I baked my first cake from scratch in fifth grade.
I don’t like to be near birds.
I still can’t believe I live in Texas.
My APC gene is defective.
I only like the color green in nature.
I’ve never been to Spain but I kinda like the music.
Clam means more than a bivalve.
I live in Sanita Clogs but love high heals.
I always have my bag with me, just like my mom.
I live three hundred and thirty three miles, round trip, from M.D Anderson.
I once was a florist.
I love Halloween.
I don’t believe in hell.
I’m and Irish-Catholic-Buddist-Existenialist who sings in a Presbyterian Choir.
I have a growing appreciation for steampunk.
I got to hold Larry McMurty’s Oscar for “Brokeback Mountain”.
He’s a smart cool curmudgeon.
I’ve only been in two weddings: my own and my son’s.
I live in yellow houses.
Trilogy was the best wine I have yet to drink.
I just bout the identical skirt at a consignment shop that I bought used two years ago.
I’ve always loved boots.
French Champagne. Irish Whiskey.
I’ve always read poetry.
Sometimes to speak Spanish I have to start with German.
I miss Little Compton and clam cakes.
I love just about anything blue.
I’ve been told I’m scary when I’m passionate.
My life rebooted at 50.
I can be very chatty.
I love my solitude.
I can pass up chocolate and bacon.
My sister is my friend.
I buy most everything second-hand.
I keep on my desk gifts my son brought home from field trips.
I love New York. Really. For Real.
There’s a family in Toronto I want to visit.
I don’t remember not owning a camera.
I love rocks and trees but not to study.
The MFA in Boston spoiled me.
Higher Education is about greed and not education.
I wish I were still teaching, even tho.
My best friend taught me to believe in myself.
I don’t know how to NOT believe in a god.
My father taught me to love books.
My mother taught me to see.
I once was a time-study engineer in a coat factory.
My grandmother survived the 1918 Flu.
I’m a very, very good cook.
Joseph Heller was a nice man.
I got to whisper is Norman Mailer’s ear: “Mr Mailer, I love your growl”
I needle felt little creatures.
Cancer doesn’t suck, treatment does.
I let go of two dreams this year.
(This was one of the most difficult posts I’ve done so far. It’s really hard to be random)
AMMIBLOG 
Googling feels like cheating, so: What’s Little Compton?
Where’s Little Compton. . .Rhode Island. It’s boundaries are Westport, Ma and Tiverton, RI and the Sakonet River (which is technically a fjord). In a place where there are no highways, and is still more or less like it was from my childhood summers. Now there are vineyards and less dairy cows, but still fishing boats and farm stands with the sweetest corn. In the graveyard there is the first child born to ‘the Pilgrims’ who survived into adulthood. I believe her name is Desire. If you drive all the way out to The Point, you can park then walk to a cobbled shore line and be where the river enters the Atlantic and across to the west is Newport.
Passion and fear are two sides of the same coin – children, outer space, high science, low romance, jigs in crowded rooms – bring on the scares!
I must admit, celebration or wake, I’ll take whiskey over champagne any day.
More times than not, Irish, Tullamore Dew. But I have two dear poet friends and we sip Champagne give the chance.
Finally, an actual question: Did you, or did you not, break into Larry McMurty’s house?
No I didn’t! But that would make a great story. . .A friend spread the rumor that I slept with Norman Mailor around Provincetown a while back.
I heard Norman Mailor was ALSO spreading the rumour. 😉
Which is amazing news since he’s dead. (Pulp fodder?)
Yellow: Fresh fruit in the spring, sunshine, and long buses full of children on their way to an education – seems perfect for my vision of you.
I don’t have a question regarding this one, I just wanted to mention that “I’m and Irish-Catholic-Buddist-Existenialist who sings in a Presbyterian Choir.” is a beautiful idea.
When were you a florist?
From 1982 to 1989, more or less. My son was a toddler, and I needed/wanted work. I took a course at a community college, and started work doing the phones, and small things at a Clarke Flower Shoppe in Providence, RI. (loved) From there I got an entry level designer job in New Bedford, MA. (yuck but learned alot) And then moved north of Boston to live with a beau (mistake) and worked in Wilmington, MA. . .then got a job working wholesale floral supplies at Jacobson’s, really liked it there until they wanted me to be a ‘sales’ person. I can’t sell, I can do customer support very nicely. . .then worked in a grocery store floral area. . .then an landed a job at MIT, entry level clerk in the Registrar office. For awhile I did dried and silk arrangements (big thing then) from my home and sold them a craft fairs. I was good at that.
No surprise that you managed the design side well while having little interest in sales – and, personally, I’ll take creativity over commercial fecundity any day.
I am just not motivated by money. . .Thanks.
Re: Your clogs – there is no darkness without light, and there’s no appreciation for fancy pants if you don’t know what jeans feel like.
Question I asked my husband: can fancy pants cover a smart ass?
These pants aren’t terribly fancy, but I’ve yet to be picked up for indecency.
I also enjoy Spanish music, though I’ve never seen the rains of Spain falling on the plains.
Well said sir!
Absolutely agreed about the colour green – though, do green eyes count as nature?
Yes. . .green eyes are naturally occurring and rare.
Do you recall what kind of cake you made in fifth grade? Seems like a good life skill to acquire, whatever the flavour.
For the fifth-grade field trip we went to Sturbridge Village. In the gift shop I bought a slim cookbook called “New England Cookery” (which I still have and use). I baked the Spice Cake with Mocha Frosting. It was two layers, not a sheet cake like I’d make from a box. And because I’d been so taken by the old kitchen at the Old Village, I thought making a cake ‘from scratch’ meant I couldn’t use the electric mixer. My first cookbook.
I don’t believe I’ve ever had spice cake, and mocha frosting sounds delicious. I love the idea of being so enchanted by a historic village that you wanted to avoid electricity – perhaps its not too late for me to run off and learn to be a blacksmith. 🙂
I am discovering that you can’t just ‘like’ something. The blacksmith made the toaster that the cook could put in front of the coals, it was made to turn 360 degrees so she could spin it around with her toe. I thought that was way cool. And I still do. Before you set your heart on smithing, try a course in welding first. And make sure you have a spreading Chestnut tree.
I’ll fret this list down over time, but my first question is: What’s the deal with birds? Is it fear (Hitchcockian?) or is it some sort of concern over their delicate nature?
Well Hithcock’s “The Birds” is one of the scariest movies ever in my book. But truth be told, apparently, even when I was a toddler, I wouldn’t go “in the water” in Rhode Island, I’d just sit on the edge with the rocks and shells. My mother asked me why and I’d say “Birdies, Mommy, Birdies”. I’d indicate the seagulls bobbing along close enough. . .so it predates my Hitchcock viewing. I think they are beautiful, but don’t ask me to hold one. . .(she shivers with yuck just writing that!)
Very interesting! I’ll avoid gifting this stuffed raven then. 😉