Mrs. Thing's Page

How did you spend the holiday, if you celebrated one? I'm afraid I go the religious route, but it works for me. I know it doesn't work for everyone. We had Christmas Eve dinner with my husband's family (16 of the 19 of us) before the late church service, and my little family (3) opened gifts on Christmas morning and had a turkey dinner in the evening. I'm being very lazy, because Mr. Thing's and my boss gave the entire company time off with pay from Dec. 24 until January 5! He says it's safer an… Continue

I bought a book by Jacob Needleman that JC recommended, and it was so good I went out and bought "Lost Christianity" by the same author (he's written a slew of books on religion). I haven't read it yet (it's on my list...), but it's about the roots of Christianity and Christian doctrine, how they relate to other ancient religions, and how one can use this knowledge to have a deeper experience of God (if they so choose). There's a lot more to it than that, but those are three of the main themes.… Continue

I'm no good at memorizing. I have to work very hard at it, and if I ever have to recite something for an audience, my mind goes completely blank. So why does it seem I can recall the exact words to entire Python sketches? And why do they pop up at odd moments, unbidden by my conscious mind?

My daughter told me on Thursday night that she needed a medieval costume for school the following Tuesday, and that she did NOT want to go as a noble, because, as she said, "Nobles sucked!" I'm absolutely a… Continue

Spring has sprung on the Connecticut shoreline. The birds who are early nesters are already busy feeding babies, and our Red-Shouldered hawks are incubating. I can't see into the nest, so I don't know how many eggs there are, but Roger Tory Peterson tells me they usually lay 1-3 eggs that take 28 days to hatch. Cardinals work fast: the eggs take 13 days to hatch, and the nestlings take only 11 days to fledge. We had a nest last year, too, and got to see the whole process. The baby cardinals were… Continue

...maybe. A little.

I've been feeling kind of weepy today. I chalked it up to menopause and did my best to carry on. I was out running errands, and when I got home, my husband had the Brahms requiem (Ein Deutsches Requiem) playing full blast, the movement with the text "...I will give you comfort, as one whom his own mother comforteth" and "You know that for a little while, labor and sorrow were mine. But at the last, at the last, I found comfort."

Then I remembered that this was the fifth ann… Continue