Great speech, Hillary!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!
Everyone's excited about school starting again. I've been school supply shopping and of course to American Eagle.

I remember in high school I had one pair of Calvin Kleins and one pair of Gloria Vanderbilts. Did I ever have Jordache? Anyway, we were mostly Sears with a dash of brand name labels. I appreciate that I can fill out most of my kids' wardrobes at Target.

What was your favorite item of clothing when you were trying to be cool in school?

I took my two oldest kids and their teenage guests visiting from Ohio on the Annapolis Ghost Tour last night during the full moon. It was quite enjoyable, despite their young fears that it might be too much like a history class. I often lingered at the sight for a photo, hoping to catch a ghoulie on film. At the scariest house, I got spooked, cold, goosebumps, and ran to catch up. They have a haunted pub crawl that I want to sign up for next - especially if I have booked a room in one of the centuries old haunted inns right there by the State Capital.

Have you ever encountered a ghost? Do you believe in them? I haven't knowingly encountered one, but I believe in them. That's why I can't watch those scary movies.

Here's the chaos just below my surface:




I'm trying to keep all the seepage and stench in check, but sometime is just creeps right in. It takes quite an effort to control

Because the Ex is well connected, I got to go to the Jonas Brothers' concert Wednesday night in Baltimore with my kids. I was annoyed at myself for forgetting my earplugs, not due to the loud music so much: it was the thousands of shrieking girls. My son was happy that Demi Lovato opened for the JoBros. He was in the gender minority, although I heard no complaints.

In case you are not living with children between the ages of 10 & 15, the JoBros are all the rage in Disney boy bands. They put on quite an entertaining show with lasers and pyrotechnics. They had an eight piece string band playing, all beautiful young women in red. I imagine this is not the venue their parents had in mind when they were driving them to lessons. But I bet it pays better than many violin gigs.

So the kids got to sit in the second row at the end of the catwalk - almost in touching distance. No binoculars necessary. Tim & I sat about 20 rows behind them. When seated, you could look sideways and see all the other parents in attendance. We had a silent camaraderie beneath the hysterical shrieking.

What was your first concert?

I went camping last week with my 13 year old son and three buddies of his at Tuckahoe State Park. This one picture sums up why I did it. We had so much fun without a kaper chart or strict schedule. Doesn't everything taste better when cooked over a campfire?

I had a mini-cabin with beds & AC for the grown-ups and let the boys set up a tent for themselves around the corner, just out of sight of the cabin.

Mark joined me the first evening and Mom the next. During their overlap, the three of us left the boys behind and went to the nearby Adkins Arboretum. We arrived with less than an hour before closing and the clerk in the gift shop suggested a trail with artwork installed throughout it. She warned us that some of the artwork was "a little weird." Sounded perfect.

The first artwork we mistook for pollution, perhaps an abandoned scout project? But then we figured it out. It really was cool, despite the humid heat and bugs. The giant sweaters were called "Tree Huggers." One of my favorites was a network of fine wires with crystal beads that looked a bit like a spiderweb with dewdrops, although it didn't photograph well.

I may have played my last Chutes & Ladders game last week, well, at least with my own child. Do you remember that game?

The little pictures create a sort of morality primer of actions and consequences for children. The playing pieces all have children joyfully skipping through their game lives. I counted and there are more chutes than ladders, so at least that aspect is realistic. One picture of a child scarfing down a plateful of cookies is connected with a chute to a picture of a sick child. A boy eating vegetables is connected with a ladder to the same boy measuring his height. A girl sweeping the floor now has money to go to the movies. A boy rescuing a cat from a tree gains a loving pet with the longest ladder on the board. The longest chute involves a precariously located cookie jar and injury.

If we were to create an adult version, what would some of the chutes and ladders be? A father smiling at his child walking in with a puppy with a chute to the same man picking up poo in the yard? A plateful of cookies with a chute to cellulite in a swimsuit? A woman midway through a row of shot glasses connected by a chute to the same woman with sunglasses and a bag of ice? A man offering a little square envelope to a woman connected by a ladder to a clean bill of health?

I saw a big boat rolling down Rt 50 toward Annapolis with "Romans 8:28" in gold letters on the back. By Annapolis standards, it was a modest cabin cruiser. I couldn't remember the verse, but had a guess. I was wrong. It's the verse that says,
"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."

For God so loved the world so much, well, he loved some folks so much, that he gave them large recreational vehicles.

My youngest daughter just finished two weekends of nine performances of an original full length musical, "Camp Hawyah." You can read more about the show in the review I got to write for the Annapolis paper. It was great fun, very entertaining, and I'm glad it is over.

















My small attempt at a garden is doing well, but I need your help. I purchased some flowers for a fund raiser and they are all thriving. The problem is that my friend accidentally gave me someone else's order too. I didn't remember what I ordered and just planted everything. My Four O'clocks look great, but what is this little red flower?

Another fun story was one our guide told us as we punted down the Cam River in Cambridge behind several universities with centuries-old rivalries: St. John's, Trinity, King's College, Magdalene.



One recent night, a King rival scaled the right spire of the school's ancient cathedral and looped a toilet seat over the top finial. Upset school officials decided to build a scaffolding to retrieve the offense. On the third night, as the scaffolding was closing in on its goal, the prankster crawled back up there like Spidey, took back the King's Crown, and replaced it on the left spire.

School officials took down the extensive scaffolding and shot the thing down with a rifle. Now, the base of the two spires are belted with lethal spikes. There has been no more of that tomfoolery. According to our tour-guide/punter, there has been collegiate mischief and mayhem along the canals for centuries.





What fun ghosts must haunt the place! But we had to leave before the ghost tour, darnit.

Included are pictures of hapless strangers who had trouble with guiding their craft.

At last...
(I guess I took my sweet time settling back into a routine. Took a while to find this new summer one.)

Here is my favorite story from our trip to England.

My son had a serious religious experience.
On the first full day of touring, he left his backpack, with the new iPod and a loaded wallet in a taxi cab. No need for scolding because he was distraught, physically ill. "I'm so sorry, Mommy, I'm so sorry." poor heartbroken guy. He just had to suck it up and continue with the afternoon's touring, which he did well. That night we filed a report with the city taxi service, but they said it takes a week to process all the stuff brought in. (Seems we weren't the only ones.)

During the week we toured several cathedrals: St. Paul's, Ely, Westminster Abbey, Canterbury. In each one, my son put down 20p for a candle, lit one and prayed that his "lost things be found." (He's carrying my backpack for me in the picture.)

Well, thank God that on departure morning, we called the taxi lost & found and they had the backpack and all of its contents. Amazing! (Enter rays of divine sunshine and angel band)

He was overjoyed but said very seriously to me, "Now I have to go to church every Sunday." Seems a deal was struck. Eureka!

His sister perked up and asked if he'd go to Youth Group now too. He insisted that he made no promises regarding youth group.




Check out Mark's great photos from our trip.

(Pardon all the parenthetical asides.)
;-)

This is the only non-British song I have on my England playlist, although I downloaded the original. This had a more interesting video.

Did you know that Verizon doesn't work at all in England? I will be relatively incommunicado, which I think will be delightful.

As for blessings in disguise, I will be using money from the basement flood to spend in England, which will be more relaxing since Suburban Scene canned me and I have no deadlines to meet or ad accounts to sweat. Seemed bad at the time, but I am grateful now.

My ten year old just says whatever pops into her mind.

A couple days ago, in my lap, she put both hands by the part in my hair and bent my head down so she could get a closer look.
"Mommy," she nearly gasped, "do you dye your hair?"
"Yes I do."
"Do you dye your roots?" she asked with instructive ridicule.
I explained how dye jobs grow out, exposing undyed roots.
"Well, there's gray in there!" she pointed out with restrained alarm.

You should see my new hairdo. I told my beloved, tattooed, alpaca-farming hairdresser that I was bored of my hair. I'm certainly not now! I'm sure you'll catch a glimpse of it on Mark's blog next week.


Last month, my ten year old asked my ex-husband and my boyfriend if they were going to arm wrestle. No sense ignoring an elephant in the room.

I'm planning a trip to London with my kids & Mark & his daughter. I am going to create an England playlist on my iPod. What must I include?

At the end of this past school year, I accompanied my son's 7th grade class to the Newseum in DC. It is the newest museum in town and it is about the history of the news. I raised my hand to volunteer quickly for this new field trip destination.

The first exhibit that my group entered was about Pulitzer Prize photography. One wall was covered with small copies all of the winners. The gallery was lined with dozens of them blown up with more explanation by the shot. Built right into the exhibit were several stations with tissues near benches.

All the natural chatter of 25 thirteen year olds enjoying a field trip stopped. They slowed down, stopping here and there with their mouths open. I passed one group looking at a photo of public torture in Southeast Asia.






"Why?" one boy asked "Why would anyone ever do that?"
Another boy, pointing to the crowd in the photo asked, "And what kind of person would laugh?"
I told them that torture as a public spectacle was ancient and even entertaining like today's horror movies.
The first boy startled at that comparison and insisted, "No. This is real. This is different."


Although I didn't get to see the entire museum, the kids were equally somber at the 9/11 exhibit and amazed at the memorial to slain journalists. The section of the Berlin Wall seemed to excite them, perhaps because the defiance in the graffiti was triumphant. The 4-D movie theater was delightfully freaky. It was as fun to watch the audience as take in the show. Great view from the Terrace too.

I hate calling my children's friends' parents and telling them that their child probably needs stitches to a head wound incurred at my home.
The first was Just Me's son, blood spurting from the back of his head.
The next, Anne's daughter. "Ms. Ann, I think I cut myself. Is it bleeding?"
(aaahhhh! I hate trying to be the calm adult in these situations.)

My son is now traveling with recently mitzvahed buddy to sit with him while he gets probably only a couple of stitches over his eye. At least this injury was calm. If it leaves a scar it probably won't even be that bad.

Do you have any good childhood scars? (Not the emotional kind)

Today I joined my daughter's 4th grade class on a field trip to Annapolis to learn some new things about my home state and to renew the sunburn on my face.

Annapolis is a beautiful old town, full of 2 & 3 hundred year old brick homes, shiny young midshipmen, hippies from St. John's, and the best crab cakes you'll find in this world. Our tour guide, Squire Richard Hillman, dressed in authentic colonial garb (with the exceptions, he confessed, of modern shoes and undergarments to the delight of the 10 year olds) was a former mayor of Annapolis. No wonder he knew so much. I'm planning to go back on a weekend evening and hear his ghost tour.

One thing I learned today was about the history of the Maryland state flag. I had always heard that Maryland was a "neutral" state in the Civil War. The truth is that it was divided. Marylanders were killing each other in battles. About 50 years after the War's end, the different military regiments wanted to march separately in a parade under their different banners. Their wives wouldn't let them. They sewed the two flags together into what was later adopted as our state flag. It's a bury-the-hatchet flag.

I did slip away from my well-chaperoned charges long enough to purchase two crab cakes to smuggle onto the Harbor Queen for my lunch. Mmmmmmm.

If you have never been to Annapolis, put it on your bucket list. I'd be happy to offer my home as a hub of your tour plans, but my basement had a cataclysmic flood last week and I'm afraid my guest quarters are inaccessible for months to come. But I will meet you there for crab cakes and a ghost tour!

Why did the chicken cross the road?




BARACK OBAMA: The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a CHANGE! The chicken wanted CHANGE!

JOHN MC CAIN: My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.

HILLARY CLINTON: When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure -- right from Day One! -- that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn't about me...

DR. PHIL: The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on 'THIS' side of the road before it goes after the problem on the 'OTHER SIDE' of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he's acting by not taking on his 'CURRENT' problems before adding 'NEW' problems.

OPRAH: Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.

GEORGE W. BUSH: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.

COLIN POWELL: Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road...

ANDERSON COOPER - CNN: We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to th e other side of the road.

JOHN KERRY: Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.

NANCY GRACE: That chicken crossed the road because he's GUILTY! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.

PAT BUCHANAN: To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.

MARTHA STEWART: No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmer's Market to sell my eggs
when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information.

DR SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad?
Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not been told.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain. Alone.

GRANDPA: In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.

BARBARA WALTERS: Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its life long dream of crossing the road.

ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

BILL GATES: I have just released eChicken2007, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook. Internet Explorer is an integral part of the Chicken. This new platform is much more stable and will never cra... #R&^*^(!.... Reboot.

ALBERT EINSTEIN: Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?

BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What is your definition of chicken?

AL GORE: I invented the chicken!

COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one?

DICK CHENEY: Where's my gun?

AL SHARPTON: Why are all the chickens white? We need some black chickens.

I'm reading a book that Julie sent me called "The Birth House" by Ami McKay. I underlined this sentence:

"Victory isn't anywhere near the same as peace."

Do you write in your books? What I write depends on the book. Sometimes I just underline or star so I can find that part later. Sometimes I write a counterpoint or a sound, like "mmmm".

When my ex-grandmother-in-law passed away and everyone was picking over her things, putting their name on stickers on her stuff, I just took a couple of books off her shelf. One was her Bible. I had hoped she wrote in the margins, although she didn't. She did have a chapter torn out of a sexy detective novel stuck right in 1 Thessalonians. There was no writing in that either.

I have a friend who was reading in the Library of Congress. He was outraged to find notes penciled into the margins of a very old book. He took it to the librarian who told him that those were written in there by the man who donated the book to help start the Library: Thomas Jefferson. Wouldn't those margin notes be cool to read?

You know, some of the scriptures in the Bible were margin notes written by the scribes that later scribes just included?

If you've been following the expanded record of my happenings on my Mom's blog,my Dear One's blog, and my friends' blogs, you'll see that I have been busy!

When I was a kid imagining how wonderful it would be to be the grown up, I hadn't realized how busy I would be once I got here. I never thought about the hours my mom & dad spent on taxi duty, only seeing 1/4 of it. I just remember the places they took me. Those were great places too, so I salute all the Kith & Kin Taxi Drivers - past & present.





I want to tell you about seeing the wild ponies at Assateague Island with the Girl Scouts. Or about the moving burial service at Arlington National Cemetery for Mark's father, about the wonderful way Mark & I celebrated the one year anniversary of our meeting, my son's thirteenth birthday, my daughters' social dramas, my first ever 18 holes of golf, and my recent upsets and openings in my writing career.

But I'm going to go put my ankle on ice and have a glass of wine and listen to John Stewart for now. I'll get back to you soon!