Twenty-seven reasons!

Twenty-seven years ago today we promised we'd stay together. For richer, for poorer. In good times and bad.

There have been trials! But my annual accounting is never difficult.

1. I love that you (we!) figured out to watch Netflix on our fancy TV without Charlie writing down each step. (Push the power button on the black remote....)
2. I love your devotion to home decor--making sure every square inch of wall in our condo has something on it.
3. I love going to Key West with you. We could go this weekend but I'm on call...
4. I love tricking you into eating at Hibachi grills which I enjoy but you, not so much...until the food arrives.
5. I love picking the trotters with you at the Pompano track.
6. I love how you enjoy feeding squirrels who live in the trees outside our condo.
7. I love it when you ask me if 70-degrees is cold enough weather for chili. It's not but we can turn up the AC and make it anyway.
8. I love getting up first, making coffee, reading "your" paper (the Sun-Sentinel) until I don't hear you snoring anymore. That silence means it's time for me to start reading "my" paper (the Miami Herald).
9. I love grocery shopping at Publix with you to see your eyes roll in mock disgust at the slowness of the elderly.
10. I love how proud you are of down-sizing our storage to a manageable amount of stuff.
11. I love our Friday night dinners at Rotelli's
12. I love walking on the beach and picking up shells.
13. I love when you take the shells we picked up on Sanibel, and plant them on the beach on our side of Florida and watch tourists pounce on them like treasure. 
14. I love how you try to humanely trap the lizards on our deck so they don't get into the house.
15. I love how you complain about getting up early for Dolphins tailgate gatherings but still manage to have fun anyway.
16. I love that you insisted I spend New Year's Eve and Day with my family in Rochester, MN when Paula and Bob had the transplant surgery. You knew I wanted to go but that I was worried about the cost.
17. I love that you will eat a meatless meal every once in awhile, without complaining.
18. I love how irritated you get at the snowbirds.
19. I love how you always answer your cell phone when my brother calls.
20. I love how you keep trying to win the Powerball jackpot so I can retire. 
21. I am amused by (and thus love) your aversion to sitting at a red light for a few minutes and your goofy detours to avoid that fate.
22. I love that you bought us both bikes for Christmas which has led to delightful rides on Saturday and Sunday.
23. Subsequently, I love that you tricked out my bicycle with a bell, cellphone holder, water bottle grip and a place for my keys.  Ding, ding! Here I come!
24. I love how you drunkenly tried to write a message on a napkin at Irish Kevin's regarding your role in "Walk the Line."  And how you stayed in bed for most of the next day, recovering for the hangover.
25. I love how you talk  r e a l l y  s l o w l y  to our South American neighbor who does not understand a word of English as if that will make it easier. Just smile and wave!
26. Person of Interest! Blacklist ! House of Cards! I love watching certain TV shows with you!
27. I love that you love sushi. Let's celebrate this anniversary with spicy, crunchy tuna. 

I can make it.

We had guests for the Labor Day weekend.  My brother Perry and his wife, Toni.  Our son Charlie.  Our nephew Paul.

Hurricane Isaac impacted our plans Friday with a rain out of the Twins game.  I tried and failed to give the tickets away but we ended up using them Sunday in the scorching, searing Missouri heat.  And of course, the Twins lost.  We came home from the K ready for a fine meal and more family time.

The title of this post refers to a "kitchen incident" that occurred Sunday night as I was preparing dinner for my guests.  The menu?  BBQ country-style ribs in the pressure cooker, cole slaw and beans.  Followed by Perry's delicious zucchini cake.

Ribs cooked this way are fall-off-the-bone tender so I was confident that I would be receiving accolades for hours after dinner.  Except for the stupid move I made with a sharp knife.

Quick rewind.  For Mother's Day, John and Charlie bought me some REALLY sharp knives.  I don't even like to put them in the dishwasher, so as not to dull the edges.  I love those knives.  And there's a bunch of 'em.  There's a paring knife, a chef's knife, six steak knives, a bread knife, a boning knife.  A fabulous pair of kitchen scissors that will cut through anything.  Even a tomato knife.

But it was the utility knife that did me in.

Five minutes before the ribs should leave the flame, I was attempting to open a jar of slaw dressing with the utility knife.

The blade slipped and I stabbed myself right in that fleshy part of the hand between the thumb and index finger.

I yelled.

Not in a panic, mind you.  More at myself.

I went to the sink and turned on the water, to wash the wound a bit.

Then blood started spurting from the hole in my hand and I really yelled.  Loud.

"I cut myself!"

Medic!  (My brother was in the National Guard and my nephew is active duty.)

Both sprang to action.

"Put pressure on it," my brother ordered and despite my morbid desire to see the blood blurting out and the fact that he's seventeen years younger than I am, I obeyed.  Paul was right there with the bandage.

It's not a big cut...just about a quarter of an inch.  But it is deep and it hurt like hell.

Pressure and a bandage was exactly what I needed.  That and for my brother to finish cooking dinner while I supervised, telling him what to do and when.

Just what I needed.

When the news hits too close to home

Wednesday morning was one just like most others.  Wake up, turn on the morning news, make coffee, read the newspaper.  Our morning team was dealing with breaking news that day.  A wrong-way crash hurt three people.  I-435 had been closed for hours and was still closed at 6am.  Bummer for commuters.

That afternoon, I was on a conference call and idly clicked on to my Facebook page.  A message?  How fun!  I clicked it.

"The girls in the wrong way crash are Ken and Diane's daughters," my cousin messaged.  "They are headed to KC right now."

Ken (Kendall) Wiechmann is my cousin.  Our grandfathers were brothers so we aren't first cousins. Second?  Third?  Whatever.  We went to school together, starting in the one-room school house through 12th Grade.  We had the same last name so we walked one after the other at graduation in May, 1975.  I went off to college and he started his own career.  We hadn't seen each other in years.

When we were children, Kendall was always just a little bigger and a little stronger than I was.  We had a typical "cousins" relationship.  Our farms were a mile apart.  He had a sister who was Pam's age and a brother who was Paula's age.  We played together.  We swam in the creek together.  We poured water down gopher holes together.

"You're ugly," I would say to him.

"You're dumb," he would counter.

And we would throw dirt clods at each other.  (A common childhood  activity in South Dakota.  Dirt clods look like rocks but aren't as dense and turn into dust upon contact.)

Back to Wednesday afternoon.  I was frozen.  I raced to the assignment desk where Killer pulled the accident report. KrissaMarie (age 22) and Kayla Wiechmann (age 26), both of Nashville (formerly of South Dakota), were driving home to see their family.

Rory Liberty, a guy with a relatively clean record, apparently driving under the influence, crashed into their car.

I didn't know these girls but my heart ached for their worried parents.  Thursday I waited for the driver to be charged so I could tell their parents.  I looked at the girls' pictures on Facebook and wondered at their lives.

Another cousin told me about the driver who was right behind them when they collided with Rory Liberty's car.  He put out the fire that started and stayed with them until the ambulances came.

That truck mechanic saved them from further injury and possibly worse.

My family is grateful to Richard Jewell.

The painted ponies go up and down.

If you have the six minutes to spare, listen to the BRILLIANT Joni Mitchell.  She's incredible.

I didn't come by my love of this song in the right way...I was old enough to appreciate Joni Mitchell when this tune was first released but I was probably too busy listening to Bobby Sherman and David Cassidy to notice.

The FIRST time I became aware of  Circle Game was when I was married to Carly's dad, Clyde, who had an incredible sense of musical beauty.  He taught me a great deal.

The second time I recall is when I was a news director at another station. The general manager "fired" a long time consultant at the TV station where we both worked.  The GM had preceded me by about a year, hired me and we both agreed that our consultant (who had worked with the station for more than two decades) needed to go.  He (the consultant) was a really nice guy.  Really nice.  But the station we were working at had slipped from a dominant first place to number two.  And you know how that goes:

1. Fire the consultant
2. Get new graphics
3. Build a new set
4. Hire a new news director
5. Lather, rinse, repeat

But I digress.  This particular GM sent an email to the consultant relieving him of his duties.  And the last line of the email was "and the painted ponies go up and down."

At the time, I thought the phrase was kinda heartless.  I know better now.

When Carly's dad died, we played Circle Game at his memorial.

And since our son Charlie moved from KC to Jackson, Wyoming, it is meaningful again.

USAToday has a story about how Boomers are helping their kids get along.   We have tried to help both of ours as they meander through adulthood.

How funny it is that both John and I have struggled so with Charlie's decision to move west when both of us did it decades ago.

John was the oldest of two, finished a stint at college and in the late 70s felt the need for more.  He and some friends moved from Connecticut to Reno.

I, the oldest of seven, dropped out of college in the late 70s because I wasn't a great student and felt the need for more.  I move from South Dakota to Reno.

Eventually we found each other and Charlie is the product of our discovery.  Yay!

Now our Charlie has jumped from the nest.  He graduated from college, spent some months with us and felt the need for more. 

Wednesday, he left for Jackson, WY.  He has a job.  He loves the outdoors.  This is perfect for him.

And the seasons, they go round and round.  And the painted ponies go up and down.

25 reasons why I love John Phillip

I'm a list-maker.  

In what has become a series, here are the 25 reasons why I love my husband as we approach two and a half decades of commitment which will be celebrated in style on April 2.

1. I love how you always ask me the speed limit when we're driving somewhere and how you then brag about never getting a ticket.
2. I love that when I walk in the door at the end of a long day, you instinctively know if I've had a challenging day and STILL kiss me hello and ask me about it. Even when the answer might be long-winded and boring.
3. I love that you let me have two Christmas trees this past year.  I might go for three eight months from now.  You've been warned.
4. I loved looking for houses with you and I love the one that we (I) picked...even though it doesn't have a big deck and a finished basement.
5. I love it when I come home in the winter and the fireplace is already lit.  Even on a Tuesday.
6. I love how you made my brother Pat's 50th birthday special that made him feel special.
7. I love that you insist on hanging pictures of our kids in various stages of growth in a prominent place so everyone knows that our family is very important.
8. I love how you put up with my live-on-the-edge mentality.  Plans?  Who needs plans?
9. I love taking pictures of you in funny places (in front of signs proclaiming the locations of Tightwad, Missouri and Peculiar, Missouri).  Yes, you are a tightwad and peculiar.
10. I love going to Sonic with you and getting a giant cherry limeade with our hot dogs.
11. I love that you're becoming quite the handyman with your new tools.
12. I love how irritated you get when I call my veggies-in-pots-on-the-deck a "farm."  Get over it.  I'm a farmer's daughter.  Anything I grow is a farm.
13. I love how you insist we see fireworks on the 4th of July.
14. I love that you seem not to mind that I'm "husky."  And that you support me when I try to lose weight.
15. I love that you know every single dog on our weekend walking route and that you've adopted Curly- the-Great-Pyrenees.  Bonus Love.  I know you know Curly is not enough for me because I want our own dog.  (Tick tock tick, the clock is ticking for us to get another mutt...)
16. I love that you wrote down all the days we should OFFICIALLY fly the American flag on the calendar so we don't forget.
17. I love how you wear your political emotions on your sleeve and that incredibly, you're more liberal-leaning than I am.
18. I love how you put up with my mad sports obsessions...like the Chiefs, Sporting Kansas City and the Royals and enjoy tailgating almost as much as I do.
19. I love that you buy lottery tickets for me to scratch off and are disappointed when we don't win.
20. I love how you groaned about going to South Dakota last year when the floods disrupted our regular routes but did it anyway, even when it added hours and hours to the trip.
21. I love how worried you were when Carly got hurt in the bike crash and how you called every hospital trying to find her.
22. I love how you've figured out how to take pictures of any jackpots you win at the casino.  And text them to me so I can be jealous that I'm not winning too.
23. I love how you take Charlie golfing and gloat when you beat him.  Enjoy it now.
24. I love how there can be a million men in a room and that I only have eyes for you.
25. I love how you've tried and tried to guess what your anniversary present would be...and how you may have figured it out but won't let me know for sure.  And I'm not telling until I'm ready.

Parenthood

Parenthood.  Funny thing.  This morning on my walk, my iPod on "shuffle," this Enya song came on and I started thinking about a part of the lyrics:

One by one my leaves fall.
One by one my tales are told.

At 54, I'm staring mortality right in the face.  My children, at 29 and 24 years, respectively, no longer need me (except for cash, sometimes).

Jacquelyn Mitchard wrote a book entitled "Deep End of the Ocean" that I read even before it got onto Oprah's hit parade.  And because of that book, I bought another written by her.  "The Rest of Us" is a compilation of her columns and on our recent trip to New Orleans, I re-read it on the plane.

Her description of parenthood goes like this:

"...our sons and daughters are only passing through.  At first, they are of you, born to come to your arms.  Rapidly, they are with you, pausing only long enough for you to dab a few hurried strokes of paint on the canvas they are becoming--they are on their way to belonging to themselves, and then to the world.  If we are lucky, they always will consider our home their harbor, but they are headed out to the open sea, almost from the first."

I still consider the farm six miles north of Wagner, SD my harbor.  But which home, of the many we've had, will my children consider their harbor?  Germantown?  Kansas City?  Somewhere else?

I wonder.

Hail, South Dakota!

John and I spent the holiday weekend with my parents and most of my siblings in Wagner, South Dakota.

I left work relatively early on Friday and we traveled north but because we stopped too many times (darn historical markers, etc!) we spent the night in Omaha and then finished our seven-hour journey Saturday morning.

Just north of Sioux City, Iowa is this sign, welcoming me home.  I always feel such a sense of calm when we cross over. 

There's something very special about the sky in South Dakota...it's so huge and blue on the flat prairie.  Calming and wonderful!

Especially incredible is the night sky.  The nearest "city" is Sioux Falls, two hours away, so there is not much light pollution.  The sky is just amazing.  You can easily see satellites, moving quickly through the dark canvas.

We wondered if they photographed us, sitting around our campfire Sunday night as Dad recalled his days in the Air Force, working on the B-36 Peacemaker during the Korean War.

Dad's stories were interrupted every so often by coyotes howling in the cornfields.  It was thrilling (and chilling) to hear them so nearby.  Coyotes are not dangerous to humans but once we realized how close they were, Lucy and Sidney, Pam and Perry's dogs, got kenneled, just in case...

Dad's brother, my Uncle Noel Wiechmann, was quite a photographer and Dad was able to secure his cameras and a tripod recently so, using Uncle Noel's tripod, I tried to capture the brilliant stars with my digital camera.  The shutter was set at 16 seconds and the aperture at 2.8.  Not the greatest because reality was so much better.  I was disappointed but when I go back in three weeks, I'm going to try again (after consulting with Brett Akagi).

I may need to use my uncle's 1970s-era Olympus.  I wonder what batteries it needs?

I saw many friends and relatives during the time we were in Wagner.  Here is the incomplete short list with their former names--Paula Faughender, Ina Miller, Don Doty, John Chrisman, Bruce Chrisman, Jeff Uecker, Julie and JoAnn Winckler, Sherrie and John Wiechmann, Jane Wipf, Pearl Weber, Patty Sip, Rod Cozad, Mark Gau, Chris Andersh and Karen Kocer.  Forgive if I didn't mention you!

Monday, we went to the Wagner Labor Day parade.  In this photo you can see my sister Pam talking to her grandson Hudson, John, Paula's husband Randy, my mom and dad and Cheray Gibson and her soon-to-be-husband Tyler Christiansen.  This was just before it started raining...

Thankfully, the rain was short-lived.  The procession, however, was not.  We were thankful when, after an hour and a half of grass-roots politicking, old tractors, some floats, one marching band and a lot of antique cars, we finally saw the horses.  Horses mean the end of the parade!  We hustled across the street to have lunch with the United Methodists.


In doing so, I apparently missed the big story of the day.  This wagon went into the crowd later down the route when something spooked the horses.  We were near the beginning of the procession but I got a shot of the horse-drawn buggy (seen here in much calmer times) when I was trying to capture the hilarious image of a motorized cooler.

Thankfully, the injuries were minor. 

Another great Labor Day in Wagner, South Dakota!

I love you Dad.

I sent my mom flowers for Mother's Day.  I sent my dad a set of DVDs about Route 66.  He's a big fan of the Mother Road and I think he'll enjoy watching some of the anecdotes about the old days. 

I'm sad that when John and I retire, we can't really follow it from Chicago to L-A.

Warning.  We don't intend to have a home in our later days. 

We think we have enough relatives so that with our (still to be purchased) mobile home of some sort (I'm still saying a 5th wheel, John thinks more like a Winnebago) we can spread ourselves out with the sisters, brothers, cousins and friends so we can see the remaining parts of North America that have eluded us through the job changes since we started moving around in 1990.

But I digress (as usual).  Mom and Dad drove a portion of Route 66 last year in this Ford pickup my father restored.  I'm still dying to drive this baby but he's pretty careful about who gets behind the wheel. 

I don't blame him, even though I haven't had a car-to-car incursion since...welll....Christmas Eve, 2009 when the snow was falling heavily in KC and some youngster slid into me from behind.  Not my fault!

Anyway, I am so darn lucky to have great parents who loved us a lot, provided for us every day and taught us all the value of hard work.  My sister Paula says that if you want a job done, just make sure there's a farmer's daughter on the team.  We don't know when to quit.

I hope you are lucky enough to still have your dad with you.  I pray that as we honor dads this weekend, you can thank your father in person.

And if we still know each other in twelve years, can we park in your driveway for a few days?

Happy Anniversary John Phillip

Twenty-three years ago, I married a guy.  At the time, he was the love of my life but who knew if it would last?  From Reno to Miami to Tulsa to Boston to Chicago to Memphis to Syracuse to Baltimore to Kansas City, John has been my rock.  Last year, I forgot to buy a card so made a list of the reasons why I'm one lucky gal.  This year, I thought I'd try again and it was easy to come up with 23 more!

1. I love your fiendish attacks on word puzzles in the newspaper.

2. I love going to baseball games with you, despite your misguided worship of the Yankees.

3. I love how helpless you are when you get sick.

4. I love that when I told you last May that we were probably moving AGAIN you didn’t flinch (much).

5. I love how gentle you are when helping my mom.

6. And for that matter, I love how much you love being with my family. OUR Family.

7. I love how you sold our Baltimore house, all by yourself, saving us thousands of dollars.

8. I love house-hunting with you in Kansas City.

9. I love the movies you pick for us to watch on Netflix. Well, almost always.

10. I love finding new recipes on the internet for us to try. And I can’t wait until I’ve lost enough weight so that we can do it again!

11. I love going to the grocery store with you, even when you wander off and get lost. Oh yeah, it’s me who gets lost.

12. I love how you’ve supported my diet and haven’t complained, not once, about the plain meals we eat now.

13. I love your annual ritual of studying college basketball for days before completing your NCAA brackets…and how surprised you are when you don’t win.

14. I love your fierce loyalty to Carly and Charlie, no matter what choices they make.

15. I love that you hate to attend social functions but always do, anyway.

16. I love how, once you arrive at said social function, you mingle and are charming and funny. Did I tell you we have to go to The Fur-Ball on May 8th?

17. I love how you helped me survive my very sad 53rd birthday this year when we had to say goodbye to our darling Dottie.

18. I love that you had the strength to stay with her the whole time because I couldn’t.

19. I love how you’re getting more interested in politics.

20. I love your patience with Billy.

21. I love how we can’t get through Omaha without some drama. But now, after all these years, we just laugh about it instead of getting into a fight.

22. I love how people wonder how/why I, a well-known bitch-on-wheels, got so lucky.

23. I love that coming up with a new list next year won’t be too hard!

Snow on the Prairie Farm

Check this out.  We are in South Dakota to see the family.  Saturday afternoon it snowed for about an hour.  Huge fluffy flakes.  I tried to capture the magic with my camera.  These were taken with a fast shutter (1/2000) and a flash. 

The images are almost devoid of color except when the flash hit something other than snowflakes.

This old schoolhouse (with a Case tractor in front) is a copycat of the one I attended for the first four years of elementary school in the mid-60s.  I learned to read via Dick, Jane and Sally in a schoolhouse like this.  One teacher, eight grades.

My dad uses it as a shop and he restored a 1951 Ford pickup in there.

These three evergreen trees are just west of the house.  The one that leans is that way because of a tornado that hit it in the summer of 1998.

The road to town is just beyond those trees

This is Millie.  She will be glad when winter is over.

Once More, With Feeling

I promise not to turn this blog into an emotionally silly and endless tribute to our dog.  We've been so grateful for the kindness of co-workers, friends and family who understand the connection we had with Dottie and why we miss her so.

John's cousin sent us a bit of prose that I hadn't seen before -- and it, combined with the cards, telephone calls and other messages, truly helped us both:

Hello Peggy ,Jon & fam, Colleen and I read your e-mail and were reduced to tears.We never got the pleasure of seeing Dottie just smiled through the years of stories told We could only imagine what a great companion and loyal friend of the family she was. Dogs are a gift to us in our lives, they give all for so little .The only comfort is we give them the love they depend on so much. I often wonder about the fate of finding a dog who found who ?.......... Michael . Colleen and Riley

The Rainbow Bridge

(inspired by a Norse legend)

By the edge of a woods, at the foot of a hill,

Is a lush, green meadow where time stands still.

Where the friends of man and woman do run,

When their time on earth is over and done.

For here, between this world and the next,

Is a place where each beloved creature finds rest.

On this golden land, they wait and they play,

Till the Rainbow Bridge they cross over one day.

No more do they suffer, in pain or in sadness,

For here they are whole, their lives filled with gladness.

Their limbs are restored, their health renewed,

Their bodies have healed, with strength imbued.

They romp through the grass, without even a care,

Until one day they start, and sniff at the air.

All ears prick forward, eyes dart front and back,

Then all of a sudden, one breaks from the pack.

For just at that instant, their eyes have met;

Together again, both person and pet.

So they run to each other, these friends from long past,

The time of their parting is over at last.

The sadness they felt while they were apart,

Has turned into joy once more in each heart.

They embrace with a love that will last forever,

And then, side-by-side, they cross over… together.

Farewell, Good and Faithful Friend.

Dogs' lives are too short. Their only fault, really.

Agnes Sligh Turnbull

Dogs are the most amazing creatures;
they give unconditional love.

For me they are the role model for being alive.
Gilda Radner

No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.

Christopher Morley

You can say any foolish thing to do to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says,
"My God, you're right! I never would've thought of that!"
Dave Berry

If you have a dog, you will most likely outlive it;
to get a dog is to open yourself to profound joy and,
prospectively, to equally profound sadness.
Marjorie Garber

Profound sadness is an understatement. Overwhelming, nearly debiliatating grief is what we feel now that our dog is gone.  We miss our sweet Dottie.  Her pure love for our family was such an incredible gift.

Reno 911

I spent the final week of 2009 in Reno, Nevada--nearly a week in the Biggest Little City that is both bigger and smaller than I remembered from when we left in 1990. 

You may know that I moved there in 1978 to seek fame and fortune.  I met and married two husbands.  Carly's dad and I divorced before she was a year old.  A couple of years later, I met John.  Two years after that we got married. 

Both Carly and Charlie were born at St. Mary's Hospital and although I didn't expect to darken those doors ever again, I found myself there last Tuesday afternoon.

John and the kids went skiing Tuesday morning.  By the time they got to Northstar (Tahoe), John was feeling poorly.  Combine the flu with altitude sickness and you get delirious and shortness of breath.  And some other stuff too but we won't go there.

John ended up in the St. Mary's ER where they administered some miracle drugs via IV and by the next day, he was almost as good as new.

I am not good with hospitals...or sick loved ones because I am not good at feeling powerless.  I know this is hard to believe but I prefer to be in control at all times.  Thank goodness it was not serious.

We did do some gambling and even though I know that slots are folly, I do love the nickle machines!  It's fun to win a little, which we did.

One night, our friends Mark and Debi Best cooked us a delicious dinner and we enjoyed getting to know their now-adult daughter Amber who was the first girl Charlie kissed (when he was two).  They hadn't seen each other since 1989 but are now Facebook friends...

We also enjoyed a meal with my cousins Doug, Kemble and Trenton Yates who were visiting from Washington, Oregon and Alaska, respectively.  If you get to Reno, we recommend Silver Peak Brewery!

I watched some local news and saw Bill Brown, Mike Alger, Terri Russell and Erin Breen, all of whom were either co-workers or competitors when I was haunting the Truckee Meadows, back in the day.  Better yet was the lunch organized by my pal Denise Clodjeaux that included Carly, Sharon Spangler and her daughter Audrey.  Audrey is a civil engineering student at the University of Nevada/Reno.  Go Wolfpack! 

The last time I saw Audrey, she was smearing smashed banana on the window that separated the assignment desk from the studio at KTVN while her mom anchored the morning cut-ins on the desk just a few feet away.  Good times!    These are some powerful women, y'all.

A big thrill for me was visiting the Sparks Marina.  When I was a much younger, thinner, cuter person I reported news from the "Sparks Bureau" for KTVN.  On air!  (Seriously!)  One of the on-going issues was the dispensation of a gigantic hole in the ground just east of the city center, alongside I-80.  The Helms Pit, as it was called then was more than a hundred feet deep.  A yawning maw in the earth.  Contaminated by run-off from a nearby tank farm.  Ugly.  Useless.  Or so it seemed.

From a city website: "Originally, consultants for the City of Sparks Public Works Department estimated it could take up to three years to fill the quarry and turn it into a lake. The New Year's Day Flood of 1997 made the lake a reality in a matter of hours. One billion gallons of water from the Truckee River and its tributaries filled the quarry as a result of the highest recorded flood event in Truckee Meadows history."

Now, it's rimmed with condos, a ubiquitous Legends shopping complex and even a beach.  Who da thunk it! 

I remain amazed.


Oh and Happy New Year, y'all.

Hope YOU got to kiss somebody...

A Love Letter

December 17, 1955

Dear Paul Wiechmann and Pearl Yates,

Tomorrow, you will be married.  You are in your mid-twenties.  You are both probably nervous, wondering what the future will bring.  Is he the One?  Is she the One?  These questions are normal, for all young couples on the eve of such an important day.

Paul, you've been a mechanic in the Air Force.  You're stationed in Spokane, Washington, far away from your native South Dakota. 

Pearl, you've got a job in Spokane, a family nearby that you love and plenty of friends.  You both come from large families that love you.  Tomorrow you will embark on a journey that will span at least five decades.

It won't always be easy.  In fact, there will be many lean times.  You will return to South Dakota so Paul can work with his brother on the family farm.  Pearl will be homesick.  Paul will work hard, very hard.  Pearl, you will stay home with the kids for awhile but you will eventually "work outside the home" and you will become a comfort for many.

After a short stint of living in Wagner, South Dakota (population 1600) you will move to the farm six miles north and that's where you will stay.

There will be children.  Seven of them.  Six will come in a bunch.  In fact, two will be born in 1957.  Peggy and Pam.  Those two girls will be followed by another daughter, Paula and your first son, Pat.  By the end of 1964, two more daughters will be part of the clan, Penny and Piper.

The farm house is big but will always seem a bit crowded.

The children will grow throughout the 60's and mid-70s and just before the oldest is ready to leave home, you will be surprised (and the rest of your family amazed) by the birth of a seventh child, Perry.

Your children will resemble you (and each other) on the outside but they will be seven very different personalities, with strengths and weaknesses.  Sometimes they will frustrate you.  Many times, actually.  No family is perfect but your children will amaze you and you will love each of them, unconditionally.

Most of your children will go to college and all of them who graduate will do so from South Dakota State University.  Two of your daughters will marry SDSU alums, planting a fever for the Jackrabbits that is difficult to match in any family.

In the 80's grandchildren will be born.  One, then another, then another and another.  Some of your children will leave the family farm and even the state of South Dakota but four will remain relatively close nearby and the others will visit the home base as often as possible.

The reunions will be joyful gatherings, filled with laughter, telling stories and remembering.  In the 90's, you will begin remodeling the house, a project that will seem like it never ends.  That's the way it is with houses that were built in the early 1900s.

The turn of the century will bring graduations of the older grandchildren and then they, too will begin to marry.  Great-grandchildren will be born.

You will travel.  You will go on cruises and drive to the far corners of the United States including Alaska.

In 2005 you will celebrate FIFTY years of marriage with a wonderful party.  Your children will celebrate your love and commitment to each other.  Each of them will view the event with a pride and admiration.

In 2009, you will still be well and happy and strong.  You will still live in the house where Paul grew to be a man.  It's not the same house, but it is definitely a Home.

Your family, the one born 54 years ago on December 18, 1955, will remain solid.  This is just a little piece:

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!  I love you and want everyone to know!

/p

System Restore

Last Sunday the NY Times did not appear on the front lawn.  That's the second time it's happened since we moved to Olathe, KS.  So, Sunday afternoon, I logged onto the customer service website (which will NOT be linked here) so that I could complain and get a credit for my loss.
Because John was making arrangements to fly to CT for his cousin's funeral, I probably paid less attention to the computer workings than I usually do.

I am not a neophyte.  I understand about viruses and I know better than to click on random links but Monday night, I had a virus message.  I ran my virus software (Trend Micro) and it told me there was a Trojan that couldn't be quarantined or cleaned.  Apparently I'm not the only one.  Was I a latent victim?

I tried to delete the offending file.  Nope.  So I shut the machine off and went to bed at midnight.

Tuesday night, I ran the virus scan again.  In Safe Mode.  It appeared to be deleting bad stuff but when I finally was prompted to restart, the virus message  YOU ARE INFECTED still appeared.  I shut the machine off and went to bed after the late news.

Wednesday night, I tried everything I could think of.  My virus scanning software no longer worked.  The freaking whatever-it-is virus had completely taken over (even CTRL_ALT_DEL) did not work.  (I was urged to contact my adminstrator.  I'm the administrator, dammit!)

Tonight, I came home with a determination to wipe the damn thing clean and start over.  I created the eight System Restore discs back in the fall of 2004.  John's dad had just died.  John was still in Connecticut, caring for his family.  We lived in Germantown, TN.  Carly was in college, Charlie in high school.  Dottie still ran around, crazy, when we put dog food in her bowl.  I worked at one of the most dominate NBC affiliates in the country.

Five years later, as I put the discs into the CD drive, I thought back.  Rewind.  Fast forward.  The death of Clyde.  The death of Bernice.  The death of my job at WMC in Memphis.  Move to Syracuse.  Move to Baltimore.  Move to Kansas City.  Friends lost, friends found.  Eight discs took just over 53 minutes to load and copy. 

Good times. 

I'm in a good place now. 

Can't wait to see what the future holds!

Eddie Vizzo

We have a routine on Saturdays during the football season. No matter where we live, John finds a casino that has a free NFL football contest. Reno, Memphis and Syracuse were not a problem -- casinos were readily available. Other places, not so much but we managed.  The rules are simple. You pick who you think will win the game, slide a "players card" through a slot and then leave.

Yeah right.

While we don't gamble as freely as we did five years ago, we still like to give money away, for some reason. Probably because both of us have tasted small victories. A hundred here, a couple of hundred there...sometimes more. When Carly and I went to Reno to scatter Clyde's ashes, I won $800! (Thanks Clyde)

But now we always stick to our budget of losing. Once fifty bucks is gone so are we.

Saturday was no different. We went out for breakfast and then took the dog for a walk.

Dottie is now a very old doggie.  (We got her as a pup in Tulsa in 1994.)  She doesn't enjoy life as much as she once did.  But she does like these walks (we think) and we also believe that the mile or so does her good. 

When we get home, she's exhausted.  She can't climb the three steps up to the front door so either John or I carry her up and then she sleeps for most of the rest of the day.

Saturday started pretty much the same way it always does.  Breakfast, dog walk, grocery shopping, casino.

John's cellphone rang just as we were entering the Harrah's parking gargage.  It was his brother Billy.  Bill is forty-seven years old but we always refer to him in the diminutive.  He's the youngest of two.

"I have bad news," he told John.  I was watching John's face and I saw it screw up in sadness and confusion immediately.  I knew somebody died.

John's parents are both gone.  We miss them all the time.  He has two aunts, one of which is in her eighties.

He turned to me and I waited for the bad news.

"Eddie Vizzo died."

Edward Vizzo was John's cousin's husband.  It might seem like a distant leaf on the family tree but in John's small group, it's a big loss.  Ed and his wife Rainy had two children.  Jessica and Jennifer are only a few years older than our two.  When Rainy's mom and dad got too old to care for themselves and Connie, their developmentally challenged daughter (who is older than John), he built a home where all could stay.  He was a big hunk of the glue that held them altogether and we always said he was "a good guy."  He'd give you his last nickel, if he thought you needed it.  He was always kind and welcoming to me when John and I were first married.  And then, when Carly and Charlie were youngsters, he looked for ways to entertain and include them.

Google him and you'll find...not much. Edward Vizzo Electric didn't have a rating with the Better Business Bureau.  That's not surprising to me.  Ed Vizzo was a journeyman electrician who did business with people who appreciated his one-on-one approach.  He had plenty of loyal customers and others waiting in line.  In fact, he died while working for a client.  Felled by a heart attack in the kitchen.  That person called 9-1-1 right away and administered CPR but he was gone.

I don't know his medical history but he had a stress test recently.  His doctor told him that a surgery might be necessary in a couple of weeks, another stent perhaps.

If I were a young, thin, non-smoker who never drank alcohol, I might move on without much thought beyond the grief I feel for Elaine, Rainy, Jennifer and Jessica.

But that's not the case.

And so I'm studying this.

Thank you Eddie Vizzo.