I love watching Deadwood.  One of my all time favorite shows.  When it first came out, I would watch an episode a couple of times in order to understand what the world was going on and half the time, re-watching to try and understand the language.  There are wonderful characters, all really flawed.   Our dog Jewel is really named after one of them.  I sent the first years complete episode out to Jim and Mim in Jamestown North Dakota, they had not seen it yet.   I have the second season on DVD and am loving it.

What is upsetting is when someone with some clout pulls the series, in the middle.  Deadwood never made it past mid-season of year three.  Big mistake for HBO, I canceled my account.   Other good shows that have a glimmer of  some promise are also truncated for unknown reasons.  Ian McShane jumped over to Kings,  and it was canceled just when it was going well.  I saw Gravity this summer and it was pretty good, and just when you are getting into it, poof, it too is gone.  So I have now discovered TV on my lap-top.  ABC.Com, CBS,  Hulu and the like.   So I really don’t need a TV service anymore.  Kinda of liberating to say the least.

The problem I am confronted with is trying to write, without the background of the boob-tube.  Radio suffices at work, but I like hearing words spoken when I write.    The need to multi-task my senses while I concentrate is most likely my brain needing stimulation in one area so that the words will come out correctly.  Dyslexic adaptation.  I also like to knit while I have to listen to stuff in meetings. Just sitting still, I wander.  I can listen to classical music without fidgeting, and wandering is what your mind is supposed to do in that situation.  Sometimes I see colors when I listen to symphonies.   I can’t read and pay attention to what someone is saying at the same time.  My ears and eyes don’t work that way.  But if I am using my hands, then I can listen well.  Most folks around town have come to accept that about me and don’t give me too much flack about it.  Work too allows me to have the radio on while I work.

Now I am under deadline for a story to go into the January-February edition of Livin’ the Vermont Way.  I am writing about Emilie’s buddy Mike Dolan.   Story is due today, and given that it is 8 at night, I have a couple more hours to finish it up.   Putting myself under pressure also helps me to focus my thoughts.  I doubt my editor Kyle appreciates that last-minute, here you go, but so far he has been wonderfully patient.

Deadwood is running on the background and the house is quiet.  Time to proof this blog and finish off the piece on Mike.

Life in the Sandbox

Well last night’s VT-GOP was interesting.  Turns out that the invite I got from Bruce at church was to join a Stowe business man who had bought a table.  Buying a table means that you get to into the “private” meeting room prior to the dinner and smooze with the big-wigs.  Got a picture taken with Ari Fleshier and my host Jacques Bouramia,  chatted with Jim Douglas for a bit and enjoyed watching all the folks jockey for a moment with the Governor and the Heir presumptive, Brain Dubie.

I have a duck box from 2006, when I was manning a table, selling paint your own bird house, bat boxes and duck boxes to raise money for the Conservation District.  Jim Douglas came by to the event and I got him to sign his name on a duck box, in green paint.  I reminded  him about the box last night and we joked about it.  He asked if I was planning to run again, and I replied that I was planning to run for the select board.  ” Didn’t work out to well for Shaun Bryer” he said.   I let that one go.

Short speeches were given a plenty in the back room, then we were herded out to our perspective tables and to hear more speeches.  I was not surprised to find our table way up in the front of the room. The annual fall dinner is a general fund-raising event, so the cost of a table is pretty steep and with an added donation, your table can be up in the front,  ours was next to Brian Dubie’s crew.  So I guess I lucked into a pretty desirable spot.  I think that the other Lamoille county republicans must have been a bit curious as to why I have emerged back in public and managed to be placed where I was.

I love being enigmatic in those type situations.  I think I scare the local guys.  They had a hard time controlling me in the past election, and I am much too liberal in some of my views, making them very uncomfortable with the thought I might run again. In fairness, Jacques is a very nice guy, and he was most kind to let me tag along.  He had found out (via Bruce)  that I had run for a house seat a while back and had a fun time telling folks I was going to run again…not so soon cowboy.  I got a bunch of other stuff to do first.

The speeches at dinner were predictable.  It went a little like this…the republican party is the only party that thinks about the economy and the democrats are disorganized with any type of financial restraint.  The state is falling apart and all the Dems what to do is spend more. Blah blah blah.   Tom Salmon was given a thunderous welcome to the team.  He talked about his service in the war and when he returned to Vermont he expected the State House democrats to be working on solutions, not talking about trying harder.  Predictable.  More partisan language and finger pointing at the other team for all the problems. Gets old after a while.  Ari’s speech was a bit creepy,  focusing on being at Bush’s  right hand side at the campaign, in the White House, and all during 911.  He talked about Peace though Power and sprinkled a lot of right winged Christian speak though out.  Then things turned into a Obama slam and I lost interest.

My feet began to hurt and I had, had enough.  This blog confession will certainly put a nail in my republican coffin.   I need to find a new home.  It is not that I have seen the light, it is more about being sick of the darkness.  Can’t we all play nicely in the sandbox folks?

Editor’s Note:  An anonymous comment linking Tom Salmon to the news story in this Sunday’s paper was deleted.

1. can’t just post a slam without taking credit for it.

2. the point of the piece was to say that finger-pointing needs to stop.  to post a slam, without your name, is a sissy’s way of finger-pointing.  at least have the courage to say who you are. then maybe I will put up the comment.

I got an invite to the annual Vermont Republican Party Fall Dinner, it will be at the Hilton in Burlington tonight.   Rob Roper and the crew tend to put on a fine party and tonight’s celebrity guest will be Ari Fleischer, former press secretary to President Bush 2.  Could prove to be interesting. All the big wigs will be there too, and I expect the speeches will be the preaching to the choir type.  This is their fund-raiser and I anticipate there to be a huge hat being passed around.  I have been getting a lot of phone calls asking me to donate as well.  Turns out the company that does the telemarketing for the VT-GOP is from Iowa.  What is up with that?  Don’t we have folks in this state that can make annoying phone calls?

My friend Jim Hoognagle down in DC is a die-hard liberal and will shake his head when he reads what I am up to, but you can count on friends, old and new to question your choices.  Turns out I have lots of liberal type friends and I am finding that I am far more independent than anything else.  I don’t fit squarely in the round hole and I doubt that will change anytime soon.  But for now I am still listed as a Republican in Vermont but feel like I am drifting away.   I am not able to connect with many of the choices that Republicans are pushing.  I will say that I am very concerned about the amount of debt that is building up and am wondering how we are going to pay the bill for all of the stimulus stuff.  I don’t know about you, but I haven’t had any stimulus lately. I still make $19,250 working for UVM. The flip side is that I have free education and a terrific health care plan for me and bub that costs about 27 bucks a month.  So add that in and based on the cost of trying to get insurance, I am on the plus side. Maybe.  It is still not a livable wage.

So the invite came from Bruce from church who asked if I was going, and I said, I can’t afford the ticket, so he snagged me one.  I am not sure that the party really likes me though, I am a bit too independent and uncontrollable.  I also like a bunch of folks who happen to be democrats and have written about them.   I am looking at tonight’s event as an opportunity to see if I want to stay on the band wagon or simply watch it roll down the road without me.

I know that party is desperate to find candidates for the next election, and I have been asked a couple of times if I will run again.    I would go up for a House seat against Shap Smith (speaker of the house) or Peter Peltz, who hasn’t screwed up enough for folks in my district to vote any-one-but-him.  So running would be a complete waste of time and more importantly money.    I think that running for a seat on the local select board is more manageable and realistic.  Local folks know you and being independent isn’t a negative. Running for a state seat means having a party affiliation, and although there are three to pick from here, I am not of the progressive ilk.

I have a feeling that the conversations tonight and the speeches are going to leave me flat.  I sure hope the food is good.

Emilie Anne is my oldest child.  She is down at UNH doing the dairy thing and learning to do her life straight up.   She and her sister Elizabeth (Lulu) have been teaching  me all about this phase of life, Empty Nest.   Lulu lives in New Hampshire with her dad and so with her being out of the house as well, it makes the issue of re-identification a bit of a challenge.  Double hard to have empty nest when the primary residence is somewhere else, so the guilt of not having you kid is heaped on with a special measure. Add to that, I had my children in my mid twenties and my peers about a decade later, so I am going through it a bit alone.  My buddies have tweens or younger and are still coordinating their lives around pick-up, drop off schedules. I wonder in their exhaustion if they see how flippn’ lucky they are to be in the middle of life swirling all around them?

Lulu is 17 and gaining independence as well.  Visits home are coordinated with what is going on in her school, sports, love-life, friend schedule. I have seen her once, since the beginning of school.  She was due for a visit, weekend before last, but her BF Tanner got sick, so she stayed put (and went out Halloween night with her buddies)  instead. She was planning to come up next weekend, but Tanner’s Dad is heading down from East Now-where Maine for a visit, so she has pushed the visit off again.  She now says she will come the weekend after next. (ha and double ha, I will believe it when I see her roll into the driveway)

I have been tempted many times to move back to East Conway to be closer, but the reality is that it would foul up her groove.  Add a major complication for all involved and I think in the end be more damaging than helpful.  Being the alpha wolf and trying to co-parent in tight corners with her step mother calling the shots from their home would not work so well.   Human nature to be a bit critical when another woman is raising up your pup.  So I have adopted a hands off policy for the sake of providing peaceful space for Lulu to grow.    The challenge has been to “be there” as a parent from over 100 miles away.  Similar to the role parents have then the kids go to boarding school.

We didn’t have cell phones or lap tops, face book pages, yahoo email, or skype when we all took off.  I was 15 when I headed to Proctor, and I don’t remember ever calling home weekly.  I called when I was in trouble, or broke, or was negotiating my plans for long weekends and holiday breaks, which included NOT being home.  I was a free agent and I loved it.

Emilie has been loving it too and managed to lose her cell phone over a month ago and then melted her computer by leaving it on a radiator.  Instead of whining about it, she sucked it up and has been going to the library to use the computer there and has been off the cell waves.  I have been getting calls from her dad asking if she is alright because she is in a non-communication mode. ( except to me, I see her pop up chat a couple of times a week from the library.)  And she and Kenny came home this weekend for a quick touch base.

I picked her up a track phone and some minutes, then I got ordered her a new laptop.  Let me be clear. She didn’t ask for them, I need her to have them so I can feel more connected.  As for Lulu, she calls me a couple of times a week to talk about the important things, like her boobs keep growing and how boring the pre-season meeting was at Cranmore, and how she got a hair cut, but doesn’t like all the layers.

Turns out I probably talk and  give support more support because we don’t live in the same house.   Also turns out that the girls are doing well, more than fine and my worries are simply misplaced angst about my own need to grow and adapt to my life as an empty nest mom.  Can I get an Amen?

Just did a clean up of the links page, looking for great blogs to link to and great knitting sites. Any suggestions?