noticed that along with food, airlines no longer provide a travel magazine in your seat back? I always loved reading that magazine, and even know a travel writer who frequently published her essays in the happy skies. No worries for me; when I travel, jI load a ton of books on my iPad Kindle app, and I even remember to download them before getting on the plane! Imagine my face the first time I discovered this techno blip.

So here we were, in the flight from paradise, forever stuck on the tarmac. First it was our weights and balances. Then it was a delay because we were waiting for a “high priority package.” Bob predicted an organ was about to be transported. But then the Bride’s section said they saw a casket being wheeled out to the plane. Of course, one woman threw a fit and demanded to get off the plane, so they also had to find her luggage…

Needless to say. whatever emergency time cushion we had built into our connecting flight to Nashville was tick-tocking away.

I decided after saying my Hail Marys’ for take-off, that this might be the time to watch a movie instead of reading. Well, all those seat back monitors are gone now too, so it’s a good thing Bob had loaded the American Airlines app on my iPad. While browsing through their free movies, I came upon an old Tom Hanks flick from 2015. “Bridge of Spies.”

Hanks plays a NY insurance lawyer who negotiates the Cold War swap between a young Francis Gary Powers, a U-2 pilot shot down over Russia, and Rudolf Abel, an older Soviet spy…. ps, this really happened! Espionage always thrills me, but that scene when the plane is spiraling towards the ground made me rethink my in-flight entertainment choice. Arrangements were made to do the swap on a bridge in East Berlin. The interesting bit though was that a young economics student had managed to get himself scooped up by the Stazi just as the Berlin Wall was going up!

So Hank’s character naturally insists on swapping the student along with Powers for Abel – two for one. Just in case you may want to watch the movie, I won’t spoil the ending. I also noticed in our recent Griner for Bout swap, that Russian media covered the event live, while we did not, supposedly for our citizen’s privacy. And that Bout was embraced and hugged by someone, while Griner was simply led to a waiting car.

Far be it for me to critique our foreign policy, but I have to admire the Biden White House for negotiating the swap. Could they have insisted that a Marine, Paul Whelan, also be released from custody? Could they have said NO DEAL without the Marine? Sure. But I think Putin has a long memory, and I’d bet he remembers the swap during the Cold War, or he heard about it often as a young boy. And he wasn’t about to give us two prisoners for one again.

Meanwhile, holiday festivities have started off with a bang! I’ve been baking hostess treats and doing cards and walking all over our neighborhood. Yes, My last PT appointment was today, and I’m happy to have graduated!

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OK Folks

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on December 5, 2022| 4 Comments »

Here’s what happened. As you already know, I fell off the lowest rung of a bunk bed ladder in July. All my doctor buddies said, “Phew, you didn’t break a hip!” As it turns out I broke one side of my pelvis, and then the other side broke due to osteoporosis. Now I am walking on my own again; no need for a wheelchair or scooter, and the pink flowered walker is behind me. As Bob likes to say, “Your bones are healed.” The problem is my psyche isn’t.

I stopped writing on this platform because I didn’t want MountainMornings to become a litany of my pain.

In retrospect I’m sorry I left everyone hanging. I’ve treated this blog as if it were my own newspaper column for years, never missing a deadline. I really loved synthesizing political news with personal updates. But today, I am much less of a news junkie; I start my day with coffee and Pinterest plus a little helping of a Master Class or two. My walk-in closet is finished, so the new/old/catawampus house is coming along. And I’m back in the kitchen, trying out new recipes.

Also, we’ve just returned from a trip to the French West Indies. Every day I’d jump step in the pool and do my physical therapy exercises – point tendu, jumping jacks, squats. And as a result, I’m so much stronger. I can tell because I don’t need to sit down on the shower seat during a shower. So that’s the good news.

The bad news is some of us got Covid.

But as the Rocker told his Dad, “Play the cards you’re dealt.” And we managed to eat at our favorite outdoor restaurants, to have delicious French food delivered to our door on the precipice of a cliff, and take a gorgeous new catamaran out in the ocean – twice. Because this small island in the Caribbean has been a family sanctuary since the Bride was the same age as her daughter. I loved seeing our Grands jump in the waves and frolic in the pool with pure joy.

One day at the supermarche, I bought Aunt Kiki the French edition of Architectural Digest. The very next day, the news broke that the latest American edition would feature a living room on the Top 100 2023 List COVER that Kiki and her team at Studio Shamshiri designed! We were all over the moon with happiness. Champagne was popped and even the Bride and Groom read the Architectural Digest story, on the beach, on her phone, since their electronics were locked in a safe. Yes, no screens on vacation for them.

https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/ad100-2023

We’re back in rainy Nashville. Bob is suffering from Covid-related Paxlovid rebound, and I’m feeling the need to write again, which is a good sign, don’t you think? Be gentle with yourselves around this holiday season. I’ve come to believe that moving slower, thinking longer, and worrying less about what might/could be is better for my psyche. My soul is catching up with my bones.

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