Musings on New Year's Eve

Here are (some of) my resolutions for the coming year. . . . Take time or make time to connect with family and friends and pets Time to travel & expand perspectives Time to meet new people, explore & help or encourage others

--Dr. Seuss--Horton the elephant tried to protect everyone. "A person's a person, no matter how small." Time to read & learn Time to dream

--Cinderella's Coach (from the Disney movie) Have a Happy New Year! Bonne Année!

Forget the Educational Holiday gifts. Go for Action Toys!

Take it from me, someone who bought her kids educational toys for too many years. When my kids were about 10 or 12, I wanted to get them an educational Christmas present. You know, the mini-science lab that leads to a hobby. I had been reading about incredible observational feats of 17th-century astronomers (like viewing the moons of Jupiter) with a very rudimentary telescope. Hummm, a telescope might be fun. I called an astronomy professor, who spoke to me at great length. He asked what we wanted to view, but then the conversation quickly went beyond my basic understanding. He advised a reflector. --I hope this won’t be another telescope that sits in a closet! --Oh no! I assured him. Of course, we encountered problems with the telescope. Too much magnification meant we could see surface features (not the entire celestial body). We also had a problem with calibration. Very quickly, that telescope went in the closet but all the kids’ friends had action toys that still worked. Just this fall, my daughter and I were clearing out a closet in France. --Do you know what this is? She pointed to long, narrow box. --No. . . . --The telescope! Not only had I bought the kids an educational present, but I had moved it to France, where we had the perfect conditions for night time viewing (e.g., no light pollution) but no one to help with calibration. So before you consider purchasing that perfect educational gift, check with me. I’ve still got a telescope in my closet. . . .

The Mail Gets Through but Sometimes Via a Circuitous Route

Years ago when I was at Anthony Seeger Campus School, a missionary came to our class to talk about her experience in Africa. One of the things she showed us was an envelope addressed with just the words, Miss Kathryn Eye, Africa. The letter, which was from a small child, eventually arrived.

Recently too, I sent a box of childhood toys to my son in New England at a time when he was moving. Three post offices kept me updated of efforts to locate the package, insisting that each client and each piece of mail is important to them (along with the 554 million pieces of mail handled daily). That box, even without a tracking number, was located.

This past Jul 19, I sent a baby present to my nephew and wife. I later learned the French post office only holds packages for two weeks before they are returned to the sender. The package, which contained a Clifford the dog and very small clothes for a newborn, just found its way back to my house (Dec. 14). Needless to say, the clothes no longer fit. But Clifford may travel again.

Do not open til Christmas. Jamais la vie!

Just the other day we were talking about shipping Christmas presents to an address where my son, notorious for opening presents early, cannot find them. A previous year, we told him the presents were for Uncle Bob, a fictitious person we invented to prevent him from tearing into packages. My daughter is about the same in her enthusiasm for opening presents early. Me, I believe in waiting until Christmas morning!

Then, a box arrived on my doorstep. My son had texted me to say he had shipped me a present. I could open it early. Me? Open early! Jamais la vie! Never. I like to wait until Christmas morning, I reminded him. Two days passed. That box sat in the hall. Maybe if I just opened the outside box to peek. Well, he did say I could open it early.

A Nespresso milk frother! Perfect for a cappuccino. When we were in Paris in late September, two cafés refused to make us cappuccino. So maybe I should say that I never open presents early. . . unless they come early!

When Nothing Grows in My Garden

My dream would be an apartment with at least two balconies, facing different directions for the sun. While in the South of France, it’s easier to find an apartment with a balcony, in this part of Florida, it’s much easier to find a house. So I am facing a yard where nothing colorful seems to grow. I have some palms and laurel oaks, but few flowers. Starting a flower bed is pretty overwhelming. That’s space you’ve just cleared of the mesh of roots and weeds, requires more than a car trunk full of little plants and bags of dirt or mulch. After many attempts at a border, I know better. Go for something smaller, more manageable.

I have started with several flower pots, some for shade and others for sun. I got the idea from walking through the Florida Tech campus. The landscape folks had transformed a very boring area (known as the “quad”) into inviting spaces with the addition of pots and borders.

My first attempts at flower pots (now known as container gardening) involve a $16.99 cobalt blue ceramic pot from a Ross Department store, hot pink geraniums, alyssum and small pansies in pots that take sun. Coleus and dusty miller and New Guinea impatiens are for the partial sun spots. I was hoping to find more draping or trailing plants. But that will be on the next trip to the nursery. Although I would still prefer a balcony overflowing with ivy geraniums and roses, these spots of color will do for now. The plants have a good chance of survival, and I am not overwhelmed by borders.

Post-Thanksgiving/ Black Friday Musings

So what was it like, Black Friday, I asked a Target employee in electronics. Well-mannered crowds who thanked him for working on Thanksgiving. The popular items—iPads, iPods and phones. And yes, the shelves are socked today for those of you with some cash in your wallet. I’m not sure I envy these people, standing in line for hours or even days, but at least they have ideas! Our family tuned in to the Macy’s Parade, but this year we quickly tuned out—too many breaks to non-parade events (like singers), boring floats (can’t McDonalds do better than the clown—I'm partial to the fries and soda)—and some ho-hum announcers.

With major ongoing cleanup efforts from Sandy , couldn’t the media have cut away to some of the scenes— the more than 10,000 Thanksgiving meals served by Occupy Sandy and more than 26,000 by the city of New York to affected areas? The focus of what used to be Thanksgiving is now spending. According to media reports, 247-million shoppers (in-store and online) spent an average of $423 (for a total of $59.1 billion—those figures may be updated later this week). One economist predicted spending would subside—after all, so much was spent in this initial Thanksgiving-Black Friday weekend. For those of you with pocket change remaining, there’s always Powerball (with $425-million).

A lot of you have gotten shopping underway, but I am still seeking ideas. . . . .

Thumps in my attic, mice and cookies and wayward wildlife

If you have read If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (Numeroff, 1985), you’ll remember the potential consequences of sharing a cookie with a mouse. You find yourself in a demanding relationship. . . . It started with occasional thumps in the attic, then evolved into what sounded like wild parties. Even my cats sat vigilant, watching the ceiling above my closet, as if something might fall through. A wildlife trapper left baited cages. And early the first morning, I saw a mouse had been caught. He was much too small to be the party animal. But still he had been caught and needed to be released quickly. A rooftop in the Florida sun is no place to be. Waiting for the trapper to return (eight hours later), I moved the mouse to the shade, gave him a name (Vito, nicknamed after a famous tango dancer) as well as some fruit to keep him hydrated. We were starting to bond. By noon, I moved the mouse down the ladder to a shaded brush area under a tree. By now, I have posted his picture on Facebook, and he’s getting lots of “likes.”

But he was wildlife and didn’t want to be caged. All those committees I served on monitoring the treatment of laboratory animals in a university made me question guidelines, concerning captured wildlife. By early afternoon, I had called numerous government agencies, each sending me elsewhere--county animal control, Fish and Wildlife Commission, Florida Department of Agriculture and within that agency, the Department of Entomology and Pest Control, which deals with rodents. My mouse, a rodent! I left a message, and to date, no one has responded. Finally, I called a friend at a school of veterinary medicine. We agreed--the most humane course would be to release the mouse to the nearby woods. The trapper arrived just as I was preparing the release mission. I plan to learn more about the guidelines for treatment of captured wildlife. My mouse was not demanding, but would he have been if we had started with a cookie?