Melanie

Stepping outside to pay the guy who plows our driveway. " The roads are awful", he said. "So much ice."  "Look at all that ice running down the corner of your house."  "Yes, (says I) my daughter has an ice jam on their roof, they have to go up there tonight because it's leaking."
"Do you want me to shovel off the roof tomorrow?"
"I don't know, let's see if we need it"
As soon as he drives away, my husband looks out on the porch and tells me the roof is leaking, the porch is wet and so are the boxes of books that we rescued from the basement. AARGH! Of course I called the guy on his cell phone to say yes, we do want him to come tomorrow to clear the roof. Meanwhile, I am emptying the boxes consisting of  collections of all the series of RL Stine, Goosebumps, Animorphs, Christopher Pike, Dragon Lance, and hundreds of Highlights for Children magazines from the '80s and '90s. There are certain grandchildren who might like them, and certain people who love having complete collections of books, so I'd hate to get rid of them. SPACE MUST BE MADE!
Isn't winter fun?

So I was in a supermarket and they were playing Christmas music, no surprise there. And I heard a familiar song, but I wasn't paying attention, until I heard " merry Christmas, if we want it, merry Christmas, now..oww..oww ow.  And I realize that this is John Lennon's song And so this is Christmas/war is over and the lyrics should be war is over if we want it and WTF! ! Are we censoring? Is it suddenly unpatriotic to wish for peace? What country are we living in? Never mind peace, clearly whoever did this should be killed. It's sacrilege to mess with John's music in the first place, but what this implies about where this country has gone in the last eight years just boggles the mind. I would go on, but my cat is dead, my boy is coming home and I must go.

My last pet died today. She was very old, and we'd kept her with us this last year by catering to her food preferences; not this brand of cat food, not that flavor, only in this kind of dish. It was time for her to go, and we were (almost) ready for it. Last year we buried the dog and another cat. My house will be cleaner and quieter.
But this was the last pet of my children, the last with a story to tell of the acquiring, how she was born on Nikki's bed, how Nikki thought she would run away from home with nothing but the kitten and a can of cat food (no can opener though!) no boy-and-his-dog stories. If I ever get another animal (and I'm not saying never, but at this time I'm thinking not) it would be the pet of my old age, and just ours. The continuity, the connection with the years of my growing family is gone.
We need to bury her before the ground freezes again, but it's too late and rainy tonight. We may do the funeral tomorrow. Wish us well.

 Yesterday, after the thunderstorms, I was driving down to Monroe to see a new baby and mom. Before I got on the thruway I saw a beautiful rainbow, which never ceases to impress me. (growing up in Queens the only rainbows I had ever seen were in oil slicks on the road)  After I got on the road the rainbow continued to get brighter and brighter, until the colors were literally as bright as the sun, and the lines delineating all 7 colors were clear and sharp. As the road curved, suddenly the rainbow was almost directly in front of me, filling the sky, and that's when all the cars started pulling over to stop and stare at this amazing phenomena. I even saw a police car put away the radar trap and park alongside the highway to look. People were taking pictures, but I didn't  think my cell phone cam would do it justice (because I still don't really know how to work it) 
When I spoke of this to my Chasidic clients, they said that one is not supposed to look at it. You know the story that the rainbow was God's symbol to Noah after the flood that he wouldn't send another flood to destroy the world? Well, they said that the rainbow appearing is God reminding us that we still deserve to be destroyed, He's just holding back . I had never heard this part before, I'm about to go look this up. Has anyone heard of this before?
It was still the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen, and I'm still amazed.

 OK, so I wrote this whole post about labor and babies and life and now I see no sign of it. And I tried this again, same deal. Happy Birthday to my lovely daughter who made me a mother and we'll see if this shows up. Testing, testing 1...2....3....

Did you ever have a time when Serendipity smiles, when you're in the right place at the right time? Not often enough! Well, today it worked. I was invited to a birthday party for one of  "my" babies who is now 4, and told I could bring children. Kae was able to bring all 3 kids to me, and it was great. They played outside on the blow up bouncy thing, the sand/birdseed table, the water slide, etc., I saw several old friends, former clients with all grown up babies, the kids got their faces painted and got huge all day sucker lollipops. Then tonight was the night for the Woodstock fireworks display! In contrast to the 4th of July, when it poured and is always crazed, this was 5 minutes from my house, gorgeous weather, not too crowded, and the best display I have seen in years. We were right underneath the fireworks, I was actually a little scared they would hit us, we were that close. The kids played in the playground for a while afterwards, we waited so we would have no traffic when we left. Then we came home, scrubbed teeth and faces and they went to sleep like angels in spite of the sugar overdose. People pay a fortune to come to this town for a vacation from the city, but I live here and seldom take advantage of the tourist activities. Last night, seeing my mother and her beau arm in arm on a picnic blanket watching Shakespeare in the park was worth the price of the FREE admission. Resolution: we must do these things more often.