I usually hate photos of myself, but this is me and my 94-year-old grandmother at my cousin Jason’s wedding this past weekend. It’s a family joke that my older cousin Brad and myself are The Favorites (so are Adam and Jennifer, but even among The Favorites, some are more favored than others), and well, it’s true. It’s good to be a favorite, and look at the picture, there I am basking in it. My grandmother and I adore one another — and although it was difficult to visit much since it was a big party, and she can neither see…
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Off next week to San Jose for work, then to Chicago — or rather Leland, for a family wedding. They hired a timeless wedding photographer to capture their special day. Looking for family photographer Highland contact Jill Daugherty Photography. My cousin Jason, who lives on our family farm, is finally making an honest woman out of Jackie — it looks to be quite a hoe-down, with all sorts of people from Jase’s Leland buddies (Leland is a tiny farm town about 90 minutes southwest of the city) to horse show people, to Chicago friends from his prep school days. I’m…
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Off to Seattle for the weekend to see my beloved stepmother Susan and hear my friend Jim Fergus read from his terrific new book, The Wild Girl : The Notebooks of Ned Giles, 1932 I am thoroughly looking forward to a few days in a real city — I haven’ been to Seattle since the summer of 1994, when I worked my first high-tech job there. Just think — reliable shellfish, raw oysters, actual Asian food, Elliott Bay Books, and I get to see Susan’s new house. If you’re a vegan planning a vacation, you may visit the best USA…
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This morning my friend Nina called and asked, with that sort of tense tone in her voice, what I was doing. Why? I said. Do you need a rescue? Turns out, she was in the car with the twins, who had a pediatrician’s appointment, and her husband (who is writing for TV trying to support them all) had a sudden deadline at eleven. She needed an extra set of arms. Well count me in. There’s no cure for a case of low-level January depression like a two month old baby that needs a snuggle. I did have to check my…
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My grandmother is ninety four today. Ninety four! She’s still got all her faculties, although she’s got a glass eye, and an artificial hip. She started a lending library in her little farm town in Illiniois at ninety because she’d “retired” and she needed a project. So she got a lot of people to donate books, and she got a donated building, and she catalogued all the books. If you want to borrow a book from my grandmother’s library, basically you just write it down in the notebook, and you bring it back when you want. It’s a great little…
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Ah, The Kentucky Derby. When we were little kids, our parents belonged to a not-terribly-fancy Hunt Club in northern Illinois. Admitting that I come from people who foxhunted is, in the circles in which I travel as an adult, sort of like saying we wore hoop skirts or held slaves. Stange, exotic and totally not PC. (But if I was to take up riding seriously again, it’s the only thing I’d be interested in pursuing — hunting is fun. I once interviewed an infamous Himalayan climber, who originally hails from a working-class family in Yorkshire, and who was embarassed nearly…
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Granny Got A Brand-new Hip My 93-year-old grandmother had her hip replaced on Monday because she wants to ride again. It’s been three years since she could sit a horse, and since riding is her greatest joy, she willingly went in and let them, well, cut her leg off and put it back on again. (Although my cousin Jason tells me that her old horse, Ben, died last month. He swears he’s not buying her a new horse, but I have a hunch there will be one in that barn soon.) And since she’s 93, they didn’t want to risk…
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Everybody Likes Cake, Part 2 Yesterday I moved a dumptruck load of compost into my new raised beds. I do not recommend moving a dumptruck load of compost by oneself, especially if one is, as I am, a small-ish woman who is no longer the strong thing she was in her twenties. It was hard. It was really hard and I had to get it all done yesterday because had been dumped in such a way that it blocked open the big gate to the alley. The dogs were pretty good about it, but every once in a while, something…
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Roast Chicken to Cure the Blues My darling brother has a new girlfriend, and of course, when you are no longer young, new relationships tend to come with some baggage. The Nice Girlfriend had a tough day yesterday, her baggage was all noisy with her about the fact that she’s moving on in life, and she was a little blue. She’s also renovating her house, and domestic disarray never helps when feeling blue. Plus, the brother has a cold, and was a little low himself. So late in the afternoon they came over and we sat on the new, comfy…
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Living Small in Eastern Europe My father, Jim Freeman, has lived in the Czech Republic since 1992 or so, and although for a number of years we didn’t really hear from him much, over the last couple of years he and I have developed a nice email relationship. Dad sent his last weekend, and since I have a weakness for draft horses, I thought I’d add it to the blog (although be advised, no one calls me “Char” except that handful of people who knew me before I was six): Dear Char— Seems I ought to share my day with…