This is What Love Looks Like!

It’s been a tough week for my mom and our family. It’ s just not easy to be 93 with complications. There hasn’t been much hospital time in her adult life but the older you get, the harder it is to avoid and we all held our breath for that week away that she would come back home with herself intact. It seems that even though she needs a lot of sleep she is happy to be home with her dog and her husband. But her home has changed.

The rest of us have used this golden opportunity for a gentle intervention to renovate our family home to make it more user friendly for both of our parents. My dad has been on board with chair lifts, furniture changes, tubs transformed into showers, but it’s breaking our hearts to what my dad fume over an invasion by helpers. We have a staff of cleaning people a nurses now welcomed in to clean daily, take over the washing and drying of clothes, making meals and my dad is furious.

I am resolved to honor my dad and respect his frustrations. Of course it’s easy for me. I don’t live across the street. I can make my daily calls and offer support and some humor and then hang up. I can visit once or twice a week but it’s my brother and sister-in-law with the daily routines that are constantly broken. Dad, I’m thinking about you and about me.

What Does Love Look Like? #4 1-3-12

Happy New Year!

I’m working on a special digital project focused on Love and Romance in images and music. I am welcoming my online community to join me and share a photo or two to add to my collection.
Please join me…
blkdrama@mac.com

See you next month

Bonnie

One FInal Afternoon with the Singing Butler: SOLT & #3 1-2-12

Morning Slicers and Photo lovers,

I am going strong thinking about how I will be inspired to write on my blogs every day with a photo that captures something of my day. So, far, so good.

Yesterday I did finish this puzzle and it was a true challenge. I’m wondering now if I can find a space on one of my walls to freeze it and hang it. I used to do that when I didn’t have much real art but now, everything on my walls has been created. What do I take down?

I did love getting back to a puzzle but this particular one, while intriguing as a panting was not fun to put together. The colors were just too similar and while I used to feel a lot less guilty when I gave up precious time to put them together now, I feel down right guilty but I stay with it to finish…

I’m thinking about my digital piece about Schindler’s List. I was almost ready to put it up on a shelf as well, but no… I think I need to write into it again… I still need a great start… a start in real time and maybe less story… I don’t know…

I do have a new piece to work on… remember…. My What Love Looks Like… I have 25 contributors… do you have something to share in community piece? I’d love something from you.

blkdrama@mac.com

Bonnie

An afternoon with Mihael and Hugo: #3 1-1-12

An afternoon with a 7 year old, what could be better?

An afternoon with a 7-year-old at the movies: Hugo with 3D glasses and a bag of popcorn and a movie about movies and imagination…

Lucky me!

An Afternoon Preparing for 2012 #2 12-31-11

An afternoon at the mall for a new look at the MAC counter in Macy’s.  That’s Mac for makeup, not computers.  for a solid hour I had an artist on my face, listening closely to my particular interests. Sure it needs some toning down, but Kim did hear me and for New Year’s and beyond, I was ready to look into the camera for another year

Project 365 Kick Off: An Afternoon With… #1 12-27-11

A Dreary afternoon to kick off this cool new challenge…a funeral in the morning…the last of three in the past few months.  A triumvirate of widows has been created.

Another Birthday Event

Sunday was a good day, a perfect day for a birthday. Tuvia over time, has gotten into my 24-hour celebration state of mind, and this year at 5am, in inky darkness he delivered his 12 roses and card to my side of the bed and off we went…

It was my day and often it overwhelms me. I try and slow down time and of course, I fail.  But I choreographed this one well and saved the dinner for last, at my Rockland fave X.  We shared a Cowboy Rib-eye steak with great wine and trimmings and when I could barely walk to the car, dessert was still waiting back home: Tara, is was….a Red Velvet Crumbs Cupcake, of course and a heaping mound of  vanilla frozen yogurt with white chocolate chips and raspberries.

But in the midst of all that wild abandon there was time grooved in for the movie version of “Sarah’s Key”. As usual, the book is better, but it’s still a watcher..

So it was a rich day.  A day where expectations were met and then some…

Check out the almost life-sized bear behind me in the photo.  That arrived with Mihael (7) and Mia(5). That was actually when the celebration began.

62, I’m ready for you!

Sharing the Train with T

I am not used to traveling by train with T.  Usually  I take the seat by the window and the precious outlet in the Quiet Car and slowly take out my tech toys. I write  a bit, read, nap, snack, chat in the whisper on the phone and just enjoy the experience and I wondered what it would be like sharing my bit of private pleasure.

It was sweet having my partner to sleep on.  Often I wonder what happens when I fall asleep next to a stranger. Do I snore, drool, slump over on his territory?  So far, no complaints but it was sweet having a familiar shoulder.

It was all good, navigating the familiar for my guest.

Now in our hotel I’m hoping that we wake up to a cool breeze to great us into the morning and to the march.

Fingers crossed!

Returning to DC with Hope?

We are about to return to Washington tomorrow for the Save our Schools march.  I have been back a few times but Tuvia will be riding the train with me and returning for the first time since we celebrated together, Barack Obama’s Inauguration.

Since then there have been many conversations at our dinner tables and while Tuvia is sensitive and respectful about my educational passions and frustrations, he has not lost any hope in the President.  He is coming along for the march on Saturday, more for me than out of any great motivation, after all, he is not in the ed biz.

For me, the march does not come from a feeling of winning but from the sadness that kids are coming out the losers in the rise of the rich and the elimination, as we know it of the middle class.  I can’t say much about the poor. Who really speaks for them?

We will attend the presentations on Saturday, as long as the weather doesn’t broil us, but I’m at a loss at how to stop the powers that be.

Of course, our Hudson Valley Writing Project will fight to survive, but what about the National Writing Project?  What about future teachers, students now..

I go to sleep most nights with thoughts of the future feeling dim.

But tomorrow we are off for DC and joining with like minded friends and colleagues and educational leaders who will inspire us but what then?

I know that’s on many peoples’ minds.

What next?  How long will it take to wake up the “reformers” that they are on the wrong track?