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I have no qualms about killing bugs. Flies, gnats, roaches, creepy-crawlies of most varieties. I was the passenger in my friend Melissa Greenwald’s car one day when a bug landed on her dash. Unconsciously and mid-sentence my hand flew down with a killer blow. She laughed about how Southern I was and put on an accent and mocked me. It was pretty funny.

And there was one morning at work when someone spotted a roach in the hallway. Everyone was scared (!!!). They called for my help so I rounded the corner and saw it down the hall. Jay was throwing paper plates at it with results that you can imagine were less than satisfactory. “Excuse me, Jay, let me take care of this,” I said taking off my sandal. One swift slam and we scooped up the ex-roach with one of the paper plates and tossed it in the garbage.

Spiders, however, command my respect and I won’t kill them. When I see them in my apartment I say “Hello there, Mr. Spider, what’s shakin? Where’s yer web? Thank you for eating my bugs.” We’ve had so many sightings recently of the same spider that I am considering naming him. Last week I opened the curtain after my shower and saw him hanging less than a foot away from my face. I blew on him a little hoping he’d move up or down, but he was stubborn. Since I needed to use the room I got a piece of tissue for him to climb on and placed him on the floor behind the toilet.

Next day Chris and I saw him on the wall in the living room. Last night he was spotted on the floor under the coffee table. I followed him around on my hands and knees for a bit trying to get him to climb on my hand. Chris told me to be careful because he might bite, but I don’t believe that.  We’re taking good care of him - why would he bite me?  But he wouldn’t crawl on my hand, either, so I directed him to crawl under the TV stand.  I certainly don’t want anyone to accidentally step on him.

I hate to complain about days with “nice” weather, but can’t we just have a sweet, slow progression into Spring without jumping to Summer?  What happened to days and days in a row where the highs are in the low 60s?  Am I the only person in the world who doesn’t crave the heat?

Left the house at 9:30 this morning and walked to the gym.  It’s only a 10-15 minute walk and when I got there I was sweating.  No.  I do not like this.  9:30am and already 65 degrees?  On April 3rd?   And these cloudless skies are killing me.   My walk back home was worse than the walk there because there was zero shade on either side of the street.   After a 2 and a half hour workout I need time to cool down and that just didn’t help matters at all.  Gah!

Winter or Summer, I choose winter.  Never thought I’d feel that way, but there it is.

Davis Square is a great place to live.  The Boston Globe’s online site boston.com did a survey recently of readers’ favorite square and Davis won, running against Kendall (I think), Central, Porter and Harvard.  Yes, it beat Harvard Square.

Davis is perfect because it’s Somerville surrounded by Cambridge on two sides, so it’s artsy, forward thinking and yet has its feet on the ground.  It’s not touristy, it’s got a real “center,” tons of restaurants and bars and shops and the population is a nice mix of locals, Tufts runoff,  mature professionals, families and artists.  I wouldn’t be surprised if all of Somerville contained more musicians than any other part of Massachusetts.

All that said, there is something in Davis that scares me.  It’s a restaurant/nightclub called Sagra.

As I sit here at my desk in my bedroom, which faces Highland Avenue, I hear the effects of this blight on my neighborhood.  Sagra attracts a crowd that simply does not belong here and which is embodied clearly by MTV’s “Jersey Shore.”  Club-going partiers,  girls almost-wearing clothes and stumbling around in heels trying to balance their cleavage and guys who are more Axe body spray and hair gel than man.  All of them are loud loud loud and have so much misdirected or unchanneled energy in them that I’m frightened to even walk past on weekend evenings.  With good reason, too.

When Chris and first started dating he was up late and I was asleep (what else is new?) and he heard a commotion on the street.  He went outside to check it out and witnessed a fight.  Not only did he see some punches thrown, but he saw a guy get hit and then fall backward so hard and so solid that he could hear his head crack on the sidewalk.  For months he said that sound haunted him, it was so visceral and disturbing.

Davis Square isn’t for melees and testosterone-filled macho “who you talkin’ to” fist-fights.  It’s also not for hoochie mamas and “like, ohmigod” spouting bimbos.  Begone foul pestilence!  Stay in the ‘burbs or Faneuil Hall and the clubs near North Station, please!   I moved here because you were not here.   If I had to choose I’d keep my white trash local yobbo neighbors (the ones who were up at 10am last July 4th starting a giant fire in their hibachi and drinking quarts of beer.  The ones who never did any actual barbeque’ing and who turned in for the night at 2pm) over this unsavory element any day of the week.  My WT neighbors may be ignorant or uneducated, but they keep to themselves and don’t stir shit up.  I appreciate that.

Last night I watched Twilight.  I’d never seen it before, though I was familiar with the storyline and the characters.  Frankly, I wasn’t expecting it to be very good, which I think is the best place to start.  (Chris gets annoyed with me that I rarely get excited about things.   But if I get all worked up like he does there’s a strong possibility that I’ll come away disappointed, so I try to maintain an even keel.)

Well guess what?  I liked it.  A lot.  And was I surprised.  The entire look of the movie was sumptuous, the soundtrack was amazing and the feel of the whole thing was spooky, seductive and hypnotic.  Who knew?  I guess everyone but me.

I can’t imagine any girl who wouldn’t want to be Bella.  She’s experiencing the ultimate female teenage fantasy, getting the attention of the handsome, brooding boy who doesn’t talk to anyone outside his small group.  Finding out he’s a vampire?  Bonus.  Maybe that was just my own teenage fantasy.

Since I’m all growed up now, ha ha ha, my vampire obsession from youth has faded.  For that reason I’ve been both surprised with the recent (fairly) resurgence of interest in them as well as annoyed by it.  Annoyed in the selfish way of someone gets when they’re “over” something, a real been there, done that feeling, you know?  I read the Anne Rice vampire books in the 80s and had my “goth” phase.  (Fortunately with my pale complexion I never needed that white pancake makeup I hear post-goths refer to these days.)  The curmudgeon in me mentally shakes my fist at the new wave/goth/punk kids and yells, “You’re not inventing anything, you know!!!  We did it first!”

Still, the vampire thing remains interesting and is retold again and again.   I’ve not watched True Blood, but the friends of mine who follow it tell me it’s amazing.  Then there’s Vampire Diaries on TV and I’ve never seen that.  Let The Right One In is one of my favorite movies now.  It’s a stark and haunting story about a child vampire set in a bleak Scandinavian suburb.   I’ve been lent the book and plan to read it, too.

It’s cool how people retell and reimagine the myth, too.  In Twilight the vampires never sleep; how amazing would it be to not need sleep?  Think how much more you could get done!  And daylight just makes them appear to be gold flecked and shiny.  In Let the Right One In, the vampires sleep during the day and incinerate if sunlight touches them.  This is much more in the traditional vein.

One final thing, the house the vampire family has in the woods is my dream house.  I can’t stop thinking about it.  Reminds me of my friend Doug Schatz’s parents house in high school in Nashville.  It was beautiful and cool and I coveted it like crazy.

Whatever happened to the little girl who loved the humid summer weather?  I used to really dig the heat; days at the lake swimming by the dock, running around in my shorts and swimsuit, and oh, those summer nights.

Sadly I grew up.   And because I did so much of my coming-of-age up here in New England I doubt I’ll ever change back.  It’s true.  My birth father, Johnny, wonders if I’m really his spawn because he likes it hot.  The hotter the better.  Hot and sunny, if I’m not mistaken.  Which is weird to me.  I never did worship the sun.

Anyhoo, Spring arrived Saturday (at approximately 1pm est) and Tony, knowing it was going to be beautiful weather, invited me for walkies.  YAY.  Tony (”Anthony”) being now a full-time working lawyer and me being a full-time loser we’ve had precious little time together.  This was going to be one big uninterrupted stretch of catch-up time.

Actually, we DID have drinks a few Friday nights ago downtown and it was a blast.   But there’s always more to talk about, iddin’t there?  Plus I missed he and Sean’s Oscar Party thanks to a bellyache (or was it bellyachin’…?) and I know it was a great time.  blurg.

He came all the way to Davis to meet me.  We walked through Somerville to Cambridge, got bubble teas sans the bubbles (sometimes they just get in my way).  Ambled down Mass Ave to skirt Harvard Square and continue to Central, through which we utilized a parallel back street to avoid the crazies.  Down along MIT, across the smoot bridge with a left onto Newbury Street.  That was until we realized how stupid it was to deal w/all the other pedestrians when we had no real shopping or dining intentions so we veered over to the Commonwealth Mall.  To Arlington Street, through the Garden, up Charles Street in Beacon Hill where we stopped to eat appetizers the size of entrees.  We got polenta w/tomatoes etc,… and it tasted like polenta pizza (yum!) and risotto with asparagus and mushrooms.  This was a lunch that ended up being my dinner.

Throughout it all we chatted and enjoyed the sun and clouds and people-watching.  Good times, I tells ya, good times.  Afterwards we took the red line at Charles going our opposite directions. I had a feeling I knew the length of walk we took since I’ve done pretty much the same walk before, but I gmap pedometer’ed it anyway and it was 6 miles.  I knew I wore the comfy sneakers for a reason.

Headline on boston.com.  That cracks me up.  Is smallish even a word?  Not according my Webster’s, but I think it’s only the 10th Edition.  Time to update.

It’s nice of that storm to pay us a visit, too.  I know how busy they can be, always on the move and waving a big wet hello to us terrestrials.  Hope it stays long enough for a cup of this interesting tea mom gave me called Eggnogg’n, “An Exceptional Winter Tea” by Bigelow.

Wow, I just looked it up on Bigelow’s website b/c I’d never heard of it before and mom only had the bags sans box.  Now this is adorable packaging.

Those penguins are having a blast!

Richard Austin Peterson, my dad, died today, 1PM CST. in Nashville, TN.

It’s true I’ve not been writing much on here or elsewhere.  No wonder I feel so groundless.  What’s going on with my family, in particular my dad, is a subject I’ve been avoiding.  I guess I’m figuring if I don’t tell people anything, they won’t ask me about anything and therefore I won’t have to talk about it.

Dad’s been in and out of the hospital since Dec. 16th for various reasons; complications from congestive heart failure, his defibrillator firing multiple times, fluid in/around his right lung compressing it and making it extremely difficult to breathe).  As I write he’s in.  At 77 years old he’s not ancient by any means, especially in this day and age, but my dad’s had health problems since he was a child.  This spate of hospital stays has been weighing on me and has taken up a lot of space in my mind.

Last Saturday I got a call from Michael, who’s been in Nashville with mom and dad for a while, saying dad would like us to come to his bedside.  “Us” being me and David, who lives in Kirkland, WA.  The previous Thursday dad had a procedure to attempt to remove the fluid around his lung, but it had filled back up and they weren’t sure about the cause.  I had asked on Thursday night if I should come down and he said let’s wait and see.  So when I got that call on Saturday (fresh my 2.5 hour ass-kicking at the gym) I ran home, went online, got tickets for a flight home 3 hours later and started packing.

I was in Nashville from Saturday night (1/24) through Wednesday morning and if I wasn’t with dad and the family at the hospital, I was on my way there or on my way from there to get something to eat.  My apologies to all the people I’d like to have contacted and seen, but dad was my priority and I couldn’t handle any distractions.

Michael and I got a short walk in Centennial Park where I took this shot.  I do love Tennessee clouds.

I wasn’t sure how long I should book my ticket for because I really didn’t know what was to expect  or what was going to happen.

I stayed at the hospital the first two nights because dad wanted me nearby.  By the third night I needed some real sleep so, despite dad’s mild protestations and after promising to return early morning on Tuesday, I slept at home in the guest room with my niece Elizabeth in the other twin bed.  Getting to be around her was one of the highlights of the trip.

There were discussions between dad and his doctors about various surgeries to remove the liquid around his right lung.  My feeling was that unless they could figure out what was causing the liquid to form and put a stop to it, surgery would be too risky an option.  And in his weakened state, I wasn’t sure his body could handle something so aggressive and intrusive.  By late Monday morning it had become apparent that the fluid was the result of an infection and the decision had been made to operate on Tuesday.

We had the last of our family meetings so that dad could make all his wishes known and get his ducks in a row before his surgery.   I made plans to fly back around the same time as Dave and Elizabeth so there’d be only one trip to the airport on Wednesday.  Here are David and EClaire in the lovely atrium as we waited out dad’s operation.

When we said goodbye he was still coming out of anesthesia, but I saw him eyes flutter when I kissed his forehead and he nodded his head when I squeezed his hand and said I loved him.

Michael called me on Thursday night to let me know Dad had eaten some and it sounded promising.  He’s seriously underweight and needs to pack on the calories so he’ll have strength to get around when he goes home.  The doctors told us he’d need about ten days of recovery in the hospital.  I’m crossing my fingers that my next visit to Nashville will be my loosely-planned trip in late March.

This entry is essentially an outline sketch of what’s been going on and I just want to apologize for any glaring omissions in my account here.   Mom mostly kept to herself during this visit, but she seems to be holding it together quite well.  Her leg has healed up nicely and she’s moving around at a faster pace than I’d expected with only a slight bit of a limp here and there.  She’s really amazing.

Blah blah blah, 2010, etc,… etc,… all I really want to point out at this very moment, as I watch my DVR’d Golden Globes from last Sunday night, is how ridiculous deep tans look.  Extra-specially if you’re someone who doesn’t have much melanin in your skin to begin with.

Like me, frinstanz.  I’d look frickin’ ridiculous with a lot of color in my skin.  When I was in Italy last June I did a real number on my face by wearing a face lotion sans SPF and ferrying myself all over Lake Como on the sunniest day of my trip.  The sun damage still shows, but thanks to my friend Lissa - a sun-worshiper, but I love her anyway, hee hee - who recommended a product that diminished those ugly freckles.  Thank you, Lissa!

But I digress.  It was Jeremy Piven who sparked this tan outburst from me.  They panned to him in the audience at the GGs and my mouth fell open.  Not only does his dark skin look unnatural and gross, but gauche.  Oh sure, let’s advertise to everyone how much money you have and how you can vacation in expensive places closer to the equator than the rest of us average people.

Am I being too harsh?  Is Chris right that I’m a bad drunk and have maybe just had too much wine tonight as I sit here alone (ok, not ALONE, Lucy is curled up next to me) watching my DVR’d programs from the previous week?  Hrmph.

Ok, that was a teensy itty-bitty mini rant.  Done.  Now I’m almost weeping because I just watched Meryl “T-Bone” Streep give her acceptance speech for Julie & Julia.  Meryl is the shit.

Chris swears I never get sick.  Last Wednesday night I could feel the tell-tale a-cold-is-coming scratchiness in my throat and said out loud that I was probably getting sick.  Thursday, Christmas Eve, and I was feeling weak, completely disinterested in food (which is a sure sign of illness to me, ha!) and my sore throat had gotten worse.  I was, however, capable of handling the day at work.  Unfortunately going to the Anzalone Seven Fishes Christmas Dinner was out.  I knew I couldn’t deal with exuberant Italians and didn’t want to go and be a downer.

Christmas Day I was still at 75%, in fact, the whole weekend that’s where I was, just hovering at the surface, not wanting to make things worse by actually doing anything or going anywhere.  But Saturday night I ventured out to hear some music (the lovely Jess Tardy and her band at Bull McCabe’s) at about 6:30 and participated in the sing-along she asked of the audience.  Then Chris and I went to see the new Coen Bros. movie, A Serious Man and went home.  BTW, don’t bother seeing that one.  That thing just went nowhere and we were disappointed as hell.  Just thankful our tickets were comped.  

It was when we got home I realized I was croaking out my half of our conversation.  This morning Chris called me Marge (Simpson) and because it takes so much effort to make words happen I’m sticking to nodding and hand gestures for communication.  Fortunately it’s just me and Lucy tonight and she’s amazing at charades.

On the whole, though, I feel alright.  No need for NyQuil or Sudafed or anything, just a sore throat and weakness.  Saturday morning I sadly couldn’t go to my favorite classes at the gym, but Chris has a point - I rarely get an illness that knocks me out.  Breaking my foot notwithstanding, of course, I haven’t been really sick since we began dating.  I’m just saying.