The vasty deep

SPOILER ALERT: This post may be depressing.

One of the things that has surprised me about settling into my forty's is the number of times I've spent comforting my parents when a friend of their's dies. My parents have a lot of friends; they are in their 70's, and unfortunately over the last couple of months, they've lost a lot of people close to them.

A recent conversation with my father:

ME: How's Mr. Condon doing? (Back story: right before Thanksgiving, a dear friend of my parents, a contractor who had rebuild their kitchen about 18 years ago, had been diagnosed with Kidney cancer. Being 82, he had decided not to undergo surgery.)
DAD: Oh, he died.

Then there was silence. The last couple of times I had asked this question when I talked to my dad is that his friend was still in the hospital, but was doing ok.

A couple of weeks later, when I was in San Francisco with my mother for Erin's baby shower, she casually mentioned that Mrs. MacVicar had died. Being in her late 80's, she was one of my parents' older friends. She hadn't been sick, so it was a bit of a shock. A couple of weeks later, my dad told me that Mr. MacVicar had died. He had been my father's barber for 20 years. A couple of years ago, my mother made my dad stop seeing him, because he would cut and talk and cut and talk and talk and talk, and my father would come back with a very choppy cut with very little hair left. He really enjoyed talking to Fred though.

Before the recent spate, in October, there was also Mr. Fagan, one of my parents' oldest friends from the Irish crowd. He died of a long battle with Prostate Cancer. His death was somewhat of a comfort - he had been sick for six or seven years. Shockingly, two months later in the days leading up to Christmas, another friend from the NJ Irish crowd, Mr. Lynch, died suddenly at home.

They have lost five friends in six months. When I was up visiting my dad the weekend of my nephew's and my birthday we were talking about it. After a draining conversation, he simply said, "Kerry, I'm just tired of going to funerals."

Last week, my cousin Maureen sent an email about my Aunt Totta, her mother. She had been diagnosed with Bladder Cancer. She's 78, and she's my last aunt/uncle on my mother's side. The other three, my mother's brother and sister, and my mother's sister's husband, have died of cancer. There is way too much of that disease in my extended family. She's doing well right now, but I keep thinking it's just a matter of time.

Right now, I've very thankful for my parents' health. Even considering my dad's heart attack from two years ago, they're both relatively healthy.

gadgets

I have a thing for gadgets. I'm just really intrigued by things that can make certain tasks easier but are, in reality, totally unnecessary. I could be wrong, but it seems like a truly American thing to get the brightest minds together to come up with devices to make life in the US even more convenient, as long as you have the means to buy them For example, the image to the left is an egg topper, that allows one to remove the top of a hard boiled egg without burning one's fingers.

I recently received an electric toothbrush for my birthday, and was so excited that for a moment I thought that this was the best present I'd received in a long time - dental hygiene is high up on my list. I'm convinced that my teeth are so much cleaner, and that my dentist is going to be so happy with me the next time I see him. This is what the best devices do; they make people believe that machines are the way to better living.

Other devices that are in my future (that is, once I'm returned to full time work...):

The KitchenAid stand mixer: A friend once told me that this kitchen tool is one reason to get married; it at least has to be the number one item that brides (and some grooms) put on their registry. It's an expensive item, and probably not one that many people receive as a gift. The last guy I dated had one, and I really took it as a sign that things were going to last - he knew how to cook and appreciated well made gadgets. Alas, that was not the case, so maybe I should take the stand mixer off its pedestal. I don't have room for it anyway.


The at home seltzer maker: A couple of my friends have one of these, and it's just a brilliant idea. I love seltzer, but don't buy it often since bottles quickly lose their fizz. The Europeans (or at least the Irish) were way ahead of us on this invention. When I was younger and my family took a vacation to Ireland, one of my parents' friends had one of these, and I've wanted one ever since (that was 1985). Fresh seltzer all the time. You can also carbonate anything - imagine fizzy coffee...luckily, this item doesn't take up much counter space.

Now if only Apple and Verizon would work things out, I'd finally have an iPhone. I may need to look into the HTC Incredible or the Google Nexus One.

The Compound

For the past six years, I've gone upstate for a weekend around my birthday since it's also the time of my nephew Parker's birthday. Seven years ago I spent my birthday in the hospital waiting for him to be born; he finally arrived at 4AM on March 26th, missing my birthday by mere hours (dang kids, always trying to upstage the adults).

In the last two years, he's gotten very bratty about gifts, and if he sees a GAP box he moans and groans and completely mortifies my sister. He hates getting clothes. Unfortunately for him, that's usually what I get for him. As I've told him, he grows too fast, and he can't walk around naked. This year, I got him a pair of Converse sneakers, denim colored, which he liked.

After a dinner of pizza and ice cream cake (Carvel with the chocolate crunchies) I went up to the Compound with my dad. The next morning, I saw the destruction my parents have been talking about since the blizzard that brought them 21 inches of wet, heavy snow; large tree branches down all over the yard, and smaller trees destroyed by the larger branches that fell. The yard was littered with the wooded casualties of that storm. The late February storm was a boon for the tree removal industry of Dutchess County; it was only this Saturday night that the contractor called my dad to tell him that they were coming out on Sunday to start the work, more than four weeks after the storm.

I returned back to the city today on the 12:50 train. I wanted to get back so I could pay attention to Salem and make my usual Sunday yoga class. At the Beacon train station, this group of four got on the train, and immediately two small dogs started barking. I looked up from my book, and sitting across the aisle from me were two guys, both probably 6-feet tall, dressed in fake fur squirrel costumes. One was carrying a briefcase and wearing a "I heart NY" t-shirt. One of their companions asked if I would switch seats with them since she wanted to get the Hudson River in the background of the photos. I of course complied with their request - how could I refuse two guys willing to go out in public dressed as squirrels? Lots of passengers were asking questions, and the conductor joked with them about forgetting his squirrel traps. One of the squirrels quipped that that is how he lost an uncle. There were lots of photos taken, and they ended up getting off the train at Tarrytown. Story is, they were putting together a proposal for an "I heart NY" campaign.

People like that are indeed a reason to love NYC.

Moving

My office is moving. The partners are looking for a permanent space (my fingers are crossed for the space at 39 Broadway, a 15 minute walk for me), but for the next three to six months, we will be in the same building seven floors down.

As I've been cleaning up my desk, I'm having to finally deal with all the personal items that have accumulated under my desk over the past 4 1/2 years, such as:
A picnic basket: I inherited this from an ex-coworker who was moving to New Orleans. This has been under my desk for, oh, maybe 18 months?
A single black slingback shoe: I'm hoping it's match is at home.

A pair of black patent leather heels: These have only been there for a week. By the end of the day, my feet were killing me, so I wore another pair of shoes home that had been sitting under my desk for a couple of weeks.

An insulated lunch bag: Not really sure how long that's been there.

A lamp: Not sure about that one. Maybe free swag from ICFF?

A vase: Flowers from my 40th birthday. Almost exactly a year ago.

15 CDs: Half of them are from the Score! subscription a group of friends got me for my birthday last year, so they've been under the desk for the past couple of months. Brought them in to add to my iTunes.

A 15 foot long carpet runner: This was a new addition to the under the desk collection last week. Benefits of working in an architect's office.

I swear, I'm not a hoarder.

Soda Bread, Corned Beef, and all things Irish

Growing up in an Irish community, St. Patrick's Day was a big day for celebration. When my sisters and I were in elementary school, we would give an Irish Step Dancing demonstration in all the other classes in the school. My mother cooks corned beef and cabbage for dinner every March 17th, and she would bake a soda bread in the morning (that is not reserved strictly for March 17th though). After an overindulgence of currants when I was four years old I would pick them out of the bread when ever she served it - my mother would keep boxes of them in the pantry since they were hard to find, and Erin and I split a box of them once (about 2 cups between us). That experience ruined my stomach lining for a while, and I couldn't stand the sight of the shriveled fruits for a long time - this also extended to raisins since they were so similar.

No matter what my aversion was to currants, I liked the taste that they left in the bread. Since the recipe was my Nana's (my Irish born grandmother), I always saw currants as the authentic fruit for Irish Soda Bread. To this day, when I see The Bread with raisins, I scoff and dismiss it as a pretender.

This predisposition against raisins left me surprised when my cousin Maureen was raving about her Soda Bread recipe which she had gotten from her mother (my mother's sister-in-law). I assumed it was the same recipe, but she sent it to me, and it was not. Her recipe called for raisins, and also eggs and baking powder. Shocking! I was all astonishment. It differs from my mother's recipe quite a bit, and I assume that its a totally different type of bread. We've agreed to try each other's recipes since we each swear by the one we have used for years. We'll see.

Yoga Challenge 2

It's yoga challenge time again at OM Yoga, the yoga studio where I practice. By 'challenge' they mean practicing yoga everyday, and the most challenging thing I've found has been finding time to do yoga every day. Out of the past 15, I've only missed 4 days, which is a 73% success rate. Two of the days were due to work deadlines, one due to a hangover (damn strong dark and stormies at the Harbor School Benefit!), and one because I felt I needed a break. I'm half way through, we'll see how the rest of the month goes.

I've been taking a lot of classes with Brian, one of the senior instructors who I hadn't taken classes with before. He's very soft spoken and relaxing to be around, which is good characteristics for a yoga teacher. He also talks about movies and TV during class, and that's entertaining - it loosens things up, sometimes yoga can be so serious. The other day he was talking about Alice in Wonderland, today The Partridge Family.

Strangely, all this yoga is making me want to run. I've been running on Fridays and Sundays, days that I don't need to be up for work or boat maintenance. I tried getting up this morning to run, but with daylight savings, that just wasn't going to happen. Maybe tomorrow.

SPRING!

I know it's still technically winter, and we just got through a powerful Nor'easter, but with the arrival of Daylight Savings Time it feels like Spring has arrived. I'm looking forward to it being light later, I'm looking forward to it continually getting warmer, and I'm looking forward to sitting in sidewalk cafes.

In a way, it reminds me of Spring days in Blacksburg, where after dinner, people would gather at Henderson Hill to catch the last sunshine of the day, drinking coffee (or eating ice cream) from Gillies. It would stay light until about 8PM, and the architects would all resign themselves to getting back to Cowgill Hall to finish our projects.

It's also time for Spring cleaning. Cleaning is definitely a chore, but in looking at my closet and shelves, I need to cleanse. I'm going to try to start that today.