Spa Divas In Training

I had a wonderful day today. Right now I'm at that relaxed stage where you're not really conscious of any part of your body. You know, nothing hurts, nothing feels tight, nothing even itches -- everything feels melted and it's all good. I'll tell you why.

There are a lot of September birthdays in my family; so many that we have combined parties, otherwise we would run out of weekend days to celebrate. Today was the party for Connie, Sasha and Sierra. Since it was an all-girl birthday, we decided to have an all-girl spa day. Carrie arranged for a wonderful lady named Barbara to bring her equipment and supplies and provide spa treatments for all of us. 

We started early, 10:00am, in order to get ahead of the heat. (As a side note for those of you who don't live in Texas, our temperature range for today was: low 55º, high 100º. That's a 45º change and we expect the same for the next week.) First up was a body and facial scrub. We put on our bathing suits covered ourselves with fragrant scrub then rinsed off in the outdoor shower around the pool. 

Next came the seaweed and mud pack. We started with my girl, Sophia, the youngest at the party. It took a few minutes to persuade her that covering herself in mud was a good thing. 

But she was a real trooper and gave it a try. I was so proud . . . spa diva in training. I knew my influence on her would be good. 

She and Sierra loved it. I think this is the photo of the day.

Connie really enjoyed the step where you relax and let the mud do its work.

And I looked like Beverly Hills Camouflage. 

While we were relaxing, Barbara conditioned our hair and wrapped our heads in warm towels.

 Sophia told Carrie she looked like an Egyptian queen.

 The three sisters -- Gooey, Aunt Connie and Net-Net to the girls.

That last one reminds me of the passage from Macbeth about the three weird sisters (aka witches.) 

" The weyard sisters, hand in hand, 

Posters of the sea and land.

Thus do go about, about.

Thrice to thine and thrice to mine

And thrice again, to make up nine.

Peace, the charm's wound up."

 After the mud it was back to the shower and then time for dipping our hands and feet in warm paraffin.

We peeled off the paraffin, massaged in the residual oils and covered ourselves with another creamy lotion to finish. 

So now you know why I'm feeling so good. Best birthday party ever. Happy Birthday to all to to all a good night; I'm melting into bed.

Thanks for stopping by.

The Old Ball Game

On August 23, Scott and I drove to Arlington with our friends, Bill and Susan. We had tickets for that night's game at the Ranger's Ballpark where Texas was hosting the Boston Red Sox. Now let me say that at the time I bought these tickets, early in June, I did not know that we would be in the middle of a record-breaking heat wave when August rolled around. 

Even though the Ballpark at Arlington is known for having good food, we decided to eat before we went to the stadium and chose Pappadeaux Restaurant. I'm glad we did because they had Alaskan Halibut on the menu, a fish that is very seasonal and one I love but hardly ever get to eat. It was pan-seared and served with a piccata sauce (lemon/butter sauce with capers) and lump crab meat on top. Yum! I should have taken a photo but it was all gone before I thought about it.

We pre-paid for parking so we cruised through the gate and into a good spot. Bill has a bad leg, so one of the attendants put him and Susan in a golf cart and whizzed them up to the stadium. Scott and I hoofed it, but we needed the walk after that dinner. 

 As we walked, we looked to the right and there it was ...

... Cowboy Stadium. Or as I like to call it, the High Cathedral of Football Worship.




Our seats were good, along the third base line and shaded by an overhang. It was 104º when we sat down. 

The Ballpark is beautiful and we were there early enough to see some of the players warming up. 

I love baseball. I am not a fanatic, watching every game and memorizing stats, but I do love the game. I love that I can understand the rules and that the players don't try to hurt each other. I love that an individual who trains hard and puts all he has into the game will usually do well. And I love that the goal is to "come home;" there's a certain grace to that. 

I wore a Ranger jersey to the game (another poor choice; polyester does not breathe at 104º) but there are several teams I like, including the Red Sox and NY Yankees. So I intended to enjoy the game, no matter who won.

The Red Sox scored in the first inning and set the pace for the night; the Rangers never caught up. Although "my boy," Ian Kinsler, made a good showing. 

Here he is at bat . . . 

Holding at third . . .

  
And coming home.

Bill enjoyed the game.

And so did Rangers coach Ron Washington . . .

... and Mr. and Mrs. Nolan Ryan. (Their seats look a lot more comfortable than ours, but I guess that's what you get for millions of dollars.)

I can't say that the heat didn't matter. It did. It was really hot. But after the game started and some of the seats around us did not fill, we moved around. There was a nice breeze blowing so that helped make it tolerable. It was after 9:00pm before the temperature went below 100º. 

The game was good, but at the end of the 8th inning, with a score of Boston 7, Texas 4, we decided to beat the crowd and head out. I seriously needed a cold shower and some air conditioning. By the time we got to the hotel a few blocks away, Boston had scored four more runs. My boy, Ian Kinsler, hit a solo home run, but still the game ended 11-5.
Not the Rangers' best showing, but we had a great time.

Happy Birthday, Maureen

Today is Maureen's birthday. If you know me or have read this blog, you know that Maureen is my best friend. We have known each other since we were 24. We are older than that now and she will be older than me until October 5. I am not going to tell you everything about Maureen and why we are friends, but I will give you a random list of things that are true.

1.  We know all the same songs. This was one of the first things that bound us together. In fact, we made a challenge game of it. Someone would give us a word or subject and we would sing the first song that came into our head. It was always the same song.

2.  We each think the other is hilarious. She gets all my jokes and I get hers.

3.  Maureen has been with me through almost every major tragedy in my life and somewhere, in the midst of sorrow, exhaustion and agony, she makes me laugh. It may be the laughter heard from insane residents of a mental institutition, but it is laughter nonetheless.

4.  Maureen has a great spirit of adventure and is an intrepid traveler. She just returned from three weeks in Cambodia, where for the first two weeks she participated workshops for college students studying science using a curriculum she had helped to write. Then she set out on her own to visit Angor Wat and the other ancient temples of Cambodia. For our 50th birthday we went to Iceland, saw volcanos and geyers and walked on glaciers. Did I say we went in December? Cold and dark but a great adventure. This photo shows Maureen swimming in the Blue Lagoon, one of Iceland's most incredible natural wonders.

5.  I can't imagine my life without her; she has become my sister. Thank you, Donna, the mutual friend who introduced us because, "y'all are so much alike I know you'll be friends." She was right. 

Stonehenge, 1992

 Happy birthday, Maureen.

Things I Swore I'd Never Do When I Was Young That Now I Do All The Time

The title of this post is pretty self-explanatory, so I guess I'll just plunge right in.

1.  Wear knee-high stockings. As a young woman, and even into my thirties, I despised knee-highs. I saw them as the height of laziness and a sign that the wearer had just given up on fashion and given in to pragmatism. Fast forward a few years (and I do mean FAST) and here I am. Not only do I wear knee-highs with dress pants, I wear them with SKIRTS, no less. Granted, it has to be a long, full skirt with no chance of revealing the tops of the knee-highs, but it's a skirt all the same. My mother's voice is ringing in my head, "Famous last words. . . ."  

On occasion I do still put on a pair of pantyhose (and maybe some Spanx) but those occasions usually involve a photograph or a funeral where I'm going to see a lot of people who I've known all my life and who made fun of me for being fat when I was young but now they are old and fatter than me so I want to look as skinny as possible, HA!  But those occasions are rare.

Exhibit A: Here I am wearing Spanx and pantyhose, trying to hide what I lovingly(?) call my fat apron. (Scott has this look on his face because his hand is on my rear end.)








2.  Talk about and become obsessed about bowel movements, hereinafter referred to as BM. (I promise, no photos of this one!) I can remember just sitting back and rolling my eyes when Grandma or Mother talked to me about their digestive problems. Grandma always had constipation issues and Mother's leaned the other direction. I thought, "Why are these people so obsessed with going to the bathroom and so anxious to share all the details?" Now I know. About ten years ago I had a severe bacterial infection (Samonella) which caused a bleed from my colon and a trip to the hospital by ambulance. This experience activated my BM radar. 

Then about four years ago I sprained my ankle at a July 4th celebration and also injured the opposite leg trying to break my fall. This kept me off my feet for over a week. Before I had recovered, I came down with the flu, including a secondary bronchial infection. This knocked me down for another week or two, during which time everything slowed down. As an added bonus, because I had such a terrible cough from the bronchitis, the doctor gave me codeine (which causes constipation as a side effect.) Before I had fully recovered from the flu, I started having terrible pain near my bladder. The doctor did blood work but found no infection. She gave me Vicodine (yes, more codeine, remember the side effect) for the pain and told me to come back in 30 days. Fast forward, more tests, more Vicodine, referred to specialist, more Vicodine, biopsy, ultrasound, CT scan. Three more months of this. Finally the radiologist who read my abdominal CT said, "You know, you are really constipated."  Eureka! Four months of pain, thousands of dollars in health care and I found out I'm full of Sh**! 

Since then my BM radar is always on red alert. I never want to be in that condition again. So I am obsessed about it every day and now follow all the health tips to keep things moving.


3.  Wear a muumuu. I always believed that unless you lived in Hawaii, muumuus were not acceptable attire until you were about 80 years old and only then because you were in the nursing home and muumuus made it easy for the attendants to dress you. It was the same message as knee-highs. You had given up on fashion and were probably too fat to fit into anything else, so you wear a muumuu. I will now admit to owning and wearing two muumuus, ordered from The Vermont Country Store catalog, which offers a wide selection.

I have the snazzy little number at the bottom, left of the first page, "Muumuu on Safari" AND the one in the bottom, middle of the page above, "100% Woven Cotton Muumuu with a Unique Border Print, " both in red. I only wear them around the house, usually right after I get out of the pool. However, the highlighted recommendation on the first page says otherwise. Here is the text since you probably cannot read the scan. It is from Dr. Elizabeth G. (a doctor, so you know it's true:) "Your cotton floats and muumuus, pretty enough to wear 'out' and so marvelously comfortable, are what I live in when I am at home." There you have it -- doctor-recommended muumuus. I don't wear mine "out" yet, but you never know; if a doctor does it, so could I.


4.  Talk about how old I am and how things were so different when I was young. Wait. . . just go back to the top of this post and read again and it will click.


Thanks for stopping by.

The Silent Warrior

I am dog-sitting again this summer. My sister teaches school, so every year for the past three years, as soon as school breaks for the summer, she heads to Germany to spend several weeks with her daughter, whose husband is in the Air Force, stationed at Ramstein. Her dog Mattie spends the summer here with me. 

Mattie has been around a long time, about 15 years. We're not sure because she was rescued and all dates are estimated. My niece and her husband were stationed in Altus, OK at the time. Their neighbor found Mattie and her sister, stranded on the median of the highway, wet, shivering and scared. He brought them both home and kept one; my niece took the other. Eventually, because of frequent moves in the Air Force, Mattie came to live with my sister and her son, Michael. Michael adores Mattie and he is "her boy." 

Mattie is almost deaf now. She still hears a few things, but most of the time we communicate with hand signals. She can hear my dogs bark though, and sometimes she joins in, something she never does at home. She was the origin of my "Camp for Dogs" stories, because she came to my house and got to do all kind of things she wasn't allowed to do at home. It was a little like going to summer camp. But the majority of Mattie's days (and nights) are spent like this:

Last week, however, Mattie had a big adventure. It started about 2:00am one morning. Scott had stayed up late, as usual, and as was his routine, he let the dogs out one more time before coming to bed. Ruffles and Lucy eagerly anticipate this every night and run to the back door as soon as they hear him walking across the house. Mattie and I usually sleep through this process. On this night Ruffles and Lucy spot their dreaded enemy, the armadillo, on the porch, right outside the door. They go ballistic and Scott lets them out. They chase the poor creature all over the porch, with Ruffles snarling and trying to bite it, which she can't do. Armadillo remember? They make so much noise that finally even stone deaf Mattie wakes up and comes to the door to see what is going on. (Of course, I am sleeping through all of this thanks to Ambien.) Just as Mattie starts outside, the armadillo tries to make a break for freedom and heads for the same door. Mattie and the 'dillo collide and then her warrior instincts kick in. She starts snarling and barking and trying to bite the enemy, just like Ruffles. Lucy, as always, stands about three feet back from the fight, barking really loud. ("It's Shake and Bake and I helped!") Finally the 'dillo finds a gap in the fence that lines my flower beds big enough for escape but the dogs won't fit. They have to go down the steps, which gives the 'dillo just enough head start to get to the big fence and out of the yard. No harm, no foul.

When Scott finally manages to get all three dogs back inside, it's like the locker room at a winning football game. They are running around, excited, licking each other and barking. It's as if they are saying, "Wasn't that great? Did you see it when I barked real loud and then went for the neck? Wow, we ARE warriors."

Now every time they go outside, they head straight for the fence to see if the enemy has returned. Even Mattie joins in. Being a wily old veteran, her usual routine was to go outside, quickly do her business and then rush back in so she could be the first one to get the "cookie" reward. But her warrior blood is up and she must now go on patrol with the pack. The rest of the time she and Ruffles, who have now bonded over their battle, look like this:

And Lucy? Well, she considers it her job to be ever vigilant and sound the alarm. She is always watching . . . .

How I Spent My Summer Vacation (so far)

Well, since we last talked, I have been very busy. In fact, it's been a whirlwind summer. I returned from the European trip and stayed home a total of six days before Scott and I were off to Las Vegas. To be honest, the timing of this trip was not our choice, but we had promised to take our son, Ben, and his girlfriend for their first visit to Sin City and this was the only time frame they had open. (Ben is having to move to find a new job since he is one of the thousands of victims of Rick Perry's "Let's Make Sure None of My Rich Friends Pay More Taxes by Firing Teachers Instead" policy. But that's another story.)

While we were in Vegas I was able to get front row, center tickets to see Barry Manilow at Paris, where we stayed. I have been a Fanilow since 1975 and I make no apologies. I love him. They allowed cameras at the show, just no video, and I took nearly 70 photos during the 90 minute show. 

When we returned home, I stayed put for a grand total of eleven days before I was off to Marble Falls for a weekend at the lake house with a group of my best girlfriends. (OK, I know Marble Falls is just a little more than an hour away, but it still counts as a trip.) The weekend was relaxing and uplifting and I'm glad we finally were able to get together. By mutual agreement, there are no photos of this get-together; none of us wanted to end up on Facebook in our bathing suits!


So now I am home for the rest of the summer and happy to stay put for a while. I wrote one post while I was in Germany, the one about Memorial Day at the Luxembourg Cemetery. Since then I haven't written anything and I'm beginning to get a little itchy. I plan to spend some concentrated time writing during July, mostly because it will be too hot to do anything but swim and stay inside. 


But before I leave you today, I want to give you some of impressions of Germany. We had such a wonderful time and I took so many photographs that I am having trouble deciding what to share. So I'm going to the bottom line -- food. Here are some photos of some of the great food I had on my trip. Enjoy! I'll see you again soon.

Sugar Waffles, Bruges, Belgium

Beautiful bread, everywhere I went

White asparagus, a specialty in Bruges

Profiteroles with chocolate sauce

Apple pancake in Bruges; our favorite!

Raspberry pastry in Trier, Germany

Pretzels, everywhere in Germany

Fresh salad with chicken in Koblenz, waiting for the Rhine River cruise.

White asparagus toast & salad in Trier

Veal cordon bleu and vegetable quiche in Luxembourg.

Memorial Day

As some of you may know, I have been in Europe for the last two weeks, visiting my niece who lives in Glan-Munchweiler, Germany, near Ramstein AFB, where her husband is stationed. He is deployed right now to Qatar for six months, so I am here, keeping her company and "allowing" her to be my personal tour guide while he is gone.

I have been to Europe before, but this trip has been different, seeing it through the eyes of those who serve in our military services abroad. I've come to know some of the people in this community and see the sacrifices and accommodations they make every day, living away from America and representing our country. Their lives are not easy; they are not on a constant European vacation. I salute them all and thank them for their service.


In the past two weeks we have visited several military cemeteries. First, during a three-day excursion to Bruges, Belgium, we visited some of the WWI cemeteries in Flanders. This trip was so moving for me that I am still processing the experience. Like most Americans, I knew a lot more about WWII than I did about WWI. Having now seen that war through the eyes of the soldiers serving the British Commonwealth, I am overwhelmed with emotion that I may be able to write about at a later time.


Yesterday, Saturday, we were fortunate to be able to attend the Memorial Day service at the WWII American Military Cemetery and Memorial in Luxembourg. I thought it appropriate to share some of my thoughts and photos from that service with you as a Memorial Day tribute.

This cemetery is the resting place of 5076 soldiers killed during the "Battle of the Bulge," December 16, 1944 - January 25, 1945. It contains members of the "Band of Brothers," 101st Airborne Division, two medal of honor winners, one woman (a nurse) and the man who led all of them, General George Patton. 

Since General Patton did not die in battle, but as the result of an auto accident after the war, at his request he is not buried with his men, but off to the side, overlooking them.

The service itself was somber and dignified, a fitting tribute. It included a flyover, laying of wreaths by officials of the United States, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, the people of Luxembourg, the City of Luxembourg and the Government of Luxembourg. Each official was escorted by members of either a US or Luxembourg military service. 

Smaller wreaths were presented by representatives of various organizations and groups in Europe and on the US military bases. These were escorted by members of Boy, Girl and Cub Scout troops on the various bases in the area. 

Music was provided by the young men of the Miami University Glee Club and by the Luxembourg Army Band. The C Battery, 5th BN, 7th Air Defense Artillery of Kaiserslautern Germany performed a 21 Gun Salute. 

The Air Force also provided an honor guard.

Throughout the service, my head was in the movies, "Band of Brothers" and "Saving Private Ryan." I thought of the terrifying conditions on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day in June, 1944, and the battles fought not only with the enemy, but with the weather as the offensive continued in the winter of 1944-45. I could hear Tom Hanks as Captain Miller speaking to Mark Wahlberg's Private Ryan as he (the captain) lay dying, "Earn this." Earn the sacrifice of these good people, live your life valuing and protecting the principles they died for. And that's the message I took away from the day.

Each individual needs to fight to protect the individual freedoms guaranteed to Americans by the Constitution - freedoms of speech, privacy and more. Don't expect the military or the government to be the ones to do all the defending. Speak up when you see your rights threatened; use your vote to make your feelings known. Be passionate not passive. This was a Memorial Day I will never forget.

And so I leave you all with wishes for a wonderful holiday and the commission to spend at least a few minutes thinking about all those who have died in wars and are still dying today. I am sure I will have more to say, particularly about WWI, when I return home. Thanks for stopping by.