Not Too Late

I'm going to call the offices of Senators Patty Murray, Marie Cantwell, and Representative Jim McDermott and tell them I would like to see them do two things in the next few months. First, the Democrat-controlled Senate and House should pass resolutions to begin withdrawal of our troops in Iraq. A troop surge at this point will not be beneficial in guerrilla-fighting combat. The longer we play the role of occupiers on the streets of Bagdad, the bloodier the battles become. We are nearing the 3000 mark for American soldiers' deaths. It's time to leave.

Secondly, it's also time for the transcripts of that energy meeting held back in 2000 in Dick Cheney's office to be made public, if they haven't already been shredded. At least, it would be helpful to know who attended the meeting. I think it's time that we look into criminal charges for Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush. The least we should do is to open an investigation into the Iraqi war, Halliburton and its subsidiaries, and illegal wiretapping, among other things.

It also may be time for us quiet ones to begin marching in the streets to protest what's happening to our country. We should also open our eyes to the future. Did you know that war ships and plane carriers have been sent to the waters near Iran? Are they going to find a reason to attack that country next? Let's make ourselves heard before it's too late.

Why do writers want to make everything in their lives so public? A husband dies, a daughter is dying, a marriage falls apart, these are all material for the next "story." Do the authors of personal stories feel compelled to share, to explain, to validate their experiences? Or are they just exhibitionists? But maybe they aren't being completely honest. Are secrets playing hide and seek with words, savored only by the storyteller and perhaps one or two in the audience? What about honesty and truth? Maybe the writer owns enough shares to control the outcome. Should the audience expect more?

On the Edge of Ideal

Yech! The holiday season is upon us. I don’t mean to be a scrooge, but sometimes the baggage from both past and present gets in the way of the spirit. I’ve searched for the true meaning of Christmas for the past few years by simplifying my involvement with all of it. It’s been easy paring down from the merry mania I see in the malls. For one thing, my husband is Jewish, and my oldest daughter converted to Judaism long before she met her Israeli-born husband. My stepson only celebrates Christmas when he and his wife go to Wisconsin for his mom’s family gift exchange. My other daughter, once an annual participant in Chicago’s Tuba Christmas, is worried about raising her daughter amid the consumerism of the season. In other words, everyone in our immediate family has reasons for not joining in the seasonal buying and decorating frenzy. And my mother? Well, she’s going to be 87 next week and is perfectly happy not getting out in holiday traffic. Finding Christmas presents for everyone, wrapping the gifts then standing in a long post office line to mail out packages are a little too much for her this year.
Gift buying isn’t the only problem, though. It’s the over-the-top feel of the whole season, from spending hundreds of dollars on icicle lights for the house and plastic snowmen placed next to plastic nativity scenes in yards, to Christmas music played right after Halloween hands out its last treat. This time of year women all over the country go into crash mode as they rev up their engines trying to fit thirty extra tasks into their already full schedules. Moms with fulltime jobs and kids to chauffer begin looking for extra hours in the day to write Christmas cards, decorate a tree, attend Holiday school pageants, bake two dozen holiday cookies, select, buy, wrap and send gifts to family members who already have everything a human being could possibly want.
Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t an assault on the original Christian holiday. It’s a diatribe against the whole November through December season, including Thanksgiving with its airport madness and New Year’s Eve celebrations with $150 a plate gala champagne dinners with a dessert of drunks on the roadway. We don’t even catch our breaths until January when a bout of flu enforces a slow down or two feet of snow closes the roads to the malls. Then the list making and multi-tasking are put on hold, and we’re obligated to just sit because our huge SUV can’t forge through the mountain of snow at the end of our driveway or wires downed by ice have killed all things electrical include our major distractors, computer, TV and radio.
This year I’ve simplified my gift giving by mailing each of the grandkids one present in mid-November. At Thanksgiving I gave a piece of pottery found at a local art show to each of the kids. And last week I sent out my annual Family Calendar created and paid for online. I’m not sending out Christmas cards this year because I’ve already sent enough emails about our last big trip and the birth of our two grandchildren. I even attached a family photo in my last group email. Thank you Hotmail!
Instead I’m looking for the meaning of the season by connecting to my roots… food. I’ve been baking stollen, and Springerles, German and Swiss recipes handed down from my two grandmothers . I really didn’t care for either of them as a kid, and definitely didn’t appreciate the effort it took to make them. Now as a grownup I love dunking the anise-flavored springerles in my morning coffee, and slicing a piece of stollen dotted with almonds, raisins and cranberries for breakfast. My job each year is to perfect the previous year’s batch. My first endeavor ended in loaves of stollen as big as rugby footballs and last year I burned the springerles. This year I produced more manageable sized loaves, and the cookies looked like they were supposed to: white puffy pillows with a springerle design pressed on top.
Yesterday we had our annual Thanksmas dinner with three other couples that live here in Seattle. My cousin, my old school friend, and Leo’s college friend and their husbands are each special to us these are friendships with a long history. I was in charge of the mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing and cranberry sauce, and everyone brings a dish to share. Leo cooked two turkeys, one smoked and the other barbequed on the Weber grill. He and his son were also in charge of cooking two turkeys at our Missouri Thanksgiving.
In my family, my mother cooked the turkeys for both Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. That was her job. It was my father’s job to carve them. He also critiqued them, and in all the holidays that I can remember only once did I hear him say, “Babe, this turkey is absolutely perfect!” Once. My mom tried everything, bird-in-a-bag, a black enamelware roaster, shortening, oleo, butter, basted, injected, stuffed, unstuffed, frozen, or fresh. But the scenario was always the same. The hour to bring the baked bird out into the world would approach. Mom would nervously wipe her hands on her apron then don her oven mitts. We’d all gather in the kitchen as she’d carefully open the oven door, reach in and slowly extract the bird. “Ooh”s and “Aaahh”s could be heard by her supportive admirers as she carefully sat the bird on top of the stove. It was a sight to behold. The tom turkey was always over 20 pounds, the skin a golden brown. Except that one year she cooked it inside a grocery bag when the skin stuck to the greasy brown paper, and its color was more of a bitter chocolate.
After the required waiting period my father would approach with his newly sharpened carving knife and fork. Breaths were held in anticipation as he sliced that first slab from the breast of the turkey. He’d cut a small piece off to taste it... “Hmmm, it’s too dry,” he’d usually say, shaking his head. And my mother’s smile would melt like the oleo she had quickly spread over it right before dad had begun to carve. At the dinner table the members of our extended would over-do the compliments, trying to undo the damage of Dad’s declaration of eternal dryness. Perhaps that was why, when I cooked my very first turkey years later, my turkey was as raw inside as a rare piece of prime rib. Better rare than the dreaded “dry.”
But now that I think about it, it probably wasn’t Mom’s cooking method, timing or the temperature. She was cooking a monster bird with a stove that didn’t quite roast evenly. Even though I’ve avoided that responsibility by turning over the cooking of the turkey to my husband, I will never pronounce a turkey to be dry. It isn’t in my vocabulary. Maybe cooked a little too long, or maybe the meat a little too tough, but never dry.
But Leo’s turkeys are usually very good. And this year they were all perfect. Four out of four. Although he’s adopted his son’s brine method, his own secret to success is still the same. He’s a born nurturer. From the time he gets up (5 am) to make the fire for the smoker, he’s constantly playing with the fire, adding more coals, turning the turkey, pouring off the grease, having a beer, taking off the lid to stoke the flames, taking a shot of bourbon, putting on the lid to keep the flames low and starting all over again. Total, uninterrupted attention. It’s a labor of love, he says. He also loves the bourbon.
“It’s on the edge of ideal,” Leo said as he re-entered kitchen after checking up on his turkeys. Wow, I said to myself as I placed small loaves of stollen into little gift bags, that was really profound. Or maybe he’s had a little too much bourbon.
“You mean cooking turkey. Or do you mean this whole wonderful Thanksmas tradition we’ve started?”
“No, I meant the gauge on the smoker; it’s showing me the heat inside is almost at the ‘ideal’ mark,” he said matter-of-factly. I gave him a second look then went outside to the deck and looked on the side of the smoker. The guage read “Low”, “Ideal” and “Hot,” and he was right, the red indicator was on the left side of “Ideal.”
Ah, the literal meaning. I took it at face value and just agreed with him. And later that afternoon as we sat around the table, our empty plates giving evidence to our fulfillment, I thought to myself as I looked in the faces of people I’d known for much of my life, “Yes, this is on the edge of ideal.”

PEACE.

Family

Places round the table set,
Giving evidence to the size,
The scope and proximity
Of a family brought together
By food, by tradition, by love,
and the memory of a man
not related by blood,
But connected by admired courage
And the portraits that he painted.

Places round the table set,
Arms touching shoulders,
Elbows touching laps,
Heads of little ones oblivious
To the time and effort it took
To assemble this clan, this tribe
From all parts, distanced only by miles
And the new responsibilities
Of those little heads peeking in.

Places round the table set,
This year all marked by chairs;
The wheeled one in the bedroom
Immobile and disabled.
No hands to rotate the spokes,
No body to fill the foamed seat
Still impressed with the shape
Of the dead butt and legs
Whose loss we now mourn.

No, not mourn, but miss.
We miss the smile, the presence
Of the person who has touched
Each person who gathers
Round this set table.
We shyly recognize our sadness,
Filling the void with music,
walking towards the wheel
To place a rock as a remembrance.

A song sung to honor,
Words spoken to give worth
To a life that has touched all.
Tears are quickly wiped away
No sobbing is heard, no loss of control.
Privacy is respected.
In a darkened warm back room
On the floor of heated tiles
The hurting invades mercilessly.

But not all mourn or grieve.
Little minds thoughtless except
For food, dry butts, and sleep.
No crying here except for
Hunger, change or to be rocked
By a parent into dreamland
Where everything is good
And there is no hurt.

My 60th birthday surprise

My 60th birthday surprise was going to a book signing event. The title of the book was The Shortest Distance Between Two Points, and the author who was to sign copies of her new book was ME! My daughters, Carrie and Aly, conspired to take my written account of Leo’s and my 1997 Chinese adventure and put it into book form. Thanks to an internet publishing site and their time and effort 20 books were shipped to my sister’s for Thanksgiving. They surprised me with the copies of the book waiting to be signed.
The source of the book’s contents came from all my journal entries and emails from our year in Shanghai which were compiled into a travel journal. In 2002 I signed up for a writing class with the teacher that Dan, my journalist stepson, had taken a class from a few years earlier. It was during that class that I decided to turn the travelogue into a memoir.
Writing the memoir took about a year. Two months after my writing class finished we moved from Chicago to Seattle. I had promised myself that after we got settled into our new home I would try to find a publisher. Eight rejection slips later I happily put the two hundred plus pages of my memoir along with my writing class notes into a box which I ceremoniously carried down to the basement. Writing became more and more infrequent as Leo and I filled our time with outdoor activities, the main reason for moving to Seattle, and teaching part time at Seattle Central Community College.
Another activity that kept me busy was visiting our kids on the other side of the country as they transitioned into roles of spouses and, in the past year, parents. I had the opportunity to be present at Carrie’s son’s birth and Alyson’s daughter’s birth. We traveled to New Hampshire to meet Pablo Jose Gorenstein after Dan and his wife brought their six month-old adoptive son from Guatamala. Last September I was in Brooklyn babysitting 20 month old Rami while Carrie delivered her daughter.
And as most of you already know, last month I was at my sister’s when she brought her husband Rich home from the hospital and called in hospice. It had started with a pressure sore and when respiratory problems multiplied, he grew weaker. He died October 5th and I stayed until the 16th . It was hard to leave her, but I knew I would be back in a month for Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving has become our family’s primary holiday. Not all of us celebrate Christmas. Besides, I became disillusioned with this hectic holiday many years ago. And since Thanksgiving centers around food and family, it seemed logical for all of us to make the effort to travel to Florida, Chicago or the past two years, Deb and Rich’s in Missouri. This year we were keeping it simple, food-wise. No gourmet stuffing, no ethnic offerings, no exotic foodstuffs. This was the year of the grandbabies, all four of them, all under two years of age. Carrie, Dan and Aly and their spouses and kids were going to be invading Debby’s house a few days before turkey day, and no one wanted to be in the kitchen and miss the entertainment in the living room.
We were all hoping that Debby’s house could handle the onslaught. With two bedrooms and a loft upstairs and a backroom downstairs all three families would have their privacy. Equipment-wise, Debby was prepared with two pac-n-plays, a booster seat, one high chair and two air mattresses. The baby equipment was generously loaned to Debby from the neighbor across the street. (Cindy and her husband are a unique pair who have been foster parents to over 20 kids.)
Even though everyone had their own space, Leo and I thought a back up plan was necessary so we also got a motel room for a couple of nights. We figured it could be used as a good “time out” room for babies, their parents or grandparents.
Before I left for Missouri I called Aly with a request. She was the family member who usually organized something for my birthday which was on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
“Aly, this year I don’t want my birthday to be a big deal.” I explained to her that it was such a gift that everyone could be there, but that Rich’s absence would be strongly felt. I just didn’t want too much commotion centered around me. She agreed with me and added that she and Whitey, and Dan and Erica would be going home the day before my birthday. So I figured I’d just get a few birthday cards, the usual check from Mom and maybe a present from Deb.
On Friday after Thanksgiving, when Debby and I returned from Walgreen’s after buying a humidifier for a congested baby, Carrie was at the gate. She was holding Rami who was dressed in a velvet suit and holding a bouquet of flowers.
“Susan Carrel, we welcome you. It’s almost time for the big event. Everyone…Susan has arrived. We can begin.!”
Hmmhmm…those kids! They had probably put together a “This is your Life” skit like they did for my 50th. But as I walked through the gate, I spotted a large sign. “Book Signing Event here today. Author Susan K. Carrel will sign copies of her book, “The Shortest Distance Between Two Points.” As I walked into the house and saw a small table with books on it, I thought “Wow, they’ve made covers to go on books so I can pretend I’m signing my book. I saw my picture on the book’s jacket, and when I opened it up I read, “Chapter 1…So did you go to Woodstock, Mom?...”
“Wha…how did you get this?” I sort of stammered. This was the beginning of the memoir I had finished my last year in Chicago. Leo looked at me with a devilish smile.
“Every time you hinted that I didn’t know how to use the computer, I was laughing on the inside.”
“You mean you found my writing, attached to an email and sent it to Carrie and Aly?”
“Even scanned in a few pictures and sent them to Carrie, too. She put it together.”
“And Aly designed the cover,” Carrie added, pointing to a geometry figure overlapped by a map of the world with the silhouette of a bicycle on it.
“Try that algebra problem on the back, Mom,” Aly said, pointing under the picture of Leo and me.
I read out loud, “A cyclist travels from A to B over a high pass, C. Her average speed going up the his is 9 km/h…”
I couldn’t contain myself any longer. “I love it! I love it! I love it! ” I squawked, jumping up and down like a kid at Chuckee Cheese.
“So sit down and start signing those books!” Leo said, guiding me behind a table with about ten paperbacks and one hardcover book.
“That one’s for you, Mom,” Carrie said. “Oh, and look at that magazine article.”
On the front of a Ladies’ Home Journal titled “100 of the most important women in the 20th Century” my photo had been glued right across from Mother Theresa’s picture. Aly opened the magazine.
“See, Susan K. Carrel, author. Dan wrote that article, Mom.” And there were even book reviews by Barbara Kingsolver, Julia Alvarez and Sandra Cisneros compliments of Debby’s creativity.
Soon I was signing my book for my family and for friends in Seattle and Chicago. “Wow she really slipped into the role of an author, didn’t she?” someone observed.
Well, I thought, I’m only turning sixty once in my life, and it would probably be my only book signing party, so why not enjoy it!

If you’re curious about this, check out www.lulu.com, type in my name or the book's title and see for yourself. Because Aly designed the cover and Carrie formatted the manuscript the total cost besides shipping was just the cost of the books. I won’t apologize for the content. It’s my memoir but basically a story about how I ended up teaching English in China and what happened during the year and half we worked and traveled there. Obviously, it’s not the final edited version but there aren’t too many mistakes. The writing, while not professional, is an easy read, and as David Hays, Rich's son, described it, “I've never read a book by someone I know. I can really picture you and Leo doing all those things.”

On Being Blake

This story has a happy ending, and there's a moral at the end. As it unfolded two days ago, I imagined myself sharing it, but I did not imagine the happy ending. Perhaps I would not be telling it if the outcome had been different.
My Aunt’s son-in-law Blake helped her move last week. He not only helped pack, but he borrowed a truck and moved all the appliances, serviced the dryer and washer, hooked up her new TV with her old VCR, and put together a bed frame, a pie safe, and a wooden file cabinet she decided to use as a towel holder in her bathroom.

Aunt Faye made the decision when she turned 80 years old that it was time to move. She had no second thoughts, no doubts when she asked her sister Betty, my mom, to see if there was a unit in the neighborhood that mom moved to seven years ago. When I arrived in Kansas City Aunt Faye had already slept in her new digs, a triplex located directly behind my mom’s.
My cousin Laura picked me up at the airport and on the way home she told me all they had done.

"Would you believe I had planned to make lamb stew, a polenta dish and other ‘Cookling Light’ recipes?" Laura said. "What was I thinking? We’ve had takeout every night...at nine pm!"

After giving my mom a kiss, I said, "Let’s go see your new neighbor!"

Mom, Laura and I simply walked through mom’s place, headed out the back door, and walked across the lawn. Aunt Faye met us at her back door and ushered us through her new surroundings. The weird part was that it was just like mom’s except flipped. It was an exact mirror image, yet there were subtle differences. The sink in the kitchen was closer to the back wall, while the sink in the bathroom was smaller. The bathroom cabinets were smaller but there twice as many. When I walked out into the garage I looked to my right expecting to see the garage door. But there it was on my left. I was turned around, just like Aunt Faye.

"Isn’t the kitchen smaller that your mom’s," Blake asked.

"Isn’t the garage larger?" I said. "And is this the same size as mom’s bedroom?"

We continued making comparisons and estimations while we wondered through the two bedroom living space. Blake was putting the finishing touches on the pie safe that had been turned into the entertainment center. He showed me the new flat screen tv which was hooked up to her vcr. "Now she can watch those old Dean Martin videos that her daughter gave her three Christmases ago."

"And look at this Sue" Aunt Faye called from the bathroom. "Blake put it together today. We found it at Office Max."

"I love it," my mom exclaimed as Faye pointed to a wooden file cabinet perfectly fitting under the bathroom counter, perfectly matching the wood on the cabinets, and filled perfectly with carefully folded towels and perfectly matched wash clothes. "I’d love to have something like that for MY towels."

I picked up on the inflection in her voice. This I could do. As Mom and I made our way back across the small yards, I began to devise a plan to help out my mom with the towel problem. AND I could also buy a cheap DVD and hook it up for her so she could watch movies in closed-captioned.

Two days later, after taking Laura and Blake to the airport, I set off for Office Max and Target to make my purchases. I wouldn’t have to "shop around" because Laura and Faye had already done the leg work. I wouldn’t have to measure, or match, or configure, because Laura and Blake had already done that. They even told me the price I’d have to pay for the DVD..."they’re cheap now, Sue. You can get one for forty bucks."...and the type of wood for the file cabinet...pine, it was a perfect match for the cabinets.

I was tired but in St. Joe the traffic isn’t as bad as Seattle. But it was Saturday. There’s fewer people in St. Joe than in Seattle, but it was Saturday. But I didn’t have to wait too long in the check out lines, and I was back home sooner than I thought. I even had time to wash her car. I was feeling like such a good girl.
"I’m going to take a nap too," I declared. After resting for twenty minutes, I woke up refreshed and ready to take on my two challenges. Electronics first. I opened the DVD player box. I took at all the cables, remote, player, and manuals. I unplugged the TV and VCR and looked for a red, a yellow, and a white hole in the tv to plug in the cables that came with the player. Nothing like that was in back of the TV. I resorted to the manual, but after reading a sentence that was missing a verb and a couple of articles I carefully put down the manual, picked up my cell phone and called my daughter.

"Aly, I know you’re busy right now, but I’m trying to hook up a DVD player for your grandmother and the TV has nothing for me to plug into. I have a yellow cable thingie, and there isn’t anywhere in back of the tv for it to go into. HELP! I know if I remain calm you will be able to solve this problem." I then unhooked the antennae cable wire, unhooked another cable thingie from the VCR and stared at the wires and cables.

"Can I help, honey?" Mom sweetly asked as she walked into a living room strewn with packing materials, flashlight, batteries, an extra remote, and lots of wires.

"Mom, this is more complicated than I thought," I said calmly. "The immediate problem is that I have three plugs now and only one electrical outlet with two connections. "Do you have an extension cord?"

She directed me to the garage where I found two extension cords that probably were manufactured in the fifties. I could see that there was going to be a trip or two to the store. I was trying to avoid places like Radio Shack.

Okay, the DVD wasn’t going to work. Mom probably wouldn’t want that extra remote anyway. I carefully repacked it and replugged in all the wires and cables. There was only a nice snow pattern on the TV screen where "Wheel of Fortune" should have been showing.

"This always has been a little sensitive," said Mom as she tried to move the eighty-five pound cabinet and television. "I just have to move this a little and jiggle this a little and it should come right on."

But it didn’t. I must have damaged a cable, I said. Luckily I could reconnect the wires and get the TV to work, but the VCR now was unusuable. Nice going, Sue.

We had dinner. I tried to have light conversation but I was feeling like a dork. My cell phone rang.

"DORK!" my younger daughter yelled into the phone. "You can connect the DVD to the VCR which is already connected to the TV!" Not anymore it’s not, I thought.

After a few tips from Alyson, I hung up the phone and decided to start on the file cabinet. I carefully pulled out the pieces, stacking each one around me, just as I pictured Blake doing it, methodically, carefully. But as I pulled the front of a drawer out, I stopped. Something was wrong. This wood didn’t match the wood in the bathroom. I hadn’t been able to find "Pine" only "Maple" "Cherry" and "Alder." I had settled on Alder because I assumed it meant "Alder Pine." I actually hadn’t thought that much about it.

After realizing my mistake and calling Office Max, I dragged the forty pound box back into the car and headed back to the store. How in the world did I think I could be Blake. Nothing was turning out. Obviously, I wasn’t a techie and I couldn’t even shop for the right file cabinet. What a dork. But after the nice guys at Office Max (they were geeks but they didn’t make me feel stupid) took my old file cabinet and loaded the car with a pine wood one I felt much better. I was on my way now!

I could have skipped into the house, I was so happy...except that box also weighed forty-pounds...I was feeling a small strain in my back. But I took out my three screw drivers, a mallet, a large hammer and the directions. By this time Mom had decided to go to bed and read. It was 8:45 pm. I put the cabinet together by 10 pm. I decided to fit it under the sink and then work on the drawers. I lifted, pushed, dragged the cabinet over to the bathroom. It looked big. As I shoved it towards the space under the counter, I started shaking my head. NO! It couldn’t be. I hadn’t really measured it that carefully, but I knew the cabinet was about 28" high and that the height of the counter was about 28". Blake fit it perfectly under Aunt Fayes, didn’t he? I shoved, tilted, pushed, swore, and kicked the cabinet but it wouldn’t fit under the counter. I figured it was an eighth of an inch too high. I turned it upside down and took the large hammer and whacked it on the bottom hoping to smash it down. Then I bent down, turned it upside down, and tried shoving it under again. Whoops, careful, there’s that back strain again. This time the cabinet went under a few inches but got stuck on a 2x4 under the counter. I calmly put down the hammer and picked up my cell phone.

"Blake, I know I can’t be you, but I wasn’t really trying to be. HELP! I can’t fit this cabinet under mom’s bathroom counter. I know you could figure out how to solve this problem...HELP!" That was going to be my message that I would leave, but they hadn’t left their answering machine on, so I just hung up the phone.

I didn’t know what to do. It was 10:30 pm, the cabinet was half put together, and I knew it wouldn’t fit under the cabinet. I felt like a little girl again in her mother’s house, a dejected failure. I almost wanted to cry. But I hadn’t done that in a long time. My adult, thankfully, showed up in my psyche and said, "What the hell," and I turned on Saturday Night Live, and finished putting the cabinet together again. When I went to bed the living room was all picked up and the cabinet was set against the wall. I’d deal with it in the morning. I did some back exercises before I went to bed.

I slept well, got up and told mom about the problem. We laughed, and she said, "well, maybe Mike the landlord can help solve the problem."

"Or Deb and Rich," I suggested. That afternoon, we drove to Kansas City and watched the superbowl with my sister and her husband. Rich loaned us two sanders to help shorted the cabinet.. The next day when we got home I sanded the 2x4 and the bottom of the cabinet and it slid right in with a couple of kicks from me.

I then calmly walked over to the DVD box, took it out and plugged it into the VCR which I connected (via coaxial cable) to the tv. It worked beautifully.
I could have embellished this story to make it much more suspenseful, more hilarious, and more exciting. However, I’ve learned that embellishing a story can get you into trouble so I’ll just end with the moral. When things go wrong, clean up your mess, get some rest, laugh a little and try again. I was lucky; things worked out for me on the second time around. They don’t always. As for trying to be Blake...not a chance.

Time to Leave

We'll be leaving soon. It will be a nineteen hours total trip south. We're leaving the country for a while, but I can't say we're going overseas,can I? Basically we're just following the land mass south, south south to Santiago, Chile. We've said good bye to all the kids and the grandkid. And this week I'll visit my mom and sister and say good bye to them, again. This time they don't ask us why we're going; they've grown used to our meaderings. Maybe, like us, they knew it was time.
We've been busy today. I've printed out five copies of our updated resumes, checked to see if my insurance will cover emergencies, and printed out an application for an international driver's license. Leo updated his resume, pulled out our ESL certificates, and dug out some materials on teaching English.
I'm glad we're finally making lists and getting things checked off them. It feels like we're really moving forward instead of just talking about this. "Oh, we've decided to go to Santiago, Chile and try to teach English for a few months." But I'm still not sure it's going to happen although the tickets have been charged on the Visa but not paid for. We promised a few people that we could turn around and come home if they needed us. So part of me is waiting for a phone call to tell us we're needed.
But I haven't felt needed. Not even when we babysat our grandson. He was sick and homesick the whole time. We did our best, honest. But he got the better of us healthwise, and we're not only packing but trying to get better. This is our third day on antibiotics and I think my sinus headache is finally disappearing. Leo is still coughing and rests a lot. We've got to be healthy when we board the plane for the long, long ride.
It's harder to leave this time. I've always doubts, but this time I'm a little fearful of the unknown. My Spanish stinks. I can't understand anyone who speaks it. I've listened to my CD three times and when the conversation is at a normal pace, I'm lost. But it's going to be easier this time than when we went to Shanghai. At least the alphabet will be familiar. And I have been studying the language for the past four years, half heartedly. This time should be easier. But we're older, and wiser. Which means we already had the experience of coming into a foreign city and not know anyone and not know where anything is. I'm glad there's two of us.