Birthdays

March in my family is like Christmas all over again.  Five birthdays including mine.  My birthday is  on St. Patrick's Day and now I be 73.  A St. Patrick's Day birthday in a family with Irish antecedents, two Irish Catholic grandmothers, (as well as Scots, Welsh, and a dose of Swede).  Thank God, no green beer or leprechauns.  I hang my Irish flag up for the day each year. Somebody asked me if I'd sing an Irish song for them, I declined.  Besides most the ones I know are old IRA songs with a lot of colorful words in them about the Brits and not child proof at all.  

I was recovering from a second round of bronchitis and was not quite party-ready but I enjoyed myself anyway.  Glad to be alive after all that gurgling and coughing.  I have very cranky lungs, asthma and copd.

Three of the birthday celebrants were grandchildren turning 14, and one becoming 13, at the same time, eek!  A peculiar age.  They swing back and forth between 3 and 33 in behavior.  I love them dearly. They are all nuts.  My youngest son now has five teenaged girls 13-17 in the house.  Why does that make me smile?

I won one dollar on the lottery.  When I remember I will go in an "reinvest" it.  I won $100 once two years ago and am still playing with my winnings.  I get a ticket about once a month, or less.

I finished reading all but one of Jacqueline Winspear's Masie Dobbs books.  I love them.  I have the last one on hold at the library.

I spent some time unpacking more boxes. I found a calligraphy poster I made of a verse of Sylvia Plath's 44 years ago. I can't remember the title.  I made it right before my oldest son was born. We lost our first baby two years before and I was feeling anxious.  This next one came three weeks early but all was well.  His younger brother made up for it by coming three weeks late.

The verse goes:

"I do not will him to be exceptional.
It is the exception that interests the devil.
It is the exception that climbs the sorrowful hill
Or sits in the desert and hurts his mother's heart."

Not feeling well and having to stay home leaves me wandering around in my mind and memories. Out of nowhere came a memory of my mother baking pies in our Ballard kitchen.  She took the extra crust and rolled it out flat, buttered it, added cinnamon and sugar, sliced and baked it and we gobbled it up.  I can still smell it.  And, she was so young, baking in a skirt and sweater, hair all done up nicely.  Wonderful to remember her that way as well as when she was older.  That tiny house in Ballard was a converted chicken coop.  Post WWll housing in Seattle.  It was still standing a few years ago.

Thoughts about comfort

Do you have a piece of clothing that you wear, a lot?  Several times a week?  I have a gray Hanes sweatshirt cardigan with pockets I've owned for over 20 years.  I put it on over my pj's when I get up and find my way to the coffee pot.  I'm Linus in a sweatshirt.  I pulled it out of the dryer yesterday and noticed it's elbows are getting thin and it has a little hole in the sleeve.  Then I noticed the skin on my elbows is getting thin.  I have no new holes though. I have a pair of Hanes sweatpants that are even older and has no holes either. The new stuff doesn't have that jillions of washes feel to them what shall I do.

Coffee Comfort! And I am thrilled with every new article I see on what coffee might do for you. The recent one posited that it would help keep your arteries open. The one before said it might keep colon cancer at away.  As a life long asthmatic I found caffeine can help keep a mild asthma attack at bay. When I was a small child there were not the array of treatments for asthma as we have today.  Emergencies were to the hospital for oxygen and a shot of adrenalin. At home, it was hot liquids mainly coffee with cream. People used to tell my Mom it would stunt my growth, ha, I was 5' 8" before age made me 5' 6".

My cell phone. I live in a remote town and once you leave the city limits it's just you among the sagebrush and wheat fields.  I can't change my tires myself anymore. The spare is cemented by dirt to undercarriage. Who thought that was a good place for a spare?  My phone and triple A allow me to roam at will. When I was in the hospital with the flu this winter I had a lot of company via text with my distant sisters, I loved it. It allows conversation to go on in ways that a phone call can't. Hooray for unlimited texting.  Hmm, my spell checker thinks texting should be testing!?

My bed.  I have six pillows on my bed.  Not decorative, they prop up my creaky joints.  I like sleeping in the middle of them. Almost better than the sweatshirt. It's tempting to stay in the sack at times but the creaky joints don't like sleeping or sitting too long, have to get up and move.

And then there's grandchildren who still like to cuddle up with me.

The Big Announcement

So!  Last week the Walla Walla City officials announced there would be a "huge" announcement today and...Ta da!

A group calling itself GOTR - Gentlemen of the Road are coming here to put on a big show, and for WW it is a very huge show.  Mumford & Sons are a Grammy-winning band that I've never heard of; I'm still playing my old Dave Mathews CD's.  The Mumfords & Company are currently touring Lisbon, Portugal, then Aviemore Scotland, and then, whaaat? Walla Walla, WA.  They call it a Stopover.  They like to pick small out of the way towns. Aviemore has less than 3,000 people, it's in the blinking Scottish Highlands. Walla Walla is getting mention in all sorts of newsie/touristy ways.  I'm sure the jillion wineries here are hysterical with joy.  My two 40ish sons are nearly hysterical over the Foo Fighters being here.

It certainly will be warm, probably hot, great concert weather.  Wonder if I can rent my spare room out?  Nah.

The population here is 31,595 people.  There could be about 30,000 outside visitors coming here to partake of this venue.  The City and businesses are arranging camping for visitors and the use of the side by side athletic fields of Whitman College and DeSales Catholic High School as well as the Walla Walla Sweets ballfield as a venue.  And it's practically downtown. There's a couple of apartment houses nearby that will either be unhappy or thrilled that they have free, nearly front row seating.

Why am I having a Maxine moment over this?  It's just one weekend.  I can probably hear most of the concert from where I live, certainly from my old house you will.  I'm usually delighted when good music, plays, or speakers show up here.  I'm sure they expect someone to make big bucks out of this but who is paying for all the setup?

Update here:
"Representatives from Whitman College and the City of Walla Walla visited a previous concert site, Troy Ohio, and they said if we don't want them they'd do it again. Mumford and Sons' goal is to leave the place better than when they arrived. They cover all costs associated with the event and a crew stays behind after the event to make sure everything is put back into place correctly. BTW, more than 20,000 are expected. Between 30,000 and 35,000."

I hope everyone who comes has a good time, doesn't get run over, lost in the pothole from hell, or thrown up on, especially me.