150 years to perfect my baking skills...

The Riverview Inn Bed and Breakfast, in Sunbury, PA, was built by Ira Thorne Clement--one of at least 3 Ira Thorne Clements in the Sunbury Clement lineage--and until I get better straightened out, I’m going to say that the I.T.C who built the home on Chestnut St. was something like my kids’ Great(x3)-Grandfather who had no clue how busy Highway 147, aka Front Street, would be in 2008. Still, it is interestingly situated with just 147 and a long, narrow park between the house and the Susquehanna River.

Like many such towns, Sunbury has found itself having very little to do with the 21st Century--most evident in the general under-maintained disposition that characterizes it nowadays.

A Christmas light display of skaters glowed cheerfully across the street from the window of the “Overlook Room” where Jeff and I were bunked. That the park’s holiday light displays turned off at 9 p.m. probably reflects the state of the economy.

Rachel supposes that the chocolatey odor which wafted from the first floor in the wee hours of the night (fondue, said Gabe; brownies, said Tracy,) signaled that the resident spirits recognized that kin were filling the house that night, and they were doing what they could to be hospitable.

I was pleased with the trip to inter the ashes of Jeff’s mom--short though it was--and found that I appreciate the richness of human settlements even in the grayness of late fall, and the dreariness of the economy. There is always something to take in.

I wondered if my children felt any sort of connection to the place. The cemetery was quite replete with Clement markers of impressive size, and there they were, Clements every one. I feel such a connection in the hills of SW Virginia, but they did not make frequent forays up the Susquehanna in their childhood, and that may be the key.

ouch and no way.

Olivia showed up Friday with a new place to clip keys, thread her iPod earbuds wire, or snag herself on nails, in the form of a left eyebrow ring. Rachel says these grow out in time as the brow seems to inexorably push outward regardless of your attempt to convince it it’s an earlobe. I don’t mind it, but as I’ve never known a piercing to not have a red, swelly, ouchie phase, I hope hers will pass with minimal trauma.

As for me, I have no further use for holes which aren’t standard equipment, and I am very grateful that I’ve spent the last...count, count, count...34 years wearing lightweight enough earrings that I still have holes, not slits, and small, relatively non-pendulous earlobes.

It’s funny how, as a kid, you notice certain features of certain adults which you vehemently decide--right then and there--that you do not aspire to. Stretchy, slitty earlobes were a very strong one of those for me. I also wanted never to have “set” hair. That’s the thing where you go to the beauty parlor and get it all curled up into a neat little helmet which you, apparently, may not wash and must sheath in a cloth shower-cap type thingy when you sleep. On your back only. I very, very, most strenuously knew that I would never wear lipstick that would come off, leaving a deep red smudge on the teacup or on a hapless child’s face. And although I think I did it once upon a time when I was young and unformed, I will never again (ever) wear a Lanz of Salzburg flannel nightgown.

Harvey might like to play Uncle Wiggly, anyway.

There are a couple of inexplicable things that I do. Or at least difficult to articulate insofar as I am handy with the tools of articulation. Which is to say less handy than I’d like to be.

One of these things is that I am not--despite my complete failure to toe the line with regards to my religion of cultural origin--an atheist. It is possible that I am an a-theist, in the sense that a theist purports to have an encapsulated image of god--that is, God as a discrete being, whereas one without this sort of discrete version of god may be an a-theist. But that does not necessarily leave one without a notion of the ineffable.

The other thing is that I “am” a writer. In the sense that I require this self-image. For my own psychological purposes. And despite the total lack of external validation.

So, in order to explain these otherwise inexplicable characteristics, I have nothing to offer but the Harvey defense. And here I reference Harvey, as in the big white bunny. The pooka. Jimmy Stewart’s friend:

Let’s summarize. Elwood P. Dowd (Jimmy Stewart) might be nuts. His best friend is a 6’+ white rabbit, visible only to himself. His sister Veta has decided to cure him by means of an injection of Dr. Chumley’s Formula 977. The taxi driver, there to ferry him to the site of the “cure” says, yes, it will work...it will make Elwood a “perfectly normal human being; and you know what bastards they are!” It is at this last critical moment that Veta realizes she doesn’t want Elwood to be a “normal human being.” She wants him to be the same carefree and kind person he’s always been, even if it means she’ll be living, forevermore, with Harvey the pooka.

So, being a writer and being an a-theist, but not an atheist--that is my Pooka. I like it.

I would rather talk to no one than have no one to talk to, and I’d rather be what might be nothing, than be nothing.

In a completely--and I emphasize completely--different vein: I discovered something remarkable on page 18 of the Vermont Country Store catalog. It is a Penny Brite doll ensemble, complete with change of outfits, and poofy weird 60’s hair, in the exact black and pink vinyl case she came in when I had my very own Penny Brite in roughly 1965? And here’s the really great thing. You can own your very own for the bargain price of...(drum roll)...$69.95. Some boomers must really value nostalgia.

Yes, the Vermont Country Store is well stocked with delights of yore. How about some clackers--those two balls on strings that you could clack rhythmically and if you were good you could bang’em repetitively at both 6 and 12 o’clock at great risk to the faces of any kids lingering nearby. Um...ten bucks. Or how about a “Mrs. Beasley” doll, from Family Affair? You can, for $99, astound your children and cause them to ask “Yo...what's with the ugly doll? At which point you pull Mrs. Beasley’s string. She says “Do you want to play?” and your children run screaming from the room. A 12 oz bottle of “Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific” shampoo can be had for the relatively bargain price of $14.95 (plus shipping--$5.95.) But don’t you want to smell the way you did in Madame Hamerstrom’s French 3? Of course you do. Well worth $20, more or less. Who knows when Chris Entwistle and his red hair will wander back into your life. You want to be ready.

not an owl

Night may forever be a mystery to me. Other people love it. They want to dress up, go dancing, socialize, have meetings, expend energy. But, when it gets past 7 p.m., the thing is, I have none to expend.

I don’t suppose there’s any evidence that it will ever be otherwise for me. A person or so told me I was nuts for having my wedding--24 years ago--at 10 a.m., so that brunch could be served. Nuts, maybe, but me...yes.

It’s not that I dislike p.m. hours. They can be just fine, and I can be perfectly happy within them...provided I don’t have to go anywhere, do anything, or think much.

Well, this will be interesting, come January, when Gabe and I take Japanese from 7 to 8:15 p.m. I hope I will manage. I remember many years ago, before I had children, taking a ceramics class at the Community College and dropping out because it went until 10, and my brain had shut down for the night about half-way through the allotted time.

I do not think I could change this by a deliberate alteration of my sleep/wake pattern. Must be the Franklin, as in Ben, genes at work.

Y chromosomes and jugs.

Genographic Project kit #3 is waiting at the end of the counter for a second swab of Jeff’s inner cheeks before it gets packed back to National Geo. for analysis. So far I can provide my children with the interesting notion that their grandpaternal lineage (my side) takes them back to Nordic roots, and that--based on me--the maternal side is, um, European. (yeah...that silly mitochondrial DNA doesn’t tell you much.) But maybe a swab of their Dad’s Y chromosome will reveal something exciting and unexpected. Like, I don’t know...an Inuit sneaked in there somewhere along the line. But I doubt it. Most likely it’s going to be Heinz 57 Euro and any hopes anyone was holding out for exoticness (from our pov, anyway,) will be dashed on a rock lying in an inconspicuous glade somewhere on a smudge between Germany and the UK.

To completely change the subject, I’d like to say something about having an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. At first you think (well, I thought,) maybe we shouldn’t say anything...no one wants to be marginalized. And of course no one does. But then you think (me again,) it’s good to have people understand what’s different and why...and there’s no shame, so why not? But now I’ve gotten somewhere different altogether...especially because we’re more or less fine. Different than 7 years ago, and limited in some ways, but fine. Fine and holding as far as I can see. Not only holding, but maybe even better than a couple years ago in a certain way. It’s as if (and here I’m more or less bull-fewmeting) there was an acute tumble down a rocky slope which happened a few years ago, followed by the perplexing state of trying to figure out what the heck happened, and maybe even a stage of inflammation associated with the downhill tumble. Inflammation which has eased, leaving us with a different set of cognitive skills, but feeling better for the easing. So, we know where we are, and why, and whatever happened has, perhaps, healed, albeit with limitations. I may be very silly, but I expect the status to remain quo for quite a long time to come, so it’s a little troublesome to suppose that the community may be watching with thoughts in their heads of the tottering or immobile old folk in the Heartlands Memory Wing, and I truly don’t believe we’re headed that way for the foreseeable future...so I’m thinking we almost need to redefine Alzheimer’s. Without a doubt it can be a continuous and markable process through the 7 stages, but it can also mean damage--in an Alzheimer’s pattern--that happens, then stops happening, just leaving you different. My present assumption is that that’s what happened to us.

Anyway, I think the silly online tarot reading I got a few years ago was right. That I had 10 jugs of some good stuff. 5 spilled. Obviously, I’m very sorry about that, but the advice is to appreciate the remaining 5 jugs. Or maybe I should call them amphorae. (I’m not sure I can appreciate Jim Kramer bellowing about stocks on MSNBC from the next room. But I can live with it. Boooyah.)