Cirque du Goyette

For crying out loud!

2012-01-22T21:30:00.003-05:00

It's not so much that Steven Tyler 'butchered' our national anthem...
It was more like he shot it.
Just to watch it die.

After last year's debacle with Christina Aguilera, and now this, I really need to be on the national anthem planning committee.

Seriously.
I know people who could phone in the national anthem while fighting the flu and still nail it perfectly.
No butchering, no screeching, no deaths.

Call me, football people.

1 step forward, a million steps back

2012-01-18T07:45:00.000-05:00

During the holidays, Chris and I were discussing vacations.

"Maybe we should consider a cruise this time," he said.
"You know," I said. "I think I'm finally ready."

And I was. I mean, everyone I've ever talked to about their cruise vacation just LOVED it.
"Maybe we could consider an Alaskan cruise," I said.
I actually started getting excited about it.

And then this happened...

We're back to square negative 1 million.

Dentists

2011-12-30T04:11:00.004-05:00

Dentists.
They're important.

I've always been fortunate with the dentists we've found wherever we've lived. Growing up, I would hear the scary experiences of other children - how much it hurt, how mean the dentist was, how ugly the nurse was, how much she smelled like old lady, etc.

I never had those experiences. Starting with the first dentist I remember, Dr. Crittendon, they were all great.

Well... maybe not all of them. There was this one dentist in Massachusetts. He asked if my jaw was numb before he started the procedure and I said yes, because it did feel numb after the shot. Then he started the drill and I felt it. I swung at him and he got all upset.

"Hey, you could have really hurt me!" he said.
"Not as much as you could have hurt me!" I said.

He gave me so much novacaine at that point, it took me two days to feel the left side of my face.
But I didn't feel any more pain.

Fast forward to today when I had an appointment at a new office because my regular dentist closes his office during the holidays. I called and told the receptionist that I had some pain and I wanted someone to take a look at it. I suppose I could have waited until next week to set up another appointment but I wanted to make sure everything was okay.
After all, you only get one set of permanent teeth.

I showed up five minutes early, gave them my insurance card, and filled out the forms. When I returned the clipboard, the receptionist gave me a slip of paper and directed me to take my own blood pressure.

"That was the first red flag, Mom," Spencer said later when I told the story at the supper table.

I thought it was a little odd, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt and took my own blood pressure thinking that maybe this was more efficient in some way. It was like the machines you see at the pharmacy.
And then I waited almost an hour before approaching the desk.

"Oh, that's not good," Wren said.

While I was waiting at the counter, my name was called so I went back to the chair. The hygienist(?) hung my purse on a hook and mumbled about crowns while she was standing behind me reading from the computer screen. When she came around to face me, she said loudly, like I was hard of hearing, "Is it your crowns? Are you having trouble with your crowns?"

I looked at her like she was growing an extra head, not that she couldn't have used the boost in brain power, and said no.

"That's what it says in your notes," she said, still loud.
"Those aren't my notes," I said.

She signed heavily, like getting the wrong notes for a patient happened all too often throughout the course of her day.

"Okay," I said. "I'm done."
And I got up out of the chair.

"No!" she said.
"Oh yes," I said, standing up and without raising my voice. "I'm done. I waited an hour."

It was one of those times when it was good to be the tallest one in the room. I was often the tallest one in the room when I was going through puberty. As a gangly teenager with braces, I couldn't see the value in it.
As an adult however, it's a good thing.

And just like that, I walked out of the door.

Some would argue that I had already invested so much time that I should have stayed, and maybe if I had only ever experienced the worst in dental care or even mediocre, I would have done just that.

Fortunately, I've had some great dentists. Thank you to all of them for short waits and good care. I'll be giving my regular dentist around the corner a call next week.

It's worth the wait.

Finding Bruno

2011-12-20T19:25:00.004-05:00

Bruno got lost.
Really lost.
Not just wandering off lost, or hunting lost, or out looking to have a good time lost.
He was truly lost in the worst way.

Losing him made me very sad.

I believe that cats, or at least my cats, live a better life with all of their claws and the freedom to come and go, inside and out, as they please. They need to climb trees, chase squirrels and birds and even bring home a chipmunk once in a while. In exchange, I only require that they learn their names and ring the bells on the door to go outside.
There is risk in holding this belief, but until recently I've never lost a cat.
Ever.

After all, we had Lola for twenty years.

After the first full day he was gone we started getting worried. Wren took walks in the neighborhood and asked neighbors about him. I made flyers and went on walks in the morning and after work.

At first, I was a little embarrassed to call his name walking through the neighborhood and then I didn't care. I would call as loudly as I could "BRUNO!" whether it was 6AM or 8PM.

Our neighbors were sympathetic but none had seen him.
More days passed and I started to worry that one of us would find his body on our walks.
This made me even sadder.

A then I dreamed that he returned in the moonlight. The next night I took a long walk calling for him, but it was the following morning that I found him. On what felt like the millionth time I called his name in ten days, he answered.

Fiona and I heard him before we saw him come around the corner of a brick house, meowing with his tail straight up. I've never been so happy to see his furry, orange butt. He was happy to see me too but a little put out that once I had him in my arms, I held onto him with Fiona's leash and covered him with my big, wet tears of joy all the way home.

Last piece

2011-11-30T08:01:00.000-05:00

I finished the last of the pumpkin pie for breakfast this morning.
Such a sad thing... I'm already dreaming of pie at Christmas and New Year.

I wonder how much time I have to ride the bike to burn a piece of pie.
Probably a LOT.
Such a sad thing...

Family photo

2011-11-24T19:10:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T12:06:00.000-05:00

That moment when the kids walked in the front door last night...
It was the best.

After anticipating their arrival for weeks, killing time baking apple cake and making preparations for our Thanksgiving feast, that first moment when Wren and Spencer came in the front door and Chris and I greeted them, when everyone was hugging and laughing and Fiona was underfoot, that was happiness condensed.

Later, when we were eating a supper of Chris' Fettucini Carbonara with Fried Egg and laughing and talking and catching up, I looked around the table and treasured the sound of the four of us all together and happy.

It doesn't get any better than this.

Halloween and All Saints

2011-11-01T07:38:00.000-04:00

I didn't dress up for halloween.
This is not because I didn't want to, but rather because I didn't have a Halloween Costume consultant.
I would definitely need one. Trust me, or just ask one of my sisters.

Some people are really great at putting together a costume, something clever, unique, well constructed.
I am not.
Not at all.
Never have been.

I went to work yesterday morning to find that some of my staff had dressed up and brought candy.
GOOD candy.
Yay!

The best costume was Supergirl as Chuck Norris. She had the Chuck Norris look with jeans, vest, boots, and cowboy hat and also a supergirl shirt, long black hair wig and a red cape.
She looked great.

Maybe she'll consider consulting for me next year...

Now that Halloween is over, it's time to honor the saints and prepare for All Soul's Day.
Have a great week, everyone.

Morning walk

2011-09-20T07:19:00.002-04:00

On Sunday, Chris got up to take his walk and asked if I wanted to go.
I did not.

I like taking walks, but on Sundays the walk should not begin before, say, 10am.
Chris likes to get started at 7am.

He went on without me and when he returned all sweaty and proud of himself for getting up and getting healthy, he found me in the kitchen drinking coffee and reading the news.
He was carrying his walking stick and he told me about the women he passed while walking.

"There were these two Asian women..." he began.
They are ALWAYS Asian.

"Hmmm..." I said.
"And when they passed, one of them said to me, 'That's a BIG stick!'"

I laughed because Chris' imitation of petite Asian women is pretty funny, and even though I had a pretty good idea of what he would say back, I asked anyway.
"And what did you say?"

"Well," he said. "I was going to say, oh, you mean this," he said, holding up his stick.
"Yep," I said. "That's pretty much what I thought."
"But no," he said. "I just said it was for chasing away the neighborhood cats."

Now, he says he's going out to take a walk with his Asian girlfriends.
And that's fine with me as long as I don't have to get up early on Sunday morning.

Fattening her up

2011-09-18T09:04:00.006-04:00

Fiona was too thin.

I don't mean like she was a little underweight. I mean like she was BONY.
And that's not good.

Chris took matters into his own hands.
"Julie," he said, putting the 12 pack of canned dog food into the grocery cart. "We've got to fatten up the dog."
"I don't know about giving her canned food..." I said.
"I do," he said, ignoring my concern, "And it's going to be fine.

Honestly, Chris knows nothing about canned food versus dry food or why one is better than the other.
He has never fed the dog.
Or the cats.
Chris tolerates the animals and periodically threatens to skin them and eat them if they don't behave.

He doesn't know anything about skinning and eating anything either.
Or proper pet discipline.
But that's another story.

In spite of all of this, he felt confident that he was making the right decision.
"Julie," he said. "Let's just try it. If she gains some weight, it can only help."

As it turned out, Fiona liked the canned food very much. We mix it with the dry so she still has some crunchy action for her teeth.
Meanwhile, Sophie and Bruno, who both eat all of their dry food like good little cats, started feeling a little put out that there wasn't any special food for them. They voiced their protest when Fiona would get fed but they were largely ignored.

Bruno took matters into his own hands so to speak and started eating with Fiona who was fine with it as long as Bruno understood that she could also end up eating his head what with her being a dog and all.
Sophie was left out of the special food process altogether which wasn't fair.

"Chris," I said. "Now that you've started this with the dog food, we have to get canned cat food too."
"Why?" he said.
"Because it's not fair," I said. "Look at poor Sophie."
"If Fiona was a real dog, she wouldn't let Bruno eat part of her food and then it wouldn't matter," he said.
"It still wouldn't be fair," I said.

So we went to store and bought canned cat food and I felt so much better driving home, knowing that the pet food would be fair for all concerned.
I felt this way until I fed the cats.

Sophie LOVED the cat food. She couldn't believe that this thing called canned cat food had ever existed. If she had taken ballet classes, I am sure she would have done little cat pirouettes to express her joy.
Bruno, however, did not feel the same way.

He went over to his bowl, took a sniff and made scratching gestures to cover it like he was in the litter box. Then he cried to be let back inside where Fiona was eating her food. Sophie was still in ecstasy, unaware that she was eating something equivalent to Bruno's poo.

It's a couple of weeks later and Chris was right - Fiona has gained weight. I don't think either of the cats has gained any weight, but all three of them know when it's supper time.

And that's kind of nice now that the kids aren't home any more.

In the elevator

2011-06-27T20:15:00.002-04:00

At the hospital, it's quite a trek from the patient rooms to the food court.
So far, in fact that it feels like I've entered another zip code just for a meal.

Naturally, only a great meal would motivate me to walk that far.
And that meal is Chic Fil-A.

After the journey past the nurses stations, down the elevators, through the corridors, on the walkways and into the basement, I found it, purchased yummy goodness and made my way back again. This time I ended up in the elevator with a man and a boy.

The boy was a little dramatic. Once inside the elevator, he knelt down on the floor and grabbed the bar.
"I'm holding on for dear life!" he said.
I said nothing and pressed the button for the seventh floor.
The man made a quiet comment to the boy and then looked over at me. The boy continued to cling to the bar.
"Do you work here?" the man asked.

"No," I said.
But in my head, I was all like, Really? Are you serious? I'm wearing jean capris and flip flops. Oh wait... it must be my pink t-shirt that made you think I work here. Yeah, that makes all the difference.
Clearly, he wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer.

In retrospect however, I'm thinking I looked like a very tired nurse with a messy ponytail, no make-up and what Marie would call my 'bitch-face.'

"Well, what's on the seventh floor?" the man said.
"My husband," I replied.
"Oh no!" he said. "Is he gonna be okay?"
"He's great," I said.

When I got back to the room, I told Chris what had happened.
He laughed so hard, he almost spewed his drink. When he finished laughing, he said, "Here's what you should have told him: 'Yeah, he's doing great. He's getting out tomorrow. He killed the man who shot him... with his BARE HANDS.'"

"Chris," I said, with a sigh. "We're on the heart floor. He probably thinks you're in your 80s."

All of this because the nurses won't bring me any of that delicious hospital food.

Stormy

2011-06-24T20:23:00.003-04:00

We had terrible storms on Monday night.
The power flickered and they were loud.
So very loud.

Fiona starting shaking in early afternoon so that by the time the storms hit, she was in my closet. Hiding and still shaking.

The storms were so loud at one point during the night that I woke up bolt upright, certain that lightning had struck the house. I walked all over the house to check every room while Chris and Wren slept soundly.
I hate it when that happens.

If Spencer had been home, he would have woken up too, but Chris and Wren sleep like the dead.
It's not fair.

The next morning, we looked out to see that the lake covered half of the yard and Mallards were swimming in what used to be grass. Later, Wren told us that it took five hours for the lake to recede but even then it looked like it might spill over the retaining wall at any moment.

Tuesday evening, when we got home from work, there were geese in the yard. That's not unusual, but this time there were whole families of geese, several whole families. And they were all enjoying the feast the lake had left behind, pecking away and keeping one eye on their goslings and the other eye on every one else.

It was kind of like being at a goose version of the mall. There were varying ages of goslings from sort of teenaged geese to much younger ones and all of them were there with their parents who were constantly fussing about what the goslings were eating, who they were hanging out with, and where they had wandered off to. There were at least thirty geese in the yard.
It was a goose parent's nightmare.

We've all enjoyed watching the various stages of goose development, especially Wren.

"Look over there, Mom!" Wren said, "Those babies are getting tail feathers just like their parents!"
"It's nice how long they stay with their parents," I said.
"I know she said," she said. And she smiled when she said it.
It was a pretty great mother-daughter moment.

Of course, I'm not wishing my tail feathers on anybody.

The heart of the matter

2011-06-19T18:53:00.002-04:00

The first full week of June was wonderful.
Fantastic even.

We finished the play and Chris and I hosted the cast party at our house, which was so much fun. I don't think we've ever had between twenty and thirty people aged between two and seventy-four come to a party at our house.
It was a blast and I hope we get to do it again.
Soon.

Planning for the party and having the party was a great distraction because the very next day we got up early and drove to Durham so Chris could undergo tests that would lead to his heart surgery at Duke on Wednesday.

"How about we celebrate twenty-seven years of marriage in Durham!" he said. "It would be like a little vacation."
"No," I said. "It's not a celebration or a little vacation."

Thankfully, Marie came to stay with us, mostly me, while Chris was in surgery.

I'm going to rewind here a little bit.
About a year and a half ago, Chris was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and the cardiologist felt that he had experienced a heart attack based on the cardiac ultrasound. Both the cardiologist and Chris downplayed the heart attack, but I was kind of freaked out. The cardiologist recommended an angiogram to see what was going on. Marie came to hang out with me while we waited for Chris to be able to sit up after the procedure. The hardest part of that experience was not laughing with Marie or making Chris laugh since he had to lay still and all.

During the angiogram, the cardiologist found that Chris had the cleanest arteries he'd ever seen. This was great news, but the heartbeat still wasn't regular. He recommended cardioversion to get the heart rhythm back. He also prescribed some meds and all of it worked.
For about a year.

Chris has A-fib but his only symptoms have been an irregular heartbeat and fatigue and he can't feel the heartbeat so mostly he gets very tired.

Fast forward through our move to Fayetteville and into the Spring when Chris started having problems again. The cardiologist here confirmed that his heart was out of rhythm and recommended he go to Duke. The doctors at Duke were very thorough. There were so many tests and procedures, I have no doubt that they looked at Chris' heart from every possible angle before they performed cardiac ablation. They explained everything to both of us - what exactly they would be doing to Chris to fix the problem and what we could expect.

"The surgery is typically four hours," they said. "Usually not more than six."
Chris' surgery took eight hours. And though I did get updates from the nurses, I was never more glad to have Marie there. Since Chris had to arrive so early that morning, Marie and I were at the hospital for eleven hours before we saw him in recovery.
And five more hours after that.

The hardest part of this process was the waiting. Marie distracted me with intermittent advertisements for her Kindle, the 'bitch face' t-shirt explanation, thoughts on capitalism, stories about her dogs and Colin, the cat, her friends, their dogs and cats...
You get the idea.

Marie's middle name is distraction. If she were a character on Schoolhouse Rock, she would be Distraction Jackson.

Distraction Jackson, what's your function?
Keepin' people laughin' when life gets scary

Spencer came over for the last half of the waiting and since we're both short on patience, it's good that Marie was there to lighten the mood. Without Marie, I'm pretty sure Spence and I would have killed each other, or worse, we would have teamed up and taken our combined anxiety out on the other cardiac patients in the waiting room, all of whom were considerably older than Chris.

You take the one in the wheelchair, Mom! I've got the one with the cane!
I'm on it, Spence!

Marie could also push Spencer around because she's the aunt and not the mom.
"Where did you park?" she asked him.
"At the hotel," he said.
"You can't park there!" she said.
"Yes I can," he said. "No one will know."
"Yes they will!" she said. "They'll TOW your car! Go move your car RIGHT NOW!"
"It's okay, Aunt Marie," he said. "It's cool."
"NOW!" she said. "Stop stressing out your mother!"

As though the stress of Spencer's car being towed could even come close to being in the same league with waiting to see Chris' doctor.
It worked though. Spencer moved his car.

Finally, the doctor arrived. Spence and I followed him to the nearest computer where he showed us a little movie of Chris' heart, confirmed the heart attack and showed us pictures from the cardiac MRI which clearly revealed the scars. The doctor talked about what he believed caused the attack and also explained that the surgery had gone well and why it took so long.
"Your husband has a very large left atrium," he said.

Later, Chris told the nurse in recovery, "You know what they say about guys with large left atriums, right?"
The nurse was unfazed, most likely tired because her shift was ending.
But Chris didn't give up. Even as he was coming out of eight hours of anesthesia, he was the wise-assed clown that he always has been.

When the nurse started unsnapping the shoulders of his gown he said, "Wow, this is just like my stripper pants."
This time she smiled and looked at me.
"Chris!" I said. "You know you don't have any stripper pants!"
"Yeah," he said. "But she doesn't know that."
The nurse laughed and that was all he really wanted anyway.

Now we're home where Chris is recovering and we both agree that we're gonna need a real vacation to celebrate twenty-eight years.
And it won't be anywhere near Durham.

Dormouse has left the building

2011-06-13T20:48:00.005-04:00

I can't quite believe it's over.
I'm no longer the Dormouse on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

My part was small and required me to hide in a bale of hay for the first half of the show.
My bale of hay, or mouse house, as the assistant director liked to refer to it, was a three sided box the size of a regular bale of hay and because of where the curtain was located, I had to push it out further on the stage as soon as the curtain was opened to provide the proper distance for the running and comedy hijinks that would follow.

The director, who also played the Mad Hatter, is a Staff Sergeant, and the White Rabbit, who is a CW2 helicopter pilot, designed the box.

"Lay on the floor on your side," they said. "So we can measure how big the box needs to be."
The height was fine, but the length was a problem.
"She's pretty long," the Mad Hatter said.
"We're gonna need to do something about the feet," the White Rabbit said.
"Tuck your legs in more," the Mad Hatter said.
"We'll figure it out," the White Rabbit said.

When my mouse house arrived, I took one look at the bread box-sized shape and said, "You want me to fit into that?"

Using a method I can only describe as magic, I managed to cram myself into the box, but moving it across the stage was another matter entirely.

"You'll have to belly crawl it out," the White Rabbit said.
"Excuse me?" I said. "You want me to crawl on my belly? Did I mention that I'm a librarian? We do not crawl on our bellies."
A few of us were on stage checking out the White Rabbit's handiwork as he had built the box for me.

"Sure," the White Rabbit said to me as though crawling on one's belly was the most natural thing you could do, not unlike breathing or eating. "You just crawl and push the box at the same time."
The White Rabbit is a lot taller than I am so I looked up at him like he might have taken a crazy pill that morning.

Judson, the star of the show and a First Sergeant, realized what the crux of the problem was. "You don't know how to crawl on your belly? Just get on your stomach and pull with your elbows..."

Even Dorothy, the child of a soldier, was like, "Yeah, it's easy. Do it like this..."
And so there I was standing tall on the stage while my cast-mates demonstrated proper form for belly crawling on the floor.

Then it was my turn.
There was a pause when I finished and then Judson shook his head and said, "Your butt is up too high. It's showing over the box. Use your arms more..."
"The box is too narrow for me to use my arms," I said.
I was hopeless.

I ended up lying on my back pushing the box out with my feet.
And this worked just fine until I got my costume which was adult-sized grey footie pajamas with a big white belly and a tail.

Footie pajamas don't have any traction so Chris helped me put duct tape on the footie bottoms so that I would have some semblance of a regular shoe. Even with the duct tape, I had to work a lot harder to move that box out quick and I was having trouble figuring out how many pushes it took. Before the costume, it was two big pushes. With the footies, it was something like twenty-seven.

Then the set designer, a Specialist, said, "I can make you a speed bump." He taped two dowels together on the stage floor and when I bumped into it, I knew it was okay to stop.
"Zach," I said. "You're a genius!"

Chris ended up playing a part in the show too. The project manager was looking for an emcee to introduce the play so I wrote a brief intro for Chris to deliver as a Rod Serling type. She loved it and he did a great job.
The two of us haven't been on stage together in twenty-nine years.

Aside from having fun with the show, it was no small task to make it happen. Six of the cast and crew are soldiers on active duty with the rest of us a mix of DoD Civilians, family members and retirees.

We had a great response from the audience. One of the moms who brought her two little boys up to the stage after the show to meet the characters said, "They were just fascinated by you! They kept asking me, 'where did she come from?'"
As if popping up out of a bale of hay was the most amazing trick ever.
Children under five are a wonderful ego boost.

By November we should find out how well we did in the Festival of the Arts Army Competition.

Now it's back to regular life as a librarian.

The cast - Photo by Christina Clark

Punch buggy

2011-05-20T23:00:00.000-04:00

I have a new car.

Well... it's not 'new' in the sense of me being the first owner and having the new car smell and all, but it's new to me and it's pretty swell.

I'm driving a Gecko Green Metallic Volkswagen Beetle, very much like the picture here.
I really like it.

I've wanted a green beetle since I saw Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt in The Mexican with James Gandolfini. I liked beetles before I saw the movie, but after seeing her driving down the highway in that little green car, I really wanted one.

The Mexican was released ten years ago.
Sometimes delayed gratification is a mighty long wait.

It wasn't until I met Jo's niece, Chasity, that I heard the term 'punch buggy.' I used to pick her up from school with Spence and Wren. One day she yelled, "Punch buggy!" and punched Spence on the arm.
At first, Wren and Spence were at a loss. Before Chasity, there was no model of any automobile that required a punch on the arm.

It didn't take them long to start playing punch buggy wherever we went and they continued playing it in the car long after I stopped picking Chasity up from school.

When I drove the car home the first time, Wren came out to the garage and said, "Oh mom! You got your very own punch buggy!"

In some small way, it does make me happy to know there are children out there giving and receiving punches just because I drove by.

Top ten great feelings during motherhood

2011-05-08T18:00:00.000-04:00

10. Choosing names that will reflect positively on your children for the rest of their lives even though you ultimately choose to call them Thing One and Thing Two.

9. The feeling of accomplishment of having pushed eight pounds through what feels like a postage stamp-sized exit.

8. Knowing from the moment they enter the world that you will have absolutely no problem slaying anyone who dares to hurt them in any way, which also means that you'll push an older kid out of the way during a parade so your kid can get the beads thrown from the float.

7. Hearing their laughter for the first time. Just recalling it brings me joy even now. It completely cancels out all of their crying which I really don't remember at all.

6. Reading stacks and stacks of books with Thing One while waiting those nine months for Thing Two to get here.

5. Being the most important person in their lives for a while with the ability to solve all of their problems and rock them and tell them everything will be okay.

4. Seeing them perform on stage. There's something about seeing your kid up there singing, being a tree - it doesn't matter.

3. Building a family which includes the four of you and a menagerie of animals to include cats, dogs, puppies, kittens, a snake, fish and birds.

2. Passing on wisdom and teaching them valuable skills like driving and when it's appropriate to swear.

1. All of those moments of pride over the years and the realization that you're not only a mother to these two people you helped create, but that they have turned out so well.

Cast

2011-04-02T21:00:00.003-04:00

In an effort to show my support of theater at work, I attended a cast call/crew meeting today.

"No pressure," the director told us, but if we do a good enough job with this, the post may get a theater program."

The play we are performing is Dorothy Meets Alice, a one act play about a boy who hasn't yet prepared his book report assignment which is due the next day. He falls asleep having read only a portion of Alice in Wonderland and having watched only a part of The Wizard of Oz.

I was asked to read for the part of Dorothy and Alice fully realizing that those parts were for younger folks. Honestly, I expected to be part of the crew, not cast. And I was half right as the cast is the crew.

It wasn't until the end of the audition when we were all on stage, standing in a line that the director asked if anyone didn't know what cockney was.
Only one person raised her hand.

I was at the far end of the line. That's when the director handed me the script and said, "Read this in cockney and pass it on."
So I did.

Consequently, I was cast as the dormouse from Alice in Wonderland.
The dormouse has a very, very small part for which I am very, very thankful.

Incidentally, our play is part of a competition.
Pray for me.

The dormouse in Disney's Alice in Wonderland.

Seeking balance

2011-03-29T21:11:00.000-04:00

In an effort to add some balance to my life, both metaphorically and physically, I bought a new chair for my office.

I realize that it looks like a toy, but it's really supposed to help with posture, balance and engaging the core.

My staff appear to be skeptical about the benefits, but I think it's going to be okay.
As long as I don't fall off.

Airborne day

2011-03-24T21:41:00.002-04:00

Every morning when I stop at the gate to have my ID checked, I am told to have a nice day or to have a good weekend, etc.
It's really a wonderful beginning to a work day.

Sometimes the guard is an outsourced security person but often it is a young soldier who looks all of twelve, wearing a sidearm and a vest labeled Military Police. I'm sure the soldiers are of age, it's just that I can't be getting older, so they must be getting younger.

This morning the guard was a young MP. After checking my ID he said to me grinning widely "Have an AIRBORNE day, ma'am!"

And I did have an airborne day. Well, as airborne as it gets for a librarian, but still it was a banner day compared to yesterday when I realized I had forgotten my ID at work and had to drive through the inspection lane instead of the regular gate.

I presented my license and registration, hopped out of the car, opened all of my doors and trunk and stepped aside for the guard to inspect my vehicle.

Guard: Ma'am, you need to pop your hood.
Me: Oh right! I forgot.
Guard, seeing me struggling with the hood: Ma'am, Are you having trouble opening your hood?
Me: Well... just a little. Can you try to open it for me?

Guard hesitates but tries anyway.

Guard: Ma'am, I don't feel comfortable opening your hood. If I break it, I have to buy it.
Me thinking it's a 16 year old car, how expensive can the hood be?: Let me call my husband.

Guard looks behind my vehicle to see more vehicles lining up and then looks back at me while Chris' phone goes to voice mail.

Me, wearing my nametag and uniform: You know I work just down the street. Can I leave my car here and go get my ID?
Guard: Ma'am, you're not allowed to leave your vehicle.
Me, sighing and still wondering why all of his sentences have to start with 'Ma'am': Okay, I understand.

As I drove off post, I called my admin which really means right arm, and asked her to bring me my ID. While I waited in a fast food parking lot off post, I was determined to master the hood. Just when I no longer cared whether or not I broke the latch, BINGO! up popped my hood and at exactly the same time the calvary arrived with my ID.
Grinning widely.

Yep. Airborne days are definitely better.

The ducks

2011-03-07T06:20:00.005-05:00

Periodically, the waterfowl from the lake stop by for a visit.

Usually, it's geese who walk through our yard, snacking and honking and flapping their wings. I don't feed the geese. They aren't bad. They just aren't my favorite.
My favorite are the ducks.

This morning I was standing in the kitchen drinking coffee when I looked out the window and saw three ducks, two drakes and a hen. They were at the edge of the yard, close to the lake. I was so excited, I got some bread and creeped out onto the deck so I wouldn't disturb them. I lightly tossed it into the grass.

I felt a little like Tony Soprano standing out there in my bathrobe and slippers trying to get ducks to eat bread crumbs. Well, except for the part where I don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bin where I keep duck food.

At first the ducks didn't notice that I was tossing pieces of French bread out for their breakfast so I tossed some more. Finally, they noticed and instead of being frightened, they ran right up to the deck and gobbled up the bread. Clearly, they are familiar with being fed from the deck, our deck specifically.

They didn't eat for long when the drakes started arguing and one shooed the other back into the lake. At that point a gaggle of geese swam by and gave me the stink eye for favoring the ducks and not throwing them any bread.

Sorry, I told them, it all started with a book.
And the book isn't called Make Way for Geese.

Cowlicks

2011-02-26T08:44:00.000-05:00

I've been having considerable difficulty managing my cowlicks lately. I have two large cowlicks at my crown and one at my forehead.
And they hurt.
No kidding.

There are solutions out there but none of them seem to work. This morning, at the breakfast table, I was searching for answers and reading some of them aloud to Chris.

Me: This one says to tease the hair and apply light hairspray
Chris: You're funny looking!
Me: ?
Chris: What? Does the hair have feelings about being a cowlick? Are you trying to break its spirit?

Still searching...

Saturday adventure

2011-02-20T19:02:00.007-05:00

We had plans to do a lot of stuff this weekend.

First, we were going to get the house cleaned up, finally finish hanging up the pictures and then spend time working in the yard.
Then, I had planned to go to work to catch up there.

None of this happened.

Instead, we woke up to a beautiful Saturday morning, hopped in the car with Fiona and drove south east. We stopped in Wilmington for few hours. The weather was gorgeous and it was wonderful to be on the riverwalk. Fiona behaved beautifully until lunch. We ate outside at Fat Tony's where she was oh so excited to see all of the people walking, especially all of the people with their dogs.

She got a lot of attention all day because she's very pretty. A group of little girls stopped to pet her when we were on the riverwalk.
She's so pretty! they said.
She's so soft! they said.
What's her name? they said.

When Chris told them Fiona is her name, they all squealed Just like in Shrek!

We left Wilmington and drove to Carolina Beach to see what it was like and to take Fiona down to the water. We had never taken her before and were considering taking her on vacation the next time we go. On the way to the beach, we assumed she would love it since we love the beach and really, what dog wouldn't love to romp on the sand?

It took us a while to find a public access point, probably because we were in a very congested part of the beach. That, and there were only three parking places per access point. While we were looking for a place, I remarked that there a A LOT of public access points on Emerald Isle with PLENTY of parking.

Chris: Julie, we haven't seen the rest of the beach. It might just be this part.
Me: Hmmphh!

Finally, we found an access point that had a free space for the car, unloaded Fiona and walked down to the water.

At first, Fiona wasn't too sure about the sand but she was absolute certain of how she felt about the ocean.
She hated it.

She took one look at the ocean and turned around to go back to the car. I tried to coax her for a walk on the sand, but she was determined. Then Chris took the leash and tried, but there was no way we were keeping Fiona on the beach and just to be sure we understood how she felt, she defecated right there on the sand.

Chris doesn't do poop, but he still had her on the leash with the poop bags attached.
Julie! he yelled like I was a half a mile away instead of standing right next to him, Julie! She's doing it! And while I was taking the leash and Fiona, Chris was pulling bags out of the dispenser and handing them to me like I was cleaning up after a elephant instead of a medium sized dog on a mission.

There's just so much! he said.
I'm paraphrasing here of course. We all know what Chris really said during Fiona's poop event on the beach.

It's okay, Fiona, I said. I feel exactly the same way about this beach.
And then to Chris, if we had taken her to Emerald Isle, this would never have happened.
Julie, he said, I'm pretty sure after this, Fiona hates ALL beaches.

He may be right about that.

Happy Valentines Day

2011-02-14T06:25:00.005-05:00

For Valentines Day, I give you one of my favorite movie scenes. In Scent of a Woman, Al Pacino is the blind Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade who dances the Tango with a young woman he has just met. His weekend 'babysitter' Chris O'Donnell as Charlie Simms has just given him the dimensions of the dance floor and takes a seat to enjoy the show.

It makes me happy every time I see it.

We needed a superhero singer

2011-02-07T20:06:00.002-05:00

Like a lot of you, I watched the superbowl last night.

I enjoy the big sporting events for all of the commercials and pomp and circumstance but also because I love the national anthem. I'm a geek that way.

So, like a lot of you, I watched with glee (pardon the pun) when Lea Michele delivered America the Beautiful to us perfectly, and then with horror when Christina Aguilera slaughtered the words written so long ago by Francis Scott Key.

Usually, I'm weepy by the time the soloist gets to 'what so proudly we hailed' but not with Christina.

Me, as Christina begins to sing: Oh brother! She is messing this up big time.
Chris: Yep.
Me: Oh no! She changed the words!
Chris: She's terrible.
Me: It's the NATIONAL ANTHEM. We don't change the words to the national anthem!
Chris shakes his head
Me: What was that? Did she just leave out a whole phrase?
Chris: I think she's trying to be Patty LaBelle
Me: Hey, Patty might scream it, but no way would she LEAVE OUT WORDS! Why doesn't someone stop her!

What we needed was a superhero singer. Lea Michele was already there anyway. She could have run over, clad in a sparkly cape from the Glee costume closet, pushed Christina out of the way and saved us all from that horrible rendition.

Sure, I understand that artists like to mix it up, to make a song their own by choosing to change a word here and there or throwing in a little personal style. But good songs, special, patriotic songs, like our national anthem really don't need any of that. The words to our anthem alone are what make it so important, not improvisation on the part of the singer.
Or, in the case of Christina, a lack of memorization.

I was so disappointed. If I didn't know better, I'd say Christina is a communist with the mission to destroy symbols of America one by one.

She could have saved us.

Of size therapy and ice cream, though not related

2011-01-15T07:38:00.003-05:00

It's been over a month since my sisters visited and Fiona still thinks I should rub her belly.
I blame Marie.

I'm not really a big dog belly rubber. I'm more like the farmer in Babe.
"That'll do, Pig."
I even sometimes call Fiona Pig which I believe might help with her sense of size since she believes that she's a Chihuahua or Teacup Poodle trapped in the body of a Spaniel Collie mix. Size therapy for Fiona is an uphill battle.

I had just about gotten her to the point of accepting that perhaps she is too large to squeeze herself onto a sofa pillow the size of a postage stamp, though she can still do it, when Marie came to visit and in less than an hour undid all of our progress.
Just like she has before.

I think my next dog might just be a stuffed pig.

In other news, I finally tried Baskins Robbins Red Velvet Cake Ice Cream. When did I do this? At our first opportunity to venture out of the house after the storm.
That's right, we risked life and limb to try a seasonal flavor of ice cream.
I blame Joan.

While she and Marie were visiting, Joan told me how delicious it was.

Joan: It tastes just like red velvet cake!
Me: No!
Joan: Yes!

Had we been back in High Point, I would have driven right over to our Baskin Robbins, conveniently located only moments away from our house, but as I hadn't quite gotten around to finding the nearest ice cream shop what with moving in and all, I wasn't sure where it was and the three of us were too busy anyway. After they left, I forgot about the new and delicious flavor that is Baskins Robbins Red Velvet Cake.
Until the snow.

What is it about being inside during a snowstorm for only a few days that makes a person feel trapped and want to go outside?
Probably the same thing that makes a person want a limited edition flavor of ice cream during frigid temperatures.

The last straw was when I got an email from Joan, which I inadvertently deleted, asking if I had tried the new flavor yet.

Me: That's it! We're going for ice cream!

When we arrived at Baskin Robbins, the place was ours. No other customers were in the store.

Me: Do you still have the red velvet cake flavor?
Woman serving us: Yes I do! And if you're trying that one you should really try Winter White Chocolate.
Me: Well... I don't know...
Her: It tastes just like chocolate covered cherries, the good ones!
Me: Sold!

And that is how we found the ice cream shop closest to us. Luckily, Chris spun me round like a bad eighties video so I won't be able to find my way back anytime soon.

Earmuffs!

2011-01-08T23:35:00.001-05:00

We went out shopping today.
Not for anything special, a few odds and ends and something for supper.

We were shopping with cash which makes me nervous because I always feel like I might overspend before getting to the register so I carry a calculator just in case. When I shop with Chris he IS the calculator. While I appreciate his gift for calculating long lists of numbers in his head, I sometimes... okay always, glaze over a little when he's figuring out the total.

Chris: Let's see, we've got twenty here, another five, this was ten, another seven...
Me having wondered off: Oh isn't this barrette pretty, and so shiny!
Chris: Julie? Julie?

While we were out, we decided to stop at some pawn shops, because... well, there are just so many here. The address of the pawn shop doesn't even matter. They are always nestled between a strip club and a barber shop or a tattoo parlor and an alterations shop or, and this is not unheard of, a combination tattoo parlor AND alterations shop.

One of the reasons we went to pawn shops is because Chris has been watching Pawn Stars. After a few episodes he was ready to check out the local offerings. He passed by the first one we saw.

Me: Why didn't you stop at that one?
Chris: It was too seedy.

We drove a little further down the road and he pulled into a parking lot. This pawn shop looked identical to the one we passed except for the neon sign that flashed GUNS.

Me: How exactly is this pawn shop less seedy?
Chris: I don't know.
Me: Um... okay.

Our pawn shop adventures fizzled but we did get some pretty great CDs for all of four dollars.

The best purchase of the day was when I found some earmuffs. They sort of fold in and are covered with fleece. Very warm. It was snowing when we left the store so I put them on and just like magic, or like in Old School, I couldn't hear a single word of profanity.

Imagine that.

Happy New Year

2010-12-31T08:42:00.000-05:00

I really fell down on the job of taking pictures this year. I also missed out on some family gatherings. That aside, here's looking back at 2010 which was a pretty big one for Chez Goyette.

As my Aunt Chris would say, "We've had a large time."

2010 from Julie Goyette on Vimeo.

Visitor

2010-12-30T00:43:00.001-05:00

What a beautiful day and don't I look pretty against the frozen lake.
Originally uploaded by jcgoyette.

Spencer saw noticed this Great Blue Heron on the railing of our little dock this morning.

Since it was so cold and there was a lot of ice on the deck still, we snapped photos through the kitchen window.

I never get tired of looking through that window.

A Christmas rescue

2010-12-25T20:26:00.035-05:00

It was a good Christmas at Chez Goyette this year.

But it almost wasn't. Christmas really snuck up on us this year.
And that's saying a lot coming from someone who has historically done the majority of her shopping on Christmas Eve.

We have much to be thankful for and, in spite of the fact that we're in a new place and not completely organized, we managed to celebrate after 9am when Chris had finished making breakfast and Wren and Spencer finally woke up. This was a far cry from how it was once upon a time.

It was a quiet Christmas for us. Mostly we hung out together, watched movies, chatted, enjoyed the fire, napped, then more hanging out, eating, watching movies... you get the idea.
It was pretty great.

We've been so busy with work that it wasn't until Joan and Marie came to visit earlier this month that I even thought about Christmas and decorating. I really didn't want to do anything while they were here. I wanted it to be like an early Christmas with the fire and the hanging out and such, but they are our mother's daughters. And so they insisted on helping with things like finally unpacking that stuff in boxes that Chris and I had been looking at for six weeks.

Chris: Think we should unpack those tonight?
Me: Nah!

Weeks later.

Me: My sisters are coming. Shouldn't we finish unpacking?
Chris: Nah!

Thank goodness they came to visit! Without them, it would have been an undecorated, sad little Christmas with presents wrapped in target bags and lots of gift cards. It would have been like Charlie Brown's Christmas except that it would have stopped at the spindly little tree part.

Joan and Marie helped get things organized, showed me what the pictures should hang in which rooms and then, after sorting through our mountains of photos, we got out the Christmas decorations. I set up the tree and Marie checked the lights. Joan got out the ornaments.
Marie took out the candy canes, hung them on the tree and announced, "I'm done."

I understood.
I'm not terribly fond of the decorating process either.

Marie watched the game with Chris while Joan and I hung ornaments until she saw that we had a little Christmas village to set up on the mantel.
"There's a village? I'll set it up!"

Apparently, Marie is awfully fond of decorating as long as it can be done in five to ten minutes, kind of like the one grandmother in Sixteen Candles when she comes downstairs. opens the box of Entenmann's and announces 'Breakfast is ready!' after the other grandmother has cooked the whole meal for everyone.

In addition to unpacking and decorating, we did other fun things which included visiting the museum downtown and riding the simulator. It was amazing. I think I could have done the helicopter part forever. It was so cool.

I just wanted the weekend to last longer.
Maybe when they come back, they can bring Jeff and Colin and stay awhile.

We'd like that.

Breaking the ice

2010-12-24T19:23:00.001-05:00

When we moved we were fortunate to find a swell house.
With an inground pool.

Now, it's not a HUGE pool or anything and it's not even really deep, but it's a pool and considering how hot it gets here in the summer, a pool isn't really considered a luxury, it's more like a necessity.
Really.

The house is also a lakefront property, or I should say lakeback property since the access is in the backyard. On the weekends when we are home during the daytime, we see a great blue heron, several mallard ducks and plenty of geese. It's very pretty.

About a week or so after Thanksgiving, I was standing in the kitchen, drinking coffee when I looked out the window and saw snow on the deck. The temperature was in the low twenties. Beyond the deck I could see that the lake had frozen and there was snow on top of the ice.
And I thought to myself, "Well, that's just beautiful."
And then I thought, "Ice! The POOL!!"

I dashed outside, still in my robe and slippers, and sure enough the pool was frozen, no movement, no pump sound. I was terrified that the ice would damage the pump so I grabbed a broom and began to poke the ice. The ice was so thick, I had to throw my body against the broom part so that I could get the handle to actually penetrate the ice.
Luckily, I also had the power of profanity to help me out.

As it turned out, the pool is fine and when it freezes we don't have to do anything special.
Thank goodness!

A few days later, I was talking to my mom on the phone and when I told her about breaking the ice in the pool and she laughed and said, "Wonder what your neighbors thought when they saw you out there swinging that broom. They probably thought you were crazy trying to break the pool ice so you could have your morning swim."

She's got a point.
Fortunately, none of my neighbors were outside in twenty degree weather and I didn't fall in.

Leaving

2010-11-25T21:51:00.002-05:00

Change.
It's not for sissies.

Chris and I moved from our town of almost twenty years on November 1st.
We moved because I was offered a once in a lifetime opportunity and so the decision to leave the town where we raised our children and bought our first home was fairly painless.

Wren and Spence are in college now so a move, while surprising and different for them, isn't devastating. Also, during the actual pack up and move process, Wren was unavailable.
"We're doing WHAT!" she said on the phone.
"Moving" I repeated. "I accepted a job offer."
"OMG, Mom!" she said. "That's great!"

Spencer had a similar reaction. He was very excited, but he also wanted to come home one more time and thank goodness he did because if he hadn't packed his room, I'm pretty sure Chris and I would have just tossed a match in there.

So we were all pretty okay about everything, especially me.
I mean, I knew I would miss my friends the most, and our neighborhood and how well I knew our town. Everything I needed was in a three mile radius and I had a five minute commute to work.

And then I got a phone call to interview at Fort Bragg.
When I accepted the offer, I knew instantly that everything would change for us. So naturally, I was somewhere between thrilled and terrified. And while I was between those states, I was way too busy packing and preparing to move to really think about just how big my decision was.

It wasn't until the last day in our old house when we were cleaning that it hit me.
I was mopping the hardwood floors when I realized that Wren and Spencer grew up in High Point. It's really the only town either of them remember. And I started weeping then remembering them as babies and how well they had grown up and how proud I am to be their mom.

As I mopped I wept some more, remembering the friends I'd made and realizing that it would never be the same when we drove away for the last time. Finally, I stopped mopping my tears into the floor and cried.
I lived longer in High Point than any other place ever.

Change isn't for sissies, but change is life and sometimes change is good.

Great chair

2010-08-22T20:37:00.003-04:00

My parents came to visit today and brought us their living room furniture.

Score!
It's great leather furniture, very comfortable and I was so happy to take it off their hands. We had a little trouble figuring out how to get it, what with us not owning a truck and all.

Chris: Well, Julie, if we can't strap it to the top of the station wagon, I guess we won't be able to take it after all.
Chris would rather have dental work done than move furniture, but I love to be on the receiving end of furniture probably because he's the one doing most of the work.

Me: I'll find a way.
And I did, or my mom and dad did actually.

Mama called and said that they would bring it to us, not to worry about it, that friends of theirs would load it for them. I was grateful and told them that they should at least let us feed them for their trouble. And by 'us' I mean Chris, because I also had to work at the station today from very early in the morning to just before my parents would arrive.

I didn't plan it that way.
I promise.

When I got home, everything was pretty much ready for my parents who, I noticed, were a little late. My parents are never late. They are almost always early. I was starting to get concerned but figured they might have left later than they thought since they were leaving after church.

My mom called when they were about twenty minutes late and said that it was taking longer than they thought, but when they arrived, we got the real story.

They were driving down the road on their way to our house when the chair, loaded on the truck with a matching love seat and ottoman, suddenly blew off the truck.

Did you get that?
THE.CHAIR.BLEW.OFF.THE.TRUCK.

Even though I was hearing my mother say these words as we walked their schnauzer, Molly, I didn't really believe her. While the cartoon image of a large, leather chair blowing off of their little, red pickup kept playing in a loop in my head, Mama went on to say that luckily, no one else was on the highway when it happened. "We looked back and there it was sitting upright in the road."

GOOD GRIEF!

As it turned out, the nicest man who just happened to be walking along route 29 in the same direction they were headed, helped them recover the chair and load it back onto the truck.
"He was our guardian angel with tattoos," she said.

"And you're okay?" I said. "No one got hurt?"
"Oh no," she said. "He was very helpful. We could never have gotten the chair back in the truck without him."

Since friends had loaded the truck for them, they were only planning to drive it here where we would unload it, and by 'we' I mean Chris.
Retrieving a flying chair was not part of the plan.

I told my mom that this needed to be the last time they took furniture anywhere.
Seriously.

Remarkably, the chair remained in one piece, solid as ever with just a couple of tears and scrapes. My parents fretted about the condition.

"Maybe you can find someone to repair it for you," they said.
"I bet we can," I said, "What with living in the furniture capital of the world and all."
At least I think we're still the capital.

I didn't want them to feel bad about the chair at all. I was just grateful that they had arrived safely and honestly, it really looked fine to me.

After they got back in the truck and headed north, Chris and I came inside and sat on our new furniture. Chris said that he was pretty sure we could get a decent patch kit for the tears.

"Are you kidding?" I said. "This is my new favorite chair."

And it is.
The chair flew off of the back of a pickup going 65 on 29 and survived.

If I had to go down a dark alley at night, I'd want the chair to come with me.
That cat in the neighborhood, the one who picks on Sophie? I'm sending the chair over to have a talk with it.
I'm pretty sure this chair is so tough that it could order cranberry juice at a bar and no one would dare to make fun of it.

This is a great chair.

Phone call

2010-08-17T08:16:00.000-04:00

I got a phone call from a high school friend last night and it made my otherwise ordinary day something very special.

We talked for over an hour.

To be remembered and then contacted after so many years is just about the best gift you can give a person.

Water

2010-08-14T18:37:00.000-04:00

Let's just say I have a fear of water.
Not the kind you drink, the kind that's in a pool, or creek, or river, or... the ocean.

And let's just add that I really don't like having this fear, especially considering that, as a child, I very much enjoyed pools, and fishing from a boat, crabbing from the pier and other fun water-related activities.

Fast forward to earlier this month when we went to our favorite beach, Emerald Isle, for vacation. Somehow, and this is where things get a little foggy, I ended up on not just a boat, but a SAIL boat.

Chris, who was ecstatic that I was actually on a boat and smiling, took this video.

Sailing from Julie Goyette on Vimeo.

Next year, he plans to get me to parasail. I don't know if there's enough Mango tea and Red Stripe for that.

Back from Hiatus

2010-08-08T22:36:00.001-04:00

I would like to say that the reason I've been on an unplanned hiatus is because I took a spontaneous and rather long trip to somewhere terribly exciting, or that I ran away with Bono to save the world, or that I've been off hiking the Appalachian Trail, but no, I didn't take a trip at all. I've just been grappling with some changes in life and during the process I've been less than motivated to post.

There are many reasons for my not feeling motivated, but I'll just tell you about the top three.

First, we found out that Chris has heart failure several months ago. Not only does he have heart failure which is completely treatable with diet and meds, he also actually had a heart attack. The cardiologist confirmed this but Chris doesn't recall it happening so he says "It was a small heart attack. He said this to me like the word small was going to convince me that what happened was more like a hiccup instead of A HEART ATTACK!

Next, both Wren and Spencer went off to college and our life at home became very different. In some ways, it's pretty great. There isn't anyone at home complaining that we're out of peanut butter or milk or cookies or anything else, the house is easier to keep clean, and the usual mountain of laundry that we accumulate is reduced to a berm.
And everything is much quieter.

In other ways, it's not so great. I miss them when they're gone and I'm already dreading when they'll go back to college in the next few weeks. I miss their stories about friends, places they've been, things they've done and what they're learning.
And everything is much quieter.

Finally, and worst of all, Brandon died.
Brandon was our nephew, the oldest of the Goyette grandchildren. He would have turned 29 on Saturday. He left a wife and three little boys behind.
It was devastating.

Chris and I live the closest to his brother, Randy, so we were there first. When she hugged me, crying over the loss of their son, Randy's wife, Lissa, asked me to say something at the funeral.
Here is what I wrote.

Brandon Albert Goyette
Born August 7th, 1981
Son to Roland and Melissa
Brother to Thomas
Husband to Kellie
Father to Collin, Carter and Caden

Brandon and I came in to the family at around the same time.
He arrived in the usual way while I had to date Chris.

Brandon was a beautiful boy and a great kid.
And he loved kids. As the first grandchild on both sides of the family, he welcomed every one of his cousins who followed, and he loved family gatherings.

He loved his friends.
He loved the outdoors and playing golf with his Pepe.
He loved cooking and enjoyed teaching his boys to cook - he'd set them up on the counter and let them sprinkle in seasonings.
And he loved that he looked sharp in his new suit.

He loved Kellie and his three sons.
He was so proud of them.

When he married Kellie, we all gathered to celebrate, and just a few years later they had Collin, followed by Carter and Caden, the first members of a new generation.

His three boys are his legacy.

And though none of us were ready for him to leave, he will live in the faces of his boys,
and in our hearts remain forever young.

So it's been a pretty crazy, unplanned hiatus. Despite this, we're wearing our shades 'cause the future looks bright, and inspiring, and hopeful.

Accents

2010-03-24T16:51:00.007-04:00

There's a southern accent, where I come from
The young'uns call it country
The yankees call it dumb

--Tom Petty

On my break this afternoon, I went across the street to Walgreens to buy my favorite shampoo, which, as it turns out is also Maggie's favorite.
Great minds...

While I was there, comparing and contrasting the regular conditioner versus the deep conditioner, I witnessed a conversation between two very different women. One had an accent so northern, there was a slight delay after she spoke while my brain worked to figure out what it was she had actually said. The other was so southern I had a similar delay, though not for near as long.

I have lived in North Carolina for almost twenty years after all and that's not even counting the influence from all of my relatives who live here. Like Mr. Petty, there's a southern accent, where I come from too.

One of the women was young, the other older. One could walk on her own, the other was in one of those motorized cart things sold on television, guaranteed to be covered by the buyer's health insurance. While I was eavesdropping, there was a pause in their conversation during which I wanted to come around the aisle and ask, "Did your insurance really cover that?" but didn't.

Well... I wouldn't really call it eavesdropping. I mean, their conversation was pretty loud.

So where was the common ground between these two very different women? What on earth could they have to talk about?
Kids.

Apparently, whether they're your kids, your grandkids, your nieces and nephews, doesn't matter.
They all make you crazy and you love them anyway.

The woman on the motorized cart pulled away saying, "And the older they get, the more they cost!" And the other woman said, "I know that!"

In other news, someone asked me about my kids today. She said, "Are they sensible?" And I said, "Yes, actually they are. I feel pretty lucky."
And I do.

Feeding Fiona's fantasy

2010-03-12T03:08:00.003-05:00

Fiona & Marie
Originally uploaded by jcgoyette.

During Marie's recent visit, she undid all of our efforts to convince Fiona that she is not, in fact, a teacup poodle or a small kitten.

Fiona has never accepted her size. Instead, she has clung to the belief that she is a cat or small dog stuck in the body of a Border Collie/Spaniel mix.

Marie contributed to this by referring to her as "Fi-Fi" and welcoming Fiona into her lap whenever Fiona could manage to stuff her long frame into it. Marie marveled at how small Fiona could make herself and Fiona reveled in being recognized for it.

It's all fun and games until Fiona tries to stuff herself under the dresser and the harsh reality of her true size sets in.

Tidy

2010-03-11T02:54:00.001-05:00

We've been experimenting with where to leave the food bowl for the cats.

If it's on the floor, Fiona believes it's for her, which seems only fair since Sophie and Bruno both eat her dog food whenever they want.

We tried leaving it on a tall stool but Bruno didn't have enough room for the bowl and himself and hearing a stainless steel bowl hit the hardwood floors at two AM was the end of that. Next, we tried a tall chair but that didn't work either. We've also experimented with the counter and end tables without success.

Bruno especially likes to eat with his butt closest to whomever is sitting next to him. That's usually Chris who doesn't appreciate the view.

Consequently, I've tried putting the bowl on the floor at the top of the basement steps. This works as long as we make sure the door is shut because if Fiona can squeeze herself through a cracked door, she'll gobble up the cat food in a second like it's roast beef with gravy.

I find this a little odd since she nibbles at her dog food which is, in many ways, much more appealing than the cat food.
Fiona may be a little 'touched in the head.'
We aren't completely sure.

So when we feed the cats at the top of the basment stairs, we have to shut the door. The thing about shutting the door is that we have to remember to open it up before we leave in the morning and let Bruno and Sophie back out so they are not trapped in the stairwell after they eat.

Recently, I was in a rush to leave for work and forgot to open the basement door. When I returned home at lunch, I stepped inside the door to an awful poop odor. I opened the door to the basement and found Bruno stretching. He wasn't upset at all and had obviously enjoyed a nice nap.

I let him out and went back downstairs to clean up. I was certain that I would find a horrible and destructive mess down there. Most cats freak out when they can't get outside and there is no litter box available. I narrowed it down to a laundry basket of towels but still I was having trouble finding it. Finally, at the bottom of the basket, there it was, wrapped neatly in a dish towel, Bruno's very large, very healthy BM.
I especially appreciated that he had picked an old towel.
So tidy.

Had it been Sophie who had gotten trapped the basement stairwell, I'm pretty sure we would have had to burn the place.
But not Bruno. Clearly, he had to perform a basic function and looked for the best possible outcome considering the circumstances.

No need to freak and so why not be tidy about it and wrap it in a towel?

Bad days

2010-02-20T09:13:00.004-05:00

Most of you know that I tutor a 2nd grader every week during the school year as a volunteer through Communities in Schools.

Every week, me and my second grader sit down together and read a book. We talk about what we think is going to happen in the story before we read, and we talk about what actually happened in the story after we read it.

It's not difficult. The books and questions are provided and we tutors just follow the guide. It's such a small thing, really.
Sometimes, though, it's not the reading that is most important. Sometimes, just showing up and getting a hug is the most important thing.

When I arrived at the elementary school where I tutor this week, I found that my second grader was having a bad day, so much so that his teacher had called his parents.
And made him take the phone and explain what he had done.

When I arrived he was crying.
So this week, instead of reading, we went for a walk around the school. After we had chatted for a little bit, he washed his face and hands while I waited for him.

When he came out of the bathroom, I stooped down to his level and looked him in the eye. I told him that everything was going to be okay, and I told him that we all have bad days, every one of us.

And then I told him what my dad told me as a child, that we have to have a bad day every now and then or we wouldn't recognize the good days when they came along.

When we got to his classroom, he gave me hug and went inside.

This might just be the most important thing he's learned from me so far.

Babies don't sleep this well

2010-02-02T22:10:00.003-05:00

Ward,

I'm worried about the cat.

June

To the rescue

2010-01-30T23:10:00.012-05:00

Ever since Spence left for college in August, the house has been much quieter and slightly cleaner.

Most of time, this is really okay. We have kids, we raise kids, they grow up and leave.
This is how life works after all.

That said, sometimes I miss the girl and the boy and all of their stories about friends and school and just their lives in general. This morning was one of those times. I took Fiona for a cold walk in the snow and returned home to make tea for myself. Chris wasn't up yet and Fiona doesn't like tea.
Personally, I think this is the spaniel in her.

Later, after Chris had been up for about 10 minutes, the phone rang. It was Wren.
"Mom," she said, "this is going to sound crazy, but can I come home?"
She was right. First, it did sound crazy because Wren would like to live at college forever and ever. Second, both of them are always welcome to come home. They never have to ask.

So I didn't answer her question, but got right to the point.
"What's wrong?" I said.
"My toilet is backed up and when I woke up this morning, my room was flooded," she said. "I've called maintenance and the RA and no one is helping. I'm at the end of my rope here..."

A day or so earlier, during one of her 'checking-in' calls, she mentioned that she was having trouble with her toilet but she'd gotten plunger and thought it was okay. She and her brother are both very good about checking in regularly via phone or text.
This is not something they inherited from their mother.
I am the absolute worst at checking in, calling to say I've arrived somewhere, or during a crisis.

Back to the phone call.

In true parent fashion, I started talking to Chris while Wren was still talking to me.
"Her toilet is broken and her room is flooded," I said.
"...so I'd really like to come home," she said.
"WHAT!" he said, "GIVE ME THE PHONE!"

After her dad made a few phone calls, Wren suddenly had help. Housekeeping was just finishing cleaning up when we arrived to load her wet clothes into the Honda and take her home to do laundry.

She was glad to see us even though we "totally invaded her space" and I "went through all her drawers and closets."
But I say there's nothing like a flood to jump-start cleaning and organization!

"Oh, MOM!"

One day she's not going to need us to help her with broken toilets, but right now it feels pretty great to come to her rescue.

Tea cosy

2010-01-03T16:16:00.003-05:00

I've been looking for a good tea cosy and I'm not finding one that really speaks to me.

I'm aware that a cosy needs only to keep the pot warm and not do any speaking, but still, I've never had one before so what's wrong with wanting it to be special?

I've been shopping on etsy but still haven't found it. Any thoughts on where I could find a functional, unique cosy? I don't want decorative. I'm looking for one that will keep my tea warm in the pot. This is my pot.

I think while I'm looking, I'm going to use one of Chris' knit caps. I mean, he's got three of them.

Who needs that many hats?

Black ice

2009-12-22T20:39:00.012-05:00

This morning I fell on black ice at Harris-Teeter.

I was on my way inside to pick up just a couple of things, one of which was bird seed because it's just too cold to have an empty feeder. I credit my cousin, Bev's, post on facebook about filling her feeders during my aunt and uncle's recent visit, with my mission to the store.

I read that post, looked out onto the deck to see our empty feeder swinging in the breeze and decided then to go get seed the next day. I went early in the morning, before work, to avoid the Christmas crowd.

On the way over, Jeff Tiberi, our local Morning Edition host, gave the forecast and told NPR listeners to beware of black ice. I was listening to his broadcast only slightly while creating a laundry list in my head of presents to buy, things to clean, and places to be. I was in mid-list creation, still concerned about the birds when my feet went out from under me and I found myself staring at the sky.
Remarkably, I didn't swear.

I sat up on my elbows and realized that I hadn't slipped on any regular patch of black ice. This patch of ice was so big that I had to scoot on my butt to get to the other side of it, looking like a dog who needs a worm treatment.

Lovely.

I fell right on my butt and now I think I know why God created bottoms.
They're for catching.

I suppose I could blame all of this on waiting so late to get ready for Christmas...
Nah, that can't be it.

Meanwhile black ice is some scary stuff.

My little pal

2009-12-12T15:37:00.006-05:00

I read with a second grader on Thursday afternoons.
It's through the Grand Pals program. The goal is to help improve the child's reading and comprehension.

In past years, I've had kids who had a lot of difficulty focusing or, who needed to chat a little bit about themselves or their dog, or whatever, just for a little bit, to a grown-up who was listening. This, as opposed to sitting down and diving into the book at hand directly.

This year, I have a child who literally runs from the playground when he sees me. The Grand Pals coordinator says he's always asking what day I'm coming again. His whole face lights up when he sees me. And let me just say, that when you're having a crappy day at work, etc., that little kid, with his smile and his hug makes everything better. As if that weren't enough, he actually enjoys reading.
He is truly a delight.

This past week we sat down to read Captain Cat by Syd Hoff. In the book, an orange tabby cat wanders onto an army base and befriends a soldier. My little pal was having a little trouble with the word soldier so I reminded him to look at the pictures of the men and he replied that they were in the army and then he figured out that they were soldiers.

After that there was a picture of the soldier playing with the cat.
He paused here and said to me in a serious tone, "He's gonna get fired for playing with that cat."
He said 'that cat' in a way that might suggest he doesn't care for cats or has been influenced by someone who doesn't care for them. I'll have to work on that with him.

"Well," I said. "I don't know if you can really be fired from the Army, but I bet he gets in trouble."
"Yeah," he replied. "'Cause he's not supposed to be playing."

Sure enough, the next pages proved him right as they showed the soldier peeling potatoes.
"I was RIGHT!" he said.
I love when that happens.

The next pages showed the soldiers crawling through the mud.
He paused at this point. "I can't be in the Army," he said. "'Cause I don't like crawling in the mud."
"That's important to know," I told him. "Because I'm pretty sure they make you crawl in the mud whether you like or not when you're in the army."

He continued reading and we came across the word 'sleet' with a picture of the soldiers marching wearing big coats with their heads bowed.
"What is sleet?" he asked me.
"It's sorta like rain mixed with snow," I said. "It's very cold."

"I don't like the cold," he said.
"Then you really don't need to join the army," I said. "Because I'm pretty sure sleet and mud are just part of being a soldier."

We finished the book and I took him back to his class.
Even though he stumbles some with reading, I'm thinking his comprehension is pretty solid.

Arsenic and Old Lace

2009-11-29T07:42:00.017-05:00

Neither of the actresses, Josephine Hull nor Helen Hayes, have anything on my niece, Maggie.

Maggie starred as Aunt Abby in Arsenic and Old Lace in her high school's production of the comedy and Chris, Spence and I drove up to see her perform. In the play two conservative, old aunts who make donations to the toy fund and enjoy visiting with their good reverend, try to make the world a better place. Granted, they do this by offering Martha's special recipe of poisonous elderberry wine to elderly, single, lonely men who come to their home seeking lodging. But at least they admit it.

Mortimer: Aunt Abby, how can I believe you? There are twelve men down in the cellar and you admit you poisoned them.
Aunt Abby: Yes, I did. But you don't think I'd stoop to telling a fib.

All of the kids in the play did a great job, but Maggie really shined. In addition to delivering her lines when everything was running smoothly, she handled unexpected situations beautifully. When the front door to the Brewster sisters' home got stuck, she stayed in character, "Oh dear! The door is stuck!"

Maggie is a joy to see on stage.

How could the director have made the play even better?
More Maggie.
Of course, I might be a tad prejudiced.

Spencer feigns shock at Maggie as Aunt Abby.

Just because

2009-11-12T19:59:00.009-05:00

When I take Fiona for her walks I often feel a little like the pied piper.
This is because Sophie and Bruno follow along.

I don't mean they follow along once in a while or every other day. I mean, if I'm walking Fiona and the cats are anywhere in the vicinity, they come along. I never call them or coax them, or offer them treats to come along.
They just do.

Sometimes it's just Sophie and sometimes just Bruno, sometimes both. When we stop, they stop and they never get too far ahead of us. Sometimes they follow us back inside the house and sometimes they drop us off at the door and scamper off to chase after a bird or to slay a chipmunk.
Either way they're with us.

Lately, with all the rain, nobody really wants to go outside, not even Fiona. But of course eventually she has to. The first couple of rainy days, Sophie and Bruno soldiered through the walks. Bruno never liked it but he did it because Sophie did and he doesn't want her to think he's a big baby.
Even though we all know that he is.

Tonight, Sophie wasn't around at walk time so Bruno had to go solo. He dragged himself up from his comfy, dry perch while I put on my shoes and raincoat and Fiona pranced around waiting for the leash. When I opened the door and he felt the wind and saw the rain, Bruno paused for a moment like maybe he didn't really agree with this walk thing and who was going to tell Sophie anyway? But then he stepped out into the weather with us.

Like he had to, like I was holding his feet to the fire or something.
He ran along with us, occasionally stopping to shake the water off his paw, but he hung in there all the way out and all the way back.

Why?
Why do they do that?
Follow along. And in the rain Why?

I think the answer is right up there with the number of licks it takes to get to the bottom of a tootsie pop.
The world may never know.

That was then

2009-11-10T19:53:00.007-05:00

The last time we went to our favorite pizza place, Chris said, "Look around this place."
I saw families having pizza together - mom and dad enjoying a beer after a long wee. Couples sharing a meal and a pitcher. Large televisions set to sports stations. People standing in line waiting for a seat or to pay their bill.
"Okay," I said. "I did."

"Now, look at this place through the eyes of an eighteen year old."
"What?"

"Do you remember our first date?" he said.
"When we went to see 'Up With People'?"
"No, no," he said. "Where we ate."

"Oh that!" I said, remembering. "When we walked into that restaurant and I said we needed to leave?"
"Yeah," he said. "I took you to Bella's, which was the best pizza place around, and you didn't like that there were pitchers of beer and people drinking and smoking."
I laughed.
"Yes, I remember thinking that everyone was laughing just a little too loud, and drinking just a little too much beer."

I was just a tad uptight at eighteen.
Just a tad.

"Do you remember where we ended up?" he said.
"Oh yes," I said. "The safe and reputable Long John Silvers."
"It was horrible food," he said.
"Yes. It was horrible," I said. "We were the only customers. But it was a chain and so I felt safe," I said, laughing some more.

"And now, look at you," Chris said. "You're ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE!"
"Yes! I am!" I said, still laughing.

And thank goodness, because if I hadn't become one of those people, I would have missed out on a lot of tasty beer, delicious pizza, and some pretty great times over the years.

Baby shower

2009-10-28T01:09:00.001-04:00

Betsy chauffeuring in the golf cart
Originally uploaded by jcgoyette.

My cousin Susie's baby shower was on Saturday. It was hosted by Cyndy and Melissa at Cyndy's house.

Susie's having a little girl. We're all so excited for her.

It was rainy and soggy and since we had to park in the field in front of the house, we were chauffeured via golf cart from our cars to Cyndy's famous front porch.

I'm thinking we need to make the golf cart a permanent part of our get-togethers. I don't think Betsy will mind playing chauffeur, at least until she's driving a regular car.

Not a horse but a unicorn

2009-10-03T20:50:00.007-04:00

[With contributions from Joan]

No one had to tell Joan and I that Marie had a hole in her head.
As her older sisters we just knew.

We knew in the same way a small child just knows when there's ice cream in the freezer or the way dogs just know when to jump off the sofa right before their owners walk in to catch them.
It's a special sense.
A sister kind of thing.

Nevertheless, it was good to know that, after all these years, world famous doctors confirmed what we had known all along except they didn't give us any credit and they call it superior canal dehiscence, a very rare hearing and balance disorder.
We would never have thought to call it that.
And so as it turns out, Marie is special. She's not a horse, but a unicorn.

Marie had surgery on Monday to plug up the dehiscence (hole) that resulted from thinning layer of bone in her inner ear. She went to Johns Hopkins Hospital because she did her research. A team of researchers from the Johns Hopkins University Department of Otolaryngology--Head and Neck Surgery found that plugging the superior canal where the bone casing is thin, and then covering the plug with a bone graft, prevented symptoms from recurring.

And those symptoms had to go. Marie had reached a point where even walking across the room was getting to be difficult.

The morning after her surgery, Joan and Colin and I went to visit Marie in the NCCU (Neuro Critical Care Unit) at Johns Hopkins.
Joan was concerned that the surgery might have some side effects that Colin hadn't considered.

"What if there's a dramatic change in her personality?" Joan asked Colin while he drove.
"Like what?" he said.
"What if this turns her into Suzy Sunshine?" Joan said.
Colin smiled and assured Joan that it would never happen.

What a relief!

Marie's doctor, Dr. Carey, told her that she had the largest dehiscence he had ever seen - 6.5 millimeters. That might not sound like much, but consider how small those semicircular canals in the ear are and you get the idea.
That's our Marie, always the overachiever.
We're just so proud.

Marie was released from the hospital this morning so if your internet was slow, you should notice an improvement now. The satellites and networks involved in the many, many text messages. Tweets, Facebook posts, emails and regular, old phone messages about Marie's condition were just overwhelming for all of the servers that were trying to keep up with the pace at which friends and family were inquiring about her condition.

We're all relieved for Marie and we hope the only changes for her will be that her symptoms are gone. Once she's back up to being herself, we're sure she'll be as much fun as she ever was, because for Joan and I, that has been Marie's sole purpose since she came home from the hospital the first time.

Wasting time

2009-09-13T18:07:00.002-04:00

What I would look like if I graduated from high school when I was ten.

Now I should probably do something productive, like more laundry.

First cat

2009-09-08T21:33:00.002-04:00

Today was a long day.

It was long like I had to pay a debt for having Monday off. Like there was a big, grumpy timekeeper playing the part of a troll living under a bridge somewhere saying, "Oh sure, you got to have Labor Day off but you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to cram Monday and Tuesday together into Tuesday! Yeah!"

Meanwhile, I played the part of the lone billy goat trying to cross the bridge. I didn't have any older brothers to save me from the troll and I wasn't going to the hillside to get fat, I was just trying to get my work done.

By the time I pulled into the driveway, I was exhausted.

As I was walking to our door, Bruno was entertaining our next door neighbor on her front step, laying on his back, curling around like a kitten, generally being as cute as a big, orange tabby cat can be. And our neighbor was telling him what a good boy he was and how pretty he was. She gives him treats and spoils him rotten.

And then he has to come back home where he's really just the extra cat, the backup in case something were to happen to Sophie. I'm not even sure if Bruno would be prepared to take over Sophie's duties as first cat should she turn out to have a scandalous past.

When he saw me, Bruno scampered over to our door for me to let him in. I pushed open the door, lugging my bags and greeting Fiona who would very much like to be first cat but hasn't received the memo yet that she is, in fact, a dog and is thereby disqualified.

After I got all my stuff put down and had started talking to Chris, I heard a thump at the front door. I looked through the peephole but nothing was there. I looked again and something jumped.

I yelped and jumped back from the door.

"Chris!"
Pause.
"Chris!"
"What?"
"There's something in between the doors."
"What?"
At this point, Chris is up and walking toward the door. He hears the thumping too.
"What is it?" he said.
"I think it's a squirrel," I said.
"A squirrel?"
"Yes, a squirrel."

Chris was doubtful and smiling at this point but I reached over and locked the door. I did this even though I was pretty sure that whatever was on the other side of the door, squirrel or not, did not have opposable thumbs. It didn't matter to me. I wasn't taking any chances.

"Whatever you do," I said. "Don't open the door. We have to walk around and see what it is."

And so we walked downstairs, through the garage, and around the front to see what was thumping madly between our front door and screen door. When we rounded the corner, we saw Sophie, hanging, spread eagle on the screen, freaked out and ready to escape from her temporary cage. Chris opened the door and I picked her and held her while we walked back around. Neither of us had brought a key and I had locked the door after all. Sophie's heart was beating wildly and she was happy to be held.

"She must have been trying to get in with you and Bruno when you came home," Chris said.
"I never even saw her," I said.
"Crazy little cat," he said.

And I thought my day was hard.
Some days it's tough be the first cat.
Good thing, she's got backup.

Watching Wheel of Fortune

2009-08-17T19:25:00.006-04:00

Chris and I were flipping through the channels tonight.
First, he flipped through them and found nothing.
Then I flipped through them and found nothing.

I landed on Wheel of fortune and decided to wait for Jeopardy to come on.

I don't watch Wheel of Fortune because I don't get it. I don't understand how the clues work.
Chris attempted to explain.

"See Julie, the clue is 'before and after' because the word in the middle is related to both of the other words."
"What?"
"Like the top word can be Bob, the middle Smith and the last one Wesson," he said. "Get it?"

"But that doesn't have anything to do with 'before and after," I said. "How about duck and swan?"
"No," Chris said. "See, they call it 'before and after' because it doesn't matter what the words are, it's the way they are connected."

I still didn't get it.

"Look at this one," I said. "The clue, and I'm using that term loosely here, is things."
"Yeah," said Chris, like it was the most natural thing in the world to expect a contestant to work with things.

But they did. One of the contestant solved the puzzle and do you know what the things were?
Longitude & Latitude.

"Chris," I said. "How are those things?"
I mean, numbers, calculations, angles even, but things? How does that make sense?
"My wife has a master's degree and can't understand Wheel of Fortune..." he said, teasing me.

I think it doesn't have anything to do with degrees. It's because I don't qualify for AARP yet. I'm sure the day will come when a clue like things will be perfectly acceptable to me.

One down, one to go...

2009-08-16T18:50:00.008-04:00

Another way of saying he's on the 12th floor
Originally uploaded by jcgoyette.

Yesterday, we took Spencer to NC State where he has matriculated at the fourth of four ACC schools in our family.

We're just so proud of him.

The night before we left, we took him to Elizabeth's, our favorite pizza place just down the road from where we live. All of us were pretty hungry and while we were waiting for our pizza, I looked over at the booth across from us where a large family was enjoying their rather large pizzas.

"I'm so hungry, I could chew off my own foot," I said.
"Don't do that, Mom," Wren said.

"Okay," I said. "But what if I just reached over and took a few slices of pizza off of that table over there? Do you think anyone would notice?"

"Oh yeah, Mom," she said sarcastically, "Go ahead and steal from the family next to us," she said. "Then the cops will come to take you away in cuffs and Spencer will have this lovely memory of his last night at home to take with him when he goes off to college."

"Well, if the cops come," Chris said. "All I know is, I'm takin' off my shirt. I've seen enough of Cops to know that if the cops come to take away your mother, I have to be shirtless."

And then I attempted to impersonate Matt Damon impersonating Matthew McConaughey always trying to take off his shirt.

Maybe it was from nerves, or maybe we were just so tired, but we were all pretty silly during Spencer's last meal with the family.

The next day, we drove to Raleigh to move him in and I have to say that it was not the horrible ordeal I had anticipated for such a large university. Campus police directed traffic and there were volunteers helping folks get moved in. The elevators were operated by students to keep things running smoothly. One mom, who has a student at UNC and now one at State, said that moving day at State was much better run than UNC.

"Go wolfpack!" she said when she introduced herself. "Words I never thought I'd say."
"You're a UNC grad?" I said.
"Oh yes!" she said. "But you forget about old allegiances when the school is right for the kid."

Spencer's room is not large but it's really pretty swell. He lives in a suite style dorm and shares a bathroom with his roommate and eight other guys.

We got all of his stuff in one load and then had lunch with his friend, Alicia, who has been such a big help to him since he was accepted. We had hoped to see some of the campus but it just wasn't the best time with so many people moving in.

We left him at the dorm and drove home.
The trip back home was a lot quieter than the trip to Raleigh.

I didn't cry until after supper when thought about the night he was born and leaving him at school for his first day of Kindergarten. It's amazing how fast time has gone by.

Like a blur.

Now I just have to get through Thursday when Wren leaves.

Sigh.

Allergic

2009-08-07T07:43:00.009-04:00

I have allergies.

I know, I know. A LOT of people have allergies but I'm not one of those people. I get a little hay fever and then I'm fine.

Not anymore.

I found this out recently when I saw a doctor for horrible headaches and because my throat sort of felt like it was closing up sometimes.

The headaches were horrible but the throat closing up thing really bothered me.

"We can go two ways with this," he told me. "You can see a neurologist for your headaches which could be migraine in nature (this, after I had a assured him that I had experienced migraines before and remembered what they were like and these headaches were not migraines), or you can go for allergy testing. It's up to you."

I opted for the allergy test even though I abhor needles.

During the test, which was administered by a very nice woman, it was obvious that I wasn't allergic to mold, cats, dogs or dust mites. I was starting to feel like my only allergies might be to attractive hairstyles, fashionable clothing, fine furnishings or money.

Consequently, I thought I might be seeing a neurologist in my future until she started with the second wave of needles with the stronger stuff. I had a reaction during the grass and pollen part. So much of a reaction that I had to go across the hall to a doctor and get a shot.

Lovely.

So now I'm taking Benedryl and undergoing immunotherapy to help build up my immunity against the trees and grass in my environment. The idea is to get shots for two years, give or take, and then I'll be okay.

I remember when I was in college, I worked with a woman who strongly believed in the negative effects of climate control and I gotta say, now more than ever, I can see her point.

Chesty

2009-07-22T20:29:00.004-04:00

I stepped into the elevator behind a woman who looked to be in her late sixties the other day when I came back to work from my lunch break.

Normally, I'm a good girl and climb the four flights of stairs up to the third floor, but I hadn't slept well the night before and had gone home to take a little nap. Consequently, I wasn't quite ready to run up the steps. When my father used to take little naps like this, he referred to them as siestas.

This is the first foreign word I can remember learning as a child. Most likely it was followed by sombrero like Speedy Gonzales wore in the cartoon.

"Girls," he would say, "Your father is going to take a little siesta on the sofa and he cannot be disturbed."
If we ever did need to wake him, he had instructed us to gently kiss him on the cheek. We were never to shake him awake or yell. Shaken daddy syndrome was not something any of us wanted to experience.

Back to the elevator at work.

I had a nice nap at lunch but dressed rather hurriedly so as to get back on time. When the elevator door closed behind me, the older lady looked at me and said, "Your button is undone." She said it like we might be related, like I had just come down to the breakfast table. I looked down to see that yes, I had neglected to button one button on my blouse.

It was just me and her in the elevator and so I thanked her and buttoned my blouse.

"You're like me," she said. "When you got that much up there, you need to be told when you're unbuttoned. I know I want to be told."
I wanted to protest at this part of her monologue and point out that while her chest had its' own zip code and probably had a chronic problem staying inside her blouse, mine was merely the result of running out of the house in a hurry.
Not the same thing.
Not at all.

The elevator ride from the lobby to the third floor where I work is possibly the longest elevator ride in the northern hemisphere. Elevators in high rises zip up to twenty or thirty floors easily in the time it takes ours to reach two.

She continued to talk, no longer looking at me but staring up toward the ceiling of the elevator. "And you can't wait for no man to tell you 'cause they won't. They'll be smiling at you and talkin' real nice and then you'll walk away and realize that they was just smilin' cause they could see down your shirt."

Here the elevator doors opened and I returned to work, a little richer with unsolicited fashion and relationship advice.

Bruno's bird

2009-07-20T17:43:00.008-04:00

Bruno has a new friend.
Well... we hope it's a friend.

It's a big Mockingbird.
I know what you're thinking,
Mockingbirds are not friends with cats.
Mockingbirds are territorial.
This bird probably hates Bruno.

And if it were any other cat and any other Mockingbird, I'd be inclined to agree with you.
But this bird seems to like Bruno.

It flies a little close at times but it doesn't seem to be chasing him away from anything. Mostly he follows Bruno around, sometimes flying and sometimes hopping, imitating the little cat noises Bruno makes during his efforts at conversation, except that the bird's attempts are louder and more annoying.

I knew Bruno was sitting on the front step when I heard the bird making those cat noises in the tree under the bedroom window. When I opened the door to let him inside, his feathered friend flew up to the mailbox post, presumably to wait for him to come back outside. The bird appears to be an unmated male, flying solo.
Pardon the pun.

Maybe it's one of those unusual relationships that happens in nature from time to time or maybe the bird has a plan. Maybe he's going to lure Bruno into a trap (think Anthony Hopkins in The Edge).

Whatever the case, as long as nobody is hurting anybody, it's okay.
Should the bird harm Bruno, however, it's likely he'll have to deal with The Bear, starring Chris.

Getting oriented

2009-07-13T07:34:00.004-04:00

Spencer is going through university orientation today and tomorrow.
He was out of the house this morning by 6 AM.
I know. I know. The planets must be aligned or something.

He's really starting to get excited about going off to college. On Saturday, he received another t-shirt from my Uncle Wally and Aunt Chris. Wally is a retired engineer and graduate of State. My Aunt told me, "You can really never have too many State t-shirts."
So true.

And yesterday we got his computer.
He'll be putting this in his backpack next month when he will matriculate as an undergraduate at NC State University.

it's coming up too fast for me.
I'm starting to miss him already.

Ladies man

2009-07-08T20:05:00.004-04:00

My father had surgery this week.

And even though his surgery had nothing whatsoever to do with women or birthing babies, he was assigned to a room in the women's center.
Near the nursery.
Not far from labor and delivery.

"My reputation has preceded me," he said, joking with us. "They know I'm a ladies man."

Any man can be confident in his ability to attract women if he's driving a late model sports coupe or wearing expensive clothes, but only my father, at age seventy-three, could remain supremely confident about his prowess with the fairer sex while attached to a catheter and with a tube of oxygen stretched under his nose.

When the first CNA arrived to take his vitals, she placed the blood pressure cuff on his forearm.

"Nobody ever took my blood pressure like this before," he told her.
"This is a smaller cuff," she said. "I didn't want to put it higher up on your arm and have it pop off."

My father nodded in agreement and told her she'd probably need the extra large cuff to stretch over all of his big muscles.

Nurses love my father.

And I'm certain his nurses appreciated the extra large dose of jokes laced with testosterone there on on the labor and delivery floor.

Coming home

2009-06-30T12:33:00.004-04:00

Chris and I arrived home yesterday from a week of traveling south and back, and Spencer comes home this evening. Wren, together with our friend, Jo, and Fiona, held down Chez Goyette while the the three of us were away.

Spencer is already back in the US. We can't wait to see him and hear all about his trip.

Wren's good advice

2009-06-22T13:24:00.000-04:00

When Wren hugged Spence goodbye at the airport on Sunday, she gave him a piece of advice.
"Remember, Spencer" she told him. "Go for the throat."
He smiled at her.

"I'm serious," she said. "Hey, I've taken some self defense classes. I know what I'm talking about.
And she's right.
She does.

Right about this time, one of Spencer's friends who was also going on the Europe trip said, "The throat? Really?"
"Yes," she said. "It's a weak point."
She explained. "You kick 'em in the shin and when they fall forward, you punch 'em in the throat like this."

Spencer's friend looked impressed. I don't think he was counting on a lesson in self defense prior to boarding the plane.

Ever since Spencer was born, Wren has looked out for him. In elementary school, the kids called them Ren and Stimpy and this was fine as long as no one laid a finger on Spence. You didn't want to upset Stimpy's big sister.

Though she hasn't had to protect him from other kids for a long time, she still looks out for him.
In her own special way.
That is, with satisfaction of knowing if he can throw a decent throat punch, he'll be okay among European strangers.

Where Is Spencer?

2009-06-21T20:38:00.004-04:00

Spencer left on his trip to Europe today.
Here's where he is so far - off the coast of Newfoundland.

Thanks for this site, Zane.

Obligatory interview

2009-06-15T07:39:00.003-04:00

As they get older, it becomes more difficult to get Wren and Spence to answer a few questions about how they're doing, what's going on their lives, etc. It's like an act of congress to get them to sit down and chat with me.

Following a big sigh, here is what Spence had to say about graduation and summer plans.

Gabcast! The Cirque #0 - 090613Spencer

Spencer's thoughts on graduation and summer.

Oh how he's changed from that first day of high school.

Gabcast! The Cirque #0 - 050825Spencer's first day

First day of high school for Spence

Congratulations, Spence. You've come a long way, Baby.

Spencer's graduation

2009-06-14T20:46:00.002-04:00

The four of us
Originally uploaded by jcgoyette.

Spencer graduated a week from yesterday.

I really should have written about it before now but honestly, it just hasn't been that easy for me.

At first, I wasn't sure why. I mean, we had a lot of people from both sides of the family here to help Spence celebrate. And though he doesn't like the limelight, he did enjoy having everyone here, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and of course Chris, Wren and me.

Naturally, having all of those people come to our house, most of whom had never seen it, was cause for excitement for all of us.
And panic.

We wanted the house to be especially warm and inviting and while it was okay before we started the graduation countdown, we made it downright impressive. By impressive, I mean we actually hung up some pictures, purged more from the basement and cleaned, cleaned, cleaned.

As my sister, Marie, says, "There's nothing like family coming to visit to make you get stuff done."

And so we stayed very busy right up until people started to arrive. Then we stayed busy visiting with everyone, taking lots of pictures, and going to graduation. Spencer marched in with his classmates, a sea of blue and white. He graduated Magna Cum Laude.
All of us are so proud of him.

Then on Sunday afternoon, when everyone was gone and we could sort of flop out on the sofa, I started crying. I don't mean I got a little weepy, I mean I cried.
Loudly.

"What's wrong?" Chris said.
"I don't know," I sobbed.
Though we were both pretty sure it had something to do with our second, and last, child graduating from high school, going off to college in the Fall. We had been so busy right up until the graduation that I hadn't let myself think about what was actually happening.

My father used to tell me that the time between when my sisters and me were babies to when we were graduating from high school was a blink, the time goes by so fast.
He's right. It really does happen like that.

When Wren and Spencer were babies, people would say 'Enjoy them while they're little!' I thought that was so odd, like I wouldn't enjoy them once they got too big to cuddle. Personally, I had every intention of enjoying them for the rest of their lives.
And I have.

Even with all the work it takes to raise up your kids, including the last high school graduation, it's worth all the blood and sweat, and the tears.
Especially the tears.

Capped

2009-06-03T21:00:00.000-04:00

Wren was the special person he chose for the ceremony
Originally uploaded by jcgoyette.

Prior to his graduation, Spencer was 'capped.'

It's a ceremony at the beginning of the senior awards where a special person the graduate has chosen helps him get into his cap and gown for the first time.

The seniors were to told to choose a person who was really special to them, someone close to them, a friend, family member, teacher, etc.
Spencer chose Wren.

She was elated that he chose her.
I was proud of them both.
And a little weepy.

Senior party at the Farm

2009-05-31T23:09:00.001-04:00

Spencer, Anthony, Turner, Kayleigh & Brianna
Originally uploaded by jcgoyette.

Spencer, Chris and I went to his graduation party this evening.

The grandparents of one of his classmates had the party at their beautiful farm in Hillsville. There was live music, the HPU ice cream truck, barbeque, cakes, and plenty of appetizers and sweet tea.

These crazy kids with their graduation activities...
Growing up, going off to college.

Sigh...

Birthday lunch

2009-05-29T08:26:00.001-04:00

Sweet shot
Originally uploaded by jcgoyette.

Yesterday we took a co-worker to lunch at Chili's for her birthday and as a treat I got her a sweet shot. It's a desert in a shot glass. Just enough to satisfy the sweet tooth and you don't need a box to take the rest home.

Of course, this isn't usually a problem for me. If I think I won't have room for desert, I skip the entree altogether.

Celebrating parenthood

2009-05-21T06:49:00.002-04:00

Chris' surprise
Originally uploaded by jcgoyette.

When he considered all of the many ways to celebrate Mother's Day and Father's Day this year, Chris chose concert tickets.
To the U2 concert.
At UVA.

Have I mentioned how fond I am of Bono? Or that UVA is my alma mater?
Maybe just a few times...

I still can't believe he did this. The man is unleashed.

Graduation pending

2009-05-16T22:40:00.002-04:00

Spencer
Originally uploaded by jcgoyette.

Friends take the best pictures.
Thanks to Cassie for taking this.

The Fierce Protector starring Joan

2009-05-15T07:15:00.001-04:00

Today's Storycorps recording reminded me of Joan when we were kids.
Go here to listen to it.

When we were little we didn't really have neighborhood kid gangs to contend with like Roger did, but there were some adults (heck, maybe there still are) who thought they had the right to discipline anyone else's kids when they deemed it necessary.

I can't speak for Marie, but I know that if I had been confronted by an angry adult I would have taken off running and yelling 'MAMA! DADDY!' as loud and for as long as I could. Being taller than the adult would not have been enough to give me the courage to stand up to him.

But Joan, she's a different kind of sister. I'm absolutely certain that if anyone, adults included, had threatened to hurt either me or Marie, she would have never let it happen.
Period.

Roger's big brother Frank has nothing on my sister Joan.

NC Marathon & The Boss with the E Street Band

2009-05-03T10:19:00.008-04:00

Yesterday was pretty darn busy.

First, I was at the NC Marathon, a preliminary for the Boston Marathon. No, no, I didn't RUN.
Well, except back to my car to get a jacket when the rain started...

I was there to cheer the runners and have Gatorade, water, sports gels (goo as the pros call them) and M&Ms at the ready. In spite of the rain and having to get there when it was still dark, it was fun. I had no idea how much work goes into being ready for the runners when they pass by. Fortunately, we had no crisis while I was there, only the occasional cramps and one request for Vasoline.

After helping at the marathon, I had to take a nap so I would be ready to go see Bruce Springsteen with Chris. He won tickets on Friday afternoon at work and called me to tell me about it.

"Julie," he said. "Are you busy right now?"
"Well, sorta..." I said.
I was shoe shopping.
"So, can I call you back?" I said. "I mean, what I'm doing is pretty important."
Hey, finding the right Summer sandal IS pretty important.

Chris continued.
"I won the tickets to see Bruce Springsteen and the E street Band!"
"Really?" I said, nodding to the sales guy. "Do you have this with more arch support?""

"What?" Chris said.
"Nothing," I said. "Bruce Springsteen, well that is some exciting stuff. Good for you."
"Yeah!" he said. "So can we go? Is there anything we have to do this weekend?"
"Sure," I said. "We can go."

I wasn't really expecting a lot from the concert. I had never seen Springsteen in concert and would probably have lived the rest of my life just fine if I never did. I mean, good grief! How old is he now? But Chris was excited and I thought it would be kind of cool to go, listen to the music and see Sil from the Sopranos up there singing and playing a guitar.

The tickets Chris won allowed us to sit in his employer's Carlisle Club section which meant that we had waiters asking if we needed anything and fetching it for us if we did.
That's pretty great at a sold out concert.

I had never seen Springsteen in concert though I had heard that he put on a great show and he didn't disappoint. The band played for three hours (no opening act) and never once took a break. For geezer rock, as Chris calls it, the band was on fire. This could have been helped by his 18 year old drummer who was a whirling dervish of energy. His skills surpass his age. Honestly, I can't imagine that they could have had any more energy when they toured 25 years ago. They played newer songs but we like the older stuff from Born to Run especially.

Thunder Road is my favorite Springsteen song.
It's the lyrics that get me every time.

The screen door slams
Mary's dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch
As the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey that's me and I want you only
Don't turn me home again
I just can't face myself alone again
Don't run back inside
Darling you know just what I'm here for
So you're scared and you're thinking
That maybe we ain't that young anymore
Show a little faith there's magic in the night
You ain't a beauty but hey you're all right
Oh and that's alright with me

Maybe it's because it's a song about starting over, which we've done, oh, I don't know, a couple of times. Or maybe it's because I can so clearly picture the image he paints in that first verse and when he gets to 'Show a little faith, there's magic in the night. You ain't a beauty but hey you're all right,' well, that's just poetry right there.

Isaac's thank you

2009-04-23T00:02:00.003-04:00

Isaac's thank you
Originally uploaded by jcgoyette.

Spencer gave away his fish last week while he was on Spring Break.
He did it in between helping us with a week's worth of work and having the occasional moment of fun with his friends.

It was originally intended to go to Jo's house for her mom to enjoy but her nephew, Isaac, 6, is all about it. Spencer set it up, told Isaac about the fish, showed Chasity, Olivia and Isaac how to clean it, and gave Isaac a list of the fish in the tank.

And Isaac sent us a thank you note. My favorite part is where he says "the fish are cool."

Jo says all Isaac talks about is fish. He might even be driving her a little crazy about it, but in a good way.
Isaac is just a little 6 year old sponge soaking up fish knowledge.

It's been fun for us to have the fish but Spence will leave for State in the Fall and Chris and I can't be held responsible for the fish.
We just can't.

At first, Chris thought we could.

"We could clean it," he said to me in serious tone.
"Um, we?" I said. "Just so you know, there's no me in we."
"Okay," he said. "I'LL clean it."
"You!" I said. "You don't walk the dog or feed her, or feed the cats or give anybody any water. You will not be taking care of fish."

"You don't know that," he said.
"Yes," I said. "I do."

And then he considered all that he would have to do. Back breaking tasks such as pulling out two buckets, adding a little chemical to the water, siphoning off the dirty water and other such exhaustive work.
(Insert sarcasm here).

"You know," he said. "You might have a point."

Sophie's revenge

2009-04-01T07:01:00.000-04:00

Bruno is ill.
He has the saddest cold I have ever seen in a cat. He's sneezing and breathing through his mouth. And this, after going to the vet, getting a shot and some fun ointment that I have to put in his nose and eyes THREE times a day.
He's pitiful.

Sophie has kept her distance until yesterday when she seemed to realize just how sick Bruno is. She walked over to him and I thought, Okay, she's going to check on him, offer some form of cat sympathy. Maybe she really does like him after all.

But no.
That wasn't it at all.
Not even close.

She marched over to him and smacked him right across the face. And then she smacked him again. She is literally half of Bruno's size.

It was like she was paying him back for all the times he's chased her. Sophie has learned that while it may not be nice to kick a man when he's down, it's sure easier.

Mona Lisa mosaic

2009-03-30T21:36:00.001-04:00

Art with toast
Originally uploaded by jcgoyette.

Yesterday, Spencer spent a little while with a bag of white bread and the toaster. In between toasting the bread, we would hear him on the phone with his friends.

"What? He needs more burnt toast? Okay, I got it."

Yep. He was burning toast for his friend, Tim, the artist.
Several of his friends made toast for Tim who assembled them into this mosaic.

I love that he spent his afternoon with friends taking pictures of Tim's toast art.

He's a wolf!

2009-03-29T20:44:00.001-04:00

Spencer has been accepted at NC State where he plans to study ecology and environmental science. And other interesting stuff like alternative fuel sources.

We're just so proud of him. :-)

Making cornbread

2009-03-22T20:28:00.015-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was making a pot of pinto beans and mentioned to Zane that I should really make some cornbread to go with it.
From scratch.

This, as opposed to cornbread via box of Jiffy mix, that I usually make.

In my own defense however, I have tried to recreate the cornbread that my grandmother Francis used to make. She would make a big pan for lunch and any leftovers would usually be gone long before dinner. Everyone who walked through her kitchen took a piece of cornbread. I never get the density right and so I have resorted to the boxed, yet reliable, Jiffy which is actually nothing at all like the delicious cornbread that Francis used to make.
But something is better than nothing after all.

Meanwhile, Zane thinks cornbread out of a box is wrong.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

"What you need to do," he told me, "Is to call Penny."
Penny is his mother and according to Zane, her cornbread is better than anybody's.

I called Penny to get her recipe and it took a while for us to finally get together so she could show me how she makes her famous cornbread. I went to see her after work one day last week.

She greeted me with a warm hug and and offered me a glass of wine. I accepted and she spread out all of her ingredients on the counter. Now I know that you don't always think of wine and cornbread as going to together but everything tasted so good. And it was white wine, so that made it okay. ;-)

She starts with Joy Brand cornmeal.

"I don't really measure anything," she told me. "I'll use this measuring cup to help you get an idea of how much you need." And while she began assembling her ingredients, I took notes and photos.
And I sipped wine.

Then she poured the milk.

Hmmm... I'm not at all sure that I can duplicate her recipe what with all the multi-tasking.

She didn't have buttermilk so she 'soured' the milk with a little vinegar.

She added salt and 2 eggs to the cornmeal.

She started mixing in the milk with the cornmeal.

And showed me the right consistency.

We sipped our wine and chatted while the cornbread baked. Visiting with Penny is always fun. She gave me estimates because she doesn't measure. "You can start with this," she said. "And then make it your own."

This is the recipe that I got from my notes:

2 c. Joy brand cornmeal
1 1/2 c. buttermilk
1/2 tsp. salt
2 eggs
1/4 c. oil
Large, hot frying pan

She baked it in an oiled, hot frying pan with this result.
Penny's cornbread is delicious.

Happy St. Paddy's Day BMW

2009-03-17T21:46:00.003-04:00

We didn't do a lot for St. Patrick's Day this year.
I had planned to make a green wine cake for work but that didn't happen.

On the upside, after years of searching for the right used BMW at the right price, Chris bought one today.

It looks like this:

He got it for less than half of the blue book cost.
And he's thrilled.

Bird

2009-03-06T20:19:00.009-05:00

Bruno caught his first bird today.

The weather was gorgeous so I had all of the windows open and the garage door cracked with fans running to air the place out. I was off today and sleeping mostly so I only took Fiona out a few times.
And the times I took her out were brief.
Very brief.

After Fiona's last walk, I entered the house to see Bruno calmly batting about a little bird. Feathers were everywhere. Sophie followed me and Fiona inside and upon seeing the bird and feathers everywhere, took a seat by the basement door.

"Sophie!" I said. "What the heck is going on here? WHAT is Bruno doing? Sophie, help me out here."
Sophie looked at me as if to say, "Help you? Need I remind you that I, unlike Bruno here, am not allowed to bring home the things I kill.
And then she looked away.

Fiona was very impressed with Bruno's bird having never captured one herself.

Bruno, meanwhile, was batting about the bird who was barely hanging on. Clearly disappointed, Bruno seemed to be trying to revive his little friend.
"Hey Buddy, what's wrong? We were having so much fun. C'mon, get up and play some more. Why are you so still?"

He was laying down at this point only halfheartedly batting at his little toy.

Unfortunately, he was a little too much like Lennie in Of Mice and Men and the little bird didn't come back. I intervened and held the dying cat toy while he took his last breath.

Sophie has never brought home any thing else that she's killed. I believe this is because I managed to impress upon her that I did not want to see another carcass on my doorstep.

Bruno however, is another story.
He doesn't give a rat's behind what I think. And so I'm sure this won't be the last dead bird/playtoy I find.

If only the bells on their collars actually WORKED.

Shedding and flatulence

2009-03-05T19:45:00.006-05:00

Fiona has always been a kind of special needs dog for us.

She takes her food out of the bowl and crunches it over the carpet. She's frightened of thunderstorms. The only time she ever barks is when she's trapped in a room. When we visit my parents, it's like she's seeing her own flesh and blood. She completely flips out until they pet her. When my mother was recuperating from her broken foot, Fiona crawled up in the chair with her as though the thing my mother needed most for speedy recovery was a 45 pound dog in her lap.

And there's just this one other thing.
Fiona thinks she's a cat.

She adores Bruno and plays with him like she's the same size. It works because I'm pretty sure he thinks that he's actually bigger than her.

Our only real complaint about Fiona is how much she shedds. She has the bottomless pit of fur. We can never seem to brush it all out of her.

Our latest effort to remedy this is to try a new dog food - Blue Buffalo sweet potato and fish. It's supposed to lessen her shedding. When I consider how much it costs, I think a miniature wagon train should burst out of the bag of kibble and deliver a load of sweet potatoes and fish every time she eats, with a magic broom to sweep up the crumbs she leaves on the carpet.

We're supposed to give the food a month to see if it will work.

Meanwhile, Bruno is not with his problem.
He has suffered from flatulence so bad it can only be described as a briefcase bomb according to Chris. It's truly difficult to believe such a pungent odor can come from a cat who is just six months old.

After trying many different foods, we finally found one, for 'sensitive digestive systems' which worked like a charm.

The jury is still out on the expensive dog food.

Dreary weekend

2009-03-02T20:06:00.008-05:00

Our weekend was supposed to be very different.
This, in spite of the snowstorm.

Of all the things we were supposed to do, including family stuff on Friday night and Saturday morning, we were really looking forward to Saturday night. We planned to go to a play at the Broach Theater in Greensboro. Nancy's brother, Phil, who we enjoyed so much in Moon Over Buffalo is the lead in Moonlight & Magnolias.
Phil is nothing short of delightful.

So we were excited about going because what's better than fun, live entertainment?
Nothing!

But it wasn't meant to be.
Chris had a freaky health week. On Monday, he started getting wheezy. On Tuesday, he woke up with a swollen ankle. We still have no idea why his ankle swelled. The doctor gave him analgesics and told him to stay off of it. On Wednesday, the wheezing got worse and he started coughing from deep within his chest. He took cold meds and continued to work. By Thursday, he was dragging. On Friday, I'm pretty sure he fell asleep at 7.

This was okay though because I was thinking that a good night's sleep and another dose of cold meds would make all the difference.
You could say I was overly optimistic.

"I can't wait for the play tonight," I said on Saturday morning.
"Me either," he said.
Saturday afternoon, I hugged him and heard the wheezing in his chest.
"You need Mucinex," I said. And I went to Walgreens to buy it from the locked cabinet in the pharmacy area with the help of an unbelievably apathetic employee who was hiding in the back, ignoring the announcement "We need someone to aisle 9 with a key".

I had to capture said employee in order to get the cabinet unlocked so I could buy the product. Once I had the Mucinex in hand, I wanted to release the employee into the wild with the rest of the rodents who scurry away from light.

Hmm... Perhaps I was a tad grumpy from having to wait so long for some help.

When I got back home, I started opening the Mucinex and telling Chris how much better he was going to feel.
He didn't respond.
At this point, he was wrapped up in a comforter on the sofa and shivering. He also had a fever.
"You can't go to the play tonight."
"Sorry," he said.

So it was a pretty rainy, dreary weekend of mostly laying around waiting for him to feel better. He's finally starting to feel better this evening.

At one point during the weekend, when he was feeling his worst, he said to me, "What if I don't make it, Julie? What if this is it for me?"

Another wife, perhaps a more patient wife, would have said something encouraging.
Instead, I paused for a moment, then punched him in the shoulder and said, "Hey, it's been a good run."

Wishful

2009-02-09T21:00:00.001-05:00

Tonight, we had lovely supper of Ziti with sausage.

Following the meal, Chris snoozed out on the sofa while I checked email, etc. Spencer was doing his homework at the dining room table.
Meanwhile, eleven miles away, Wren was, I have no doubt, pouring over her college assignments and just studying her little butt off.

A wonderful family picture.
Hold on... I've just gotten a call from Courier & Ives. They want us to pose for next year's collectible Christmas plate and they're asking, "Would Chris be willing to wear some slippers?"
Gosh darn it all! Chris says 'No.'

Chris doesn't do slippers.
Not in North Carolina, and not even if he lived in coldest part of Alaska, not even if Sarah Palin killed a bear, skinned it and made slippers for him herself.
I'm pretty sure he'd be willing to see her in a bikini though.
Because when it comes to women in bikinis, Chris is all 'politics schmolitics.'

Back to the family scene.

As Chris snoozed and Spencer studied, I started thinking.
About ice cream.
Baskin Robbins.
Peanut butter and chocolate.
And I wondered if I could slip out to Baskin Robbins, have a cone of ice cream and come back without either of them noticing.

We haven't had ice cream in the freezer in forever. And the more I thought about it, the more I wanted some.
Just a little. One cone.
Ice cream doesn't just satisfy a craving, it makes us happy. God bless whoever created ice cream.

I could stand up, stretch and tell Spence that I had to run up to Walgreens, where I would buy a pack of gum to ease my guilt about not sharing.
Then I would make a beeline to Baskin Robbins which is just a little further down the road.

I was rolling this plot around in my head when Chris woke up suddenly and said, "I want some ice cream."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"Let's go to Baskin Robbins!"
"Okay."

Wishing thinking.
Sometimes it's a powerful thing.

Longer than ever

2009-01-26T07:30:00.001-05:00

Spence
Originally uploaded by jcgoyette.

Spencer finishes up a college application on Sunday morning.
I'm pretty sure he grew even taller while we were away.

Box of cheer

2009-01-22T07:33:00.001-05:00

Earrings from Joan
Originally uploaded by jcgoyette.

A package arrived from my sister, Joan, a few days ago.

In it was a box labeled 'Chocolatier' and I thought Yay! Chocolate! But it wasn't chocolate, it was better. She sent ten pairs of earrings that she made. Joan is an artist so whatever she creates is beautiful by default.

I, by contrast, do not have this ability. I tried to make jewelry several years ago but stopped when I realized that six year olds could, and in fact, were, doing a better job.

She put a note in the box saying that she had meant to bring them at Christmas but believe me, they couldn't have arrived at a better time.

Thanks, Joan. I've worn a different pair every day since they arrived.

It's been a long time...

2009-01-20T18:08:00.001-05:00

1707 in the snow
Originally uploaded by jcgoyette.

since snow has fallen for us.

This morning it was a real treat to wake up and see a blanket of white. Not fun to drive in it or deal with the oh so cold temperatures but so pretty to see. By the afternoon everything was clear and the roads were safe.

Just the kind of thing you need after a week and a half in Florida.

Roland

2009-01-14T17:30:00.002-05:00

I met my father-in-law twenty-seven years ago this month.
And delivered his eulogy today.

It's been one long, difficult week.
Thanks to everyone for your kind words and prayers and especially to Jo, who on a moment's notice, literally, volunteered to stay at our house and take care of the animals so we could leave quickly and drive through the night last Wednesday.

Here's what I wrote:

Born in Providence, Rhode Island  June 29th 1933
Roland Albert Goyette, Jr.

Roland. Ro. Goyettie. Coyote. Honey. Daddy. Dad. Rollie. Pepe. Great-Pepe.

Devoted son to Roland Sr. and Agnes.
Brother to Ronald. Brother-in-law to Cil.
Uncle to Lori and Jeff.

Husband to Pauline for 39 years.
Father to three sons;  Roland, Russell and Christopher.  And to one daughter, Judith.
Father-in-law to Lissa, Suzanne, me and Terry.

Husband to Patricia for the past thirteen years.  Step-father to Julie, Stephen, John and Charles.

Grandfather to Brandon and Kelly, Hunter, Thomas, Taylor, Russell, Wren, Travis, Harrison, Spencer, Addie, Adrian and Cooper.

Great grandfather to Collin, Carter and Cayden.

Friend to many.  
Of the 350 million people in this country, Roland knew at least ten percent of them.

He loved us all.

His life was spent taking care of others. Feeding family and friends was one of his favorite things to do.  Pancake breakfasts, holiday feasts, 'Pepe cones' for his grandchildren
 and The. Absolute. Best. Martini. Ever.

He loved to cook as much for the process as the actual eating. 
I can remember watching him prepare shrimp for boiling, carefully peeling and de-veining each one and lining them up into perfect rows before dropping them in the water, seasoned his special way, all with a glass of wine nearby.

He loved the ocean. 
He loved riding around in the boat, surveying the waters, being the captain.

He loved golf from the first time he played the game to the last time he swung a club.
 He was thrilled to play in England and Scotland.

He loved volunteering. 
For the Coast Guard Auxiliary. For the St. George Island Lighthouse Reclamation. For this church he attended with Patricia. And, as a fireman for Old Saybrook fire and rescue in his younger years.

He was adventurous and loved to travel.
Especially to the UK.

As a young man, he was politically active, and campaigned for John F. Kennedy. He was very much opinionated, always, and enjoyed a political discussion with anyone who would take him on.

He loved music. 
Frank Sinatra, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock.
 These were among his favorites.

He was an avid reader, enjoying spy thrillers and mysteries.

He loved to tell stories, especially family stories and he told them often.
 So we would all remember to pass them on to our children and their children.

Life is made up of many moments and it’s often the smallest ones that mean the most. The consistency of Roland’s golf swing. The way he held a baby. His courage and strength. The way he folded the paper towel on the counter for coffee spoons. His enthusiasm. The jokes he told. The encouragement and inspiration he offered others. His open mind. His effort to leave each place he lived, better than the way he found it.

His smile.

We’re all better for having known and loved Roland.
And so we thank you, God, for taking him gently on Sunday and we know that when he reached those pearly gates, Saint Peter stepped aside so that Pauline and Larry, Hervie, Roland Sr. and Agnes, and all of the others who preceded him in death could say,
"Welcome home, Roland. Have a martini. Now that you're here, the party can start."

Obituary

2009-01-12T17:18:00.003-05:00

Chris' Dad, Roland, passed away on Sunday.

He had what the doctors called a 'catastrophic' stroke on Wednesday, the seventh and after three days he died. We drove through the night the same day we got the news so that we could see him.

Shortly after we arrived, Patricia, his wife, asked me if I would write the obituary. Here is what we sent to the newspapers:

Roland Albert Goyette, 75, resident of St. George Island, Florida died January 11th, 2009 at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital.

He was born June 29th, 1933 in Providence, Rhode Island to Roland Albert Goyette, Sr. and Agnes Christopher Goyette.

In 1953 Roland married the late Pauline Forand who preceded him in death in 1993.

A Navy veteran, Roland was President of Rhode Island Junior Chamber of Commerce. As a young man, he owned Liberty Foundry. He worked as a Vice President for Sales and Marketing for HBA cast products in Bristol, Virginia and retired as general manager for Hubbell Lighting in Moultrie, Georgia in 1999

He married Patricia Robson in 1995 who survives him of the home. Also surviving him are his son Roland Albert Goyette, III and his wife Melissa Harter of Concord, North Carolina and their son Brandon Albert Goyette and wife, Kelly Baumer, their three sons, Collin Albert, Carter William, Caden Basil of Oakboro, North Carolina and son, Thomas Lowell of Concord; his daughter Judith Goyette Payne, her husband, Terry and sons Harrison Dale and Adrian Monroe of Sugar Hill, Georgia; his son Russell Alan Goyette, Sr. and his wife, Suzanne Banks and their two sons Russell Alan Jr., Travis Christopher and daughter, Addie Suzanne of Bristol, Virginia; his son Christopher Armand Goyette and his wife, Julie Crumpton, their daughter Tempest Wren and son, Spencer James of High Point, North Carolina.

Also surviving him are his brother, Ronald Goyette and his wife Cil of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. His niece, Lori Ann, his nephew Jeffrey his wife, Mickie and children, also of Harrisburg.

Also surviving him are step-daughter, Julie Logue Reichert, her husband, Wallace and sons Taylor, Hunter and Cooper, and his stepsons, Stephen, John, and Charles Logue.
Roland has always loved the beach and being on the water and was very happy to buy the house on St. George Island with Patricia. He enjoyed golf his whole life and was thrilled to play in England and Scotland.

He volunteered as a fireman with Old Saybrook, Connecticut Fire and Rescue, and with St. George Island Light house reclamation and with homeland security with the Florida Coast Guard Auxillary.

Funeral service will be held on Wednesday, January 14 at 1 PM at St. George Island United Methodist Church with Rev. Themo Patriotis and Father Roger Latosynski officiating. Visitation will be from 11 AM to 1 PM on Wednesday prior to the service.

The family requests that in lieu of flowers, memorials in Roland's name may be directed by mail to Saint Jude Children's Research Hospital, 501 St. Jude Place
Memphis TN 38105 or online at https://www.stjudemedicalcenter.org/Donations

Tradition

2009-01-03T19:44:00.000-05:00

Judy and Terry
Originally uploaded by jcgoyette.

Judy and Terry came to visit for New Years.

One of the best parts of the holidays are the visits with family. In this case, they came to see us so we got to play host, and feed them our favorite foods as well as the traditional meat pies.

The thing about the meat pies is that they're a GOYETTE FAMILY TRADITION. For as long as anyone can remember, Chris' mom, Pauline made meat pies during the holidays and they were always just the best. Roland and all four kids looked forward to those pies all year. You could say there were the highlight holiday food for the Goyette family.

Consequently, they're just a tad intimidating to make.

So anyway, we make the meat pies but typically we have them for just us. Typically, we don't see a lot Chris' family during the holidays. That's just the way it usually works out.

Back to New Year's Eve.
We were making the meat pies and I was pretty nervous because while we like them a lot, I wanted Judy to like them too, unprompted and without me seeming pitiful by fishing for compliments. And also, it was Terry's first experience with the famous meat pies.
So I was just a little stressed about it which is probably why I'm frowning in the pictures as I'm preparing pies.

Everyone cleaned their plates at supper on New Year's Eve and both Judy and Terry said they enjoyed them. After supper, we played Fact or Crap and Dominoes and then rung in the new year with a bottle of Moet et Chandon.
And then, because we're all getting older, we went to bed.

Once upon a time we were just getting started at midnight but now with jobs and kids and regular responsibilites we go to bed earlier, pretty much right after the ball drops.
On the flip side, it's important to note that those were also the days when we all waited tables so frankly, I'm okay with getting older.

The next morning I got the ultimate compliment from Judy.
"I woke up thinking about those meat pies," she said. "Is there any left?"
As a matter of fact there was and so she ate it for breakfast.
Cold. Because that's how she likes it.

She made my day.
I'll make her a meat pie whenever she wants one.

The pecking order

2008-12-29T21:00:00.004-05:00

Whenever we all gather for a meal at my parents' house, there is a distinct possibility that two or more of the grandchildren will have to eat at the kids' table (i.e. the bar in my mother's kitchen). The bar is all of two feet from the table but it's still the kids' table.
For Spencer, it might as well be Napolean's Elba.

This year, at the Christmas meal, Spencer and Maggie had to sit at the bar because Marie and Colin couldn't be there. This meant that Wren and Hannah got to sit with the grownups and enjoy sparkling conversation. Conversation that couldn't possibly be enjoyed by anyone sitting two feet away at the bar.

Spencer protested his assignment.
"Grandma, I'm taller than the others," he said. "I think the kids' table should be based on height."
"No, Spencer," she said as she finished putting our feast on the table. "That's not how it works."
"Grandma," he said. "I'm taller than the refrigerator!"
His protest was noted and dismissed.

The pecking order is a natural part of life even with the cats. Bruno, for example, is now referred to as the red-headed stepcat while Sophie is taking over the role of queen.

"Don't call him that," I said.
"It's the truth," Chris said. "He needs to know his place."
"I think 'red-headed stepcat' is a little harsh," I said. "He's very sensitive."

Upon hearing this, Bruno, snuggled between us on the sofa, stretched out fully and curled up just a little tighter to sleep just a little deeper.

"It's the truth, Julie," he said. "Bruno is literally red-headed and it's going to be a while before he earns the next level of name calling. 'Red-headed stepcat' stays."

The cycle of life.

Aberration

2008-12-28T13:54:00.003-05:00

When I was a little girl, if anyone had ever told me that a little dog would scootch across my parents' kitchen table on her belly during the Christmas holiday, in full view of God and everybody, I would have told this person he was nuts.

Fast forward to last week when Cory came to visit...

Sunday breakfast

2008-12-14T11:47:00.002-05:00

Sunday breakfast
Originally uploaded by jcgoyette.

Fiona enjoys french toast, eggs and sausage while Chris feeds her from a fork.

"If we won the lottery," Chris said, "We'd get a servant just to feed Fiona from a fork. Just feed the dog. That's all they'd do."

This would be for Chris' amusement, of course.

Pixar

2008-12-07T11:56:00.003-05:00

I sent this video to Spencer with the note 'Saw this and thought of you. Love, Mom'
Because nobody understands the humor of the fart as well as my seventeen year old son.

If you're looking for some mittens...

2008-12-02T07:06:00.002-05:00

...you might want to go here. They're 100% boiled wool, fleece lined and handmade with love. Warm and snuggly, they make a great Christmas gift.

The proceeds go to Pelham United Methodist Church in Pelham, NC.

The best part of Thanksgiving?

2008-11-27T19:38:00.000-05:00

You never know what design you'll end up with
Originally uploaded by jcgoyette.

Playing Dominoes with my parents.

The beast in me

2008-11-26T18:58:00.001-05:00

I have to purchase new lenses for my glasses.
Actually, I have to purchase frames too.

Last Friday night, I started getting sleepy while we were watching television so I took off my glasses. Chris said, "Here, give them to me." (Note: he doesn't remember saying this, but he did. I'm sure of it.)
I handed him my glasses and proceeded to doze in and out until finally I announced that I had to go to bed.

"Where are my glasses?" I said.
"What?"
"My glasses. I handed them to you, remember?"
"You did?"
"Yes. Now where are they?"
He begins to look around at this point. "I don't know. I don't see them."
I begin to grow irritated and start to look on the floor around the sofa. I even get the flashlight and look under the sofa.

Still no glasses.

Then I get the feeling, a sinking, dismal feeling, that I should look under our bed and when I do, I find Fiona under there happily chewing on the remains of my lenses.
Happy, that is, until she sees my face.

How did I know to look under there?
Because when we first got Fiona, she only chewed up things that belonged to me. Not cheap things, and not shoes. She chose to chew up my iPod shuffle, my cell phone and finally my backup pair of glasses.
It's important to note here that I usually keep these things out of her reach and that Chris' glasses are almost always available to her, but she's never expressed any interest in his things, or anyone else's for that matter, only mine.

Back to Fiona under the bed, seeing my angry face.
I started yelling at her and pulling her out from under the bed. She ran into the living room to be near Chris and I followed, still yelling. At this point, there was no where for her to hide so she wedged herself between the end table and the wall face first, feeling, I'm sure, that if she couldn't see me, I couldn't see her.
This might have worked if her back half wasn't sticking out.

Fiona has never really understood her size.
She thinks she's Tinkerbell.

At this point, a beast very similar to the one from Alien leapt from the depths my being out through my mouth and began to screech about the importance of vision correction and the protection vision correction devices require. It began to question why we have a dog in the first place, especially a dog WHO CHEWS UP GLASSES!!
Fiona was very frightened of the beast.

Chris wasn't as frightened or respectful of the beast as he should have been so it severed his head.
Spencer stayed out of sight.

Finally, the beast retreated in defeat and I was left holding the pieces of my very expensive glasses.

"Just call your eye doctor tomorrow and they'll figure out what to do," Chris said.
"They're closed on Saturdays," I said.

Actually, most eye places turned out to be closed on the weekends. I had two possibilities, the closest of which was Wal-mart. I drove there wearing prescription sunglasses and with lowered expectations only to be pleasantly surprised. The woman who helped me, took a look at my scratched lenses, explained that she couldn't do anything about the scratches, but she could put them in frames, and proceeded to save my day.
In less than fifteen minutes, I had my glasses back on.
I was thrilled.

Apparently, the beast had no idea how easy it would be to restore my vision.

007

2008-11-16T20:46:00.001-05:00

We saw Quantum of Solace this afternoon.

The movie was typical Bond with action packed scenes on land, sea and air. It was really pretty great even without all of the famous gadgets and even though Daniel Craig is not Sean Connery.

Connery is my favorite Bond. I enjoyed Pierce Brosnan too but Connery was the best. I offer this opinion, not as a true Bond fan, but as more of a spectator on the periphery of actually caring about Ian Fleming's character. I'm not one of those women who see the movies as degrading. I just think it's better to enjoy the humor in the movies, and Judi Dench, for example, than to focus on the character's male chauvinism.

That said, I like Daniel Craig. He is the first Bond since Sean Connery to remind me of him. He's handsome, but not pretty. Muscular, but not overly so. Mostly he's persistent and scrappy even. I think he'd be fun to have over for supper. And those eyes.
Those amazing blue eyes...

Sigh.
I'm going to need a moment here.

Okay, so back to the movie.
I was intrigued by the title but admittedly, I don't get it. Quantum of Solace? A measurement of comfort? Love?
I didn't see it. Maybe it's the kind of thing that only a true bond fan would understand. Or maybe Fleming, who was known to treat women like something unpleasant on the bottom of his shoe after he had lost interest in them, was writing about a stormy relationship, his marriage perhaps.

I don't know this for sure.
It's just a thought.

Title aside, It's one of Chris' favorite Bond movies.

"I'm going to come up with a Bond girl name for you," he told me.
"Oh boy," I said with sarcasm, "Just what I've always wanted."
"No, really. I mean it," he said.
"Is it going to be something you can say in front of the children?" I said.
"Well, yeah," he laughed. "But it doesn't matter since they're smart enough to understand double entendres."

I see one more session with the therapist added on their long lists.

Deliverance

2008-11-12T06:36:00.004-05:00

We went on a little adventure this week.
The kind of adventure that involves looking for something you can't buy in a store. The kind of adventure that requires you to drive to places you've never been. The kind of adventure that could result in you purchasing a treasure.

My parents go on adventures like this all the time. I think for them, my father especially, the hunt is more fun than the purchase. The deeper he has to go into the bowels of unfamiliar territory, the better. And the more colorful the characters that he meets in the process, the more engaging his stories are about the experience.

As a little girl, I used to go on some of these adventures with him. He would drive his pickup and play country music and we'd sing along with Hank Williams and Kitty Wells while he found the house, trailer or barn that he was looking for. I remember once we went to the house of one particular man. I forget why we were there, what it was that my father was interested in buying, but I remember the house, a dilapidated two story clapboard, sort of junky, with a strange smell.

I noticed the smell right off the bat and I know my dad noticed it too. There was no way he could help but notice it. But he conducted business with this man as though we were standing in the post office. No mere odor was going to keep Daddy from his purpose.

The man was older than my dad and looked normal except for his fingernails which were yellowed and longer than any nails I had ever seen on a woman.

I took one look at those nails and hid behind my dad's leg until it was time to leave.

Later, when telling my mother about the adventure, he described the house, the man, and his fingernails in great detail. But his favorite part to tell was me hiding behind his leg. He would throw his head back and laugh hard saying, "Don't you know your daddy is the biggest, strongest, toughest daddy in the whole world and he's not gonna let anybody get you?"
I nodded because I did believe it, with all my heart.

But all the same, I really didn't want to go back to fingernail-man's house again.
Ever.

We were about halfway to our destination, somewhere in Surry County, when Chris asked if I could hear the banjos from Deliverance playing.
"That's NOT funny," I said.
"I'm just sayin..." he said. "What if these people we're driving over to see, shoot us and then sell the Mazda? We'd never be heard from again."

He teased me about this the rest of the way until he turned down a dirt road and we looked for the trailer. The seller was out in his front yard, ready for us. He had a beard, several tattoos and a cigarette dangled from his lips. We would find later that he was the kind of smoker who could carry on a conversation and multi-task using both hands without ever losing the cigarette.

He walked across the yard as Chris put the car in park and I said, "I don't think we have to worry. If he tries to kill us, you can take him."

Veteran's Day

2008-11-11T07:13:00.003-05:00

Not being a veteran myself, I am always drawn to stories from wars.

The stories from individual soldiers, their experiences, how they coped with the adjustment to life in combat, boredom, humor, being homesick. I think I am drawn to these stories because I am so far removed from that experience myself. That, and because I believe the individual stories from war are every bit as important to our nation's history as any textbook, in some cases, more so.

Having said that, it seems like the two most important days in a soldier's deployment are the day he leaves and the day he comes home. I base this on what I've read as well as what I experienced with Zane and his family. I was fortunate enough to witness both his departure and return from Iraq.

This morning, on NPR, a veteran of Vietnam described his coming home experience. Click here to hear the story. The transcript is below.

Morning Edition, November 11, 2008 · With wars continuing in Iraq and Afghanistan, the number of military veterans grows every Veterans Day. Commentator Forrest Brandt served in an earlier conflict — he was with the 1st Infantry Division in Lai Khe, Vietnam, from 1968-69.

Brandt, now a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves and an adjunct professor at Northern Kentucky University, wrote about the day he came home:

July 18, 1969
I'm dressed in crisp khakis,
shoes shined,
brass polished,
First Infantry Division patch on my breast pocket.
Flying on a Boeing 707,
LA to DC.
Through my headset I hear the Largo from Dvorak's
New World Symphony.
A melancholy English horn calls out the melody,
I hear the words of the song, Going Home.
At 35,000 feet the pilot tells us,
if you look carefully, you can spot a chalky line.
That's the route of the Oregon Trail.
I find the line.
I imagine those weary pioneers.
I sense their doubts,
Why did we leave?
When will we be 'Going Home?'
I think of my own home.
Did my father, 'Going Home' from war in 1946,
feel the same confusion I feel now?
Am I the same person who left?
And all the time the melody calls out to me,
Going home, going home, Lord, I'm going home.
I think of childhood friends.
of endless games of baseball in the summer,
football in the fall and basketball in between.
I remember girlfriends, dances, college nights,
the twists and turns of growing up.
I remember church, Easter Sundays and Christmas Eves.
I return to Vietnam.
I remember buddies I left behind so I could be 'Going Home.'
I remember the grunts and peasant kids,
the way the razor wire cut blurry lines between good and bad, friend and foe.
I remember the broken bodies at Bien Hoa Air Base,
strapped to litters,
wrapped like mummies,
drugged out on morphine,
torn apart by the war,
waiting patiently for their flight,
their 'Going Home' ride.
I remember the flag draped caskets at Tan Sohn Nhut,
all 'Going Home.'
The music and my thoughts overwhelm me,
crash down upon me in an anointing wave.
My throat burns.
my vision blurs,
I taste tears on my lips,
my body heaves with sobs I cannot stop.
A stewardess, unseen by me, approaches.
I feel her comforting hand across my shoulders,
I smell her sweet perfume as she slips into the seat next to me.
I experience grace as she grasps my hand in hers and says,
"It's all right, Lieutenant, you're almost home.
You're Going Home."

Happy Veteran's Day.

Throwing the axe

2008-11-10T07:05:00.000-05:00

Axe throwing
Originally uploaded by jcgoyette

The woman running the axe throwing area asked Chris and the guy who was throwing next to him if they had ever thrown an axe.

The other guy said, "Not in a while."
And Chris said, "Never in my life."

He got it on the first try. :-)

A good day to fly

2008-11-08T17:46:00.000-05:00

Chris and I went to the Sheep dog trials in Huntersville.

It wasn't a planned trip. We got up early to go to the gym and on the way over we asked each other what was planned for the day.
"Nothing."
"Really? Me neither."

Leaving the gym, on the way out to car, I started thinking how it would be a good day to shampoo the carpets. I didn't say it out loud, but Chris somehow knew because he said, "Wow. The weather is so great today. We should look for a festival or something." Read: Anything but shampooing carpets.
I nodded while simultaneously wondering just how much carpet shampoo there was left in the bottle.
Should we stop on the way home and buy more?
Hmmm...

"Julie," he said. "I'm serious here. Where do I go to find out about festivals going on today?"
And here the librarian in me kicked in.
Who am I kidding? The librarian in me never turns off.

"You can go to Festivals.com for national information or, if you want NC festivals only, go to VisitNC.com and click on What to do.

"Okay," he said. "I'm going to find something to do."
And he did.
He found the Sheep Dog Trials in Huntersville which, as it turned out, trumped shampooing the carpet.
Who knew?

The weather was gorgeous and in addition to the trials, there were frisbee dogs, a tracking clinic, a cornfield maze, a trebuchet, and axe throwing. There was a yard sale raising funds to provide care for the hooves of the cattle in the neighboring pasture. And so, in the interest of hoof protection, I purchased an electric frying pan for Chris. We already have an electric frying pan, but this one was special. So special that I paid $3 for it.

And no, Daddy, I didn't even haggle.

My father is sighing right now, telling my mother that I could have probably gotten the frying pan for $1.50, or even 75 cents.
He's probably right.

But no, I paid $3 for it because, well... because Chris is worth that much to me. That, and also because Chris has wanted a frying pan with an exposed element (great for grilling) for as long as I have known him.

My sister, Marie is sighing right now, asking her husband, Colin, firefighter captain extraordinaire, "Doesn't Julie know what a fire hazard that is?"

The answer is yes.
But doesn't that just make everything more exciting?

Back to Huntersville.
We walked over to take a look at the cornfield maze. There was an observation deck where we saw several adults checking out the design. A couple of moms were chatting while their kids romped through the maze carrying the requisite tall, brightly colored flags. On the other side of the deck a mom and dad were conversing.
"Don't worry, Honey," the dad said. "They're just hiding somewhere. They'll come back in just a minute or two."
The mom didn't look convinced.

From there we checked out the Trebouchet chunkin' punkins. It was pretty great to watch large pumpkins form a perfect arc in the air and then crash into the field. We bought tickets for axe throwing which turned out to be pretty easy for Chris.
"It was a lot like throwing darts," he said.
This, even though a dad behind us in line with his two sons said, "That guy is good!"

The sheep herding was fantastic. It was amazing to watch handlers and dogs, sheep and obstacles. As much fun as the trials were the collies that came out at the end of trial to fetch the sheep. These dogs were masters of 'the eye,' the way the dog stares down the sheep. Just a look from one of these dogs kept the sheep tight and together on the far side of the pen.

People attending the event also brought their own dogs, most of which were border collies. It was like a sea of Fionas, only none of them were as pretty as she is.

We also enjoyed watching the frisbee dogs. They reminded us of watching Gypsy. No dog loved to catch a frisbee as much as she did. While watching the dogs catch frisbees, we saw a few people wearing t-shirts with the star trek ship logo behind a picture of a dog leaping for a frisbee and the words 'It's a good day to fly.'
A great shirt considering that the leap to catch a frisbee is probably the closest a dog comes to flying.

Huntersville was wonderful.

Who doesn't like peanut butter?

2008-10-31T19:45:00.001-04:00

Peanut Butter starring Spencer
Originally uploaded by jcgoyette.

Spencer is going to a Halloween party as the peanut butter half of a PBJ.
We're just so proud.

Vote

2008-10-28T21:07:00.000-04:00

I voted early today.
I walked over to the senior center on Hamilton after work and, for the first time ever, waited in line to cast my ballot.

It took just over 30 minutes and I had to stand out in the wind for a portion of it, but it didn't matter. I brought Garrison Keillor's Liberty with me (it seemed appropriate for the polls), and I read as I moved along with everyone else. Not one person complained about the wait and everyone, even the kids, behaved themselves. The line was longer than the one at Outback on a Saturday night. It was longer than the checkout line at Ross on it's grand opening.

The line was long.
And inspiring.

Maybe I arrived at the right time in previous elections, maybe voter apathy was at an all time high.
Whatever the case, I'll take the wait.

Vote.