We're Sorry: This Program Has Been Unexpectedly Interrupted

I'm really mad at the television.

Actually, I guess I'm more angry at the cable service, or maybe it's the TiVo ~ whatever the root of the problem, it's caused us to miss some of our favorite programs.

I'm not a huge TV fan, and for about 22 hours of the day I wouldn't care whether I even owned one or not.  But it's become a part of our nighttime ritual to wind-down by settling into the big leather recliner sofa with our favorite snacks (wine and pita chips for me, lemonade and peanuts for J.) and watch some TV together.   We TiVo the things we like, so we usually have a line up of things to choose from, although since Dancing With the Stars, American Idol, Parenthood, and Modern Familyhave all ended for the season, the pickings are a little slimmer.

That's another reason I'm so annoyed with this situation - there's very little to watch right now, so I can't afford to lose any of it. And for some reason, our TiVo sometimes just stops working in the middle of recording a show.  There's no rhyme or reason to it, and it can happen at any point during the programming.  It's become a crap shoot whether we'll "get" the entire episode of anything we record.  The worst thing was the finale of Dancing With the Stars - we had recorded the episode, and were watching it semi-live (about 30 minutes behind the live version). But the TiVo zonked out exactly at the point where Tom Bergeron said "And the Season 11 Champion of Dancing With the Stars is....."

Freeze frame - then nothing.

Man, was I hopping mad.

Since then, we've lost parts of episodes of Parenthood, Men of A Certain Age, and Modern Family.  It's even worse than if it didn't record at all, because you're 15 or 20 minutes into the show when suddenly the picture freezes and the TiVo blip off. Losing the network shows isn't so bad, because thanks to the internet and some great VGA cables we can see them via computer on the big screen TV.  But when Jim completely missed two of his favorite car races last weekend -that was apparently the last straw. The friendly service man from our Optimized Cable Company will be here on Wednesday.

I feel like a crotchety old lady when I complain about stuff like this.  But our evening TV time is one of those small pleasures that become very important in a relationship.  Way back when we were first married, we'd settle out there in the same TV room and watch the Mary Tyler Moore show - and I'm talking first run episodes here, so you know how long our evening TV ritual has been in existence.  It gives us a chance to relax, laugh (or sometimes cry, depending on what we're watching), and take our minds off our own problems for a while before going to sleep.  You'd be surprised, but some very interesting and even intimate conversations have arisen as a result of television shows.

So I'm hoping there's a quick fix to this problem and we can get our reliable TiV0 system back in order before the new seasons of Rescue Me, The Closer, and Mad Men begin.

How about you? Do you and your partner have long standing rituals that help you relax and unwind at the end of the day?

My Friendly ACO Hardware Store

I've been sprucing up the outdoors a bit lately, adding in some new plants, putting new layers of mulch around the shrubs, getting hanging pots up.  First of course there was beaucoup weeding to be done - we've had so much rain this year, the weeds have been soaking it up like drunkards and growing like the proverbial you know what. I've fallen in love with my neighborhood ACO hardware store, because they have absolutely everything I need, even though it's crammed into a fairly tiny space. I've found everything from greeting cards to pet food to planters and pool covers in this little gem of a store. It's also a nice change from the huge warehouse stores like Home Depot or Costco.  Even stores like Walmart make me a little nervous - they're just too big.  I kind of enjoy pottering around in a small, cluttered store. At ACO, there are even friendly sales people wandering around who seem only to happy to help.

I'll be going back tomorrow, because I've finally found the garden bench I want. I just need to take my husky helper with me to get it. They also have a bird bath that matches, and I'm thinking about getting the pair of them.

Why not, right? Summer is just too short..might as well make the most of it in as many ways as possible.

The Pressure's Rising

You know, I expected to feel a lot less pressure than I'm feeling right about now. I knew this week and next week would be kind of busy.  Actually, I knew most of June would be kind of busy.  But there's been a few unexpected surprises (a couple of "special projects" from my old workplace, which I've agreed to do, and then the realization that I've promised book reviews on two books next week, neither of which I've read yet) which have combined to send me into a tiny bit of a tither.

But no more than a tiny bit.  Because I know this spate of stuff is short lived, and that come July 1, I will have free time galore.

Yeah, right.  And I  know of some swampland in Florida I can sell you on the cheap.  Really. I do.

I had a meeting tonight with my friend Pat, the (now retired) teacher I worked with for many years when I was accompanying full time.  She's running a week long musical theater camp for middle schoolers next week (yes, I'm accompanying). In the fall, she's starting a theater group which will be based at the church where she's now musical director.

Last week, she celebrated her 70th birthday. But she continues to think about new things to do, new ways to provide great opportunities for kids and adults in her community, new ways to help her church grow its membership, new ways to have a fulfilling life. She's extra excited about the camp next week because her 13 year old granddaughter will coming in from out of town to attend the camp and stay with her grandma for the whole week.

I love working with Pat - as extroverted as she is, she's also an only child like me, and she gets the whole only child thing about needing time and space, and being in control of one's life. She works harder at getting herself "out there" than I've ever been able to do.  But she inspires me all the time.

So in many ways, it's Pat I'm channeling when I do things like sign up for online courses in writing creative nonfiction.  I'm in the midst of my first one of those right now...it was offered by a blogger friend whose writing and philosophy of life I admire, so it seemed like the perfect way to get my feet wet in terms of taking my writing practice to another level.

This was our first week of "class," and so there were reading and writing assignments to add into my already busy schedule.  But I'm excited about working with Andi, and also about meeting more people who are interested in expanding their writing horizons. It's already been fun and challenging and inspiring.

I've set up a separate page here at the Byline where I will post my "writing assignments" for that class, should you be interested in seeing what we're all about.

So, how about you? Is your summer starting out with high pressure, or are things more low key? And which do you prefer?

Grandmothering in the 21st Century

When I was about six years old, my maternal grandparents came to live with us.  At that time, we had just moved into a brick ranch house in one of the many ubiquitous subdivisions of homes that had risen from the landscape in response to the post WWII baby boom.  This house was slightly different from the majority of others in the neighborhood, in that the basement had been "finished" - meaning it was paneled and carpeted and sectioned off into three rooms, including a complete kitchen and bathroom.  Although my grandparents slept upstairs  in one of the three bedrooms, they spent most of their time in the basement.  At least my grandmother did, for she took over that basement kitchen and ran it much like Gordon Ramsay would do. My mother was occasionally allowed to assist her with the cooking process, but the rest of us just tried to stay out of her way. As a child, I loved having my grandparents living with us. My grandfather was an ever present source of companionship. A gentle, soft spoken man, he taught me to ride a bike and play poker, all in the same summer. He always had patience with me and my friends, and would happily drive us anywhere we wanted to go, never saying a word no matter how loud we giggled or how silly we acted.  My grandmother was perpetually busy, flitting from one project to the next - cooking, sewing, gardening, cleaning. I can still see her on a hot summer day, pulling loaves of freshly baked bread from the oven and serving it up with fresh butter and tall, sweating glasses of iced tea. Yet she was the one I'd go to with a book to be read aloud, or to ask for a song to be played on the piano so I could dance or sing along. She'd also stand patiently by while I rolled out tiny pie crusts, dusting the floor with flour, in my futile attempts to mimic her stellar baking ability.

From an adult's perspective, I see the flaws in this arrangement.  My grandmother, although the picture of soft, southern serenity on the outside, was really tough as nails. She ran the house as if it were her own, thus never allowing my mother to develop her own style of domestic engineering. My grandfather took on many of  my father's rightful roles around the house, roles he had forfeited in favor of long hours spent running his successful business.

But the constant presence of loving grandparents was an astounding gift to me. And not only did I have both my grandparents with me throughout my entire childhood, my great grandmother lived right across the street! I have wonderful memories of spending Saturday nights with her, watching the Lawrence Welk Show, eating Fritos and drinking Coke.

Because my grandparents were such an integral part of my daily life - and my son's life too, since my own parents lived around the corner from us during his entire childhood - I developed a lot of expectations about being a grandparent.  I somehow took it for granted that if/when I became a grandmother, I would duplicate the role made famous by my own grandmother and mother. I would be a constant, daily presence in my grandchild's life, always available to play games, read stories, host overnight's, do the carpool.  I'd be the lifesaver when mom and dad needed a night out or a weekend away.

I would be There with a capitol T.

But I'm beginning to realize it's not going to be that simple.

The big difference, of course, is that my grandchild will live over 1,000 miles away.  Not down the hall, not even down the street.  It's a (long!) two day car ride to Dallas, or three hours (and almost $400 a ticket!) on a plane.  Pretty hard to be at someone's beck and call under those circumstances.  Even if I can manage a trip down every month or two, it's certainly not the same as dropping by after nap time to go to the park, or running over to babysit at a moment's notice, or coming along to doctor's appointments and shopping trips to provide an extra pair of hands.

So how do I reconcile this picture I have in my head of what it means to be a grandmother with the reality of the kind of grandmother I'll have to be in the 21st century?  The kind who reads stories on Skype instead of snuggled in the rocking chair, or the kind of comes to stay for a few days every once in a while, bringing gifts and disrupting the daily schedule.  The kind who's an interesting, probably welcome, presence but not part of one's life, not really.

Not the way my grandmother was for me.

Not the way I wanted to be.

It feels a little bit like reinventing the wheel, at least my family's version of it. There are no long distance grandmothers in our family, so there are no role models to follow. But if I think about most of my friends and their grandchildren, I realize that this situation is definitely not unusual in today's world. Of all my friends who are grandmothers, only three of them have grandchildren who are "local."

"You just have to enjoy every second when you're with them," my friend G. told me. "Don't do anything else but be present with whatever they want to do."

It seems I'll be blazing a new trail here in the months and years ahead, but at least I'll have some company. We'll just have to see where it leads.

Now tell me, all of you who are long distance grandparents, what's your best advice?

Ain't It Grand?

Technology, that is. Here I sit on the sofa in the living room of my son's beautiful new home in Dallas, typing away on this tiny little tablet that's no bigger that a child's picture book. Soon, I'll touch the bright blue "publish" button and send this little post out into the world where it will be read by people who have become my friends, even though I've never laid eyes upon them or heard the sound of their voices.

But then just yesterday we saw, clearly outlined on the screen of a computer, the first image of our grandchild, his/her tiny face in absolutely perfect profile, nestled snugly inside that safe cocoon where he/she can grow until it's time to greet the world. We heard the strong and steady heartbeat that, having now begun, will not stop again, God willing, for perhaps nearly 100 years.

And as amazing as is the technology that brought us those images and sounds, it can't hold a candle to the miracle of that life and the promise it holds.