A mermaid like me, who lives in the middle of the country, is her happiest when she is near the ocean.
My birthday is coming up very soon.
Accordingly, I am almost ready to fly west, and I will land by the Pacific!

I shall be a good mermaid and will try to post photos during my week there.

When I return, life will be very busy again, with Year Two of my graduate school classes beginning on the 7th of September. I have also joined an all-women's fitness club, where I will be working out, taking classes, and working on my nutrition, weight, and wellness in the company of other women. That begins for me as soon as I return from the ocean, too.

So I will take this next week as Mermaid Time. Soon it will be fall. Do you love this end-of-summer time? I sure do.

I grew up in Essex Junction, Vermont. Essex Junction, called "the Village", is next to Essex, which is "the Town."

This past week, Essex was the site of a horrible crime. An angry and disturbed man, who had just broken up with his schoolteacher girlfriend, went on a shooting spree, killing two schoolteachers and wounding several other people, finally shooting himself. He survived, as did three of the people he shot. He shot the first woman at her home and then went to the elementary school where his estranged girlfriend would have been preparing her classroom for the fall. He didn't find her, and seems to have shot randomly at the school. A bullet went through a door and shot a teacher in the head, killing her. Other bullets hit other innocent people.

The two women who were killed were both in their 50s, had been elementary school teachers for their entire adult lives, and were important to their community. One of them grew up in the Village and I knew her younger siblings and have memories of her. She will be buried in her family plot which is right next to the family plot where I just visited my dad, uncle, and grandparents' graves. She will be one more grave for me to visit and honor.

The other woman is not someone I consciously knew, although she was apparently a waitress at the Lincoln Inn, the Greek restaurant in the center of the village, at various times in her life, so I probably did know her that way. She attended the little Congregational church where I was raised, and her funeral will be there. She was the mother of the gunman's estranged girlfriend.

We are all connected somehow. My heart is torn up about this horrible tragedy and how it affects the whole community there. Essex is one of those places where people feel safe, and the town is rather insular. Of course they have crime, but shootings are rare, and a school shooting is something new for Vermont, I believe.

There is the added burden of the race issue. The gunman was African-American, "not from here" as Vermonters would say, but from Massachusetts, and all of the victims were white. This is significant because Vermonters tend to be quite racist. I'm sorry to say it, but it's true. It is one of the whitest states in the country, and something like this only serves to fuel the fires of racism and divisiveness and hatred.

All of the people there have been on my mind and heart this week. I don't know how much national attention this story has received, but for me it's been a big story and I've been following it, and talking with Vermont friends, daily.

I just wanted to share the event with my blogger friends. We never quite lose our roots, do we? I can picture all of the places in this "story" and I know so many of the families who are affected, who are interviewed in the local paper, and who work at the school, police station, funeral home, etc. I go back every summer, so I've kept up my ties, even though we have no family living there anymore, just cemeteries to visit.

I feel sad about this, and angry too.

If you want to read about the events, go to www.burlingtonfreepress.com, where the coverage has been thorough. The only journalistic decision they've made which bothered me was the inclusion of photographs of the estranged girlfriend and her sister at the court hearing the next day. They are two grieving women, and I just didn't understand why their faces had to be in the news alongside the gunman's face.

Wealth, or at least the state of being financially secure, is something I never take for granted. I do feel "rich" in many ways, especially since breaking out of my marriage and finding my own path.

Today I was fortunate enough to be able to buy myself a new car. It is a new vehicle, although the dealership manager put 6,000 miles on it and then reduced the price accordingly. I am ecstatic. It's the car I wanted: a 2006 Dodge Magnum R/T, in a beautiful dark Midnight Blue, with gray leather interior. It is roomy, and powerful, with an 8 cylinder powerful HEMI engine. The car itself is really a Mercedes in Dodge land. Someone said it's both a luxury car and a station wagon, a muscle car, if you will! Apparently men really like driving these Magnums, especially with the V8 engine.

I rented a Magnum in California a while back and never forgot how much I loved it. This is my dream car, for now. I have a good long warranty, and I hope to have it for many years. Now I will let A.J. drive my old VW Golf 2001 without having to share it. He's proven to be a responsible driver thus far. I am still the owner of the Golf, but A.J. will drive it more often now.

My car comes home on Tuesday. It needs to be protected from paint and rust damage first. I love it. Did I mention that I love it?

And I don't take this for granted. I paid for the car in full, because that's how my financial advisor and I decided to do it. And that means I still have no debt...no financial debt in the world. How about that?

Two more photos from our fishing day at the Baptism River, which flows into Lake Superior. I like the photo that shows both mother and son. I guess if you know me well, you can see I'm looking what my grampa would term "a little peaked." I was really pale and sick to the stomach that day. Still, I'm happy we had our weekend, and I'm doing somewhat better at the moment. We're home now, and I just made myself some ginger-coconut soup (Thai). Ginger is good for what ails you.

Sunday morning at Lake Superior....ahhhhh...peace and quiet, and nowhere to be in a hurry.

We stayed in one side of the first floor of this beautiful log cabin home you see.
Our first view in the morning was the sun glistening off the big lake. We heard loons our first morning, and seagulls all day, and at night the stars were awesome.

There was a wedding taking place at the lodge next to us, but the wedding party and their guests seemed to have been taken by the peace and beauty of this place, and they avoided the rowdy party noise you might have expected.

This noon before we left, I went to the place where the bride and groom were married, outside by the lake, and found a beautiful gold ribbon on the ground. I kept it. I'm not sure why, but it seemed special, like this place.

Our Saturday at the Baptism River, 200 miles north of where we live in Minnesota. A.J. caught a beautiful trout, and after we photographed them together, he released it. We watched the trout regain its composure and balance and swim away. It was so quiet, and rather free of mosquitoes, that we both really enjoyed the Minnesota woods. I was feeling a bit ill Saturday, but there's nothing more healing than nature.

I have a great kid. Only he's not so much a kid anymore as a young man. And tonight? He's driving, without me, quite late at night, on the highway and then on a two-lane road, with a friend, coming home from a music night...and I'm so nervous! It's hard to get through the nerves. I know he has to amass these solo driving experiences in order to gain confidence and experience, but wow, it's hard on me.

He has had his license for two weeks now.

I will sleep well, once he's home!

I heard the coolest "oldie" on the radio today. I don't really remember it from when it was a hit, but I love it. Do you know this song?

by Every Mother's Son

Come On Down To My Boat

She sits on the dock a fishin' in the water uh, huh
I don't know her name she's the fisherman's daughter uh, huh
Come on down to my boat baby
Come on down where we can play
Come on down to my boat baby
Come on down we'll sail away.

She smiled so nice like she wants to come with me uh, huh
But she's tied to the dock and she can't get free
Come on down to my boat baby...
Fish all day sleep all night
Father never lets her out of his sight
Soon I'm gonna have to get my knife and cut that rope, cut that rope
Then we can go fishin' in my little red boat
Make you happy in my little red boat
so come on down to my boat baby...

Small Poems for the Winter Solstice
** Margaret Atwood **
1
A clean page: what
shines in you is not nothing,
though equally clear and blue

and I'm old enough to know
I ought to give up wanting
to touch that shining.

What shines anyway?
Stars, cut glass, and water,
and you in your serene blue shirt

standing beside a window
while it rains, nothing
much going on, intangible.

To put your hand
into the light reveals
the hand but the light also:
shining is where they touch.

Other things made of light:
hallucinations and angels.
If I reach my hands
into you, will you vanish?

Last night I dreamt of both my mother and my former mother-in-law. Two separate dreams, each so vivid. When I woke up today, I felt I'd spent time with each of them.

My mother-in-law appears at my old childhood home, in the dream, dressed in white (not an angelic white dress, but a "warm-up outfit" a la the 1980s, which is something she often wore, those shiny warm-up pants and matching jacket that make noise when you walk). She is outside in the driveway, and suddenly a group of bad men, actual Nazis in uniform, come toward her and toward us. She speaks directly to my son, who is Jewish on her side of the family and Christian on the other side, my side. She advises him, clearly, of exactly what to say to the Nazis when they approach him, and reassures him that if he says this, he will be fine.

Tell them, she says,
"There's a tree in the road and you won't be able to get around it."

This saying seems to empower us all, and we stand firm as the Nazis approach. I wake up.

The dream of my mother was longer and more drawn out. It was at an athletic festival, almost a Special Olympics, with many different events, some outdoors and some indoors. My mom is an observer. She is frail and confused, and as she was at the end of her life, on strong medication. But everyone she meets reaches out to help her. She wanders away from me and befriends people, has adventures, and then reappears at day's end.

My dream self was observing her having her many encounters and mishaps, and then finally the me in the dream physically meets back up with her, ready to take her to the car and get her home. She is somewhat irritated with me about something (again, a common experience near the end of her life), very drowsy from the meds, but as always, her witty and soulful self. I sort of pack her into the car and she sighs, half asleep, and asks me, "Where were you? I had a good day."

And that was my dream world last night.