Working in the Vineyard....

We worked in the vineyard this afternoon until it got too dark to see. Dennis strung wire on the metal cross arms and removed some of the grow tubes while I pulled weeds and worked on the little rock walls that surround each row.

We don't talk much while working in the vineyard. Dennis, caught up in his vision and dreams for this vineyard that have been six years in the making. Six years of studying soil, sun and drainage patterns, and researching types of grapes. But me, my mind tends to wander. Usually I find myself thinking about the vineyards in the Tuscan region of Italy; hundred of years, handed down generation to generation, each family member doing exactly what we are doing today, back-break, painstaking labor, hoping for a crop of unique one-of-a-kind grapes, the likes of which have never been tasted before. It would have been easier had we not chosen to grow organically. But we wanted to insure the soil was pure and the grapes untainted by chemicals or pollutants.

Even our large, clumsy, usually rowdy dogs seem to sense this is a reverent place. They are calm, respectful, almost reflective here, and often caught up in peaceful thoughts of their own.

The edge of the woods is near, and sometimes, while working in the vineyard, I get the distinct feeling I am being watched. I scan the wood line, and never see anything. But I know somewhere in those woods, the native inhabitants are watching, camouflaged by their habitat, wondering what these strange two-legged creatures are doing.

My dad had a stroke before the first vines began to bud. But he knew everything about the plan. He saw the drawings, he walked the land as it was plotted out for planting and he was excited at the prospect of his wild overgrown hillside producing something of value.

I can only hope (dream) that 50, 100 years from now, someone who I have not met yet will be picking grapes from this vineyard and wondering about the people who planted them.

My Memories of Dogs

A walk down memory lane with some of my oldest and best friends.............

This is my grandfather's hunting dog. He worried I spoiled the dog and would take the "hunt" out of him by sneaking table scraps, petting him too much and telling him stories. An interesting thing about this picture it that it was taken sometime around 1955....and by happenstance, I have the EXACT same dog today (2009) that I rescued three years ago after I found him starving and abused by some hunters. The two dogs have the same markings , they are the same size (but I have grown a bit!) , a sweet shy temperment, and sometimes I can't help but wonder how we came to find one another........perhaps again?

If you ever thought it strange that I have such affection for dogs, these pictures might answer a few questions. My earliest memories are of dogs....the way they smell, the way they feel, but most of all, they way they loved me. I can remember countless times, sitting in the corner of my yard, feeling sad or lonely and telling my various dogs all of my troubles. They always listened politely and made me feel so much better.
As I grew up, I never forgot those feelings of comfort and love. These days, I try to return the favor to dogs who need me, just as I needed them so many years ago. And even though our roles seem to be reversed now, the love we share is just as strong.


These were my friends that I played with at my grandmother's house. I wanted them to feel equal so I insisted on carrying them around together, often with a disasterous outcome for the three of us because I wasn't a very graceful child.....something that followed me into adulthood. We had tea parties, and one day when my grandmother was busy in the house, I put makeup on them. Instead of getting into trouble, my grandmother laughed and told me how beautiful they looked, then we put them in her bathtub and gave them a bath.

I was two years old when this photo was taken in my great-grandmother's yard in Centerville. I don't remember this guy's name but I do remember how he would get low to the ground so I could pet his nose. And his hair was very soft. He followed me everywhere, even though I didn't walk very well. He would stop and wait when I fell, and then off we would go again. I think this was my first love.

Patrick Swayze and My Mother

Today, when I learned of the death of Patrick Swayze, I was overcome with sadness.

I was sitting in a hospital room with my mother at the beginning of March, 2008, as we watched the news that Patrick Swayze had been diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer. On that night, we knew that my mother had been diagnosed the previous August with the same disease. What we didn't know that night was that my mother had less than a month to live.

On that evening, my mother talked about how handsome he was, what a good dancer he was, and how she enjoyed his movies. She speculated that he would probably have the surgery she was unable to have due to her age and the risk. Because my mother never accepted that she would die from this horrible disease until two weeks before her death, she didn't accept it would take someone as young and healthy as Patrick Swayze either.

The day Luciano Pavaretti died of Pancreatic Cancer in September, 2007, my husband called me in my mother's hospital room with a rather frantic "Do NOT turn the news on today". She had only known for a month this was her diagnosis too, and we were all trying to wrap our minds around what this meant. So, I kept the television in her room off that day and tried to engage her in other activities. I left that evening as she went to sleep, only to return the next morning with her first question being, "Did you know Pavaretti died yesterday from the same thing I have?".

From August to the following March, my sister and I were glued to our computers, researching anything and everything we could find about the disease. Nothing we read was encouraging. In fact, the more educated we became, the more discouraged we grew. But it was weeks before we could speak aloud the inevitable truth to one another. We knew our mother's fate, just as we knew what the outcome would be for the young and vibrant Patrick Swayze.

And while this living hell kept my mother captive for eight months, two months longer than the average lifespan after diagnosis, Mr. Swayze had youth on his side and was able to battle for 20 months after his initial diagnosis.

So, even though we knew how our mother's story would end, her death at 1:04 pm on March 31, 2008 came as a heartbreaking jolt.

I am sure that the family of Patrick Swayze felt the same way today.

Has Technology Passed me By????

The washer and dryer in my house in Arkansas look pretty much like the washer and dryer everyone had....20 years ago! Very simple, very basic features that anyone with a 4th grade education can operate. Even though they are about 10-12 years old, they work perfectly well and I see no need to replace them until they die a natural death.

However, as the result of a series of unfortunate events involving two very close friends in Kansas City, I recently obtained possession of the very exotic piece of machinery, pictured above, for our condo. Apparently, there is a whole new world of electronic appliances that are so technologically advanced, the owners manual should be offered as a college course.

This one-piece ventless washer/dryer combination is very common in Europe, often found installed in the kitchen due to lack of space elsewhere. However, I doubt most of the European-style units are as technologically advanced as this computer controlled, LED lighted, state-of-the-art unit my much younger friends bought and could operate blindfolded.

The concept is simple: place the clothes in the drum, go through a series of computer prompts that will determine multiple settings for everything from water temperature, spin cycle speed, rinse specifics, and all sorts of drying options. This miracle of modern technology even steam cleans! It has a timer that tells you (to the second) how much longer the entire process will take. It has beautiful soft blue lighting and soothing little chirps and soft bell sounds as it goes through the process of washing and drying your clothes. It is so beautiful it looks like a piece of jewelry, a rather large piece of jewelry, but jewelry none-the-less.

Just put the clothes in, walk away, and come back FOUR HOURS LATER!

Do the math my friends. If you get up really early and go to bed late at night, you MIGHT do three loads of laundry in one day. That is, if you are more computer literate than I am and can program the thing, understand the owners manual, and don't spend the first 30 minutes looking for the lint filter (there isn't one!).

I love this beautiful new machine. It makes laundry feel like a work of art and it makes me feel so modern, so European......but oh so stupid!

Labor Day at the Bella

Adam, Geoff, Chelsea, Chad, Dennis, Junior, Candi, Wendy, Jenny, Greg

In order to welcome my very favorite time of year, autumn, we have to bid farewell to summer. This parting of the seasons ritual is more commonly known as Labor Day.

Thanks to our Kansas City friends who joined Dennis and I at our condo to usher in the new season.

Five Health Care Myths That Just Won't Die

The far right-wing rhetoric about Health Care Reform has become so comical it is hard for me to believe that any rational thinking person could possibly take it seriously. But, apparently, there are those who do! I feel rather silly wasting my time writing about this and wasting your time as you read it, but there seems to be an element of our society that causes the bell curve that charts intelligence to dip far below its regular curvature.

Newsweek magazine has finally heard enough of this nonsense and published an article about the "The Five Biggest Lies in the Health Care Debate" ( http://www.newsweek.com/id/214254/page/1).

When I first saw this, I laughed at the cleaver title and thought it was a piece of satire. But when I read the supporting evidence, I realized it wasn't a joke and there were people who actually DO believe these silly notions.

If you don't want to read the entire article (which isn't very long), here are the five absurd concepts that apparently have some believers from somewhere out there.....and I do mean "OUT THERE":

1. You will have no choice in what health benefits you receive.
2. No chemo for older people.
3. Illegal immigrants will get free health care.
4. Death panels will decide who lives.
5. The government will set doctor's wages.

The article also explains there is nothing anywhere in the proposed bill to give the government access to our bank accounts, despite what the hysterical screamers at the Town Hall Meetings would hope to have you believe.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE........if you know anyone who believes any of the five statements above, do us all a favor and try to get them some professional help. If you aren't comfortable with that, spend a few bucks and buy them a copy of Newsweek.

My Grandmother's House....then and now

For sometime now, I have had reoccurring dreams about my grandmother's house, a place I spent a lot of time as a child. These dreams vary in scope and detail, even in time reference, but they are each unmistakeably centered around events at her house.

My beloved grandmother is long gone but the house is still there. It is a white wood frame, with a comfortable front porch, three bedrooms and one bathroom in an tiny little town in Arkansas. My dad grew up in this house and my grandmother continued to live there after my dad left for college and my grandfather left her for the maid, until shortly before her death.

Some of my favorite childhood memories took place in this house. She was a doting grandmother in whose eyes, I could do no wrong. I had privileges in this house that would be out of the realm of consideration in my parents' house. I could play for hours on end in my grandmother's closet, dressing up in her fur, her hats, her high heels. I could play with her makeup, putting on as much as I wanted, always with the end result of a good face scrubbing that night in my grandmother's old claw-footed tub.

My grandmother would cook anything I wanted to eat and if I wanted a cake or cookies, a good portion of the batter was left in the bowl for me to lick off of an old wooden spoon. I could stay up past my bedtime watching the Hit Parade or Gun Smoke. My grandmother thought Miss Kitty was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen and the fact she worked in a saloon didn't bother my grandmother one bit.

Last night, I had a wonderful dream about my grandmother's house. The dream took place in the 50s, with everything exactly the same way it was in my childhood, but in the dream, I was the same age I am right now. My grandmother was still the beautiful tall red-head, dressed to perfection. And she catered to me as she always did, even though I appeared in this dream to be much older than she did.....time stood still for her, although it didn't for me.

I think I understand what this all means, but for fear of disrupting the perfection of it all, I am not going to dissect it. I just want to cherish the memories and the peaceful feelings it brought. And I hope these dreams will continue to visit.

Shakespeare had it right when he wrote in Hamlet, "To sleep, perchance to dream...".