Okay. It DOES rain all the time.

We went to the Northwest Folklife Festival yesterday afternoon to listen to music. It rained. We went to Kell's for dinner with friends and to listen to music. It rained.

When we woke up this morning, it was raining. It's pretty much rained the whole weekend so far, and the only good thing I can say about that is that the plants and flowers that we bought on Saturday should be easy to plant. We won't need a shovel. We'll need a siphon. But at least the ground will be soft.

Hopefully tomorrow we'll have some break in this weather, some sunny window of opportunity that will make us feel like getting outside to garden and get some exercise.

As we've said all weekend: "Ah. Welcome to Summer in Seattle." And we've also repeated the oft-told joke:

"What do you do in Seattle during the summer?"

"If it falls on a weekend, we go on a picnic."

Massage Night

Don't hate us, but my husband and I have had a masseuse come to our house every other week for the last 8 years.

Something about it must work. We're rarely sick. And we're certainly never sick on massage night.

Years ago we had a chair massage at a business function, and my husband asked that masseuse to come to the print shop that he owned with her massage chair every two weeks so that employees could have a nice perk. One thing led to another, and the masseuse started coming to our house with her massage bed and a boom box for music.

After a while, hating to see her have to pack and struggle with the stuff, we bought our own bed that we keep in the closet in the extra bedroom. She sets the bed up here in the office when she comes. I also figured out how to use Windows Media and started playing massagey CDs (see above "Forest Rain") on this very PC. So now all she has to do is get out of the car, warm her very strong fingers, and have at it.

I'd advise it for everyone. It's not really that expensive, and a wonderful treat. And I do believe that it's part of the reason why we're never sick.

Of course you do have to get over the fact that she's massaging your wrinkled old body with its dimply old fat, but once you get past that, it's pretty doggone cool.

Must light the candles. Ciao!

I'm on Amazon.com!

I checked a few minutes ago, and my self-published book - Riding Herd on My Middle Age Spread - is now listed when you put my name in the Amazon search engine. Now I need to get a picture of the book jacket on there. The page looks pretty naked.

My intention is to push everything - website, newspaper ads, book-signing, e-mail blast to fan base, announcing this blog, putting articles contained in the book on various websites, losing 15 pounds, whitening my teeth, etc. etc. - to a July 1st roll-out.

Piece of cake! I just won't sleep!

 

Lightening! Cameras! Seattle!

If you don't live in Seattle, you probably know that it rains here. But don't believe what you see in the movies. It movies set in Seattle (except for that World's Fair movie with Elvis Presley) it rains sideways and the windows rattle with thunder and lightening splits the skies.

We moved here in June of 1972 and were surprised and pleased with the weather. We expected rain because the rumors of excessive wetness had preceded our move. Even Bill Cosby did a bit about it, citing the fact that natives saw the sun so rarely and were so frightened of it that they made offerings and sacrificed animals when it came out, crying "Is our city bad?" 

But we'd moved from Illinois where the same amount of rain that Seattle gets in a month could drop in about two hours. Now there were some serious rainstorms: towering, dangerous-looking clouds, gray-green skies, anxious moments crouched in the southwest corner of the basement ...

But anyway, the summer of '72 was great in Seattle, and then the lid cloud came down and covered everything from the Cascade Mountains west, and it dripped, dripped, dripped until ... oh ... until around the 5th of July, which is usually the first guaranteed nice day of summer.

But anyway, back to the lightening and thunder. Thirty years ago, it rarely thundered here. Now it seems to be a regular occurance. It's been rumbling all evening.

Or is that my husband ...

Look Ma! I'm Blogging!

Well, the experts in the writing business say that one must blog. So blog I must and blog I shall.

Since I've been in magazines and newspapers, I'm used to deadlines and word limitations. It says below that I have "25,000 characters". I have no idea how many words that is. Hell, during menopause, I was 25,000 characters.

My husband (known as "The Sainted One" in my articles) and I are spending the weekend at our second place on Whidbey Island. For those of you unfamiliar with the area, Whidbey is north of Seattle, and tonight we'll watch 3 passenger ships sail past our place and head to Victoria or Vancouver B.C. The weather sucks this evening. It's drippy - as it often is in Seattle - but tomorrow is supposed to be nicer.

My sister drove up from Bainbridge Island (which is across the Sound from Seattle) and spent the day with us. My sister's husband is the creator of the Talking Beer Openers that were mentioned in a Dave Barry column and are sold in stores everywhere. It's truly amazing that money can be made doing something like that. And he's made a lot at it. He's always given me his beta testing products, so I tested the first Talking Beer Opener that allowed you to record your own voice on it. When you play ours - which is triggered when it touches the bottlecap - my voice comes out, cold and imperious: "Just how many is that now?"

While Barbie was here, we had one too many beers and laughed too hard. That's the way it always is when we get together: Exhausting. In the very best way.

Well, The Sainted One just said that there's a ship going out and one coming in. Must go. Let's see if this sucker is 25,000 characters ...