August 2014 – Page 3 – *the gratitude-a-thon

gratitude-a-thon day 359: “O Captain! My Captain!”

August 12, 2014August 13, 2014UncategorizedLeave a Comment

127135a — His eyes always twinkled. He had one of those faces that looked like the sun just broke through the clouds.

Some of the pee-my-pants funniest people I know have struggled with addiction and depression–those two lovers, that so often go hand in hand. They are diseases we look down on, think that they come from a lack of willpower. We say “buck up,” and yet, oddly, these take-over-your-life afflictions seem to result in people who often make us laugh the hardest. Oh, the fucking irony.

Robin Williams was one of those people, born with the twin demons. And he made us guffaw and giggle our heads practically off of our bodies. He did jokes and voices with the agility and speed of an olympic skier on a slalom course. And just as adeptly he could make you cry with his sincerity. A quick wit and a big heart. His range was boundless in movies as diverse as Mrs. Doubtfire, in which he played drag better than the pros, and Good Will Hunting, in which he played a therapist who changes the life of a Southie genius, while healing himself at the same time. And then of course, there was Dead Poet’s Society. “O Captain! My, Captain!” I seem to be one of the only people in advertising who was dramatically moved by the recent Apple iPad commercials, (legions of people hated these) in which Robin did the voice over, and quotes Walt Whitman:

“O me, O life of the questions of these recurring. Of the endless trains of the faithless. Of cities filled with the foolish. What good amid these, O me, O life? Answer: that you are here. That life exists and identity. That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

He sold those words to me like nobody else could, with a depth and emotion that got me in my gut. As I type them, I can hear his passionate resonating voice echo through me. He contributed more than a verse. He contributed a million volumes. If we’re really lucky, he will have contributed more awareness to addiction and depression, too. Ah, nanu, nanu.

gratitude-a-thon day 358: right in your own backyard: spontaneous sunday

August 11, 2014August 11, 2014UncategorizedLeave a Comment

If Riley could talk (and I’m sure he will very soon), he would have said, “This is fucking great. How come we’ve never been HERE before?” He loved this walk. Me too.

This was a serious Dr. Seuss moment. Did he go to Wellesly?

Don’t you love when you wake up on a Sunday without plans and then one magically materializes, and it winds up being complete perfection? Like if you tried to plan it, it never would have come off right, but because it just happened, it was exactly right in every way. Enter Facebook, and a blog post on Rhode Island, and my old roommate Leah, who lives six minutes from me, and who I do a lot of technological staying in touch with, but not real life seeing, and ba da boom, a Sunday off-the-leash dog walk around Lake Waban on Wellesley’s campus, where I had never been before, and where nature does its thing in the best possible way.

Leah has great energy, and she’s smart and funny, and she has Stanley, her fearless five pound dog, who thinks he’s part of Hell’s Angels. After our walk, she took me to Volante Farm, where I’d never been, and we looked at flowers and plants and bought some yummy stuff to eat, and then we stared at the lines of summer flowers being grown, which I’d only ever seen in bouquets at the farmer’s market, and which I couldn’t take my eyes off of. We then lounged in her backyard, where our dogs pranced around, and we gabbed and ate until our tongues were tired. Spontaneous Sunday. Absolute A++++.

Volante Farms in Needham is new to me. I can’t wait to go back. This is the tiniest bit of the enless row of flowers. It went on forever (ok, not really, but sort of).

The adorable Leah and her fearless and crazy cute guy Stanley.

gratitude-a-thon day 357: rhode trip

August 10, 2014August 10, 2014UncategorizedLeave a Comment

On Thursday, with the sun turned on high, our good friends Karen and Maia took us on a mother daughter road trip to their summer digs in Wickford Rhode Island. Aside from working in an ad agency in Providence for about a year (where one of my accounts was the state of Rhode Island), and going to Newport a few times, and Watch HIll with my mom and sister, in like 1968, where I rode the carousel and ate unforgettable fried chicken and mashed potatoes, I haven’t really explored the smallest state in the country, that has, as I so frequently used to tout in the ads I wrote, “384 miles of coastline.” As a lover of all things beach, I musta been in an extended coma.

Anyway, we packed a lot into our mini vacay, and I came out a believer. What a great place, a hidden gem, Rhode Island is. From Allie’s Donuts (sublime with local color and a line 20 long) to the Farmer’s Market at Casey Farms (with the friendliest vendors anywhere, not to mention a cornucopia of mushrooms that were like art, and where I bought a sugary scrub that I KNOW will transform my summer-worn skin to lovely and young again) to the amazing Narragansett Beach,( where a spontaneous text would allow us to meet up with my good friend Ginny, who invited us to her sister’s INSANELY beautiful ocean front home, and where, at last, I met the Princess of Cute,Ginny’s granddaughter, Madeline), to our walk through historic and crazy adorable Wickford (including a super find $18 scarf), a late afternoon boat ride, a candlelight dinner where we ate Karen’s delish food, drank this summer’s drink–crushed blueberries, lemonade, basil and vodka (which desperately needs a name), and played phone charades (you wear your phone on your forehead to play), we had a freaking ball. I will be back. MEGA thanks to our hosts. It was just what I needed. Rhode Island forever.

Ally & Maia have known each other since 1st grade.

Moms and as our girls called themselves, “daughts.”

An unbelievably gorgeous church in historic Wickford, where Karen’s mother-in-law is buried, and where her sister-in-law was married.

The Wickford Collection, an inspiring antique/interior design store.

I’ve actually never seen spikey sunflowers like this.

Mushrooms as art. I couldn’t quite get over how beautiful these were.

Queen Ginny and Princess Madeline. What a treat this was.

A really fun two days. Thanks Karen, Maia, Scott and Colby for sharing your happy place.

gratitude-a-thon day 356: small bites friday

August 8, 2014August 8, 2014UncategorizedLeave a Comment

The obvious question is, is he going to sell weiners?

Road trip to Rhody with a good friend and our girls today. And it’s sunny!

Ann Coulter continues to prove her complete lack humanity and intelligence.

Jeez, I wish I’d been on this train. These people did not enjoy this enough.

I have officially heard of everything.

Now when you eat gluten-free is will really be gluten-free. WHA?

Even if I become a celebrity?

Target: September 14: Joseph Altuzarra drops. Who’s gonna take me, I will have just had the bunion decapitated.

My latest obsession. I want them all.

No kidding. It’s like learning a language when you’re young vs. old. Duh.

gratitude-a-thon day 355: you grieve until you don’t

August 7, 2014August 7, 2014Uncategorized2 Comments

10574218_10202540390172312_3508223290369606984_n — I brought these to Peter’s memorial service, which was perfect and beautiful–in his backyard–with friends and family gathered under a large tent, taps and a bag pipe player, too.

The thing is, I didn’t think I would be this sad. But here I am days after my cousin’s memorial service, still crying at the slightest provocation, feeling fragile like a piece of delicate high-end wedding china, small in the face of loss.

The sky is light blue, my hydrangeas are in full bloom, and the beach is ready for the taking. We’re smack in the middle of my favorite season, and yet it might as well be winter, because Nina Simone, you got nuthin’ on me; I’ve got the blues.

Dying is part of this show, but Jeez, it’s not the fun part. They should really try to make this death thing a little more fun.

But to know that you loved someone so much that you feel a little part of yourself has been surgically removed, is lucky in some bizarre (and painful) way. And that’s how I feel, that gnawing in the stomach that loss delivers like UPS, an overall sadness, an achy breaky heart.

The gratitude comes in waves, of having been fortunate enough to have known someone you truly loved. I just wish it didn’t come with this heaping side order of sad.

gratitude-a-thon day 354: pie in the sky

August 6, 2014August 6, 2014UncategorizedLeave a Comment

Unknown — My kids and Peter love the strawberry rhubarb. But me, I’m all about the blueberry peach.

My mom used to make apple pie when I was a kid. She also did a nice pumpkin on Thanksgiving. She made them from scratch, no store bought pies, no purchased crusts for Louise. Just her hands and fresh ingredients. And me watching, eating the gooey sugar and cinnamon apple prep. Pie was a winter holiday dessert. Pie was not something we ate during the summer.

tumblr_n8cqqr9gos1qecgwyo1_1280 — The worst thing that can happen on vacation is to see the “sold out” sign in front of Eileen’s. It happens all the time, too.

Then I began going to the Vineyard, where summer is all about pie. At least in our family. I know I thought it odd that first time we noticed that pies were everywhere on that island. But I quickly accepted the idea, and over the years we honed our taste buds by trying all the contenders. The winner, Eileen Blake’s Pies and Otherwise, wiped out the competition by a landslide. Selling a myriad of sweet confections out in front of a ranch house, we once doubted the existence of Eileen, having never seen her. There was usually a man selling the pies, out of a gazebo. We had hours of fun imagining Eileen and what she might look like, or if she was really a bunch of elves, or whether she used canned fruit, or real. But it didn’t matter in the end, because her pies were the after dinner nectar of the Gods. We turned on the oven, slid in the pies, doused them in vanilla ice cream and no matter how many people were gathered, one taste would silence the crowd. Our faces softened, as low toned moans escaped our lips. Eileen had us at Blueberry Peach. We were goners.

A little bit of Eileen in my own backyard.

When Eileen upgraded her sign, my cohort, “the other Toni” and I asked if we could have it, dividing up the two-sided sign to give our husbands as birthday gifts (their birthdays were a few days apart and always happened during our vacation). Not a gift they could have imagined. We killed it in the surprise department. It still sits in our backyard patio, reminding us of the heavenly taste of Eileen all year long (who by the way, went to pie heaven a few years ago, causing us to wonder if the legendary pie of our dreams would no longer be part of our summer evenings and waistline expansion program).

I just found these pie recipes and considered making one, but really the truth is, unless it’s Eileen’s, or my mom’s, pie is for after the turkey, not after the lobster.

gratitude-a-thon da 353: more words

August 5, 2014UncategorizedLeave a Comment

Scrabble player alert: The Official Players Dictionary has added 5,000 new words to the game. I hope some of them have an “x.”

gratitude-a-thon day 352: woof, woof, best dog book ever

August 1, 2014August 1, 2014Uncategorized2 Comments

The first year after I gave birth to Riley, I mean, got him from a family who was allergic to him, I took him to the dog park at Down’s Field everyday. Since much of Brookline doesn’t have lavish yards, we have lots of parks, and during certain hours of the day, those parks are ruled by dog people and their beloved’s. That’s where I met Matthew Gilbert, smart, handsome, dad to adorable yellow Lab,Toby, and tv critic for the Boston Globe. I liked him immediately. Truth be told, I might have even had a little crush on him.

images — A boy and his dog. Toby and Matt.

Anyway, I met some really nice people that year, who were transplanted from their home field, by some construction at their usual park, Amory. I met Lee and Gilson and Bob, Angela, Ellen and Matt, to name a few. Dog people are a different breed. We all share something in common: an uncommon, and somewhat out of the dog park passion for our pups. We will talk incessantly about their high IQ’s, pick up their poop without flinching, find them endlessly amusing and adorable. We will allow them to use our legs as fire hydrants, walk around with crinkly bags and biscuits in our pockets, and invest in lint brushes to tame the myriad of hair that covers our wardrobes. To us, they aren’t animals, they are people. The very best kind of people.

Anyway, all those years back, Matt told me he was writing a book about the dog park. I couldn’t believe what a great idea that was. It was such a rich and funny little microcosm. Well, five years later, Off the Leash, A year at the Dog Park is out, and because I have to travel to a funeral in DC today, and wanted a treat to pull me through, I have waited until now to read it (although I bought it on Kindle the day it came out two days ago, and allowed myself to gobble up the first two chapters, which I found to be beautifully written, funny, and smart).

Last night I went to Matt’s book party at Bar Louie’s, where hundreds of people swarmed Matt like the dogs at the park swarm even a tiny bit of leftover food that doesn’t quite make it into the trash can, and where I finally met his handsome and charismatic husband, Tom (who I might also have a crush on). I saw several dog people I knew, had a great conversation with someone I never get to see, and had a glass of really good wine. It was really nice to see the dog community coming together to celebrate and support one their own.

Matt at his book party last night, thanking the crowd.

If you’re a dog person, or just a person who loves good writing, you need to get Off the Leash. The cover alone, of the adorable Toby and one of my favorite dogs, now in puppy heaven, Rosie, is enough reason to buy it, but it’s really the story of the way a dog can transform your life that will make you love it. Riley gives it five woofs, I mean stars.