Halloween

My nephews are awesome.

I love chocolate. So I don't give it out at Halloween or I'd eat too much!

I give out bags of Cheetos and Doritos. They're always a big hit.

Time

The first snow of the year is drifting down outside my window.

Marty says, " Time is the fire in which we burn..."
But if we're lucky, the flames are fueled by what we love.

Mary Oliver says it for me:

The Deer

You never know.
The body of night opens
like a river, it drifts upward like white smoke,

like so many wrappings of mist.
And on the hillside two deer are walking along
just as though this wasn't

the owned, tilled earth of today
but the past.
I did not see them the next day, or the next,

but in my mind's eye -
there they are, in the long grass,
like two sisters.

This is the earnest work. Each of us is given
only so many mornings to do it -
to look around and love

the oily fur of our lives,
the hoof and the grass-stained muzzle.
Days I don't do this

I feel the terror of idleness,
like a red thirst
Death isn't just an idea.

When we die the body breaks open
like a river;
the old body goes on, climbing the hill.

Face

Question of the day is which head shot should go on Boston.com?

Globe editors prefer serious business journalist face.

While Boston.com editors prefer smiley friendly face.

I went with serious Maura. This process required too much thought and discussion so now I feel totally stalked by my own face. Don't even try to get me to change my mind.

Music

I wrote about Starbucks this morning and something occured to me.

All the actual CDs we've purchased in the last 8 months came from Starbucks. Otherwise we buy everything on iTunes.

Starbucks really has a lock on marketing to lifestyle. They should sell selected books too.

Oh and Radio Paradise is the BOMB.

Teenager

<-- Dylan 1st day

Our baby is a teenager today. I remember when his feet were at my elbow and his head lay in my hand. We're so glad he chose us as parents. He's a star in our universe.

F-f-f-f-ootb-b-ball

Up at 6am to drive to Dylan's football game in Topsfield. It was 36 degrees. When we got to the field, it was covered in a sparkling layer of frost.

We f-f-f-roze. The kids lost and 2 kids on the Marblehead team were carted off by ambulance with neck injuries - high drama at the height of fall. Luckily the injured boys are fine.

It's LIVE

Gack.

- 2 kids sick, trips to doctor
- launching on Boston.com tomorrow - scramble!
- just signed a new client - National Grid Wireless - in collaboration with Doreen
- Bob's closing the Mattel deal
- Bob's taking the Microsoft deal to second level
- the last two bring us closer to a move
- Dad's having CAT scan today to see how chemo has been working
- oh, and the laundry is behind, we're halfway through painting the hall, need to do bills, blah blah blah

Pre-launch countdown

Have been laboring away on the Boston Globe project. It's nearly there. Set to launch Friday (if all goes as planned) on Boston.com and on Halloween in the Boston Globe. Still in cloaked mode - more as it's live...

Coffee

Beth Schultz, all around great trainer at the Y, has gotten me to do stuff I never thought I could do at Boot Camp and Body Pump & Sculpt. But this goes too far. She wants me to stop drinking coffee. She says it with zeal because she just quit and claims that it's pushed her to a whole new level of weight loss/body tone. She claims coffee increases your insulin levels and does something bad to your liver?

Now, I trust Beth in all things. But come on.

I Googled it and found 10 reasons why coffee is good for you. Ah...nothing like a good cup of rationalization to start your day.

In the Hot Zone

I'm deeply moved by the work independent war correspondant Kevin Sites is doing. Sites' blog, www.kevinsites.net, was one of the first to to provide readers with an intimate, behind-the-lines look at the war in Iraq and how it was being covered.

Now Yahoo! has hired him for one year (a first for Yahoo!) to cover every major global conflict for Yahoo! News Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone. There is text, video, photo essays. It's amazing.

So far he's been in Somalia (where my Aunt D. was a nurse and aid worker). He is now in the Congo, he writes about the desperate situation but how there is laughter there too.

The project is dedicated to Marla Ruzicka, humanitarian and founder of Civic Worldwide who was killed in Iraq in April 2005 by a suicide bomber. I was captivated by this video of her.

Mom & Charles

I just watched Sunday Morning. It reminds me of Mom and Charles Kuralt. Years ago I wrote this little poem and it makes me happy to read it.


Why I write of the dead all the time

All around me
You follow me
Every step I take
It's you taking it with me
I’m not alone
And thank you
Thank you
All of you

Rainforest Ho!

My friend Marianne - adventurer, scientist, neighbor and fearless companion and support in all matters of parenting, love, life and art - invited me to join a group of remarkable women in Costa Rica to celebrate her birthday. And in the face of possibly moving and juggling the usual demands of family and work, I said yes. It's just like Mari to give me a gift for her birthday.

I just faxed the confimation form to Aguila de Osa so it's for real. Rainforest, dolphins, monkeys, hiking, kayaking, and giant bugs all with a group of uppity, smart women followed by cocktails on the porch? Pinch me...I must be dreaming.

The Sky is Falling

This morning I flipped on Good Morning America. They're doing a segment called "Is God Mad at Us?" and the talking heads are Jerry Falwell, Bill Nye the Science Guy and another guy who is (I think) a comedian. No lie. Given this brain trust, the talk of tsunami, hurricanes, earthquakes, bird flu pandemic, etc. in the context of a screen caption that says "Is God mad at us?" is worthy of The Onion. Highlight: Science Guy got apoplectic when Jerry Falwell scoffed at "supposed" global warming.

As I write this I'm listening to OnPoint on NPR and it too is about whether we're in the run-up to the apocalypse. And next hour they're going to talk about the coming San Francisco earthquake.

It's never easy to live on earth. It's brutal and hard and filled with conflict. So why do we have this sudden pervasive feeling that the sky is falling? Maybe because our leadership is so lacking that it's frightening to face the present and future. Is the light dawning???

Chick Thoughts

Went to see In Her Shoes last night. It's good Chick-lit that translates well to Chick-flick. It's not for everyone. But it worked for me. Laughed. Cried. The usual chick response. Cameron Diaz is exceptional in the role of the crazed, self-destructive sister. After the movie, met up with Marianne and some other women at The Hurricane and throughout the night I found myself ruminating about getting older.

Bought Jennifer Weiner's latest book, Goodnight Nobody, for Doreen's birthday present today...she'll always be 2 weeks younger than me.

I'm definitely having massive menopausal mood swings.

Make. Me. Shut. Up.

Flying J

Last Saturday we're on our way to Marty and Brenda's wedding. Having just blown into Rochester, NY the night before via a 7 hour drive and a West coast plane trip, we're completely on top of it. The wedding is at 11:00 in Alden and by about 10:50 we're still miles away, really low on gas and I'm just putting my mascara on.

So we pull into the Flying J in Corfu to tank up. Bob starts pumping gas and says why don't I go in and get coffee. I head across the windy parking lot toward the store since we're desperate for caffeine before we hit the Lutheran Church.

The second I open the door to the Flying J, it hits me right in the mascara. We're in the mid-West. Forget that we're in the flats between Buffalo and Rochester NY. No. In America the Midwest starts just after the Berkshires.

First of all, until I came in here, the town seemed deserted. Just a bunch of fields and some prisons. But inside, it's like the Corfu General Store or something. There's the guy lifting up his little boy to get a donut from the case. There's a some truck drivers chatting it up. There's a bunch of people over by the Lotto thing. There's a few men getting coffee from the spicket by the Slurpee machine. Some guy is checking the race sheet. And there's a hard-boiled woman with a tattoo manning the cash register.

And every man, woman and child has just frozen in mid-gesture to look at me.

The thing is, I'm wearing a sleeveless black dress, heels, makeup, my dress-up jewlery. But I think it's the part about blowing in the door, fluffing and fixing my windblown hair and tossing my wispy chiffon shawl over my shoulder that has taken it completely over the top. In this room, in this place, it's like I just walked off the set of Sex and the City.

Soooo...OK then...straighten my dress...clutch my little black bag...and...set off at an East coast pace toward the big silver coffee taps next to the Slurpee machine.

The coffee is scalding hot and smells like burnt sludge. There's a guy with a dull smile blinking at me holding the cream carton, so I skip the cream and totter over to pay tattoo lady. I high-heel it outta there. As the door shuts behind me a giant gust of wind blows my shawl over my face and the scalding sludge drips down my hand.

I get in the car and Bob says "No espresso?"

Falconcrest

One of The Mannicans had a wedding so all the rude boys and girls went. We heathens did not know the words to the hymns at the reception but we did know the way to our favorite backcountry bar. Dear friends, ice cold drafts, hot wings, a suggestive potato, stories from the glory days, some singing. Ahhhhhh...

Margie and Bob - remember that day we went in the river?

Mean Kids

The other day my nearly 13-year-old son was walking to school and ran into a bunch of kids walking to the local charter school in the opposite direction. He had gone to grade school with some of them but hadn't seen them in years. A girl in the group said "Hi Dylan" and before he could say anything back she said "Loser."

Dylan did the right thing. He didn't even remember what her name was. Why would someone he barely knew pass judgement on him? He was stunned, kept walking and didn't say anything.

I know I should take comfort knowing we've raised a nice kid. But I hate going back and re-living all that crap from middle school. Just wait until they all see who the losers become...

Oxygen

My Dad has lung cancer. On October 4th he had his second round of chemotherapy. When we found out about his cancer, Peter Jennings had just died from it. Jennings and lung cancer were in the news so much it made me feel like what would happen to Dad, to me, to our family, was being broadcast.

Last year, when my Mom was dying of ovarian cancer, we spent her last days listening to her breath. And now, with Dad, it's his very lungs that are failing him.

When things happen in your life, it's never long before you read or hear about how it's happening to other people too. Yesterday I opened up a new issue of the New Yorker and found this incredible poem by Mary Oliver.

OXYGEN

Everything needs it; muscles, and even,
while it calls the earth its home, the soul.
So the merciful, noisy machine

stands in our house working away in its
lung-like voice. I hear it as I kneel
before the fire, stirring with a

stick of iron, letting the logs
lie more loosely. You, in the upstairs room,
are in your usual position, leaning on your

right shoulder which aches
all day. You are breathing
patiently; it is a

beautiful sound. It is
your life, which is so close
to my own that I would not know

where to drop the knife of
separation. And what does this have to do
with love, except

everything? Now the fire rises
and offers a dozen, singing, deep-red
roses of flame. Then it settles

to quietude, or maybe gratitude, as it feeds
as we all do, as we must, upon the invisible gift:
our purest, sweet necessity: the air.

- (c) Mary Oliver, The New Yorker, October 10, 2005

Blue Sky

It's one of those amazing blue sky fall days that make you appreciate the planet. I guess I'll ignore the desperate state of world affairs and breathe it all in.

So on that note, here's a way to stop and smell the roses...er...well, the plants that came out great this year at my house...