Scout Moves

I am a part of a small group of women who meets once a week for cocktails, a specialty of our host, and snacks and talking. We sit around the table in the dark on the deck, and we speak openly about whatever comes to mind, with the understanding that what’s said at that table does not leave that table. So, you will never hear me spill on my sisters. “Sisters” is a good term for the four of us. A friend of mine, a man who hasn’t attended one of these cocktail hours, called us the Weird Sisters after Shakespeares’s three witches in MacBeth , or maybe after the Wyrd Sisters in the Terry Pratchett Discworld series. Either way, we’ve taken on the name, and the Weird Sisters are a weekly event. The other evening, I was telling the others about how I was always one of the boys in high school. I didn’t have a lot of friends in my teenage years, but I seemed to have friends who were boys, although not necessarily boy friends. Even if I were dating a specific boy, I still spent time with boys wh...

I have just finished reading Anna Quindlen’s Every Last One , and this may prove to be one of those novels that haunts me from here on out. You know, there are some stories that stay with you for a week or so until you begin reading something else, and there are others that embed themselves in some neuron in your brain, and you relive their plot lines or remember the most memorable scenes years after turning the last page. For me, Cold Mountain is like that, and The Grapes of Wrath, A Time To Kill and Slaughterhouse Five . There are others, I’m sure, but those are the top picks at the moment—maybe some of my neurons are sluggish today. And now Every Last One can take its rightful place in my internal library. I read the book on the recommendation of my sister-in-law, who said that just when I would feel like giving up on the thing, something shocking would happen. Boy, was she right. My little paperback copy has 300 pages of actual story (never mind the reading notes—you shouldn’t n...

It happened like this. I was sitting in my living room chair this morning, finishing the first cup of coffee for the day and thinking through an email when the door bell rang. I considered not answering it. I was still in my pyjamas and hadn't showered so my hair was a little like Alfalfa's in the early years, not in the "It's A Wonderful Life" years. But then I remembered that just yesterday I had made an appointment with the appraiser to be here at 9:00ish. I could not send this person away, and I had no choice but to answer the door as is. I let this stranger into my home and laughed, explaining I had forgotten he was coming and was still in my PJs. Please excuse me. The guy was good-natured about it and laughed right along with me, and he explained he would need some time to measure the main floor and the basement, so I had plenty of time to run upstairs and get dressed. Phew. While I was upstairs, I tidied up our bedroom a little and opened the shades so the ...

Last night, the Big Fat Summer Band performed a concert, our Road Show, we call it. Instead of playing at the park where we play most of our concerts, or in the street where Small Town holds its festivals, we travel ten miles west to play in Sugarcreek, also known as The Little Switzerland of Ohio. The buildings on the main streets are dressed up with gingerbread and small details that mimic a stereotype of a Swiss village. The town has a Swiss festival every year where cheese makers compete for Best Cheese prizes, little girls dress up in traditional Swiss dresses to march in a parade and burly men throw 138-pound stones in the Steintossen competition. There is a picnic shelter behind the fire station, and we set up in front of that to face the audience perched up on the hillside. The fire fighters pop popcorn in a portable thing and sell soft-serve ice cream while we play, and the church next door hosts what they call a Haystack Meal before hand, so you can load up on carbs before yo...

Ohio is one of the states caught in what's being called The Heat Dome. We're swimming in waves of exhausting heat and humidity, although it feels more like trudging than swimming. You walk outside, and suddenly your muscles can't seem to move your bones as limberly as they had moved them when you were inside, and each step becomes a deliberate act. I will step once with the left, and then once with the right and so on until I reach the mailbox. If you tried to swim like that, you'd sink to the bottom like the bag of bones you are. Last night was band practice night. All week, I had dreaded going because we meet in a middle school band room that is not air-conditioned. The band is up to 90 people now, and even with the double doors opened and the ceiling fans going at full tilt, sitting in that packed room is like sitting on the edge of a boiling cauldron and waiting to be shoved in. The horns sit in front of the trombones who occasionally fling spit when they play movin...

The other day, Husband and I were walking to our car parked in a parking lot, and a group of young women passed us on their way into a store. One of them suggested they have dinner while they're in town (it's a place with lots of restaurants), and what should they get, she asked? One of her friends said, "Something good." That's the kind of comment that deserves a smack, as far as I'm concerned. Something good? Something good?! How is the driver or the cook or the person generally in charge of food supposed to work with "something good?" Well, here's something good—lemon-lime basil shortbread cookies. I found the recipe in the July edition of Bon Appétit and set it aside to try. I kept forgetting I had dog-eared the page, but this afternoon, I finally got to make the cookies. The thing is, when I was shopping with this recipe in mind, I forgot I would need lemons and only bought limes. No worries. I just doubled up on the lime zest and used lime...

I have thought that if I had the ear of a newspaper editor, any newspaper editor, I'd ask for a restaurant review column, but in a small town, that can be risky. I wouldn't approach the job as a way to promote local restaurants. I'd call them as I see them, and locals can be fiercely devoted to their favorite joints, even if those joints are mediocre. So, no review column, but I can speak freely here. And today, I would like to speak freely about Danny Boy's . Danny Boy's has only four locations, all in northern Ohio, and Husband and I went to the one in Canton last night. I suggested it because a couple of people have recommended it, and I was driving. The general rule is if you're driving, you're choosing the place for dinner. The atmosphere. The tag line for the place is "Food, Frank, and Fun," and we didn't get it. What does Frank mean? Then we walked in and discovered Frank means Sinatra. The walls are covered with Sinatra-related memorab...

Well, I'm not sure how this happened, but another week has gone by without a fresh post. That wasn't intentional. In fact, every day I would wake up, look at this poor blog and think "I should write something here." And then I would click off to some other site and forget to come back. So, how has this week been for you? Busy? Productive? (which isn't always the same thing as busy) Happy? Sad? Irritable? Giddy? It's been fine for me. It kicked off with prime seats for an Indians game in Cleveland—three hours in the blazing sun! I did a little cooking but not too much. I spent some time in the pool, but only once was I in the thing long enough to turn into a prune—my friend, Jane, came over, and we drifted around and talked for a long time. I read a little more of The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, although I would have liked some more reading time. I played my horn a little but not nearly enough, and then went to band practice last night where there ...

Today is our 27th wedding anniversary, and as I said to a friend this morning, we were babies when we were married, which is why we are still so young today—just in case you were trying to factor an age and think we might be pushing toward being elderly. It's also one of those days when lots of little things must be done, none of them very time consuming, but each of them of value. I'm fighting some kind of sinus thing that makes me want to curl up on the couch and close my eyes, and it makes my teeth hurt, which is an odd sensation, but I'm pretending this thing isn't creeping up on me. Go away, and leave me alone, I'm telling it. On the list: bake cookies for my children even though they don't live with me anymore, ship some of those cookies, connect with someone about a meeting tomorrow, organize some thoughts about said meeting, send in my weekly column, open and close the garage door in a timely manner because it was painted this morning and can't dry s...

After a few weeks off, I am back writing my weekly column. I could have written all kinds of sappy patriotism for July 4th and gotten flowery about freedom and flags and God Bless America. But I chose to talk about Band of Brothers instead. Husband and I have just finished watching the series, followed by The Pacific , and there is a striking element that runs through the stories, as well as the interviews that introduce them—throughout the war, the soldiers of World War II might have known the war they were fighting was as just as war can be, but the death that surrounded them became increasingly senseless. A telling scene—as the Americans drive in and the Germans walk out after surrendering, an American perched on an approaching tank screams at the dejected Nazis, saying, "What were you thinking? Dragging our asses half way around the world, interrupting our lives... For what, you ignorant, servile scum! What the fuck are we doing here?" With that in mind, here is tod...

Dive at Small Glass Planet has shown us some photos of and told us about a true English afternoon—a game of cricket, although one that lasted only one day instead of the usual five—and his post put me in mind of a game we played when I was a kid. We called it “cricket,” but it was only loosely based on the real thing. The elementary school in my town, which later became part of the high school, was adjacent to the town park, a huge place that offered wonders on every square foot, or at least it seemed huge and full of wonders in the eyes of a little girl who had ridden there on the back of her friend’s bike and was eager to play. The front portion along Morgan Avenue was the playground, and it had all the usual equipment—swings, slides, climbing things, spinning things. There was one slide that was particularly high, and you had to be extra daring to climb the ladder all the way to top and then let yourself slip down the metal slope. Knowing that at some point in history some kid had ...

Wow, a whole week has gone by with only one blog post. How did that happen. Oh, it must be because my summer version of a schedule—which is to say I have no schedule these days—lacks structure, and I have to create some of my own. I'm pretty good at that, but without the usual routine of the school year, I sort of feel as though I am swinging from a vine and can't quite reach the next tree. Yes, I know I don't have school kids in the house anymore, so the school year shouldn't affect me, but the notion is deeply ingrained, I'm afraid, and I will forever be guided by it. • So, what's been going on, you wonder? Well for starters, my mother was here for two weeks, so I shut down everything I would normally do—I missed the final two weeks of the ESL program where I volunteer because I felt bad about leaving my mother here by herself, and she wasn't interested in going along. The idea of sitting in a room with the Guatemalans seemed to make her nervous. And I put...