"Most Versatile Blog" Award

I have been nominated by Ruth Berge, Palm Beach County columnist and fellow writer, for the "Most Versatile Blog" Award. Thank you, Ruth, for becoming a "Follower" and nominating my writing! I graciously accept!! I hope everyone will click on "Follower" at my blog and yours (http://www.ruth.the.writer.blogspot.com/). And thank you, Ms. Saba, for establishing the award on her blog, http://www.worddiaries.blogspot.com/.

In order to follow the rules, I am going to divulge seven little-known things about me.

First, I morphed into a screaming hockey mom during the years our two sons played ice hockey (yes, both sons went on to play pro baseball). My husband would go to the opposite side of the arena and pace, while I just kept yelling, "Get that guy! Take him out!" To quote Sarah Palin, "The only difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull is lipstick."

Second, I have done the following on foreign travels: cartwheeled down an Austrian Alp after falling off a T-bar; remained confined in my room in Buenos Aires during a coup, while machine gun fire richocheted off the hotel; watched helplessly while a gang of youths surrounded, then lifted, our Volkswagen in Naples, Italy; suffered swollen eyelids from a severe allergy attack on a 12-inch trail over 200-foot gorges in Madeira, Portugal (do these count as four separate items?)

Third, I often can't remember why I enter a room.

Fourth, parts of my body are no longer where they should be!

Fifth, there was some glitch in the evolutionary process that landed me on the same planet with snakes.

Sixth, I work out at a fitness center but hate every minute.

Seventh, Ditto for playing golf twice a week! I'd rather be on the tennis court.

Here are some blogs or websites with blogs that I follow. Some are about writing; others are about life. I have been a follower of Nathan Bransford's for many years, when he was a literary agent and before he became an author. In fact, I queried him with my first manuscript, which became MINOR LEAGUE MOM: A MOTHER'S JOURNEY THROUGH THE RED SOX FARM TEAMS, published in 2009 by Barking Cat Books (he rejected me, unfortunately, but I still follow him).

http://www.blog.nathanbransford.com/

http://www.ruth.the.writer.blogspot.com/

http://www.jmleduc.blogspot.com/

http://www.worddiaries.blogspot.com/

http://www.rachaelharrie.blogspot.com/

http://www.amloki.blogspot.com/

http://www.italianamericanwriter.com/

www.Ally_Peltier_Ambitious_Enterpri@mail.vresp.com

http://www.momsteam.com/

http://www.elliegreat.blogspot.com/

http://www.awriterhemuttered.blogspot.com/

http://www.theauthorsshow.com/

http://www.grubstreet,inc.com/

Thanks again, Ruth! Now back to practicing humor for the manuscript I'm working on (A HANDBOOK FOR GROWN CHILDREN WITH ELDERLY PARENTS). Pam

The Cat and the.....Horse

I'd like to share a couple of stories that had the whole family laughing over Labor Day Weekend.





Don, my brother-in-law, got a call from his sister's husband before the couple was leaving on a cruise. "Would you mind taking care of our cat?" Don heard.

"No, I guess not. What do I have to do?"

"Just feed it and give it some medicine."

"Well, judging from the size of your cat, I guess it eats a lot, but what kind of medicine?"

"Just some pills."

"OK."

A week later, Don received another call from his brother-in-law. This time, the couple was aboard ship, as it pulled up anchor.

"I forgot to tell you, Don, the cat might need an enema."

"Say what?" Don screeched in his West Virginian drawl. "Are you sh___ing me?"

"Just insert the enema up his kazoo, if things get blocked up. Otherwise, he might have something burst."

"The h___ I will! I'll let the vet do it! I don't have a rubber suit."

"You can't take him to the vet! He charged us $900."

"Good thing that cat didn't have a problem while they were away," Don told us. "My sister would have found a dead cat on her hands!"






Our son had a financial client whose wife was a vet. The vet and her husband received a call on Christmas Eve Day from the frantic owner of a horse.

"Please come right over, Dr! Our horse is so old, its breath is labored, and we know the end will be soon. Can you ease his passing?"

"I'll be there shortly," the vet responded.

She and her husband arrived at the owner's house and and inquired as to the whereabouts of the horse.

"Well, it's so freezing cold out that we didn't want him to pass out there. So we put him down in the basement!"

"How did you get him down there?"

"We made a ramp."

Following the owner down the ramp, the vet and her husband found the horse in a tiny compartment in the basement. The horse was, indeed, about to expire.

"We have to get him out of here," the vet said. "I need to inject him and there's no place for him to lie down."

"What shall we do?" asked the owner. "We can't turn him around."

"Get a rope and we'll pull him backwards up the ramp."

The owner stood at his head, encouraging him, while the vet and her husband pulled from the rear. The horse was not only wobbly, but extremely reluctant to be pulled backwards up the ramp.

After several hours, darkness fell, marking Christmas Eve. The temperature plummeted. The horse finally made it to the top of the ramp outside, where the vet could inject him. She and her husband waited with the owner till the horse expired, then rushed home to pick up their family for church services. "May Christmas bring a day without ropes," they prayed.

AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE IRENE: REALITY CHECK

So there was this little thing called Irene, barrelling up the coast. Only a Category 1 - no big deal, right? Charley and I live on the coast of Florida most of the year and lived through a Category 2, evacuated for a Category 3.

In Massachusetts for the summer, we prepared there. Our house sits a half-mile from Buzzard's Bay, just south of Cape Cod. It had survived Hurricane Bob. We took everything off the deck that could possibly fly around, stuffed the freezers with anything that might survive without electricity, checked the sump pump, notified a neighbor we'd be gone, and gave him our cell phone number. We got cash from the ATM and made sure we had gas in the car and prescriptions for a month.

Oh, yes! We were scheduled to babysit our thirteen-month twin grandsons that weekend in N.J., while the rest of their family were in a wedding in Chicago. Into the car we piled lanterns, boots, a battery-operated radio, non-perishables, and a few bottles of wine. We knew the drill.

Arrived in N.J. and helped our son prepare his house for the storm. Deja vu! We not only stuffed the freezer, we stuffed the garage. All playthings for the older sister came in - plastic playhouse, swings, bike - as well as the toddlers' wagon, water table, and double stroller. Diapers, paper products, and water gallons were piled high. Somehow we got the outdoor furniture, grill, and two cars in there.

The neighbor next door came running over. "We don't get hurricanes in New Jersey!" she insisted. "I didn't know what to do, so I went to Home Depot at 7 a.m. looking for kerosene lanterns. The guy working said, 'What hurricane? We don't get hurricanes in New Jersey.' I just finished pulling six mattresses into the basement for tornadoes. My daughter, Sarah, woke up at midnight and asked me if I'd brought the hammock in. She is really nervous!" I can't imagine why?!

The storm raged for two days, delivering pounding rain, but no severe wind. We never lost electricity. It was a good thing - one twin developed a raging fever that mocked the storm outside. "There's no way in hell we can take him anywhere! What did we do back in the old days?" Charley and I asked each other. Turns out there are some things that never change - stripping a child to lower his fever, using cool compresses, making sure he drinks cool water. We took turns rocking him under an a.c. vent, and called his parents at 2 a.m. for permission to give children's Ibuprofen.

On the fifth day, Charley and I climbed into our car for the six-hour drive back to Massachusetts. We stayed awake by drinking Diet Cokes all the way. Thankfully, the twin's fever had subsided. His parents and sister had returned on a rescheduled flight. Our home in Massachusetts remained intact, along with electrical and phone lines.

I married an Irishman, my only explanation for our good fortune! Loss of electricity or damage to a house? There are some things that can be replaced, and others that can't.

TERMS OF ENDEARMENT: RULES FOR GROWN CHILDREN WITH ELDERLY PARENTS (Excerpt from new manuscript)

MY PARENTS AND HURRICANE WILMA

RULE FIFTEEN: EXPECT FALLOUT IF YOU RELOCATE PARENTS DURING

A NATURAL DISASTER (BUT DO IT ANYWAY!)

In October, 2005, Hurricane Wilma hit south Florida. It was only thirteen months after Frances and Jeanne had hit. Wilma went across the Gulf of Mexico and hit Cozumel as a Category 5 storm, then turned around and took aim at Florida's west coast. Its eastward path would carry it across the Everglades toward Ft. Lauderdale, just below us.

Ten years before, I had relocated my parents from Connecticut to Boynton Beach, just five miles from Charley and me in Florida. In 2005 Mom was 89; Dad was 93. I had left them alone in their cinderblock house for Hurricane Frances, a Category 2. During Jeanne, almost a Category 4 storm, my mother and I had mopped up all night in their house. When Wilma bore down, I made reservations for the four of us at the Hampton Inn in Brunswick, Georgia.

My parents protested that all their neighbors were staying in their homes. After age eighty, the herd mentality took over, reminding me of a bunch of teenagers. Evacuation to a shelter was unthinkable, because of the prevalence of germs. "God knows what we'd catch! Besides, we don't want to listen to screaming children all night," Dad insisted. "We'd be on cots and wouldn't sleep at all. We need a bathroom close by and the toilets would be overflowing."

We each packed one suitcase. In addition, I'd put water, snack items, rain gear, books, lanterns, blankets, and some canned food in the car. I'd recharged my cell phone and gone through a check list for our residences. Mom brought her knitting.

On the drive up Route 95, there was dead silence from the back seat. My parents were punishing Charley and me for uprooting them from their home without just cause! At a rest stop we heard, "Bob (next-door) says this will only be a tropical storm. Why do we have to leave our house? Bob has a generator and Ann is the new block captain, with a satellite phone."

"You certainly have a lot of faith in Bob's weather predictions!" I replied. There was no point arguing.

Wilma got stuck over the Yucatan. Mom lectured, "You are a worrier, Pam, and we should never have left Leisureville. Besides, we're missing Doc Schenecke's 90th birthday party, and he came to my party last fall!" My mother the social butterfly??? She hated even going to block parties right in front of her house, especially if she had to bring a dish.

The inhabitants of the Hampton Inn that weekend were all Florida residents, driven out by caution over the storm warnings. Saturday and Sunday Charley and I listened to a litany of complaints about my parents' accommodations. The beds were too soft; there were only three T.V. stations; the toilet seats were too low (after all, they had replaced all theirs in their Leisureville house with high-rises); there was no Florida newspaper at breakfast. "Let's go shopping at the mall," I suggested.

"No thanks, I think we'll stay right here." Charley and I left them in front of the T.V.'s giant screen in the lobby.

The next day: "Why don't you both come to a matinee with us?"

"No thanks, I think we'll just stay here."

By Monday morning, Wilma was gathering strength and heading east across Florida. It finally hit our area, nearly a Category 3. We, however, ate a leisurely breakfast in Georgia, read, napped, and went out for an early dinner.

"You know, Charley, I think it was a very wise decision we made not to stay in our house," Dad informed us. "My God, what am I eating? Catfish??"

A CONDENSED VERSION OF MY LIFE (THIS MORNING)

I decided to pay some bills after breakfast. First, I took my cereal bowl and juice glass to the sink and rinsed them out. I tried to put them in the dishwasher, but it was full with last night's dirty dishes.

So I turned on the dishwasher, poured more coffee into my mug, and cleaned out the coffeepot. I walked toward the front room to get my glasses in the desk.

Passing through the front hall, I noticed the flowers in the vase were wilting and the stagnant water was beginning to smell. So I took the vase into the kitchen, threw the flowers into the trash, emptied the water, rinsed and dried the vase.

When I was putting it back in the front hall, I remembered I had come out there on my way to someplace else. But I didn't have any idea where. So I headed back into the kitchen and just as I remembered I was supposed to be getting my glasses, the phone rang.

After my conversation with one of our daughters-in-law, I decided I'd better get dressed. When I passed through the front hall on my way to the stairs, I remembered that I had been going to get my glasses. I retrieved them from a drawer in the desk in the front room, but couldn't remember what I needed them for. So I put them on top of my head and went upstairs.

In our bedroom, I made the bed and put the clean laundry away. I put the items that needed ironing into a pile. Then I went to my closet.

It was a very hot day, and I was going to meet someone for lunch. I selected a sundress to wear, but then I saw that it had a spot. So I went downstairs to get the spot remover.

I retrieved the spot remover but needed my glasses before I could do anything with the dress. I looked in my desk in the front room, but they weren't there. I looked around the kitchen counters and the family room sofa, as well as among the magazines. No luck!

I went back upstairs, got another dress out of the closet (I was going to be hot in this one!), put on some jewelry, and decided I'd better wait with the makeup till I found my glasses.

I started down the stairs, but half-way down, I remembered I hadn't brought the clothes that needed ironing. I went back up, but noticed the toilet was still running in our bathroom.

So I took off the tank cover and jiggled the lever a few times, lifted the float manually, and washed my hands thoroughly. I got down to the kitchen and remembered I had forgotten to bring down the clothes that needed ironing. Oh well, it was too hot to iron, anyway!

I noticed the stack of bills still sitting on the kitchen table. Since I couldn't find my glasses, I decided to cut some flowers from the garden to replace the ones I threw away.

There was a problem with cutting the flowers: the deer were eating our arbor vitae trees in the early mornings, and they carry ticks that cause Lyme disease. The arbor vitaes were right next to the hydrangeas and the roses I wanted to cut. So I had to cover myself with bug spray. That meant a shower when I came in, and I usually showered at night.

As it turned out, I was sweltering in that dress under the hot sun, anyway! After I'd cut and arranged the flowers, I went right for the shower. I took off my dress, then my necklace and earrings, and hopped under the cool spray of water.

I started to wash my hair when I discovered the glasses on top of my head! Now what was it I needed them for?

THAT LITTLE WHITE BALL

I don't understand the problem! The little dimpled ball sits there, stationary. It is begging to be clobbered! All I have to do is swing at it.

I would not consider myself a novice at the game. Our property in Massachusetts abuts a golf course. We have owned it for twenty-seven years. I have taken clinics and private lessons. I have attempted to play in ladies' leagues.


Still, I stink! My handicap remains at forty. Some days, it's downright embarassing! And frustrating.


If I analyze, I conclude that I really don't enjoy the game. Therefore, I don't lug buckets of balls out to practice. I don't play enough, either.


I LOVE playing tennis. I am on the tennis court three-four times/week. I have played competitively on a team in Florida for many years. If I make a mistake on the court, the next ball is coming right back at me. I don't have to dwell on a screw-up, while I walk yards and yards to hit the next shot.


When I am not on the tennis court, I am writing. It is a new career, after my first book was published, and I have to take it seriously. Yet I still expect to go out on the golf course and play decently.


Golf I have to squeeze in. It doesn't always happen.


Golf takes time. You have to devote half a day, at least, to the game. You can go play a couple of sets of tennis (and get some ACTIVE exercise) and be home in two hours, max.


You have to play golf regularly, or at least practice regularly, if you expect to improve, like anything else. By regularly, I mean at least three times/week. There is no muscle memory, because there are so many variables.


The grip has to be just right. The stance has to be just right. The shoulders have to turn so the backswing is just right. And God forbid if the hips don't pivot with the shoulders! The head has to stay down. Do I need this?


If I choose the wrong club, I hit too far or not enough. If the wind is blowing STRONGLY, as it was last Thursday, I have to keep the ball low. I don't know how to do that, unless I choose a club that will make the ball go too far. I also don't know how to give the ball backspin when it lands on the green.


The three women I played with last Thursday were all steady, consistent golfers. They are good friends and were very positive and supportive, but they were always waiting for me.

I set the ball on the tees and took gorgeous practice swings! On one occasion I topped the ball and it landed five yards in front of me. Two other times, I whiffed. Four times I picked the ball up and stuck it in my pocket.

I went right home after we played, disgusted. Didn't even eat lunch. I tried not be negative or aggravated. After all, I was privileged to be out on the course. I tried to focus on the good shots. They were few and far between.

Yesterday I learned that.......we had WON the ladies' day last Thursday. How???? It must have been my handicap that pulled us through. Maybe I'll sign up for next week.

ONE OF THE BENEFITS OF TRAVEL

With the exception of common courtesy and a respect for human dignity, one must leave all assumptions behind when travelling. This is especially true for Americans in Italy.

Charley and I do not assume the following there:

-that the paper will be delivered regularly or that buses, trains, and ferries will be running (24-hour strikes occur with a day's notice);

-that the road to our hotel, with rock walls tumbling down the hillside at hairpin turns, will be fixed in our lifetimes;

-that garbage will ever disappear from roadsides, or even be collected;

-that drivers will move over for pedestrians (who have no sidewalks), instead of playing "chicken";

-that American prudishness about exposing the body is universal.

It is one of the things we love about southern Italy. Life is exuberant and loud. Neapolitans are brash, grabbing life as it comes and squeezing it tight (as evidenced by the antics of twosomes on scooters or in passionate embraces whenever the mood strikes).

Neapolitans are not afraid to flaunt their assets. The men and women are bronze, the women with thick chestnut tresses and filmy gauze dresses cut to their navels. They have little and live under the shadow of the ever-threatening Vesuvius. They disregard the mafioso clans that rule every aspect of their city: garbage collection, construction, gambling, drugs, pinball machines, and all other illicit activities.

"Humans are flawed," the Ischians tell us. Their island faces Napoli and Vesuvio. "We cannot be expected to perform perfectly all the time."

At our hotel pool on Ischia, I am surrounded by six-foot models in thong bikinis, topless women sunbathing, and men in Speedos. Some of the sights over age sixty are not pretty! Only the English and Russian women in that age group, like me, wear one-piece bathing suits.

Perhaps it's time to dig that bikini out of my suitcase!