All Around The Mulberry Bush

Hello World,

Happy Summer! We have now officially entered the season of those lazy, hazy, crazy days, and don't spare the lemonade and watermelon, by golly. This is the time to kick back and relax, and make it a point to enjoy all of the advantages that summer has to offer, that we may long for the rest of the year in vain, when the frosty winds blow and snow is everywhere. Although the weather does not always seem to correlate to the season at hand to the extent that we might hope, I'm thinking that we should finally be able to count on some consistent conditions from this point forward, and at least in this area, that means only one thing: hot, hotter and even hotter yet still. That is, unless they got some different accessories for the Kremlin's infernal weather machine, and rather than the usual heat and humidity around here, they start throwing plagues of locusts and raining frogs at us instead. I think we can all agree that summer can be tough enough to get through, without unleashing new obstacles of Biblical proportions, thanks not.

Of course, last Sunday was Father's Day, and around here that means that it's time for our cats to rise to the occasion and show their appreciation of The Big Cheese in our household, their Daddy-Cat, who has no equal when it comes to hunting and gathering for his brood. The kitties came through in fine style, with some presents that were sure to please the old man, although not perhaps the cat toys and Fancy Feast they would have preferred, but maybe more appropriate to the actual recipient. There was even breakfast in bed, albeit a store-bought coffee cake, however, that did not seem to detract from the enjoyment of it either. They also came across with some new slippers, trash cans, a computer magazine subscription, as well as a few handy household items, and the requisite junk food, which is a staple that graces every occasion at our house, and none the less welcome for its ubiquitousness. One very special selection was a set of decorative yard lights that look like wood pilings with nautical beacons on their tops, and tied together with coiled rope, for a jaunty seaside motif. We all agreed that they were much too cute to put outside, and would make much better night lights than yard lights, and that's not just some fish story, believe me.

Now that it's almost July, our friends at Brentwood-Benson Music figure there's no point in beating around the bush any longer, and just essentially marking time by sending out catalogues for "Fall and Holiday" like everyone else. At least in their minds, the time has come to call a spade a spade, and they were not going to wait any longer to send out their Christmas 2010 catalogue, complete with snow-covered village on the cover, and all the snowflakes, mangers and herald angels that anyone could want inside, not to mention, Wise Men up the proverbial wazoo. Personally, I prefer my Star of Bethlehem and shepherds abiding in their fields at a time when the temperature is more conducive to mittens and hot chocolate, and not quite so blisteringly hot as the middle of June, when my thoughts are very far from the cozy blaze of the Yule log, and that's not just the eggnog talking, believe me.

Ever since the Clerk's position has been eliminated in Purchasing, it has fallen to me to order supplies for the department, and I know what you're thinking - with my poor addled brain (such as it is) in charge of this, you can't think much of our chances at having the supplies we need on hand to do our work with, and you wouldn't be far off the mark. Fortunately, these aren't life-and-death patient supplies for surgery, where lives hang in the balance, but just routine office products that we requisition from our Storeroom, like pens and paper clips and file folders. I will say that it doesn't help to work in a department where they must believe that the shoemaker elves just show up magically with supplies in the middle of the night and restock the supply closet, because it wouldn't occur to anyone to point out to me that we're down to our last one of something, so that I would have a chance to re-order whatever it is before we've already run out of it, thanks not. While I try my best to check the supplies on a regular basis to make sure that we have plenty of everything on hand, heaven knows, anyone would know better than to expect that to work, so the supply situation in the department can be more of a hit-or-miss proposition than it should be. Last week, I was checking things over in the supply closet, and happened to notice that we had no more toner cartridges for our copier, which we get from our copier vendor at no charge as part of our lease. I have no one to blame but myself there, because we so rarely change the toner cartridge that when someone from another department with the same copier calls in a panic and has no toner, I routinely let them have one of ours, which I must have done at least twice, since we had none left at all. I was surprised that it didn't occur to me at the time that I should call the vendor and order another box of toners, but there was no denying the empty space in the closet where the toners should have been, and noticeably weren't. So I called and ordered another box, which came promptly, and I moved it to an inconspicuous part of my office, until I had time to unpack and put them away, which I finally did. I still had the empty box standing up in a corner, until I had a chance to break it down and put it out with the trash, and I found it a handy place to set things temporarily when I needed to clear a space on my desk, or shift piles of papers from one place to another without making it even worse. At one point, I picked up some papers that I had left on the box, and as if seeing it for the first time, my eyes were drawn to an identical box that was in the back of my office on the floor, and which I had apparently been using as a table, since it was covered with loose papers, folders, labels and catalogues, almost to the point of being completely obliterated from sight. That was the "aha" moment when I realized that I had in fact called to order a replacement box of toners previously, and put it on the floor, and then proceeded to treat it like a piece of furniture, and an extremely unmemorable one at that, ever since. So I guess the good news is that now we have way more toners than we will ever need for our copier, which will at least make the people in other departments happy when they need to borrow one.

Last week, I found myself in White Plains, on Mamaroneck Avenue, which is a bustling thoroughfare, chock-a-block with offices, banks, shops and fine dining establishments of all varieties. There's a reason that the local people say: "If you can't find it in White Plains, it's probably because you're lost," and they're not just whistling Dixie, believe me. You've got to be on the top of your game if you're going to travel around White Plains, because one wrong turn, and you're just as likely to wind up in an inter-galactic worm hole that shoots you to a far-flung solar system, or falling down a rabbit hole that lands you like Alice in Wonderland. So I was looking pretty sharp about me as I was driving, which is how I spotted the gentleman who had double-parked while dashing into a nearby eatery to pick up his order, and when he came back to his car, I noticed that he pressed his key fob to unlock the doors and un-set the alarm. Frankly, this would have made more sense to me if it hadn't been a convertible, which not only had the roof and all the windows rolled down, but also someone sitting in the passenger seat besides. Of course, he might have just come from the other end of that inter-galactic worm hole, but in that case, I wouldn't recommend the sushi.

Speaking of cars, it was in the Wheels Extra section from last week's newspaper that featured a cover story about the new 2010 Scion XD, from our friend Connie Keane of Motor Matters, and which actually starts out with this arresting statement:

=============================
I'm sure you've heard the expression,
"Don't let your light shine under a bush."
==============================

Well, no, technically speaking, I can't say that I've ever heard that expression in my entire life. Perhaps on the far distant planet that Scion comes from, in the Galaxy of Idioms-That-Make-No-Sense, people there use that expression all the time, and it might even mean something to them, in their incomprehensible atmosphere and incongruous gravity, where anything goes and nobody knows why. Here on this particular planet, I would expect the inhabitants to be more accustomed to the familiar phrase: "Don't hide your light under a bushel." In fact, I might even say this was an entirely different kettle of fish, but I was planning to take a trip through the inter-galactic worm hole, and so the sushi is completely out of the question.

Elle

Father Knows Best

Hello World,

Happy Father's Day! Sunday will be the day for everyone to honor the paternal figures in their lives, and all they do for their families and friends, plus the community at large, and the far-flung corners of the globe, and a grateful nation thanks them all. Of course, there aren't as many father figures in our culture as there used to be, heaven knows, ever since Walter Cronkite signed off, Mr. Rogers hung up his sweater, Captain Kangaroo hopped off into the sunset, and even Daddy Warbucks folded up and blew away. So to all of them who are left, real or imaginary, let's give them thanks on their special day, and recognize the Captains of Industry, the Pillars of Society, the King of his Castle, and even the Potato of the Couch, and long may they wave.

Speaking of fathers, last Friday our local newspaper ran a big story about a father who returned home after a 3-year voyage at sea, and saw his 23-month-old son for the first time, complete with pictures of the happy family. Now, anyone can tell you that math is not my strong suit, but even I can tell that if he's been off on the high seas sailing solo for 36 months, and comes home to find a 23-month-old baby at the old home-sweet-home, then there's either something that just doesn't add up right, or the little landlubber he left behind has got some 'splaining to do, it seems to me.

In other holiday news, on Monday it will be the First Day of Summer, and believe it or not, all the days will start getting shorter from that point on, as inexplicable as that sounds, with the entire summer still spreading out before us. Also, last week brought us Flag Day, and fresh off their unparalleled success over Memorial Day weekend (both the 30th and 31st) The Flag Brigade did another admirable job hoisting the colors upstairs and downstairs on Monday, and lending a touch of patriotic decor to the neighborhood that it so desperately needed. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate as much as might be hoped, and it was damp and overcast all day, although it didn't actually rain until after dinner, when the flags were safely back inside once again. So more good work by The Flag Brigade around here, and not to be taken for granted, heaven knows, since we all know their poor brains are not what they used to be, if in fact, they ever were, so coming in out of the rain is nothing to scoff at. Because when it comes to wet flags, I'm with Barbara Frietchie, who famously observed in John Greenleaf Whittier's classic poem: "Rain if you must, on this old gray head, but don't make me put our country's flag in the clothes dryer instead."

And while we're on the topic of inclement conditions, it was on Wednesday that I was walking across the hospital campus from the parking lot to my building, and I was overcome by the most horrible stench that seemed to be everywhere at once. Mind you, as someone who lives with a house full of cats, I feel compelled to point out that I am not at all persnickety about smells, and can tolerate a wide range of aromatic situations without complaint. But this was so overwhelmingly bad, and so pervasive from every direction, that even I found myself looking for an escape from it. This was my usual route to work, and everything seemed exactly the same as always, so at first, I couldn't pinpoint the culprit for the foul aroma. Then I noticed that it was perceptibly worse near the flower beds, and sure enough, the new landscaping contractor must have shown up and poured loads of manure around all of the plantings, one supposes, in a sincere effort to make all of the plants more abundant. However, because they did all the flower beds at the same time, the smell hit you from every side all at once, and there was no relief from it, no matter where on the campus you went. In a normal place, I'm thinking they would probably invite the landscapers to perform this particular service on a Friday afternoon, so the smell would have a chance to dissipate over the weekend, and be hardly noticeable by Monday morning. But in their continuing efforts to decrease employee morale, as well as reduce productivity, the hospital administrators decided that this would be just the thing to make us all think seriously about taking the rest of the week off, and going someplace where the air quality would be a little more agreeable. Like inside an active volcano, for instance. Frankly, I'm surprised that they came up with this idea, because I think all of the employees would agree that our jobs at the hospital already had plenty of manure as it was, without paying people to come and drop off even more of the stuff.

And speaking of surprises, here's another story from work, although it starts out like a fairy tale, being as it is, from long ago and far away. It all began in April, when the Pride of Flushing, the hapless New York Mets got off to a woeful start, going 3-7 in their first ten games, in spite of some high-profile transactions in the off-season that were supposed to guarantee their success. They fared no better in May, with a record of 12-17 for the month, to the continuing dismay of their perennially disappointed legion of fans, who had seen their home-town favorites spend way more time floundering around the bottom of the standings than they ever cared to. As the season wore on, they continued playing as an under .500 team, and looking every bit of it, with unreliable pitching, inconsistent offense, and occasional defensive lapses that came at the worst possible times. But to their credit, they never gave up trying to claw their way back up to respectability, and just very recently put together a hot streak, where they had won 12 of their last 14 games, while their skittish fans found themselves being more surprised than anybody. So last week, when I saw a co-worker crossing over the courtyard to the other building, and noticed he was wearing his Mets cap, I couldn't help but blurt out: "Front-runner!" He laughed.

Meanwhile on the retail scene, many of us would be on the lookout for positive indicators of economic recovery in these difficult times, and glad to spot any harbingers of better days ahead. When I was in White Plains recently, I thought I noticed just such a welcome sight in my travels, as I passed a building that featured an enormous lighted sign across the entire storefront, with gigantic screaming letters for all the world to see that announced:

UNPAINTED FURNITURE

Unfortunately, the sign lost a lot of its impact for anyone who actually looked at the store, and realized that the entire store window was full of mannequins wearing brassieres, slips, body shapers, girdles, camisoles and other undergarments of various descriptions, and not a single piece of furniture in sight, unpainted or not. So here I'm thinking, either the language-challenged store owners got rooked by the sign company, and something got very lost in the translation, or the furniture people left so fast that they never took their sign with them. On the other hand, this could certainly be a new wrinkle in the furniture business that I am not aware of, and I would have to say that it would no doubt be very popular among certain segments of the population, especially compared to unpainted furniture. Why don't you go right ahead and take Dear Old Dad there, and let him browse around the silky lingerie to his heart's content. Tell them Captain Kangaroo sent you.

Elle

Art For Art's Sake

Hello World,

It's hard to believe that we find ourselves practically perched on the middle of June already, as the 15th will be coming up hard on Tuesday, and if you're anything like me, nothing to show for it. They said on the local news that we just went through the warmest March - April - May on record in New York, ever since they've been keeping weather statistics, going back to the 1860's, which is a pretty impressive record to beat after 150 years. It seems especially peculiar to me, as I look back through my old notes for the period, and keep finding words cropping up like frigid, blustery, dank, freezing, raw, bitterly cold, bleak and so on. I find us digging out from a snowstorm on 3/5, scraping ice out of the bird baths on 3/12, and reeling from a Nor'easter on 3/19. It gets no better in April, with a note about shivering in long johns and ear muffs on 4/16, and as late as 5/28, still saying things like "a bracing 40 degrees" during the week. There must have been an awful lot of extremely hot weather, in order to overcome what seemed like a very cold spring, and break the record for those warmest three months ever. Or as Jerry Reed once famously observed: "When you're hot, you're hot."

Speaking of hot, it was exactly that on Sunday when yet another catalogue showed up at church with its cover full of holly berries, poinsettias and pinecones, thanks so very much not. This one was from our friends at Lorenz, who assure me that they are Serving Today's Church Musicians With Collections For Piano, Organ, Instruments and More, and featuring selections for Summer, Fall and Christmas 2010. At the time that I found this catalogue in the incoming mail, it was so hot in the church office that I had taken off my dress while I was using the computer, since everyone else had already left after Bible Study, and there was nobody around to see me in my underwear. I can't tell you how it irritates me to get mail covered with snowflakes and reindeer, when I'm sweating like a team of Sumo wrestlers in a sauna, and it would be safe to say that Christmas is about the farthest thing from my mind. It's bad enough when they start coming in the dog days of August, but when it's 90 degrees in June and they're sending them out, that's just adding insult to injury, and I personally think there should be laws against it. In fact, it should be a law like gravity, so that when the temperature reaches a certain level, anything with Christmas decorations just spontaneously ignites, so the rest of us can be spared this flagrant seasonal incongruity once and for all.

Of course, it's easy for us to have our very own flagrant seasonal incongruity right here in the comfort of our own home, in fact, it seems like we do it every year. It happened again last week, when Bill went to all the trouble to put in the window air conditioners, and the temperature went down 20 degrees overnight, so that we were looking for blankets and fuzzy slippers instead of ice cream and cold showers. I suppose it's good to have some things that are reassuringly predictable, if nothing else, in this crazy mixed-up world.

And while we're on the topic of things that are mixed up, last Saturday was the 142nd running of the fabled Belmont Stakes, and that noise you hear is the chorus of yawns from a disinterested public, which not only had no Triple Crown to look forward to, but not even a Double Crown, even if there were such a thing. Both winners of the previous races - Super Saver and Lookin At Lucky - were absent from the Belmont, so there was no chance that either of them could end up winning two out of the three races after all. That left racing analysts to tout this race as a match-up of runners-up - that is, Ice Box from the Derby and First Dude from the Preakness - and in fact, Ice Box was the 9-5 favorite to win. What happened instead was that Drosselmeyer, a 13-1 longshot, ran away with it instead, beating Fly Down by 3/4 length, with First Dude in third and Ice Box fading to 9th place in a field of 12 horses. It was even tougher for the media to make any kind of story about the race at all, since neither the jockey, Mike Smith, nor the trainer, Bill Mott, had anything particularly newsworthy about them, or any coincidental connections from the past that could be woven together to make a heart-warming human interest story at the very least. The best they could come up with was that poor Drosselmeyer had been left out of the Kentucky Derby for failing to earn enough money to qualify, so I suppose that his Belmont win does count as a heart-warming human interest story after all. Or at least, a horse interest story, which like the Double Crown, if there only were such a thing.

Meanwhile on the retail scene, I was surprised to come home to find a big box from K-Mart on the front porch, which measured a brawny 14" H x 12" W x 18" L, and could have easily fit copious amounts of serious merchandise, although it seemed too light for anything substantial. I know that my poor over-worked brain is not what it used to be, heaven knows, but I couldn't remember ordering anything but swimsuits from our friends at K-Mart, and so this large box really had me at a loss. You could have knocked me right over when I opened it up, and sure enough, it turned out to be swimsuits after all, although why anyone would pack six measly swimsuits in a huge box filled with nothing else but those plastic air bags they use now, I'm sure is a mystery to me. Mind you, the swimsuits were all on hangers and wrapped in plastic besides, which is certainly a novelty to me, and a first in my experiences with buying swimsuits, and if this isn't a classic example of excess packaging run amok, then by golly, I don't know what is. I'm surprised they didn't throw in some packing peanuts and tissue paper besides, and then put the box inside an even bigger box, and cover the whole thing in shrink-wrap, because they were obviously on some kind of crusade to protect those swimsuits from the outside world, or vice versa, which can't help but make a person wonder. One thing I do know, you can believe after this business with the swimsuits, that I won't be ordering anything fragile from K-Mart, or I'd have to buy a whole new house just to fit the box they would ship that in, I'm sure.

Anyone who has signed up for FaceBook knows that along the right-hand side of the screen, they run ads for a variety of products and services that their members might be interested in. I couldn't help but notice one last week for what the heavy bold headline described as a "Full Rime Realtor," which really caught my attention so that I re-read it several times. I admit that I don't know everything there is to know about real estate, but it still surprised me that they came up with a term that I simply had no idea what it meant, and made me wonder what was new and exciting in the world of real estate since the last time I looked. So even though the type in the ad was small and faint, I moved in closer to read it and see if they explained what they were talking about. Aha! The mystery was soon solved, as the very first line promised wide-ranging benefits from a "full time Realtor," which certainly made a whole lot more sense to me than a "full rime Realtor," that's for sure. Although here again, I have to wonder just how much confidence they think I'm going to have in their services, if they can't even spell "time" right in their own ad. Of course, there are no standards anymore, heaven knows, and I was going to let that slide, until another ad leaped out at me from one of my games, which I believe was for Applebee's, or one of those other chain restaurants, where they were introducing some new seasonal meal specialties, that they were sure would tempt even the most discriminating diner. At least, I think that's what they were trying to convey, because what they actually called these new offerings was "Palette Pleasers," which I'm thinking would only appeal to the starving artists among us, and not the hungry tastebuds of the population at large. On the other hand, if they're going to use the wrong word instead of "palate," I suppose it's better than "Pallet Pleasers," which would only apply to scrap wood formed into skids for shipping containers, and I would expect that haute cuisine would tend to be lost on them. Although it would probably be right up the alley of our friends at K-Mart, where the shipping clerks probably carry their own pallets with them, in case they need to bring home any left-overs.

Elle

Hand In Glove

Hello World,

Happy June! Like a breath of fresh air, it's a pleasure to welcome in this special month, full of events and occasions that will be remembered for a lifetime, not to mention, beloved by poets for centuries, and for good reason. I've always thought it was very convenient that there were so many words that rhyme with June - moon, croon, spoon, tune, noon, swoon, dune, loon, soon, prune - but I realize now that if these words didn't exist, someone would have to invent them, for all the songs and poems that were to come. It's just a lucky thing that all the proms and weddings and graduations and reunions don't happen in April, or even worse in October, or all of those poets and songwriters would be up a lagoon without a spittoon, and not a balloon or saloon to help them, until they were maroon in the buffoon, like a rough-hewn tycoon. And that's not just the macaroons talking, believe me.

While it is hard to believe that it's already June, the year hasn't completely gotten away from us yet, and in fact, on Monday it was still May. There are some schools upstate that are still having classes, to make up for a lot of snow days over the winter, and won't be finished for another few weeks yet. We're still weeks away from the summer solstice, and let's face it, the basketball and hockey playoffs are still going on, as impossible as that might seem to believe. So you can imagine my chagrin - and under the circumstances I might say that "outrage" would not be too strong a word - when I received not one, but two catalogues in the mail with products for Christmas, of all things. The first one was from Hal Leonard, the music publishers, and their New Music for Ministry Fall & Christmas 2010, which promises Something For Every Church! I was prepared to let them slide, even with the snowflakes on the cover, because I was thinking that they realize that church musicians and choirs would probably need extra time to get ready, if they're going to have to learn and rehearse new music for the holidays. But it was the very next day that I got Tapscott's Autumn and Holiday 2010 catalogue, and our friends at Tapscott sell artificial flowers (which they describe as "permanent" rather than "fake") and decorative floral products, so they have no reason that they need to be selling them this early in the year, as if you have to assemble them yourself, or they grow them to order or something. Believe me, I understand all about the insidiously pervasive "season creep," and there are no standards anymore, heaven knows, but I simply cannot condone this kind of conspicuously premature consumption run amok, and I am unanimous in that, by golly.

Speaking of time, I'm beginning to realize that this is more of a slippery character than I had supposed, and requires more vigilance in trying to maintain the pinpoint accuracy that we might be aiming for. Alert readers may recall my ancient steam-powered computer at work running Windows 2000NT, where it would reset the system time to account for Daylight Saving, but only three weeks before or after the fact, since the government changed the dates of DST long after the software had been developed. When I got another computer at work, plus the spare computer that I was using in the interim, I rejoiced that I finally had computers that would keep the right time and date, and not lag behind, or charge ahead, of the rest of humanity twice a year, until the DST switch-over actually took effect. I realized that I spoke too soon, when I got my used computer from California, which was set to Pacific time, and even after I reset that, it was still the wrong time and had to be reset manually. That should have been the end of it, and I could once again go back to rejoicing in having the right time and date on all of my computers. Alas, one more time, I spoke too soon, because on Thursday at work, I was sending out a bunch of form letters that had been merged with an address list that included the current date, and I was more surprised than anyone to see that all of the letters assured me that on Thursday, it was Friday, June 4, 2010. (It wasn't.) So once again, I went into the system settings on my used computer, and reset the date to match up with the rest of humanity on the East coast, and once again, thanks so very much not. I happen to love my new little used computer, but it certainly does make me wonder what kind of stuff they were smoking out there in that specialty shop where they were selling them, that's for sure.

The previous week, of course, was Memorial Day weekend, and my sister's 38th annual barbecue at the log cabin in New Paltz, which is attended by hundreds of their closest friends from around the world, as well as some of the nearer galaxies. I was glad to go once again, and brought my other sister along with me, which was just as well, since there was a wide-ranging local detour for road construction, and unlike me, my sister has the kind of unerring navigational abilities that early explorers could only regard with wonder and envy. The highways were remarkably uncluttered for a holiday weekend, and the weather was cooperative throughout, even in Indianapolis, where it usually seems to rain on the Indy 500 every year, which should probably tell the race's promoters exactly what our old nemesis Comrade Mischka thinks of the whole idea of people driving around in circles for hours. This year, the comrade and his infernal weather machine weren't a factor at The Brickyard, so the drivers didn't have to slow down for safety in dangerous conditions, although conversely, perhaps it was the very lack of bad weather that contributed to the smattering of accidents, which in turn forced the track officials to lower the speed limit anyway. Back at the barbecue, a good time was had by all, and we were happy to see old friends from far and wide, although I admit that I thought things got a little out of hand when the Klingons and Vulcans all showed up at the same time, which you would think would be impossible, with intergalactic space travel the way it is these days, heaven knows.

Back on the home front, the Flag Brigade did an admirable job running up the colors, both upstairs and downstairs on Sunday and Monday, and even more astonishing, remembering to take the flags back in again after dinner on both days, which is not something to be taken for granted, not by any means, and I ought to know. On Monday, I was outside much of the day, feeding the birds and doing yard work, and found myself being serenaded by an extensive outdoor concert for Memorial Day at the nearby Hudson Park band shell, which included a widely diverse offering of performances from oldies to salsa, from swing to marches, from disco to jazz, and even Elvis impersonators, which may not have been the very last thing I would have expected, but it was pretty close to it. The program went on a lot longer than I expected, and it offered an entertaining backdrop to my landscaping endeavors that is usually sorely lacking, so I was glad to be outside and have a chance to enjoy the local talent strutting their stuff, sort of like a community radio station without any commercials. At around 4:00 PM, they wound up with a rousing version of God Bless America that shook the rafters from half a mile away, and that was without the Klingons and Vulcans showing up, mind you.

In other local news, the new month was only hours old when we discovered that another one of our Invisible Cats had slipped away from us, this time Puffin, the orange tabby who tried his best to be a real cat, and overcome his invisible roots, with mixed results. He was the fourth of his family that we lost in a 14-month span, leaving us with only the little calico, Potfourri, to carry on the Invisible tradition, which I have every confidence that she is prepared to do, although it's a little hard to tell, since we never see her. Also sneaking up on us in unheralded fashion, the estimable Belmont Stakes will be this weekend, which this time around, is getting about as much media attention as the hockey playoffs, and considerably less than the recent national spelling bee competition. Without a potential Triple Crown in the offing, no one seems to care what the outcome might be, and none of the horses or jockeys have really caught the public's fancy, like Secretariat or Seattle Slew, or even Sarah Jessica Parker, although she's more of a clothes horse than an actual thoroughbred, or so I've been told.

Speaking of clothes, I recently got a pair of nice new garden gloves, which were a late birthday present, so they showed up last month, rather than in March, when my birthday is. They seemed like fine sensible gloves, and I'm always glad to get garden gloves, which I use a lot. At least, they called themselves garden gloves, but I found out later that could only be accepted in the very loosest interpretation of the term, and only very nominally at that. Which is to say, that a person could certainly wear these gloves to their local garden club, and look fashionable having tea and finger sandwiches on the verandah, and perhaps strolling about the grounds, without actually touching anything botanical, and I'm sure they would be perfectly adequate for the purpose. Silly me, I tried wearing them to actually do gardening with, and I only used them three times, and they completely fell apart, which I don't mind saying, is my idea of garden gloves for sissies and not to be taken seriously, thanks so very much not. Fortunately, I found another pair of garden gloves in this catalogue that I just received, so I can order them myself and be all set for a whole summer full of yard work and outdoor chores of all descriptions. I just can't decide if I want the ones with the jingle bells, holly wreaths, snowmen or candy canes.

Elle