Live and Let Di

Adirondack Art

Three teenagers. The first sunshine in days. What to do?

Adirondack chairs. Paint. Paintbrushes. Spray paint. Art.

Di

Perfect with Kosher Salt and Lime!

Happy nights and hungover mornings are in store for those who keep Kosher. Yes, Martin Silver of Star Industries has announced that Agave 99 will begin promotions on Cinco de Mayo, but it will be available in time for Passover! I can't wait for the promotions...Mexican songs sung in Yiddish! Somehow I don't think Raleigh, NC will exactly be in their promotion market. I'll have to find it on YouTube.

It's really not so crazy...tequila is fun. Hence, the catchphrase of our Mexican vacation, "Mas Tequila!"

Even my Mom, who isn't Jewish and doesn't drink tequila gave it a sip and learned about the correct process...salt, tequila, lime (try not to make squinchy face...it can give you wrinkles).

With this new product, Mom could be the hit of her Mah Jongg group. (Yes, my non-Jewish Mom plays Mah Jongg in several groups in two states!) All you need to go with the Kosher Tequila is:

How simple. And maybe your next dinner party will look like this:

Apologies to the non-irreverent of my readership. Oh, I forgot, I have no reverent readers.

Di

Danger, Will Robinson!!!!

The other day a new warning light came on in my car. I'm used to the one that tells me I'm low on window wiper fluid. The one saying I'm almost out of gas is the only way it even occurs to me to stop and get gas since I drive so little and it's just not in my routine. The one that tells me that someone hasn't buckled in comes on when I put my purse and briefcase on the front passenger seat...either it's way too sensitive or my stuff is way too heavy.

The other day, this one came on:

Do you think it's telling me it's time for a mammogram?

Di

How to embarrass your kids

Embarrass is one of those words that I have to look up every time I use it. The two double-letters just confuse me.

Embarrassing your children is an innate skill that actualizes when your kids become teenagers. It's surprisingly effortless as most parents can tell you. I remember embarrassing my son once when I took out my laptop while waiting in the orthodontist's office.

Do you think my son will be embarrassed by what we posted on the billboard we paid for to sponsor his baseball team?

Go to PhotoFunia. You will have so much fun. Thanks to Karen from verbatim for unknowingly granting me permission to shamelessly steal this idea from her blog.

Di

In which Di is reminded to Google

Today I was in search of white baseball pants with black/red piping. Of course, I first called the Fuquay Sports Shop because I like to buy local when I can. When they didn't have them, I decided to go to the big box sporting goods store's website.

For future reference, their website address is DICKSSPORTINGGOODS.COM. What I typed in came up with something completely different. AND I TYPED MY BASEBALL PANT SPECIFICATIONS IN THE SEARCH BOX!!!!!!

Di

Flip for a Cure

You've all heard me mention Kim, my friend who is kicking breast cancer's butt. (Here is her Caring Bridge site. Whether you know Kim or not, reading her site will give you an idea about how one person has coped with this disease and how friends, family and strangers have been there to help.) Her daughter is a competitive gymnast and her gym is doing the coolest thing to help Kim and her family. Please tell everyone you know if you are reading this from the Raleigh area. Throughout this experience with Kim, I have been absolutely blown away by the lengths that people will go to in order to help in any way they can.

In Cold Blood

Relax! I did not finally snap and take out my whole family with a spatula or something.

I am a TCM addict. I admit it. I don't think it's a problem. I don't think I require an intervention. I have a secret love for Robert Osborne...his knowledge of movies (duh, I know it's scripted) is only surpassed by my other love, IMDB. I will turn the cable on to guide, surf to TCM and scroll through the next week or so, recording all of the classic movies that I want to see or re-see. In recent weeks/months, I've seen The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke, Sophie's Choice, Saturday Night Fever, Gaslight...just from TCM...this doesn't even count my Netflix selections. No commercials. No censored language. It may be the perfect television station!

Yesterday I watched In Cold Blood, starring Robert Blake and John Forsythe (who I recently watched in the my-Mom's-era tearjerker, Madame X with Lana Turner). I read the book by Truman Capote so long ago that it's not on my list of books read that I have been keeping since 1997. I recall that I heard that it was really the first "true crime" book...a completely new genre that has resulted in everything from incisive true crime writing to tabloid trash books that make it from event to bookshelves inside two weeks.

Now people know more about it because of the recent Capote movies. The basic story is that two ex-convicts decide to pull off a robbery where they have been told there is a safe with lots of money in it. They end up killing the family and walking away with about forty bucks. The book, and perhaps moreso the movie, delves into the minds of the killers. Purportedly, Capote became enmeshed with the killers, particularly Perry (Blake's character) to the point where it went well beyond journalistic propriety.

The movie was brilliant. Mr. Osborne forewarned me that the score was done by Quincy Jones...and what a score...certainly avant-garde for the time. It was Blake's performance that was mesmerizing. Blake was a child actor, with his credits going back to the age of 5. His younger days were spent in the Our Gang series of movies. He was also Baretta. He once won a Golden Globe for Baretta, but was not even nominated for his amazing performance as Perry in this film. Of course, the year was 1967 and the nominees were:

	In the Heat of the Night (1967) - Rod Steiger(winner)
	Bonnie and Clyde (1967) - Warren Beatty Cool Hand Luke (1967) - Paul Newman (I) Graduate, The (1967) - Dustin Hoffman Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) - Spencer Tracy

I think he just should have done the movie in 1966 when I'm sure he could have joined the ranks of Paul Scofield (A Man for All Seasons) and Alan Arkin (The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!) or 1968 when he surely could have supplanted Alan Bates in The Fixer for an Oscar nod.

Looking at this movie from our current day, you will be amazed at how ahead of its time it was in terms of lighting and direction. The actual murders are not shown at the beginning of the movie, but are later told in retrospect by Perry. Some fantasy scenes that depict what is going on in Perry's mind are both seamless and chilling. The director purposely delved even more deeply into the killers' characters than the book did in order to evoke...not really empathy for the killers...but a psychological understanding of who they were and how they got to that point.

Oh...and a little IMDB tidbit...have I mentioned how much I LOVE IMDB?...the eyes on the movie poster are the eyes of the real killer, not the actor portraying him.

Brilliant...and best of all, free on TCM. Go for it.

Di

The Ten-Year Nap

This is not about my afternoon sleeping habits...and my naps rarely reach the length where they are measured in years! The Ten-Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer is the best book I've read in, well, years! Or maybe it just seemed like that since I wolfed it down over the course of two rainy, gloomy days this past weekend.

The Ten-Year Nap delves into the lives of some very different women living in and around New York City who are contemplating their lives after ten years of motherhood. I say "some" women because, although the description says four women, there are many women whose lives are touched on throughout the book and Meg Wolitzer crafts her book so beautifully that you never feel like, "Oh, this is Karen's chapter." Their lives weave in and out of one another's seamlessly. Every time you think something has the chance to devolving into cliche, it doesn't.

None of the women is a cookie-cutter stereotype of the "I left my career and regret it" or "I am the earth mother who needs nothing more than my children to complete me" roles that we often see in books focused on mothers. There are so many situations that will make you think, make you look at your own feelings about motherhood and make you think about the judgments you make about others.

Wolitzer even manages to weave in the past, interspersing the experiences of women of previous generations. What happened to the feminists and their consciousness-raising groups of the 60s? What bearing does that have on today's women? What happens to a woman who left her dream behind because marriage and family was expected?

Part of what made this book so compelling was that I read it following a typical Friday night with my friends who are also a diverse group of women. And strangely, I wrote this post about the value of diversity of friends on Saturday morning, before I became engrossed in The Ten-Year Nap. Wolitzer captures this sentiment and the messy overlaps of and distances between our perspectives.

My thanks (and my husband's irritation for me being AWOL a good part of the weekend) go to Caitlin Price at FSB Associates for sending me a copy to review.