The Blog: Spellbound by our own imperfect lives...

I woke up at 6:30 which is and isn't normal. On good sleeping nights I wake up early and feel great. On bad sleeping nights I linger in bed until 8:00 or after and feel like crap. I took on a giant project yesterday. I planted Engelman Ivy on my chain link fence a few years back. In the spring it appears to be quite in control but by this time of the summer, it has become a frightening abomination. It clings to volunteer trees until they are hidden so once you start chopping, there is just no end. I started hacking some of it down when I saw Regis trying to mow around and under it. Soon I had a giant pile of vines, tree parts, roots, and monster leaves. One of our very kind neighbors offered to tote it to the compost site, thank God. It might have come to life in the night if it hadn't been hauled away. It's lush and beautiful in the summer, some of the leaves get as big as dinner plates, and the fall colors are gorgeous. But it's scary. I know, if I didn&#

I started this blog in 1990 and called it Buns of Stone because Regis and I were going to walk 500 miles in a year. Yeah, well...that never happened. We were going to write together and that didn't happen often either. He fell by the wayside and I continued my ranting, hand-wringing, story telling, and celebrating for 13 more years. This is my 2000th post. ESFP - The Performers I put my blog address in typealyzer [ http://www.typealyzer.com/ ] and here is what it said. The author of http://www.teresasaum.com  is of the type ESFP. (Notice the absence of the T which means I have no affinity for math and logic. What a surprise.) The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft beautiful textiles, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves. ESFPs love being around people and having new experi

Actually I didn't count 2000 posts, that would be an impossibility and if I did it ten times, I would get ten different numbers. Today is 1999. I know it doesn't make a whit of difference but I'm trying to be accurate. There is a noodley thing on my admin site that keeps track of such things so it should be easy but you know me and my math thing. There's also a stat thing. It says my blog has had almost 70,000 page views. I think a lot of those must be guys in China trolling for people to send viagra comments. Tomorrow will be #2000. Yesterday I was in the grip of ennui. I took a nap in the morning, did nothing most of the day, hid out in the bedroom after lunch and finally decided I had to get outside and do something. I went up to Tom and Betty's and got in the pool first with Tom, then with Betty. There is nothing more therapeutic than paddling around a swimming pool in a big chair, drinking a cold beer. It's been so hot here that it's hard to e

I always dread the question one gets at the end of summer: Did you travel? Now, thanks to Billy Collins, I have an answer. No, I did not travel. I have been commanding the simple presinct of home. Consolation by Billy Collins How agreeable it is not to be touring   Italy   this summer, wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns. How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets, fully grasping the meaning of every roadsign and billboard and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots. There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous domes and there is no need to memorize a succession of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon. No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon’s little bed on   Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass. How much better to command the simple precinct of home than be dwarfed by pillar, arch, and basilica. Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps? Why feed scenery into a hungry,

So, far, this has been a week of little activity. It's too hot to do much outdoor work, so I do the necessary things to keep the plants alive then I fill up Gus's pink pool and sit with my feet in the water while I read.  I wear sandals when I garden so I can hose my feet off when I get hot. Hence the dirty toes. No way around it. I figured out that if I wear socks and shoes, the dirt still gets through so you have the disadvantages of having your feet be hot AND dirty. In the morning when the water is warm (and dirty), I use it to water the garden. When Regis and Gus come back from a trip to the dog park, I fill it with cold water again and he heads right into the water.  Last night I watered plants and filled the bird bath and when I bent over to move the hose, sweat ran into my eyes and stung. I think that's a first for me which says something about my activity level in the heat, I guess. Immobile.That's what I am. I just checked back and see

I have been busy sweeping the spider webs from my head. Funny how those damn things get in there and occupy their own dusty shelves. It takes some work to find them and banish them. It was a wonderful cosmic accident (or not an accident) that I found Mary to help. I have great faith in her. I spent the morning reading old writing and compiling a binder because that's what I do when I want to organize my head. I have a weight loss surgery binder (used to have two but let go of one...), I have an exercise binder, and now I have this new head binder. The Buddha quote and the St. Therese prayer are on the front. An oak leaf that I saved from last fall is on the back. Inside...lots of calendars, articles, writing, pictures, and my goals for healthy living. Off to do the dishes. We had to get a new water heater because, of course, the warranty just expired...right before the damn thing sprung a leak.

Today is my cousin, Deb's, birthday. I won't say how old she is but you can see we're close in age. In fact, we might be the same age for a few months until I get the jump on her in October. We were always more like sisters than cousins. She was from an all-boy family and so was I. In the old days, before cell phones and the interwebs, we wrote real letters. Our families visited in the summer and on holidays, even though it was almost 300 miles across the state.  Once in a while, I went there to visit by myself. It was a wonderful place to visit...Houston is in the SE corner of Minnesota, a landscape of hills and ravines. So different from the prairie side of Minnesota where I grew up that it seemed exotic.  Deb had a room at the top of their stucco house with a tiny window over the bed. We would kneel on her bed into the hot summer night and watch the traffic around the park.  Deb and Teresa at Tulaby Lake...maybe late 1950's. Deb came for

Yikes! I think we may have taken weather warnings a bit too far. We get excessive heat warnings on our phones about every fifteen minutes. No shit. Like you'd forget between the time you read it and then got up to walk out the door. Wait...what was that again? Excessive heat, like excessive cold, seems like a good reason to hunker down and not do much. Ella and I rigged up a shopping cart with a luggage carrier and a yellow basket and walked to the farmer's market. We bought two melons, two jars of pickles, some hot peppers, and two tomatoes. After that, I didn't do much but sit on the swing. We watched a movie last night which was entertaining but I'm sure the actor had a serious shot or two of botox in his lips and it was distracting. Good movie but who has lips that big? I need a hair cut and Regis is nervous about doing it. I tell him it's only hair and it will grow back. I just want it very short so how bad can it be? I spent the winter bald so I h

I don't even work and by the end of the week, I'm tired. What the hell. I did have a busy week, but still seems slothful. One night this week, I worked in the garden then filled up the pool for Gus. Nice soak for my feet and it was very cooling. It would look better if I had a nice pedicure but instead I have garden toes. I've been in the back yard lately. Our back yard is tiny and pretty much featureless so there's no attraction. One day this week, I decided to put up my ancient clothes hanger thing. One of those square ones on a pole. It did the job but I noticed the next day that the one plastic piece on it had broken. I think I can fix it. I use it once every ten years so I'm not of a mind to replace it. I found our walnut tree stump needs a mowing. The stump has been there since the tornado took the tree down. We tried once to have it removed but the stump removal guy couldn't get his machine through the gate. We decided to just let it weather

It was a long day. Regis toted me over to the East Ridge Clinic at 9 am for my mammogram and blood draw. Then we tooled around Mankato for a while doing some retail therapy (successful thrift/consignment store shopping), pet store for Gus, lunch at Blue Bricks, then more appointments. I saw the research nurse and oncologist this afternoon. All is well. I'll go back every three months for two years, mostly due to research protocol. They expect me to be a survivor. Re: the successful retail therapy. I bought a couple of great black sweaters for wear with leggings, a Chico's knit top at a steal, a pair of Guinness pajama pants (don't ask), a great tropical looking caftan (I know...nobody wears those anymore), and the best denim jacket ever. I might give the jacket to a friend who has a birthday coming up if I can bear to part with it. Of course, there is always the chance he will turn up his nose and say I should keep it. Haha! Then I came home to find St. Francis and a bo

Regis woke me up in the middle of the night when the blue moon was right outside our bedroom window. He held the curtains open so I could see it. It looks like most other full moons but it doesn't happen very often and you know how I like a happening. Regis is sleeping in this morning (probably because he was awake in the middle of the night spotting the moon) so I'm up alone to man the coffee pot and radio. It's a job I can handle. We had another good summer meal last night. Tiffany and Eric and Elliot came over for steak, sweet corn, cantaloupe, and habanero pickles. Elliot wanted in the worst way to walk to the DQ but it was getting late. We walked there once and that's stuck in his little four-year old memory as: We always walk to the DQ! Here's another beautiful butterfly shot from the collection. If you view it in Picassa and zoom in, you can see the little individual hairs on his wings. My cousin in Florida, Christine, sent this b

Gratitude by Barbara Crooker This week, the news of the world is bleak, another war grinding on, and all these friends down with cancer, or worse, a little something long term that they won’t die of for twenty or thirty miserable years— And here I live in a house of weathered brick, where a man with silver hair still thinks I’m beautiful. How many times have I forgotten to give thanks? The late day sun shines through the pink wisteria with its green and white leaves as if it were stained glass, there’s an old cherry tree that one lucky Sunday bloomed with a rainbow: cardinals, orioles, goldfinches, blue jays, indigo buntings, and my garden has tiny lettuces just coming up, so perfect they could make you cry: Green Towers, Red Sails, Oak Leaf. For this is May, and the whole world sings, gleams, as if it were basted in butter, and the air’s sweet enough to send a diabetic into shock— And at least today, all the parts of my body are working, the sky’s clear as a china bowl, leaves mur

It's been an amazing week. I've done a lot of work with my therapist, Mary. I believe in signs and she came into my life at just the right moment. There were many signs...the ginko leaf, her daughters, the bessel interview, the St. Teresa prayer that I found on the boulevard. Yesterday, I found this. On Facebook, which is not quite like finding something on the boulevard but close. It has meaning for me. Regis drove me to my appointment with Mary yesterday and when we got out of the car, this gorgeous butterfly was on the Joe Pye weed. Regis took a picture with his phone because we weren't sure it would stay long enough for anything else. He would flit around a bit, then land again. I unlocked the door, got the real camera, and Regis took about 90 shots. The rest of them are here   if you want to see them. The detail is incredible. Another sign, right? I wrote yesterday about Karen slugging rats in the gutter. We have laughed about that expression. Simil

Garden: August 2013 My garden has been a mess for about five years for several reasons, none of which matter now, but I was determined to do better this year. I had connected my cancer treatments with gardening, so came out of that raring to go. I bet we have hauled ten giant bags of crap out of there. All the hostas have been transplanted into shady spots and the things that need more sun have been moved to sunny corners. I'm so proud of it. Ella and I went to the Govenaires Drum Corps Expo last night. It was a beautiful summer evening...pink and purple sky, almost full moon, fresh breeze, and popcorn. The music was great, too. The Govies put on a good show. Ella bought a mini-flag and was anxious to start twirling it when she got home, but I cautioned her about whacking her father in the head. I said that would not bode well for the future of her flag. I am amazed that somebody can come up with a concept like Chasing Hollywood, then put it all together with m

Our neighbor who drives us insane with his incessant gas-powered lawn machines spent hours the other day cutting a checkerboard pattern in his grass. He should really live in the suburbs because nobody on our block, hell not even our whole street, cares this much about lawns. There is a house on the next block that I swear has not had the grass cut all summer. What the heck, the rabbits love it. Yesterday morning we went to buy groceries for our dinner. The grocery store is a highly stimulating experience at 10 o'clock in the morning. This is why we prefer the pre-dawn hours for shopping. We had a little breakfast and coffee, visited the friendly meat department, and got the hell out of there. We had kids around for dinner. Regis cooked steaks to perfection. We had great sweet corn on the grill, baked potatoes, melon from Marie's garden, and pickles from the farmer's market. Ella gave me a hand and foot massage on the patio later and we enjoyed the summer evening. Eve

Remember that giant basket of paper I had collected over the fall and winter? I finally went through it today. Ta da! The dread of it was not nearly as bad as the actual task which is true most of the time with other dreaded tasks like cleaning out the refrigerator. I also filled out a survey on my medical care (extensive!)and applied for a lifetime teaching sub license. It was a complicated process that included contacting TRA and MDE and the filling out of multiple forms. I'm not sure where this will go but I think it's a sign of improved mental health that I got this far. I went out the garden in the afternoon, intending to just putter. I ended up digging out three giant hostas and transplanting all the pieces into the front garden. That's a lot of bending and digging. I pulled a chair onto the driveway so I could take periodic breaks and look these over because I am a random gardener and think that having a plan ruins the zen beauty of it. Regis said he would take s

Yes, we have gray Formica, probably from the 60s on our kitchen counter tops but we don't care. Sigh. I have lost interest in home decorating. It's just not within my capability circle anymore. After that admission (confession?) I can now brag about this lovely little appetizer I made on Sunday. Tiny tomatoes from the farmer's market, basil from the patio, fresh mozzarella, and balsamic vinegar with olive oil. So good and so pretty in the white dish. I slept fitfully and not much last night, then slept hard from 4-7 with weird dreams about a chaotic work environment where people were taking baths and the stairs were like escalators but after you went up one step, the one behind you disappeared. The theme seemed to be that the people doing the construction were incompetent. Things were falling apart all over the place. Regis has taken over our financial business. Thank God. My brain could just not wrangle with it anymore. I don't know why it was such a pain

I've been doing this dance for a long time. Trying to recover from some wounds, psychic and physical. I loved seeing this today. I'm going to visualize my backwards steps as part of a dance, not a disaster. It's a lapse, not a collapse and the urge to move forward is a reason to be optimistic. It's what Bessel van der Kolk calls the life force. Jane called me yesterday to remind me that 36 years ago, we almost went to Elvis's funeral in Memphis. We were living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa so it wouldn't have been such a long drive and would for sure have been a lark. Then we heard how many people were expected and motel rooms were so hard to find we would probably have to stay in a different state (or sleep in the car) so we decided to skip it. It's been a good story over the years...a thing we almost did. I wasn't even an Elvis fan, just always up for a happening. Did you know you can put "pictures of Elvis after death" into google a

It rained again during the night. Good for my hosta garden. Also good for gnats and mosquitoes. Most of the hostas in this part of my garden are new. It's hard to know since I am not a professional, how far apart to plant them. Right now they look sparse, but next year, they will explode out of the ground and fill the space. We had a lovely day, mostly on the patio. Ella came about 3 and we wandered down to the fair to see what was happening. A lot of packing up and moving on is what was happening. Nice to see Linda, Robert and Roxie, Connie, and Annie. I went to the fair three times this year...that's a record. The cooler temperatures made that possible. Yeah, that pepper experiment worked. I cut a slit in the peppers, emptied out some/most of the seeds, stuffed them, wrapped a few in bacon and Regis grilled them. Fire in the mouth! These peppers had soul! I got not so good news from my NJ friend, Karen, in the middle of the night. She sent an email saying he

Regis and I have been experimenting with peppers on the grill for a couple years. We started with a recipe for stuffed jalapenos and have gotten more experimental as time goes by. For one thing, it was a bear getting the seeds out of jalapenos and then figuring out a satisfactory way to keep them upright during grilling. We discovered poblano peppers and started to slice them open and lay the stuff inside. That worked so we tried it with Annaheim peppers and banana peppers. Taking the seeds out is the tricky part. If you leave too many, they taste like fire. If there aren't enough, they don't have much flavor. Regis said we might be taking the soul out of them by being so meticulous in the cleaning. So, we'll try again tonight.

There was some kind of mix-up with the amusement company so there are no rides or games of chance at the county fair. There is, however, this lovely trolley pulled by these horses and for five dollars you can ride around town for about 30 minutes. I sat on my front step and waited for it to come by and when they stopped, I leaped aboard. So much fun. I might do it again today. It is a big week for weddings. Regis did an impromptu wedding for a young man who is in the Navy. They got a judge to waive the waiting period and the wedding was lovely. Today, another outdoor wedding. We feel honored to be a part of so many of these wonderful and happy days. I went to the farmer's market and the coop this morning on the hunt for poblano peppers. No such luck but I did find some nice jalapenos and a couple other hot varieties that will be tasty. Also some jam made by my friend, Annie, a jar of habanero dill pickles, and some pickled beets. My goals for the day ar