thoughts

Mattie has been a part of my life since my mother was three years old. She took care of us all. She took care of everybody. The number of people who feel as though Mattie “belongs” to them is staggering. Every time we went to visit her (which was, of course, not nearly enough), her house was abuzz with people. Some were living with her, some were visiting, some popped in to fix the tile in the bathroom, some brought lunch. But we were never alone. And Mattie loved it that way. “This my baby’s baby,” is how she would…

Okay, so my weekend in Chicago? Was terrific. I didn’t actually meet 800 people, which was good. Because that’s a lot of people. But I did meet beaucoup people. So many that it was crucial that everyone had nametags everyone’s name was on their boobs so we could all casually glance down and remind ourselves whose boobs we were glancing at. However, for successful glance-casual reading of boob-height nametags, the names on the tags must be printed very large. And I know that Blogher loves us and meant to print the names very large, but by accident they printed them…

I know I know. You’re all sick to death of hearing about Harry Potter. But here I am. With more. Sorry. At this point, 2 days after the release of the final book in the Harry Potter series, it seems to me we humans fall into 4 camps: Got on line at midnight; bought book; read book for 7 hours straight; finished book; are alternately depressed that “it’s all over” and desperate for others to finish book so you can discuss it and keep it alive, for the love of pete. Waited til the hubbub died down and bought the…

That Bob. He’s run off to play with Larry this weekend at Burning Man, southern style. It’s called Transformus (not Burnin’ Mayan, for those who were wondering) and instead of a hot dry Nevada playa, it takes place in the lush NC Blue Ridge mountains. With lakes. And trees. Tonight, wondering what they were up to, I took a look at the schedule of events and found these items: Friday Evening Shortly after dark, for about an hour – “Scream & Stab” at TikiTorchure. Saturday Afternoon 2:30 Cape Sphere will be hosting the Human Carcass Wash. Become part of this…

We’ve been spending a lot of time at the pool lately. So much so that you’d think we were, y’know, kids growing up in the summer. Or, er, parents of kids growing up in the summer. The main difference being that we don’t drop them off at the pool and leave them there all day to play tennis, swim and go to the canteen with their friends. Instead, we all go together. But once we’re there, we may as well not be there. They find their friends, or they find other 4-5-6 year olds, and they’re off playing with them….

So back a while ago, after I graduated from college, I worked at Club Med for a year. I was in the Turks and Caicos Islands, which, at the time, nobody had ever heard of, myself included. During the summer months, it rained a little bit every day. Short, punishing rains that seemed to disappear before they even got started. When I was a kid, my dad used to tell me great stories about growing up in Miami Beach. One of my favorites was the one about how it would rain in the afternoon there, so quick and out-of-nowhere that…