Nearest Distant Shore

Friday iTunes Random Ten

1. Jump-Van Halen
2. Those Memories of You-Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris
3. Love of My Life-Dave Matthews Band
4. My Kind of Woman, My Kind of Man-Vince Gill with Patty Loveless
5. You've Really Got a Hold on Me-Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
6. I Wish it Would Rain-the Temptations
7. And It Stoned Me-Van Morrison
8. True Companion-Marc Cohn
9. Midnight Hour-Wilson Pickett
10. Again Tonight-John Mellancamp

The song that I like most this week is I Wish it Would Rain.  I love the Temptations so much and this song has so many memories woven into it.

There isn't a song on this list that I don't like a lot so I won't choose a least favorite this week.

It's the last day of September; what are you listening to?

Photo Friday

This week's photo challenge is darkness.

Check out my Friday Photos album for past challenges.

Thursday Thirteen

Appropriated from the fabulous E, who I think might just be my long-lost sister:

1. I've made up for my slothful Tuesday by working like a rented mule for these two days following.
2. I was very happy to see my boy when his granny brought him home today.
3. I would be just as happy if she came back and got him again in a day or two.
4. Today I bought two bags of chocolates-one for the office, one for the house.
5. I may share mine, but then again, I may not.
6. Due to autumn's arrival (per calendar if not per weather) I have switched my evening libation from beer to red wine.
7. That's sort of a cheat, since I vowed not to drink beer during the week anymore (too many empty calories).
8. The most dangerous place in Wilmington at 4:00 tomorrow afternoon will be the space between me and the beer cooler.
9. Due to extreme sorryness, I haven't been to the gym all week.
10. I probably won't go tomorrow either.
11. Liam and I have a playdate with some of his pals and their mamas tomorrow morning at our favorite park.
12. The park has a walking trail that loops around for a mile or so.
13. I promise to walk it.  Maybe even twice.

This fun little exercise in silliness was brought to you courtesy of Leanne.  Go say howdy!

Wednesday Wandering

Apparently the surest way for my plans to change is to write about it here.  Instead of spending the week hanging with my kid and scrubbing my house, I picked up three jobs and made plans to send Liam off to his grandparents. I took him down there Monday afternoon and he'll be back sometime tomorrow, spoiled and sassy, no doubt.  I'm so lucky that my mama is close by and that Liam gets to spend time with her and her husband; good grandparents are one of life's greatest blessings.

So with Liam gone, one would think that I would be very productive, right?  Hahaha!  Yesterday, instead of springing out of bed, grabbing coffee and going to work like a grownup would, I slept until nearly 9:00, wandered into the kitchen, read the paper leisurely over my first cup of coffee, then made myself a big breakfast.  After breakfast I surfed around a bit and caught up with some of my favorite journals, then moved to my big comfy chair to finish Pawleys Island*. 

I have read all of Dot Frank's Lowcountry Tales and even when her style occasionally annoyed me, I've enjoyed them a lot.  But I believe that with this one she has turned a corner as a writer, and it's her best one yet.  Her main characters are always well-done but this time the supporting cast is very clearly drawn, too.  And she has finally stopped beating her readers over the head with a magnolia branch (or maybe a palmetto frond).  Although her sense of place is as strong as ever, it's done with much more subtlety and grace this time.  It's been awhile since I neglected what I needed to do for the pure joy of finishing a novel, but that's exactly what I did with Pawleys Island.  The only thing that would have made it better would have been reading it on the beach.

The morning shot, did I go to work after lunch?  That would be a no.  I went to the bank and the grocery store and then to the mall to look for some shorts to wear to the gym.  I didn't find any shorts but I did buy Panthers t-shirts for Sweetie and myself (they were buy 1, get 1 half-price), and a couple of black shirts of my favorite kind.  And I did find some beautiful ribeyes on sale at Harris Teeter, which we will eat for supper tonight, a special treat that we don't indulge in very often, since I try to buy very lean beef most of the time.

So that took care of the afternoon and of course by the time I got back it was cocktail time so I poured myself a glass of wine and fixed a little dish of almonds to munch on and settled in to watch my favorite cooking shows, Paula's Home Cooking, Everyday Italian and Barefoot Contessa.  I'm ready for fall cooking!  And I'm thinking that Ina Garten's French onion soup sounds like a fine place to start.

Fall has made a glorious appearance here on the coast of Carolina.  The overnight temperatures were in the 60s and the humidity has dried up.  This morning the sky is the clear crystal blue of a Carolina autumn and I have all the windows and doors open to the wonderful fresh air.  The temptation is very strong to blow off work again and head to the beach, but today I have to be a grownup.  Maybe this evening I'll take my glass of wine to the patio and keep Sweetie company while he grills supper.

Meanwhile, I'd better get to work.

*I have a whole ramble started about my current reading habits that I'll eventually finish.  Suffice it to say that I have come out of the closet about my love for "chick" books, romantic fiction, contemporary women's fiction, whatever it's being called today. 

Friday iTunes Random Ten

1. Trouble No More (live)-Jimmy Rogers, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
2. Saw You Running-New Grass Revival
3. Crazy He Calls Me-Billie Holiday
4. Sailing Shoes (live)-Little Feet
5. These Arms of Mine-Otis Redding
6. Waymore's Blue-Waylon Jennings
7. The Great Pretender-the Platters
8. Song for the Life-Kathy Mattea
9. Rude Mood-Stevie Ray Vaughn
10. Burn that Candle-Emmylou Harris

The song that I like most this week is Song for the Life, written by the fabulous Rodney Crowell.  This version by Kathy Mattea is terrific, but I've never heard a bad one:

Somehow I've learned how to listen
For a sound like the sun going down
In the magic that morning is bringing
There's a song for the life I have found
It keeps my feet on the ground

The song that I like least this week is Burn that Candle.  No one loves Emmy more than I do, but this song just doesn't do it for me.

A special shoutout this week to the late, lamented New Grass Revival.  They kicked nine kinds of ass, Sam Bush is a god and John Cowan is probably one of my top five all-time favorite singers.  This isn't my favorite NGR song but it's still miles better than a lot of other folks' best efforts. 

What are you listening to this first weekend of autumn?

Photo Friday

This week's photo challenge is burn.

Check out my Friday Photos album for past challenges.

Time Flies Whether You're Having Fun or Not

Happy Autumnal Equinox!  Although I love summertime, fall on the NC coast is just glorious and my favorite season of all.  I would like to know how in the hell did it get to be nearly the end of September?  I swan, it was just Labor Day and here I am staring Liam's fall break dead in the face. 

I've spent most of this week trying to clear my desk so that he and I can hang out and do fun stuff next week.  The weather folks are promising that a cool front will move in by the first of next week, so I'm also planning on doing some serious fall cleaning; taking down blinds, washing windows and curtains, cleaning out closets, tossing out what needs to go, shampooing carpets and scrubbing every square inch of this pig sty to get ready for the much-too-quickly-approaching holiday season.  We're hosting Thanksgiving this year, and we always have Christmas at our house (I travelled when I was childless; not any more), so I want to get all the hard-core heavy cleaning done and out of the way.

Today Liam's class hosted their end-of-quarter party for the parents.  In addition to being served cookies and lemonade and getting to see their work folders, we were treated to a talent show!  There were gymnasts and dancers (break and ballet) , a keyboard player and a contortionist, a pyramind builder and an artist, a future NBA star and his NFL counterpart and collectors of many things, including superheroes, rocks  and cards (baseball, hockey, NeoPets and Yu-Gi-Oh).  And I have to confess that today I was one of Those Parents.  Since Sweetie couldn't be there, he asked me to videotape it, and I did. 

I have a love/hate relationship with camcorders.  When Liam was born we were really too broke to buy one, but beyond that, I had seen far too many parents totally miss the moment because they were hellbent on recording it.  I didn't want to do that; I wanted to watch the moments as they happened.  But a couple of years ago, Sweetie's parents gave us a nice little camcorder for Christmas.  Of course, most of the time I forget I have it, and when I do remember it's never charged, but I do have a very cute tape of the Christmas and end-of-the-year programs from Liam's preschool and Christmas mornings for the last couple of years.

Today I got there early enough to score a good seat (and let me just say that those first-grader chairs were not meant for my 46-year-old doublewide ass) so that I could see and tape without blocking everyone else.  A couple of cartwheels went unrecorded when the gymnasts came a bit too close, but I got most of it on tape and it is priceless.

Liam had his second appointment with the orthopedist today.  Poor little fella was totally freaked out by the noise of the saw, but he came through like a champ.  The arm is healing nicely; it's beautifully straight, which is great news.  This time he chose a black cast, very cool and Batmanesque, and he should only have to wear it for about three more weeks.  Best of all is that he can toss the hated (and totally useless) sling.  That's going to make life much more pleasant for all of us.

This has been a very busy week and boy howdy, am I ready for the weekend!

Photo Friday

This week's photo challenge is divine.

Check out my Friday Photos album for past challenges.

Friday iTunes Random Ten

1. Amarillo by Morning-George Strait (possibly the most perfect country song ever written)
2. Sisters are Doing it For Themselves-the Eurythmics with Aretha Franklin
3. Love is on a Roll-Don Williams
4. We're on a Road to Nowhere-Talking Heads
5. Shake, Rattle and Roll-Big Joe Tuner
6. A Keeper for Every Flame-Mary-Chapin Carpenter
7. Long Black Train-Allison Moorer
8. Landslide-Dixie Chicks
9. Saturday Night Special-Lynyrd Skynyrd
10. Disco Inferno-the Trammps

Oh, I like this mix. 

The song I like most this week is Sisters are Doing it For Themselves, which my friend and fellow Aretha-worshipper Lori and I used to play on the jukebox at the late, lamented General Longstreet's.  What a great song to start off my morning!

The song I like least this week is probably Love is on a Roll.  I don't dislike it and really love Don Williams, it just seems to be a little out of place on this particular mix.

What are you listening to on this last weekend before the equinox?

Chrysalis

I can tell that this new journey to something approaching health and fitness is well on its way to becoming an obsession.   And since I know that one woman's obsession is another woman's fast track to eye-glazing boredom, I decided that I would have a journal solely devoted to my attempts to reclaim my body from the evil clutches of inertia and Frito-Lay.

Stop by Chrysalis and say hello, won't you?