Dancing in the Moonlight

In his youth, Allen Palmer had the body of a Greek God and when he aged he was kick-ass cool, bright and amusing.  Allen's death was a loss to the entire neighborhood (and beyond) and so we had a Caribbean themed “Celebration of Life” party. Of course we did.

Allen Palmer, circa 1961
Shot during the filming of  "The Teahouse of the August Moon"

The place was jam packed with friends and family who wanted to pay their respects and remember their friend.  As the night wore on, people began grabbing the mike from the steel drummer and telling Allen stories. Many of them had known him their whole lives so they had lots of fond memories to recount. I had a story too, but mine remained untold. Until now.

Shortly after I met Allen, I added him to my bucket list. That was the day that I discovered he had been an instructor at Arthur Murray Dance Studios, the Cadillac of dance institutions. I vowed on the spot to dance with him. I didn't know where, I didn't know when, but I knew. It WOULD happen.  

Jerry and I are extremely compatible in many ways, but as a couple we are lousy at dancing. Secretly, I've always blamed him.  It's not that we haven't tried - we have taken so many dancing lessons over the years that we should be the Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire of our time. I yearn to be that couple on the dance floor that performs so beautifully that everyone else stops in awe and watches their dazzling footwork. Clearly, I needed to dance with Allen Palmer.

And then, it happened. I will never forget that night. We were all at an outdoor concert at the clubhouse and people were dancing on the grass in front of the band. Suddenly, Becky Palmer materialized out of the darkness. “Please go dance with Allen!” she begged. “I'm exhausted.”

She didn't have to ask twice. It was a shining moment which will live forever in my memory. I floated over the lawn to the dance area just as a slow song started. And then Allen took me in his arms. 

God has a wicked sense of humor and this was the longest song of my life, spent stepping all over poor Allen's feet. At one point, I think I may have even kicked him in the shins. It was mortifying. People were looking at us, but not for the reason I had imagined. Turns out that it's me, not Jerry, that is rhythm impaired.

Armed with this insight, I have started my “Afterlife Bucket List” - things to do after I die. First on my list? “Take dancing lessons from Allen Palmer.”

P.S. Jerry, this post is your public apology and the only one you'll ever get so if you don't read it, it's not my fault. 

www.StillSwimmingUpstream.com

The Harvest

My Grandmother could grow anything.  Green thumb?  More like her whole hand was green!  She tended a massive garden, canned and froze their food from it and had exceptional luck with houseplants, too.  How it got there is lost to history, but one spring a banana tree appeared in her living room.  Gran was especially fond of that particular plant and it clearly returned the feeling because it grew so high that eventually the leaves touched the ceiling.  Even then it didn't stop.  Grandpa built a two-story greenhouse onto the front of their house, they moved the tree in there and it just kept on growing, growing and growing. 
      

I mention this for two reasons:  First, it's fun to remember things about my childhood and my grandparents.  Second, it proves that genetically, I should be endowed with at least a smidgen of gardening ability.  Should be. 

Friday evening Mary Ann brought down a handful of delicious cherry tomatoes and said, "It's the last of the harvest."  Last of the harvest?  You're kidding me, right?  My neighbor had a harvest! 


Last winter, I made Jerry rig me up grow lights because I was determined to grow everything from seed.  Much to my surprise, seeds actually germinated and I planted them in tiny pots and loved them, just like my Grandma used to do. 


After everything but the coleus died, I bought and planted fourteen tomato plants, four green peppers and so much basil that, by rights, I ought to be able to make pesto for our entire county about now.  I even brought three mint plants back from Ohio.  Mint, as you may know, is considered invasive and professional gardeners suggest that you plant it in a pot to contain it.  I did not do that because I was hoping it would spread across the hillside and I would have unlimited mint to cook with.  Well, one plant is still living - barely - and one cup of mint tea would decimate it.  I have never seen such tiny leaves on a grown-up mint plant before.


We do live in the woods and we do have the red clay soil that is so distinctive in the south.  To figure out the sunniest spots, I took golf balls and set them in the sun in the morning.  Every hour I looked out and if a golf ball was in the shade, I picked it up.  At the end of the day, there were only a few golf balls left, but I figured that these were the places with the sunniest places to plant.  That is how I chose our planting sites. 


To counteract the clay soil, when we planted (and by "we" I mean "Jerry") we added a mixture of topsoil, vermiculite and sphagnum moss.  We watered with miracle grow, too.  Throughout the brutal heat of summer, we watered faithfully.  We even hired a neighbor kid to water whenever we went out of town for the weekend.
 

And now it's fall, harvest time.  So far our loving efforts have yielded:  zero green peppers, one early tomato (from a blossom that was on the plant when we bought it) and  a week's worth of really good caprese salads, featuring tomatoes we bought and basil from our yard. 


Two of the basil plants actually grew!  Herb lore says that herbs prefer crummy soil so it's poetic that the ones that did well here were the ones I put in a container of potting soil.  The others look like dwarfs they are so small.  The bottom leaves have turned yellow and the top leaves are holey.

Things are looking up though.  About the time that it started to frost, one of the tomato plants decided to bear fruit, which I immediately picked.  We have nine small green tomatoes in our kitchen. 


So maybe our "harvest" this year will be in the form of fried green tomatoes.  If you want to be cruel, you could calculate the cost of the plants, the soil amendments, the teenager's watering fees, the time and the effort invested in that side-dish of (organic) fried green tomatoes.  You would tell me that next year I ought to save that money and buy the tomatoes at the farmer's market down the street.


I can't do that though. That Grandma gardening gene will tell me that next year will be different.  Or maybe it's not the gardening gene talking at all.  I inherited a pretty strong optimistic streak, too.


  

Vacuuming

I have a wonderful Oreck vacuum that we bought at the Habitat for Humanity Restore for thirty-five dollars.  Jerry installed new brushes and it's almost as good as new.  Almost. It vacuums fairly well and is feather light, so I can carry it up and down the stairs with only one hand.   The only problem is that when I turn it on, it sounds like an airplane is taking off in the room, so I wear an industrial set of ear muffs like the guys on the runway wear.  When I have them on, I can hear only blissful silence.

I vacuum a lot, especially very early in the morning.  So if you call me at, say, 8:15 a.m. for example, (well, any time before 10:00 a.m. really) I'm not in bed asleep, I'm vacuuming. 

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Win, win

After reading my last post, my daughters asked me to make a few clarifications.  Malibu Barbie wants you to know that she never dresses me.  Indian Princess Barbie says you will know if she's dressed me by whether I look good or not.  If I do, she did.  If not, then not.


Princess has a point.  Today, for example, I am wearing a (formerly) white tee shirt that my son-in-law intended for Goodwill and a pair of striped men's boxer shorts that at one time belonged to Malibu Barbie's boss.  I'm ashamed to admit that this is not even a low in wardrobe choices;  sometimes they are actually worse.  I know this because I have been looking at old photographs.  Talk about masochism!


I realized I've pretty much spent a lifetime looking frumpy, dowdy and generally wearing clothes that frankly weren't all that flattering.  Then I remembered:  I made a pact with myself when Princess was born that I wouldn't buy anything new until I got down to my pre-pregnancy weight.  My reasoning, I dimly recall, was along the lines of motivational. The thought was that I would inspire myself to lose those last few pounds faster. 


Well that was a dumb, dumb idea! Daughter is pushing twenty-three and I recently lost almost enough to get down to my highest weight during that pregnancy. About now would be a perfect time to admit defeat.  I could justify an entire new wardrobe with just that single sentence, one that will make me look like the hottie that is trapped inside me.  Except now I don't want anyone to see my wrinkly chest, my bat-wings or my chicken neck. 


So what I'm saying here is that I'm going to let vanity prohibit me from wearing more stylish clothes?  Isn't that the very same trap I set for myself originally?  Apparently these last few decades have taught me nothing. 
 
So, thank God Indian Princess got old enough to take charge of the situation!  Tomorrow she will be arriving for a week's visit.  She will probably take one look at me and drag me off shopping.  We will go directly from the airport to the mall.


She will get to do what she likes best (shopping) and I will get to do what I like best (spending time with her!)  So it's win, win. 


Ain't life grand? 

Focus

August is turning into September and the first cool breeze since I moved to the Cay in South Carolina is blowing. I opened all the windows to smell the fresh air and immediately I heard raucous birds calling to each other, crickets chirping, the buzzing waves of cicadas and the hum of some industrial strength mowing machine on the golf course which lies on the other side of our woods. It's amazing how loud it is inside my house! I have never had the pleasure of open windows here before because with the summer (that some say is the hottest they remember) came oppressive heat, humidity and air conditioning. As a rule, I am not crazy about air conditioning but rules are made to be broken. Even I can see its charm when summer heat is at its most brutal.

What a wonderful way to start the day! Open windows, gentle breezes, nature sounds. As I sat down to type, I heard some twigs snapping in the backyard. Maybe somebody is back there! I have a fertile imagination and so already I am mentally calling 9-1-1. About this time, I realized that I didn't know where my cell phone was which could impede my ability to make the aforementioned call, should I truly deem it necessary.

There's a lot to be said for land lines. One of their best features is that they are always in the same place and you know right where that place is. (Unless you buy a cordless model and then you'd have the same drama that I was facing.) We don't have a land line, so I was faced with the chore of finding my cell.

I went into the bedroom to search for my phone, realized that my bed wasn't made, grabbed a corner of the top sheet, yanked it halfway up the bed when I heard a "thunk" outside the window. I dropped what I was doing and looked out. There is a nut tree behind the house - I don't recognize what kind it is. The nuts look sort of like hickory only a little larger but they are not pecans. Anyway, nuts are dropping off the tree onto the deck below and making loud noises. Also there is a squirrel in the tree running up and down the trunk, probably looking to score a few of those nuts. That explains the noise. In thinking about the noise, I realized that I was supposed to be searching for my cell phone, so I turn around, left the bed unmade and started looking anew.

The first thing my eyes fell upon was some laundry, so I started picking that up. Then I remembered the cell phone and wandered off into the bathroom where I found more laundry, but no phone. Then I meandered into the guest bathroom to pick up the towel and put it with the other laundry.

I went to the basement bathroom, grabbed the towels and walked to the laundry room where I deposited all the laundry in the hamper. I then check out the new paint job in the lower level bedroom. I decided I really like the color we chose, felt satisfaction, basked in its glow, came back upstairs where I heard something outside again. I went back to the bedroom, realized I was hearing rain on the leaves, turned away from the window, saw the unmade bed, walked around to the other side, pulled the sheet up to the top, then remembered I was supposed to be looking for my cell phone. Next I went to the living room where I saw yesterday's paper on the sofa, so I gathered it up and took it to the recycling basket in the basement.

Back upstairs, I remembered I was searching for my cell phone, and I had been downstairs twice but neglected to check for it. I went downstairs for the third time and this time I actually looked around but saw no cell. Once more I came upstairs, looked in the bedroom yet again, still didn't find the phone but did notice that the bed wasn't made so I stopped and made it.

When I walked into the kitchen I saw my cell phone sitting directly behind the computer screen. I heaved a sigh of relief. I am no longer worried about a possible break-in, have found my phone and (added bonus) I have made the bed, taken the newspaper to be recycled and picked up the laundry. I settled in to type, put my fingers on the home row keys and realized that sometime during the massive search for my phone, I took my glasses off and don't know where I laid them down.

It is now noon.