Today, as I drove around our charming little town in search of a USB cord (didn’t find one, but if you’re looking for candles I can show you ten shops within spitting distance of each other) I realized that I need no such cord, as I have several Moses Pendleton photos that I’ve not yet posted. Quite a few actually. There are are a series of red roses that I absolutely refuse to post here because they are rich and sensual and textured and beautiful, and the photos really do lose something when I reformat them for the blog. I just can’t do it, but hope to get prints of them from him someday. I know exactly where I will hang them, Moses, if you ever figure out how to print them.

But I recalled a photo that Moses sent me over a month ago that I just love.  Here it is:

Photo by Moses Pendleton

I love the way the two chairs seem to be just barely touching hands, facing into the late afternoon sun together. Rooted there, like a lovely old married couple.

Then, wonder of wonders, I found a place that sells …well I have no idea what the hell it’s called but you take the photo card from the camera and stick it in this little plastic thing and then you insert the erect male end of the little plastic thing into one of the female receptors on your computer and, if the camera and the plastic thing really love each other, boys and girls, they will make pictures together!

I know somebody here tried to explain this contraption to me once. Maybe somebody knows what it’s called.

So now I’ll post some photos I took during our last snow storm.  I hate to post my photos on the same page as Moses’s, but mine is a sort of photo essay. It’s the story, more than the composition that’s important.

This is Holly in the snow.  The snow makes Holly feel quite alive and full of herself.

She believes that the cold gives her special powers that will enable her to conquer all larger mammals.  Here is Daphne after Holly has gone for a muzzle-grab:

Oops. She tried the same move on Lulu and was forced to offer an immediate surrender:

Here they are having a little conversation, working out the terms of the surrender. Somebody looks slightly humbled:

But all is soon forgotten. Holly will walk behind the other dogs for a little while. Until her special powers return:

Horses in snow:

A field of white:

Just this today. No poem. The photo is unaltered. The sky was that.

I was in the city today and had plans to meet a friend for lunch.  I noticed that the stores on Fifth Avenue already have their holiday decorations up.  Seemed odd on such a mild day.  But beautiful.

I drove past this little park on East 51st street that I had never seen before:

After I parked, I walked past it and saw people enjoying themselves in the area.  I don’t know if you can see it in the photo, but there’s a lovely waterfall in the back.  There was a big sign explaining that it was a “private space open to the public” and there was a long list of things you could and could not do.  You could eat this, but not that, drink this, not that, etc. Well, with the beautiful trees and the waterfall, I decided it was the nicest private space open to the public I have ever seen, so I took a few photos and was careful to eat and drink nothing.

After lunch I brought my friend back to look at the space.  All the people had gone, but I noticed a sign that I hadn’t see when I took the other pictures.

Still can’t read it?  It said this:

Okay, Private Space Open To The Public, get over yourself!  I mean you’re beautiful and everything, but no photos?  You’re too important to be photographed?

I now am going to make it my mission to mark the seasons by the changes in the Private Space Open To The Public. I am now officially its paparazzi stalker.

Photo by Moses Pendleton

Yes, time for a fresh dose of Moses. I’m not sure if I’ve shared this here, but Moses has tens of thousands of photographs of his sunflowers. He also has thousands of hours of video footage of them. You wouldn’t think that something as static and motionless as a row of plants would make for interesting video footage. I’ll just say that his sunflowers don’t stand still when Moses is in their midst. You wouldn’t believe the energy in those fields when he is there.

I think this photo is my favorite sunflower photo so far. No, okay, this is my favorite, but the one above ranks a close second. That’s actually Cynthia Quinn, Moses’ partner and collaborator on the left. She’s so petite, and the sunflower so large, that at first I thought that perhaps Moses had dressed up another sunflower as the grim reaper. The photo doesn’t do the beautiful Cynthia justice. This is what she really looks like:


I lifted the Cynthia photos from the web and couldn’t find the name of a photographer to credit. Sorry, amazing photographer.

Anyway, here’s a spooky poem to go with the spooky photo. I really love October in New England.

Spellbound
by Emily Brontë
The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.
The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.
Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing dear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.

Awwwwwwww!

We’re having our bathroom done. First, the shower needed to be fixed, and then we determined that the shower needed to be replaced and now the entire bathroom is being gutted and rebuilt. It’s the bathroom next to our bedroom. I really hate the term “master” bath, I always have, since I was a child, but it’s the bathroom attached to our bedroom.

I’m sharing this because they just started the demolition of the former bathroom yesterday. I left in the morning, to work elsewhere, and when I arrived home, the dogs met me at the door, just freaking out. They were explaining to me, with their contortions and whining and carrying on, that they had allowed strange men into the house having no idea that their intention was to attack my bathroom with jackhammers. Daphne and Lulu really seemed to feel reponsible for the whole thing. The noise was incredible. There were two jackhammers going in my bathroom.

As the workers finished for the day, I looked at the gaping holes where our shower and tub used to be and asked if any of the holes led outside. “We’ve had problems with bats,” I explained.

The nice jackhammer guy (let’s call him Jack) said, “No, don’t worry, those holes just lead into your attic.”

“Oh my God,” I screamed, ducking and running from the bathroom, “our attic is FILLED with bats.”

“Um…You live in a house with an attic filled with bats?”

“Yes,” I said. Then, seeing his perplexed look, I quickly explained that we didn’t stock the attic with bats. If it was our choice they’d live elsewhere.

Jack asked why we didn’t have the bats removed and I told him about the bat/wildlife removal expert (we call him Batman) we called in last spring to help us with the bat problem. First, Batman wanted to get rid of the bats in the early spring, by sealing their tiny entrances and egresses, before they had their babies. The bats would be having babies in a few weeks, Batman explained, and if he sealed them from the house after the babies were born, the mothers wouldn’t be able to return to them and the babies would die. He started to explain what a stinky situation that would be, but he had already lost me with the words,”mothers” and “dead babies.”

“Are the mothers pregnant now?” I asked Batman.

“Yes, he said, “so you really need to get them out before they have the babies.”

“But where will they go? What if they can’t find another unoccupied attic in time?” I said. Somehow, even pig-faced, flying rodents become somewhat precious to me when I am forced to consider their babies. My attic was, in fact, a bat nursery, and I had to think of the mothers, all plump and expectant, all warm and safe, hanging by their toes from the ceiling.

I determined that that the bats must be allowed to remain in the attic until after the babies were born and able to fly, and then Batman could seal off the house.

Well, the spring came and went and Batman became very busy, but we decided there was no rush. The bats were not coming into the part of the house where we live. They live in a crawl-space part of the attic where nobody goes. So, we passed the summer watching the bats soaring and dipping over the fields each evening, and I felt a sense of proud ownership toward them, I have to admit. These bats had been born and bred in my own house and they were a fine-looking bunch. These Leary bats are special, I told myself, then I screamed and shuddered and ran into the barn when one swooped a little too close to my head.

Several weeks ago, we got another call from Batman. If we wanted the bats out by winter, now was the time. They would be hibernating soon.  I had thought bats were migratory for some reason and when I heard that they hibernate, visions of sleeping bear cubs came to my mind. Visions of warm, cuddly, sleeping mammals.

“Where will they go?”

“Someplace else,” Batman cried. The man’s job is to get rid of bats and he was losing his patience with me. I was having a hard time letting go. They weren’t just any bats, now. They were our bats.

So I think you know how the story ends. I imagined my bat families flying from house to house, knocking on eaves and loose clapboards, only to be driven off by the territorial winged residents already there (and bats hate those bat houses, we have them all over our property – it’s the one place where bats won’t roost). I imagined them huddled in a tree, the mother’s frozen wing wrapped around her young, the father wringing his disgusting claws in despair, and the little ones asking, “Why can’t we go back in the warm house?”

“Because the selfish witch lady wants the whole place to herself, dear one.”

I explained all this to Jack and I saw him catch the eye of another guy in his crew a couple of times. He wasn’t exactly backing away, as I told him the story of the bats in the attic. He was leaning away. Just leaning.
There was no way for him to cover up all the holes to the attic, last night, so he shut the bathroom door, and sealed the bottom with duct tape, just to keep anybody from crawling over and offering their rabid thanks.
Today, when Jack returns and unseals the bathroom, I’ll take a picture of the mess for you all.

I have begun informing select people (just my friends, my frenemies, my agent, former editors, the New York Times, my shrink, complete strangers, my pets, the internet and basically anybody within earshot) that I’m writing a new book. The new book is a memoir about all the animals I’ve known and loved.

For some reason the first thing people ask me about is the title. Well, actually, because of my frothing, spitting enthusiasm describing the book, the first thing most people ask is, “When is the book coming out – later this month?” Then I have to mumble something about the fact that I don’t have an exact publication date, as I haven’t actually written very much of the book yet. The next thing they ask is, “What’s it going to be called?”

I don’t really know what to call the book, so the other day I wandered into my favorite bookshop to look at some books and was surprised to see that most of the books in the pet/memoir genre share very similar titles. Marley (or Alex or Bloodfang) and Me seems to be a very popular template for a bestselling book about a pet. Also, A (dog/cat/fish) named (Skip/Dewey/ Stinky) has worked quite well for authors in the past.
As I studied the titles, however, instead of becoming inspired, I was actually forced to recall how much I really hate these books about pets that were so naughty and deranged that they nearly drove their owners out of their minds,caused them to divorce, bankrupted them, cost them their jobs, ritualistically befouled their homes with their own waste, crippled their elderly parents and caused them to miscarry their babies. I hate these books because, in the end, the authors always realize that the pet wasn’t sent by the devil to destroy their life, but in fact, was a gift from God. It wasn’t the pet who was flawed, it was the human. In the closing chapter, when the beloved rascal is drawing his last breath through his greying muzzle, we understand that the pet is actually more humble and selfless and loving than we humans can ever strive to be.

And by the time the author has dried his or her tears, he (or she) has a bestseller on his (her) hands.

My book isn’t really like that. My pets do all the stuff above, but without the blessed goodness. A suitable title for my book would not be Sneakers and Me, but rather, Sneakers Bit Me (subtitled: Every Day, For Ten Years, At Mealtime). Or: Mark Kicked Me (subtitled: In The Head, Hard).

How about Lulu Come Home (subtitled: Get In Here, You Effing Moron?

I don’t see much hope for my book if people only want to read about kind and giving animals. Why can’t I have a pet who understands the real meaning of life? A sweet, loving pet who cares more about racing in the rain with me than gobbling kibble and attacking people?

How about Pongo’s Ashes?

As many of you know, we have been touring colleges with our daughter, Devin. On a recent tour of Vassar College, our guide explained to us why the hallways in the main building are so very wide. It seems that there was a theory at the time of the buiding’s construction (1860s), that educating women could make them sterile, as it would force all the blood to rush from their ovaries to their formerly barren little brains. In order to prevent this from happening, extra-wide hallways were constructed so that the women, wearing wide hoop skirts, could exercise by walking and running past each other, up and down the corridors.

It all had to do with forcing the blood back to the ovaries where it belonged.

Devin told me that she had just recently learned about this outdated theory in an evolution class, and she told me how funny everybody in her class thought it was.

“It is funny,” I said, and then I laughed and laughed …and then my laughing sort of petered out because I realized that the Vassar designers were absolutely correct about this ovary/brain connection, and there was really nothing funny about it at all. Suddenly everything was painfully clear. I had one ovary removed during a surgery several years ago and since then I have been unable to a) remember to buy paper towels, b) follow the simplest directions given by tennis instructors, and c) understand what’s really at stake in Iran. Oh, and d) be certain that the comma, rather than the semi-colon is the correct punctuation in this type of a,b,c list.

When I had both ovaries, you should have seen me. I was smart. Wicked smart. Though I wasn’t technically a genius, I could hold my own in a conversation that had to do with topics other than dogs or sex. Now, that’s all I really know anything about. I know pretty much everything there is to know about sex and dogs, and almost nothing to do with anything else.

I’m working with half a brain. It’s so obvious.

I went on the Vassar website to find out more about this theory, as I really plan to do some research into this. Not all old ideas are bad ideas. “An apple a day” really does keep the doctor away, we are now relearning, and I intend to prove that a woman’s intellect is indeed tucked away in her ovaries and that is why I appear to be semi-lobotomized most of the time.

I didn’t find anything about this ovary/brain connection on the college website, but I did come across an encyclopedia that listed some famous visitors to Vassar. One of these was writer/philosopher William James, who gave a lecture on “Psychology and Relaxation” in 1896. He scolded the young Vassar ladies for ‘trying to wear a bright and interested expression all the time” instead of “the stolid expression and coldfish eye of their European sisters.’”

Ah yes, the “coldfish eye.” I know it well. I get it every time I step off of an airplane onto foreign soil. I devoted an entire book to being on the receiving end of the “coldfish eye.” Well, William James was right and I’m going to give up my grinning, drooling affable countenance in favor of the coldfish eye, starting today. The coldfish eye makes you look smarter, it really does.

Now any questions about dogs? Sex?

Yesterday I had another tennis lesson with Val. We were hitting the ball back and forth and he had me doing this drill where you hit the ball cross-court, then hit the ball straight ahead, then run over to the backhand court, hit the ball cross-court, then straight ahead, etc.

It was quite fun but I was often hitting shots into the net. I believed this was because I wasn’t swinging properly. Val said, “You’re a little stiff.” I thought he meant my shoulders and I said that yes, my shoulders were a little stiff. Val said, “No, your legs. When you run, you don’t bend your knees.”

“I don’t bend my knees when I run?”

“No,” said Val. And then I was treated to a demonstration of the way I run. Imagine a person running who has no knees. In order to create any momentum, you must tilt your upper body forward and then the ramrod straight limbs sort of stagger along behind you, Frankenstein style. When I saw Val do this, I instantly realized that a) I was watching the funniest thing I’ve seen since Don Knotts died; and b) he was, in fact, not trying to be funny but was doing a dead-on impersonation of me, running. It turns out that for these five years of trying to learn tennis, I have not bent my knees. Not while swinging. Not while running. I don’t know why – the knees bend.

I recalled, then, a riding lesson I took a few years back. I had just steered my horse around a course of jumps, sending rails flying and causing many gasps of fright from onlookers. When I pulled up my horse, the instructor said, “Ann, the problem with you is …” and then she paused, trying to find the exact words. Finally, she shook her head and said, definitively, “You’re a spaz.”

I had an appointment in the city today, and I was late. Why? Because, as I was driving past Greyledge Farm, I saw a Black Angus calf stretching his neck up as high as he possibly could so that he could peer in the window of the barn. It was INSANELY cute.

I had to pull over (sorry white honking minivan, you were tailgating though, Mama, you know you were) to take a picture. Of course, when I approached on foot, the calf stopped looking into the window and turned his attention to me:

His mom was a little suspicious at first. She put herself between me and her calf. “I’ll veal chop you,” was her message. Look at those eyelashes.

Then, when I began taking photos, she saw what I was about and she did what all mothers do in such a situation. She started fussing with her boy, trying to make him look all nice for the pictures:

Then he was clean as a whistle and all ready for his portrait, so Mom stepped aside:

So I made a big deal – heaped on the praise, tickled baby’s nose, scratched Mommy’s ears, complimented her on her eyelashes and slim waist and ample bosom. And then I was late.

I’ve blogged before about how I have recently taken up tennis, and how it has become a bit of an obsession. I’m a little frustrated, at present, with my lack of skills. I just want to be great at tennis, is that too much to ask? I don’t mean Venus and Serena great. Just great enough to have people not feel suicidal when they realize that they’re stuck with me as their partner in doubles.

I occasionally play with a doubles group that consists of women who are all better players than me. They’ve been playing longer. They’re better athletes. They have better skills. When it comes time to partner up, I have to gaze off into the horizon and pretend that I’m all absorbed in the beauty of the nearby dumpsters, so as not go through the squirming agony of watching the women try to shove their way over to the other side of the net. The good sport who is last to move away, always bravely chirps, “Okay, Ann and I will be partners then!” And of course, she braces herself for a battering by our opponents.

Tennis is a gentleman’s sport, thank God. It’s just not polite to whack your partner on the back of the head with your racket when she hits a volley right into the net, again. Instead, my dear, patient partners always begin the game with encouraging words like, “Nice try!” or “That’s a tough shot!” (this last, said through gritted teeth, after the ball lands squarely in my racket and, in a fit of astonished excitement, I send it soaring over our opponents, over the base line, over the fence and into the parking lot).

Right now, we’re sort of between seasons. In the summer, we play outdoors, but the rest of the year, we play in an indoor tennis court. The fall season starts in a week, and in preparation, I have been taking private lessons from a man named Val Stoiana. Val is a genius. He fixed my forehand swing (my backhand has always been stronger) and taught me how to put more spin on my serve IN ONE LESSON! He yells at me, and insists I do better. He’s from an eastern European country and teaches by drilling, not coddling. I can’t get enough.
I know I’m late to the party, but I want to become better at learning. Working with the Little Britches kids, and observing my own kids over the years, has made me become very interested in the way we process information and gain new skills. I have a lot of excess energy and my mind tends to wander. I’ve noticed that my kids’ friends who are the best students, with the highest SAT scores, are not necessarily the brightest bulbs. They just are just able to receive, process and then retain information in what seems to be a relatively effortless and systematic way. Their minds don’t wander the way mine does. Somebody will be explaining to me how to hold a tennis racket and my mind will wander right off the court and into the next week, when I have a dinner planned with an old friend, and haven’t quite figured out what I will wear.

But Val has turned out to be a perfect coach for me. He keeps me in the moment by sending balls at me again and again and again – forehand, backhand, forehand, forehand then an overhead lob. There’s no time to fret about my book, about kids, about next week’s dinner. Just hit the ball. In the sweet spot. Again. Again. Again.