Metropolis

Saturday night, Mr. G. and I grabbed some lawn chairs, a picnic supper and a puking Bailey(more on that later) and headed to City Park.

Every year Baton Rouge Gallery does Movies on the Lawn - a showing of silent movies with a live score. For 7 bucks, you get to watch a movie on an inflatable screen and feast on free popcorn. It's a lot of fun. Bring lawn chairs or a blanket, and you're good to go.

Mr. G. is not a fan of silent movies. He believes that movies require both color and audible dialogue. Just call him the Ted Turner of Baton Rouge.

However, he took a film class in college, a much beloved film class, and the teacher had touched on "Metropolis." So when I mentioned it was being screened Saturday night, he was game.

True that

Bailey had a tough Saturday. She tends to have a sensitive stomach, something the pound director casually mentioned to us as we were pulling out of the parking lot and Bailey was safely perched atop her new doggie bed in the cargo area of our car.

Pound director (tapping on the car window): Oh, just one more thing.
Me: Yes?
Pound director: She gets sick from time to time.
Me: Sick?
Pound director (waving his hand as if this was really a minor issue): You know, occasionally throwing up if her food disagrees with her.

"Occasionally" was putting it mildly. We considered just putting the house for sale and moving during the transition from puppy chow to big girl food. It seemed easier than cleaning up all the puke. Finally, the vet told us to put one kibble of big girl food in her puppy chow and then increase it to two kibbles the next day and then to three kibbles, and so on. Bailey, who is 4, is almost entirely transitioned off puppy chow. Just another six months or so.

On Saturday, after a weekend of feasting on barbecued hot dogs, Bailey was sick. Apparently Mr. G. gave her hot dogs. Then Mrs. G. gave her hot dogs. For all I know, the neighbors gave her hot dogs. But she seemed to have puked all she was going to puke by the time the movie rolled around so off we went (naturally with a hot dog in a sandwich bag because we're stupid, stupid, stupid).

We got to the park early and took flyers from the pretty girls pitching some laser tag/bowling/sliders place on Sherwood. Mr. G. nodded his head at them and listened to the spiel, pretending that yes, he plays laser tag ALL the time and then quietly asked me later what the hell laser tag is.

My favorite part of any outing is the people watching. Movie on the Lawn attracts movie lovers of all ages. A nattily dressed old man turned up with his daughter.

Daughter: Say hello to the dog.
Old man: Hello, puppy dog.
Daughter: Now help me with this blanket.
Old man (to me): She said I wouldn't have to do any work.

A beautiful Husky showed up with a young couple. The Husky was most interested in Bailey, who snobbishly ignored her, even when the Husky howled to get her attention. Throughout the movie, that poor Husky rolled on her back in the grass, wagged her tail and howled while Bailey blew on her nails.

We munched on sandwiches, giving Bailey bites. She had a little hot dog and a little popcorn. And a little food from the sweet girls sprawled on a blanket next to us. Then she puked all over the lawn just before the movie started. Mr. G. quickly cleaned up the mess, and we hoped no one noticed.

"Metropolis" is a strange but also stunning film. And long. Very, very long.

It tells the story of a futuristic class struggle. It features the exaggerated acting common in the silent film era.

The leading lady in Metropolis

The film was greatly cut down not long after its initial release in the 1920s. The editing apparently didn't do the film any favors. The original film was considered lost until a copy surfaced in Brazil not so long ago.

From what I can gather, the film is famous, in part, because it was massively expensive to make. Basically, it's a movie about a city underneath a city. Set in 2027, the city above is full of light, a beautiful garden, flying cars (still waiting for this!) and privileged sons of the wealthy. The city below contains the machines and the workers who risk their lives to make the city above work. Toss in a mad scientist, a beautiful woman and turmoil in a father-son relationship, and you have a movie.

"Metropolis" is a German film, and Hitler was a fan of it. So there's that.

The film's influence can be seen in Madonna's video "Express Yourself." Yes, really.

Parts of the film are especially fantastic. The sets must have been incredible. You go from a city with flying cars and soaring buildings to the catacombs to a room with impossibly huge curtains to a man tumbling down a cathedral roof.

The dance scene above is one of the film's most famous. It's hilarious and unexpected.

One of the best things about seeing this movie in Baton Rouge was the musical score. It wasn't the original, but a new one conjured up Matsy. It had elements of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" (the boatride scene). It was surprising and perfect all at once.

There are three more entries in this year's Movies on the Lawn. I'm especially excited about next month's "Peter Pan." Maybe we won't feed Bailey a boatload of hot dogs ahead of it.

In search of Willoughby

Juliette, Georgia, in its heyday

One of my favorite movies (and books) is "Fried Green Tomatoes." I even dragged Mr. G. to the tiny Georgia town where they filmed the movie. This required a lot of back roads and countless time out of our trip schedule, but it was worth it.

Much like Whistle Stop, Juliette in Georgia is kind of a knockabout place. There's not much there, but I'm a sucker for small towns. I kind of like the idea of living in one around 1910, when you could walk to work and grocery shop on Main Street. It makes me sad to drive through small towns and see the abandoned buildings that once constituted Main Street. I'm at a loss for why small towns can't sustain a two-screen movie theater and a general store. Do we really require a 16-screen megaplex and a Wal-Mart?

Willoughby: Not the happiest of 'Twilight Zone' episodes.

In other words, I'm searching for Willoughby, probably because we moved a lot when I was a kid so I never really had a Willoughby of my own.

An aerial view of the Hebert property. That patch of white between the rusted roof and the bayou is where my mom's childhood home stood. Those trees on the other side of the road (away from the bayou) once were known as the Hebert Woods.

What I had to sustain me were my mother's memories of her own Willoughby, which really was just a parcel of land on the bayou near Amelia that had been in her family for a century at least when it went to another family last year. It was kind of a knockabout place, and I've listened to my mother debate with other family members about what exactly it was called. The latest answer is Boeuf, but I've also heard Bayou L'Ourse tossed out (this was listed in my uncle's obituary). My aunt recently told me "We NEVER lived in Bayou L'Ourse" so heck if I know. My grandmother just settled for "the Assumption Parish side of the bayou" - or maybe that was where she was born. I don't know. It's hard to determine point of origin when you're deep in the bayou without any streets much less street names. My mother will tell you firmly, though, that they lived on the bayou. They did not live in the swamp. Thank you very much.

The old church in Amelia where my mother was baptized - and where she later set up her cowboys and Indians on the church pew during church services. 

The Kennedys had Hyannisport, and the Heberts had Boeuf. To get there, you leave Gibson in Terrebonne Parish and take a right just before the bridge to Amelia and Morgan City. Amelia, by the way, is where my mother was baptized and had her First Communion. It's also where my family did their shopping and were buried. You can see the cemetery from the family land. All you had to do was get into a boat and row across the bayou to Amelia. No one needed a car.

I think, although I'm not certain, that we ended up there this way: Jean Baptiste Etienne Penisson settled there with his wife, Henriette Boudreaux (they're buried in Amelia). They had a daughter, Marie Rosalie, who married Jean Severin Hebert (or John S., as we always knew of him). John S. and Rosalie had a ton of children, including my great-grandfather, Jean Jules, in 1878. He lived nearly 100 years.

At some point, Jules and his wife, Eugenie, moved across the bayou to Amelia, where they lived next door to Oleus and Louise Montet. In the Montet household was an orphaned niece named Florence Gertrude Gauthreaux. Jules and Eugenie's son Horace married Florence. They became my grandparents.

Granny at what I think was the back door of the old house. With her are Aunt Ethel's children.

But back to Bayou Boeuf. My grandfather built a home on the family land there once he married.  It was a three-room shotgun shack: Living room/Bedroom, Bedroom and Kitchen. I know exactly what it looked like because A. I saw it once when I was a kid and B. Miss Teen (my granny's neighbor) had the same floorplan. My grandparents raised six kids there before moving down the highway to Gibson. Four of their kids were actually born in that house, probably in the front bedroom, but who knows. I never thought to ask Granny before she died.

The bayou house also is where an old uncle was laid out for his wake after he killed himself in the bayou. The story goes that he ran out of coffee ration slips during the war and just couldn't go on. We do love our caffeine although I doubt the truth of that story. Granny tended to spin stories when she thought you couldn't handle the truth. Once she got into her 90s she let some things slip, but she never told me the truth about that tale of woe. She did tell me other stories, though. Those were some fun afternoons full of jaw-dropping gossip.

Aunt Ethel's yellow house in its heyday. In Assumption Parish, the Mary statue in the front yard is standard.

We decided to go back to Boeuf recently even though our connection is gone. I should probably explain something about Cajun families. Everyone seems to marry young. My grandmother lived to meet great-grandchildren and even a few great-great grandchildren. My grandmother's sisters and my grandfather's siblings weren't just people I knew from stories. I met many of them.

Aunt Ethel and Uncle Bake. How cute are they?

My grandfather's father was Paw Paw Jules Hebert. I don't remember him; but I was 3 when he died so I probably did meet him. Paw Paw Jules had a daughter, Aunt Ora, and several sons. Aunt Ora married and moved to Morgan City. Uncle Aaron died in the war. My grandfather, Horace, stayed on the Hebert land until he moved to Gibson in the 1960s. I never knew Uncle Howard since, like Uncle Aaron, he died before I was born. I should remember Uncle J.T., but I don't. He must have lived in Morgan City, which was like the other side of the world to us. Uncle Wilfred - or Uncle Bake - lived until 1982, and I remember him vividly. He was a nice man who liked to tease in a good-natured way. I used to imagine that my grandfather must have looked and been very much like him (he died prematurely not long before I was born). Uncle Bake was married to Aunt Ethel.

Aunt Ethel (really my mom's aunt) survived Uncle Bake by decades, staying on in the little yellow house on the Hebert land after everyone else left. That little yellow house hardly seems big enough now for two adults and six children (girls in one room, boys in the other; apparently all the Heberts had six kids), but it seemed grand in comparison to my mom's childhood shotgun shack. It even had a bathroom. Aunt Ethel surprised us all by dying a few years ago at age 85. I guess we thought she'd always be there, working on her crossword puzzles and tending to her flowers.

This Memorial Day weekend, we decided to go back to the Hebert land and see what was still there. Our party for the trip included Nanny (my Aunt Olive), my cousin Kim, her husband, my godbaby, Aunt Marilyn, me and Mr. G. The biggest problem would be finding the place even though we had two people who grew up on the land in the car with us.

We turned too soon and ended up in the town of Bayou L'Ourse (which is lovely even if it decidedly is not where my mom and her siblings grew up). We wound our way around to the bayou that separates Assumption Parish from St. Mary Parish, craning our necks for anything that looked familiar. When we reached the bridge, we knew we'd gone too far and turned around. Finally, Nanny told us to turn around again and guided us to what is now a paved road sandwiched between massive shipyards. The road even has a name now: Bayou Lane. It seems fitting. We parked at the end of the road, got out and went exploring.

Skirting a row of cars parked on the side of a shell road, I followed Nanny as she walked without hesitation to a stranger's door behind Aunt Ethel's house. My husband later joked that the menfolk hung back while the women and children breezed past the new "No Trespassing" sign.

Mom and Aunt Marilyn on the front porch of the old house, which was torn down in the 1980s.

Nanny had no fear because this was where she'd been born, on this spit of land down what used to be a shell road.  There, among an avenue of trees, is where the original Hebert house (the Big House) likely once stood before it burned to the ground long before my mother was born. There, back by the bayou, is where my mother's childhood home once stood. There, near a magnificent tree is where Paw-Paw Jules' house once stood, a three-room house that he later shortened to two rooms (kitchen and bedroom) after his wife died (although, as my aunt said, who the heck shortens a house? You usually add on, not take off a room). Somewhere there, probably by the bayou, is where the shack stood that housed Paw-Paw Jules' brothers until one of them tied his hands and feet together and flung himself into the bayou. Still there, right by the road, is Aunt Ethel's yellow house, where my mom and her sister watched Neil Armstrong land on the moon.

It was all foreign to us. We hadn't been there in 20 years, and it showed. Down the street was Cousin Bea's house, but Cousin Bea's long gone. At the end of the road was Miss Viola's house, but she's long gone as well and someone's fixed up her house and added to it, making it look picturesque, like something out of a movie.

The avenue of trees on the Hebert land. This avenue leads to the bayou.

Then we spotted the nice trailer behind Aunt Ethel's old house. It seemed like old times, back when one of her children lived behind her house in a different trailer. And, I think my aunt thought that it was Hebert land so no doubt we were related to whoever lived in that shiny new trailer. We weren't.

The Hebert land sold after Aunt Ethel died. It sold to an old man who peered at my younger aunt, said her name and reminisced about her birth. He grew up down the bayou - someplace called Bayou Cheramie - and used to come by in a boat to visit my mother's brothers. He took us through Aunt Ethel's house, inviting us to take anything we wanted, and invited us to visit again.

Sisters: Aunt Marilyn and Nanny by the old bayou.

I have a feeling that was our last trip to the Hebert land, which makes me more than a little bit sad. Soon enough, Aunt Ethel's house will fall down on itself, and there will be no trace that we were ever there.

Places really do hold memories, and all of the places where my Granny lived (save the nursing home) are gone. Even her house in Gibson - with the screened in porch, the lineup of graduation photos on the back of the couch and the framed picture of the pope - is gone. I can't walk up those steps, open that screened door and picture her sitting in her rocking chair in front of her stories.

A few good things did come of our visit to the Hebert land (as it will always be remembered in my mind even if it now is Charlie Davis' land). One, the women proved they're braver than the men. Ha! Two, we met some adorable French bulldogs who now live on the Hebert land. That seems fitting given our ridiculous love of dogs. Three, the visit made Nanny nostalgic.

Granny as a young mother with Nanny.

I learned, for example, that Granny could row herself across the bayou lickety split. Since she was 42 when my mother was born, Granny always seemed ancient to me. It was fun to hear about what a pistol she was in her younger years (not that she wasn't a pistol in her later years). I only knew her for the last 35 years of a very long life.

Nanny and Uncle Herbert. And a chair. Why is there a chair?

I also learned what kids did for fun on Saturday mornings in bayou country back in the 1940s. Obviously, there wasn't a movie theater, but the general store somehow showed movies on the weekends for the kids. Nanny remembers following the adventures of Rin Tin Tin each week in a room adjacent to the store. Each Saturday viewing ended on a cliffhanger with Rin Tin Tin's life in danger.

Beautiful Nanny

I love hearing about yesteryear. I especially love to hear Nanny reminisce. She's a favorite in our family - a woman with an enormous heart, a quick mind and a great sense of humor. Everyone loves her.

And I understand why my grandfather on the other side of the family holds onto the farm that's been in our family for so long. I understand why he holds onto it even though it's much too far away in West Texas and no one from the family really lives in the area any longer. Places hold memories, but places don't endure. And losing those places is like once again losing the people that made those places so dear.

My black thumb

Mr. G. likes to tell everyone I have a black thumb. Let me tell you something. I'm sick of hearing about my black thumb.

Every year, I proclaim that this is the year. I go to Home Depot or Walmart and load up on seed packets, Miracle Gro and containers. It's like back-to-school shopping when all of your notebooks are clean and awaiting the neat, meticulous notes that will pave your way to groundbreaking career in astronomy. You'll discover new galaxies. You'll discover life in those new galaxies. You'll get Pluto back into standing as a planet. Yeah, how'd that work for you? Same here.

But back to the garden. Every single year, it fails. Every tomato plant just withers and dies. My dreams of watermelon don't even yield a seedling. One year, I watched a cucumber plant bloom and produce tiny cucumbers. I checked on those tiny cucumbers every day. I exalted in those tiny cucumbers. Then the tiny cucumbers died. I had to stay in bed for a week.

What you have to understand is that my granny was an incredible gardener who prided herself on never having visited a plant nursery. She just dug up stuff on the side of the road and replanted it. Or she got "cuttings" from neighbors.  She was magical.

Plus it just seems that gardening should be part of my Southern DNA.

I have planted rose bushes that thrived. My kumquat tree produces bushels of fruit. The rosemary does really well when Mr. G. doesn't throw a heavy potted plant on top of it.

Then there's the casualty list. The Satsuma tree died without giving us a single Satsuma. The yellow rose bush died. The shrimp plant died. Even a tree that had no doubt stood for decades died. The other day, I was pulling brown leaves off the two-headed palm tree, and one head of the tree came off in my hand. It's like I decapitated it. Poor Marie Antoinette.

This year, I planted basil, zucchini, cucumber and green beans. Then I called my green thumb neighbor over to inspect the progress.

Neighbor: That's cucumber?
Me: Yes.
Neighbor: Doesn't look like cucumber.
Me: The packet said it was cucumber.

Then we strolled over to the zucchini.

Neighbor: That's zucchini?
Me: Yes.
Neighbor: Doesn't look like zucchini.

So now the seed companies are actively duping me. They see me coming and give me seeds for something meaningless so I won't destroy countless vegetables.

Then we went to the basil, whereupon my neighbor squatted down to peer at it before carefully straightening up and looking thoughtful.

Neighbor: I have trouble with basil myself.

So I give up. I'm never planting another plant. I'll just plant the Christmas tree out there so Mr. G. can proudly show off the yard with a sweep of his hand and chortle about his wife's black thumb. He really seems to get a kick out of it.

Thanksgiving On The Bayou

Granny, who much preferred cuddling a cute puppy to making a pot roast.

My Granny wasn't the best of cooks - although I always liked her cooking. But, then, I like my meatloaf slightly burned. The only time I turned up my nose at her cooking was the time she made rice from a box to impress her sister, Aunt Pearl. I'm not really into fancy food.

Great Aunt Pearl, who apparently liked her rice fancy.

To this day, I have to have Granny's oyster dressing at least once a year. The directions go something like this: "Rice, oysters, chicken livers, celery and onions (if desired). Cook and mix together." It's fabulous and really, really easy to make, which probably was the attraction.

Cooking wasn't really Granny's thing. She'd rather garden, read or watch her stories. Oh, how she loved her stories (soap operas for those of you without story-loving grandmas).

Granny loved the holidays. 

I like to read as well. I've also inherited her love for the holidays. I'm a sucker for them. I can remember helping set out her tabletop manger and ceramic Christmas tree. Just out of reach in my memory is some sort of ladder that I was fascinated with as a child. I think it had elves on it and they were trying to string lights. On Christmas Eve, we'd walk down the street to Midnight Mass at the little Catholic church in Gibson.

This year, my mom told me the story of her first Thanksgiving. She remembers it because she was 9 at the time.

Granny, my mom and the rest of that side of the family are Cajun. One hundred percent Cajun. No DNA testing needed to figure out that lineage. Their ancestors immigrated to Nova Scotia from France, got the boot by the English, went back to France and eventually set sail for Louisiana. My granny used to tell a story about the voyage from France to Louisiana. The ship sailed in 1785. Granny was born in 1913. And she talked about that voyage like it was a cruise she took as a child. In other words, she was a sixth-generation American with one foot planted firmly back in France. Granny's mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great grandmother may have been born in Louisiana, but she spoke French as her first language. Her life revolved around Cajun French and the Catholic Church, not the Founding Fathers.

We're Granny's first four children. Oui, we speak French. Doesn't everyone?

But back to Thanksgiving in Bayou L'Ourse (outside Morgan City) circa 1960-something. Granny got her first television set the year my mother entered fourth grade. Soon, Granny learned about a publication called "TV Guide" and got herself a subscription to that. It was in "TV Guide" that she read about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

I don't know who Cara Williams is, but this issue of TV Guide brought us Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving morning, Granny woke my Aunt Marilyn and my mom and settled them in front of the television. She told them they were going to watch a parade while she worked in the kitchen.

At some point, my mother wandered into the kitchen and asked what in the world was going on. It wasn't even 10 o'clock, and Granny was festooning a ham with pineapples and cherries. I'd like to imagine she'd already made the oyster dressing.

Granny explained that they were celebrating Thanksigiving. "It's not really our holiday," she said. "But we're celebrating it anyway."

We've been celebrating Thanksgiving ever since. We've even taken the big leap of transitioning to a turkey for the main course.

Granddaddy, chocolate pie and vodka.

My granddaddy wants a chocolate pie.

Let me explain something to you about Granddaddy. He let me watch "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" and "Annie" EVERY weekend when I was a child. Every. Single. Weekend. Can you imagine how absolutely annoying that was? Songs. Dancing. Orphans. Gene Wilder in a purple top hat. If memory serves me well, my sister, cousins and I sang along and danced in front of the television set while Granddaddy sat on the couch reading his "Wall Street Journal" through every viewing. So he's getting his chocolate pie.

Granddaddy had four granddaughters, and I believe he was present for the births of all of us. He may have missed my sister Linda's birth, but it's a 2-hour drive from Houma to Baton Rouge. And it was the middle of the night. So he can be excused for that. He was there in spirit (and who knows, he may have been there. I'm not recording this for the historical record so - while I could call my mother and ask - I'm not going to call my mother and ask).

I used to get up early in the morning and make canned biscuits with my grandfather. And by early, I mean early. He gets up at dawn. My cousin Aimee also learned that getting-up-at-dawn trick for a little quality time with Granddaddy. They'd lace up their sneakers and go running together. I also used to help Granddaddy in the garage when I was little. He had a closet of jumpsuits and he could always be found tinkering with the cars on a Saturday morning.

I don't remember what conversations we had on those Saturday mornings. Quality time is about just being there, and Granddaddy has always been there.

I was my grandfather's first grandchild, and I believe he was all of 42 when I was born. Excuse me while I breathe into a paper bag after processing that fact. OK, I'm back. For the longest time, there was a flock of bird stickers on the sliding glass door at my grandparents' house. They seemed a bit more whimsical then my grandparents are so I finally questioned their origin. Granddaddy explained that he put them there so I would know not to run into the glass door as a small child. After accepting that I must have been the dumbest small child ever, it occurred to me how sweet a gesture that was (Although, really? Did I run into the sliding glass door more than once? Was this a weekly occurrence?)

Recently, my cousin Paula remembered all the times Granddaddy let her style his hair. Apparently rollers were sometimes involved. He also was game for tea parties. Listening to this, my grandmother said, "You know your granddaddy lives for his kids and grandkids." And I did know that. No one worries more about our health, cars, jobs, etc. than Granddaddy.

As I said: He's getting his chocolate pie. Apparently the man's been hinting strongly about wanting a chocolate pie for MONTHS, and no one's done anything about it. OK, it might have been days, but still ... no chocolate pie!

The inspiration for the chocolate pie is my great-grandmother. That woman could cook. Unfortunately, she also liked to give you a recipe and leave out a few key ingredients. Ah, that competitive streak runs deep. So we try to recreate what came out of her kitchen based on my grandfather's descriptions and his cousin Dorothy Jean's help. Dorothy Jean's mother and my great-grandmother used to cook together.

All my grandfather remembers about the chocolate pie is that the crust was made with lard. This is not surprising given that he grew up on a cattle farm. I, on the other hand, do not have cows grazing in my back yard. There's just Ava the cat, and she brings absolutely nothing to the table except a never-quenched longing for kitty treats. Preferably the crunchy kind.

So I did a little internet research, and discovered cooks raving about using lard for their pie crusts. Then I read this comment from Lillian in Maine: "I use vodka instead of water." And I wondered if Lillian is sampling the vodka before she adds it to the pie crust. Lard, I can process (and buy, as it would turn out, on the internet). But vodka?

Then I did a little more internet research and realized Lillian from Maine isn't quite as batty as I thought. Cook's Illustrated has actually researched this. http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2007/11/cooks-illustrated-foolproof-pie-dough-recipe.html. Vodka is something of a secret ingredient.

I don't imagine that my great-grandmother used vodka. Plus, my grandfather is Baptist and doesn't drink. So I'll probably be leaving out the vodka. But I will be making that chocolate pie. Because Granddaddy - like Willy Wonka - makes the world good.

Memory issues. They're a ... Wait, what was I saying?

Memory is a bitch.

As I age, I find that I'm more forgetful. I have to make lists to stay on task. I walk into rooms and stand there trying to remember why I walked into the room. I ponder for far too long someone's name. The other day, it was Sofia Vergara's name that eluded me. Now I can't remember why I was trying to remember it.

My husband is so forgetful that he doesn't remember he's forgetful. He's always been this way. He forgets to lock doors, close doors, pick up his cellphone from a restaurant table, check a hotel closet for clothes, etc. Our front door keys are in the seat pocket of an airplane (Glenn has no memory of this incident - he insists I lost them). The key I gave to a neighbor for when Glenn locks himself out of the house? Glenn locked himself out of the house, borrowed the key and promptly lost it. His original wedding ring is at his parents' former house somewhere. Hundreds of cellphone chargers and power cords are in hotel rooms and press boxes. I now buy replacements in bulk.

Glenn thinks I have an unreasonable hatred of candles. I don't. In my single days, I burned candles and scented my house in lovely, lucious smells. Now I live with a man who toddles off to bed or - even better - out the house and leaves candles burning. He scorched the bathroom wall and ceiling with soot by leaving a candle burning too close to the wall. Glenn's defense: "Anyone could do that. You forgot your cellphone the other day."

Last week, the window salesman came by. Many of our windows are original to the home but not in a historic kind of way. The salesman looked at the bedroom window and said we'd need to put in one that opens as a fire exit. Glenn remembers that conversation as we need to put in one that opens so we can let in fresh air. He loves opening windows, requiring me to go through the house periodically and lock all the windows he's closed but forgotten to lock. I've been fighting his insistence on getting window screens. I just know he's going to drive off and leave three or four windows wide open. Then the dog will push through the screen. Or the cat will push through the screen. Or a burglar will push through the screen. Glenn just thinks I'm anti-fresh air.

Now the memory issues are a sensitive subject. Glenn's mother suffers from dementia as did his aunt and cousin. So I usually just collect his cellphone from the restaurant table and hand it to him when he starts searching for it 20 minutes after we've returned home.

Not that I should be smug. I went grocery shopping the other day for his parents and picked up lunch for them. When I got to their house, I put a pan of cookies in the oven, settled them at the table with their lunch, put away the groceries and left. Then I made a U-turn in the middle of the road and went back to retrieve the cookies from the oven.

Dead trees and wet concrete. Oh, the horror.

A few months ago we did something we didn't want to do. We're frugal and we abhor murder. But the tree outside our kitchen window had to go. Little cracks started appearing in the window. Then they turned into big cracks. Yep, the tree roots were pushing against the foundation.

If you're a homeowner, you know that the mere mention of needing to cut down a tree is enough to draw a waterfall of tears. Cutting down trees is expensive. I always try to convince our handyman that he can tackle this chore himself. He just shakes his head and laughs. He thinks I'm kidding.

Not long ago, my friend Sue and I noticed that a cypress tree around the corner was dead. A few weeks later, the homeowner happened to be sitting outside with a cold beer when Bailey and I strolled past one summer evening. I decided to casually mention the dead tree to her for 2 reasons: 1.) I'm an idiot who didn't realize the sycamore shedding bark like leaves meant the tree in my back yard was dead. The handyman had to tell me. Then he shook his head and laughed when I tried to convince him to run over to Home Depot and rent the equipment to knock it down. 2.) The dead cypress tree is smack next to her garage. It could total the roof or a vehicle.

So I casually mentioned it after some small talk. She immediately burst into tears. Not quite ... but just about. She's gotten estimates, and she can either feed an entire country or pull down the tree. She's still deciding. Although, hey, if you know a contractor looking for cypress wood who will pull down the tree in exchange for the scrap, let me know.

But back to our tree. It had to go. When you start becoming destructive and bust my windows, you get your walking papers. I didn't watch while it toppled. It's probably a good thing. I can't stand killing a tree and I would have cringed when the tree crew asked if they could take a leak in our back yard. I probably shouldn't have made such a large pitcher of iced tea for the tree crew.

It's a good thing I didn't go all Wizard of Oz and plant a field of poppies.

With the tree down, I had to decide what to do with the empty space. I quickly decided on a flower bed with bird feeders and a bird bath. I worked, sweated, pulled up grass, tilled the soil, planted the flowers and then approached my husband with a bit of distressing news. I needed a water hose within close proximity to the flower bed in order to keep the flowers alive. And, looky, there's a faucet RIGHT NEXT TO the new flower bed.

Let me tell you something about Mr. G. He has a hatred of water hoses because he doesn't like getting concrete wet. Seriously. Joan Crawford hated wire hangers. My husband hates wet concrete. He once scolded me because the water from my pretty flowering pot was draining and getting the front stoop wet. He apparently thought I was going out there and wildly sloshing the water into the pot and all over the concrete with the nifty watering can he bought me so I could avoid using the hose. He didn't realize pots have little holes in the bottom to allow for drainage. He's got issues. Deep, deep, deep and mystifying issues.

Now I'm not exactly certain what is so bad about wet concrete. With mental illness, it's really best not to peel that onion. Trust me on this. I've tried sympathetic looks. I've tried soothing tones. I've tried a little soft music. Mr. G. just isn't willing to crack open his sheer and utter insanity on this issue.

So Mr. G. got a pained look on his face when I mentioned the need for a hose. Have I mentioned the new flower bed is adjacent to the driveway? We're not talking about a wet sidewalk; we're talking about getting a giant slab of concrete wet. Imagine if Mr. G. had to see that every time he roared into the driveway in his little Mazda. So he tried to change the subject. Then he questioned why I couldn't just tote my watering can back and forth. After filling it up in the sink, of course. No need to use any of the existing hoses! The concrete might get wet. I explained that I really didn't feel like making six or seven trips to the kitchen sink to water the flower bed every other day. So Mr. G. made a counteroffer. He would water the flower bed. And he did! All of ZERO times. When I questioned him about it, he looked at me and said: "You didn't really believe me, did you?"