all that's past is prologue...

 So my story of the Peabody ducks actually starts when I was a preschooler. My dad (long divorced from my mom at the time) was in Memphis and sent me a postcard of the famous ducks in the lobby fountain. He said he’d take me sometime. I knew not to hold my breath. The first time Patrick and I drove to New Orleans together for Mardi Gras, Beatrix was 4. As we approached the outskirts of Memphis I realized where we were and yelled “DUCKS!” Always up for an adventure, Patrick agreed to stop. Beatrix was fascinated by the ducks in the fountain, and the Duckmaster fell in love with her (and maybe my story). He took us up to the duck penthouse and gave us a private tour. I still have my duck pin from that day. Since then, we’ve stopped every time (if we’re around at lunchtime, we eat at Huey’s across the street). We’ve met my cousin Janie here. We pass Sun Records on the way out of town. Today, we actually arrived in time for the March of the Ducks. Every day at 11, the Duckmaster rolls ...

The last two nights, we've been at Beatrix's performances of The Trojan Women . It was a truly powerful show, with stunning performances, poignant set/costumes/lights, and a timely, cathartic theme. It's been a great show for her to do. Seves is not only a talented director, he works hard to build a cohesive and supportive cast. The seniors in particular have been important mentors to the freshman. I'm so proud of them all. Then we got up early, hugged the pets goodbye, and hit the road south. We had a delicious lunch at the Hamburg Inn 2 in Iowa City ( a new tradition, my FB memories tell me we were there 1 year ago today!). We're now in Cape Girardeau, in the Drury Inn, where there is a free dinner and bar, a pug in a stroller in the lobby, a huge hotel room, and the Hallmark channel with Christmas movies. It's perfect. We're on vacation.

This is where I vote — where I voted for Hillary, and Obama before that, and for so many candidates over the years. When I first moved to the neighborhood, it was at the school, which I liked better. As churches go, a Unitarian church isn't a bad compromise, but I would feel better if there was more of a separation between church and state. It's where I've voted almost my whole life; prior to that it was the synagogue on Summit. I've voted absentee exactly twice, in 1988 for Dukakis because I was in college and in 2002 for Wellstone because I was going to be on tour on Election Day. Then Paul's plane went down and retrieving my ballot was incredibly difficult. At first they said I could not because there was not a candidate determined, and I said I would just write in Mondale because I knew that's who it would be. Then they said there was no way to do it at all. Then a TV crew walked in and all of a sudden it became easy to get my ballot.  But I still wait until...

Still feeling good about our window-washing success from yesterday (and our yoga teacher Viv's instruction today to "Do what makes you feel complete"), we decided to tackle the downstairs windows today. Here's the before-and-after of our dining room ("before" to the right, "after" to the left). Not pictured, the "after-after" where Patrick went out and removed the dead screen and cleaned the outside of the windows. It looks really amazing now. You can kind of get the sense now at night: A similar before-and-after from the library ("before" left aide, "after" right). Now we even have the fairy lights glowing and it's soooooo cozy. Patrick also ran out and got new LED bulbs for the kitchen so it's much less dim, while I cleaned out the corners and areas around all the windows, sorted old magazines, and oiled the wood of the table. Meanwhile, Beatrix repotted some plants and started in on her laundry.  Now, after ...

(subtitled, The Power of Norwex) For the past many years, I've had to be in at Circus Juventas on the day of the Gala at least part of the day to help get ready. This year I clearly didn't have to be, and we were sticking close to home to keep an eye on Beatrix, who was not feeling great. Patrick and I were standing in the guest room, looking at the kid's pile of laundry, when we decided we should take the window air conditioner out and put up the curtains the kittens had pulled down. "I should really reach out to one of those windows cleaning services," I said. "It would probably be ridiculously expensive, but it would be nice to have clean windows for once." We both reached our arms up between the windows to try to clean them, which just looked worse, a line of grime halfway up the pane. But that's also when we realized they could tilt out. Don't judge. Yes, the windows were put in about 14 years ago. But in my defense, I'v always lived in ...