Category Archives: General

It started in the night, as they said it would. Never one to predict or assume anything regarding Mother Nature, I believe it when I see it. This morning, I believed. A thick blanket of snow covered the world, and more was falling silently from the sky. In the front yard, a tall hedge of ‘Steeplechase’ Thuja stood, cradling big fluffy pockets of snow and a multitude of chirping birds. It was a wall of life – the dark green scales of the evergreen still pulsing with suspended cells, backed by the songs of tiny winged creatures. A gorgeous living panoply, buffering our home from the street.

A noisy plow, with its swirling yellow lights, barrels down the road, spraying snow and piling it high on the edge of the driveway. I will ask if Andy needs help with it as the snow-blower can only do so much. Such is winter in the Northeast – and if I were someplace where it was sunny and warm every day, I would miss it. (But I’m not.)

Seeing as how I had nothing to do with the Super Bowl this year, last night proved peacefully quiet. Far more exciting were the events of the last week, in which our kitchen was finally completed. There are Before and After shots, along with a series of how we got from there to here (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4). But there were other trifles and odds and ends that made up the last week of January, so let’s get to a brief encapsulation.

First up was the preparation for the hottest social event of the winter season – The Gay Soiree. It’s this Saturday, so be sure to order your tickets and plan your outfit, as I’d love to see you there.

What a guy wants… or used to want.

Troublingly, it was a week of nightmares, one of which I tell about here, and another here, and there were a couple that won’t be written about until I’ve processed them.

Madonna made a splash at the Grammy Awards, and I happened to love every brief minute of it.

The Hunks of the Day were male-model-heavy, with the likes of TR Pescod and Francisco Lachowski, in addition to the might-as-well-be-models like Imran Khan and Blake Skjellerup (as a preview of Olympic sexiness to come).

Certain Sundays, especially those in the dead of winter, should start slowly and quietly. They demand a quieter awakening, a gentler touch. To that end, I offer no bombast or heated heralding of the break of day. Only this poem by Mary Oliver, from her collection ‘Red Bird.’ It speaks of the delicate unfolding of the heart, like the tissue-paper-wrapped bud of a daffodil crinkling open to reveal its nodding head.

I don’t want to live a small life

by Mary Oliver

I don’t want to live a small life. Open your eyes,

open your hands. I have just come

from the berry fields, the sun

kissing me with its golden mouth all the way

(open your hands) and the wind-winged clouds

following along thinking perhaps I might

feed them, but no I carry these heart-shapes

only to you. Look how many how small

but so sweet and maybe the last gift

I will ever bring to anyone in this

world of hope and risk, so do.

Look at me. Open your life, open your hands.

Having been visited by several unfriendly dreams in the past week or so, I smudged the entire house a few days ago, but it seems to no avail. Last night I had one of the most frightening nightmares I’ve had in a while. (Yes, even worse than Grandpa Munster.) In this one, I was behind a glass window, watching Andy sit at a table. It looks like an interrogation room, and I try pounding on the glass to have him see me. My hands feel like they’re in slow-motion – so slow that they don’t hit the glass with any thud or force of contact, and so my exertions go unnoticed. I try screaming, but whenever I scream in dreams no sound comes out (until the very end).

I watch him typing and smiling, and I wonder if he’s sending a message to me. I calm down and rest my hand on the glass. If I move very, very slowly it makes contact and rests there. Two men enter from a door behind Andy, but he doesn’t notice, or at least he doesn’t turn around. He continues typing and smiling. One of the men, a college-aged guy with dark, longer, somewhat shaggy hair stands behind Andy and makes motions ridiculing him. It reminds me of the time when someone was saying bad things about Andy behind his back when he didn’t think anyone was listening, and I pound the glass to get Andy’s attention. He does not look up. The other man laughs as the younger guy starts making fun of Andy’s appearance. Then the two start kissing behind his back. Andy is seemingly oblivious, still occasionally typing something, with a wan smile and a distracted look. The young guy points at Andy and laughs – a cruel, wicked, satanic laugh that makes me want to cry. He then starts kissing the older man again.

I look at Andy, sensing danger, but he doesn’t seem fazed. In fact, he doesn’t seem to notice them behind him. I watch him closely, and see him grow old before my eyes. The men behind him laugh more, pointing at him and ridiculing him, and I try to scream but still no sound will come out. I don’t know if they mean him harm, or if it’s harmless fun, but I feel attacked on his behalf, and he doesn’t seem to know. Instead, he grows older. His hair is white, his skin is wrinkled, his eyes slowly close, and his head slumps down. I panic, trying to distract the men behind him, whose laughter and lascivious behavior seem to be draining his life away. The harder I try to pound on the glass, the less sound it makes, and my voice won’t rise above a whisper, no matter how strenuously I try to force a shout or a scream. The laughter of the faceless men is terrifying, and I sink to the ground to try to find a way into the room.

In the wondrous way nightmares and dreams work, I suddenly feel like I wake up, only I’m in a car, riding along some highway in what feels like Maine. I look over and Andy is driving, and he looks like he looks today, maybe a little younger. The relief I feel is overwhelming, and I wipe my tears away. He looks at me, surprised at my crying state, and asks what’s wrong.

‘Nothing’,’ I say. ‘I had a nightmare…’

He looks a little concerned, then continues driving. Green trees rush by the window, and it strikes me as an anomaly – the great majority of my dreams and nightmares are in black-and-white. This small flash of color – the color of life, of green things that fly – is the last thing I remember before waking up for real.

It started off with Andy and I trying to help wounded soldiers, in the only way I knew how: by making bouquets of flowers. We stopped by our family friend Elaine’s house, and picked bunches of Queen Ann’s lace. I remember the airy umbrels, elegant and rustic at the same time. She gave them generously, helping us gather, and then, in the way that dreams suddenly do, I was in the back seat of a moving car – an expansive station wagon, but not, I don’t think, the woody.

We are hurtling down the highway and a young man with dark hair is in the back seat attacking me. I can’t make out his face, it is in shadow. Andy is gone and I scream – at least I try to scream. The man begins to hit me, viciously, over and over. I try to scramble out of the back seat to the front of the car but I’m paralyzed. Still, no sound comes out, as often happens in my dreams. He does not stop, and I keep trying to scream, hoping the desperate tone, the wild pitch of someone in real trouble, cuts through whatever apathy has me in such dire solitude. When at last the smallest whimper comes out, when I’m almost too scared to speak, I awaken.

Calling out to Andy, I calm myself and slow my breathing. He hurries into the bedroom and I tell him about the nightmare. He asks what the man looked like, but I cannot remember. The only vivid parts were the flowers and the attack. He reassures me that if I couldn’t see his face then it couldn’t happen. I want to believe that.

It’s easier to see our backyard menagerie of visitors in the winter snow. Like this little squirrel, munching on a piece of bread that Andy tossed out one winter. How these fluffy creatures survive the cold, I’ll never know, but you rarely see a squirrel shiver.

Outside our bedroom window, a trail of bunny prints circles beneath the Wolf’s eye dogwood tree. I watched one of the culprits hop along the poolside fence, disappearing into the snow and brush, the white blur of a puffy tail like some burst of smoky magic.

Peering out of the den, I see more trails, left by other rabbits and squirrels, and right up against the house a smaller set of prints that we can’t quite figure out. It looks too small to be a squirrel, but too large to be a mouse. One of winter’s mysteries.

I much prefer the summer, with its blazing banners of color, floating from butterfly bush to butterfly bush, carrying the sweet hope of nectar on its unfurling sun-kissed tongue.

After a weekend of laying low and hanging out with Andy, Monday arrives like an unwelcome return bout with strep throat – just when you thought you’d already kicked it. We spent much of the time returning the house back to the state it was in prior to the kitchen being re-done, which meant lots of dusting and moving things, some re-organization and re-configuring, and a  look at the final bill (which came in as expected – and not so far beyond our original estimate as some had suggested). In addition to all of that, I made a chicken curry dish for dinner, and shoveled the driveway for Andy, whose back recently gave out. He was right – it’s not as fun as it looks. (And it never looked fun at all.)

The Madonna Timeline was updated twice – once with a song I love, and again with a song I didn’t. She also performed at the Grammys (though as of this writing it hadn’t happened yet so a recap on that will be forthcoming).

Don’t forget: you’re so invited, and I just can’t hide it.

There were a couple of notably nude male celebrities on display, well, almost – in the naked form of Leonardo DiCaprio (whose ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ was far more entertaining than it had any right to be) and an underwear-clad (and removed?) David Beckham.

Though the weather outside was frightfully frigid, there were Hunks to keep you warm, including shirtless male celebrities like Tom Cullen, Grady Sizemore, Adam Jacobs, Derek Allen Watson, and The Property Brothers.

If all goes according to plan, this week should bring about the long-awaited final completion of our kitchen project – and that will mark a new beginning – something to see us through the rest of this rough winter, until we find our summer again.

As I sit here pre-programming posts for the weekend and debating about what to do and where to go, I decided to just be lazy and populate this particular post with blasts from the past. Chosen haphazardly from the last two of three years, they’re just a few items that struck my momentary fancy. Read into them what you will, but don’t read into them too much.

Fading…

Reading…

Standing…

Babysitting…

Meeting…

Kissing…

Disrobing…

Holding…

Sailing…

Dreaming…

Failing…

Crushing…

Banning…

Cheesecaking…

Drowning.

My favorite bartender Nicole is about to go out on maternity leave. (Another one bites the baby dust…) I will miss her friendly, witty banter, but most of all I will miss her way with the pink peppercorns. I admire any bartender who can come up with a cocktail based on your likes and recommendations of ingredients, so when I told her I wanted something with gin and grapefruit, but nothing too sweet, she concocted a delicious treat that incorporated gin, grapefruit juice, a couple of other ingredients, and – the secret weapon against sweetness – pink peppercorns. It was the perfect drink, something that works in all seasons.

The warm delight in finding a good bartender who remembers both your name and your favored drink seems to be on the wane, which is another reason I’ll miss Nicole. Albany has not been kind in crafting talented cocktail conjurors, so I may wait until she returns to get a proper libation. It will be worth it.

A number of friends have recommended the film ‘Frozen’ – and after watching this clip for the hundredth time and reading this take on the movie, I may have to visit Elsa’s icy world after all. I don’t think I’ve seen an animated film since ‘Up’, so perhaps it’s time.

On this very important holiday, let us take a light-hearted romp with the weekly recap. I can’t decide if this blog should veer into the more personal or less personal… the former may be more interesting, but the latter is better poised for longevity and inclusiveness. In the meantime, we remain in flux, and in limbo – and I can’t stand either. On with the show…

Somewhere, lost amid the kitchen shuffle, this website marked its 11th year of existence – making it a dinosaur as far as websites go. Still we chug along. I think I can, I think I can.

I made a return to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, even if at first I couldn’t remember.

The madness and melancholy of Morrissey. And the hope of Casey Stratton.

This prick royally pissed me off, and promptly apologized. Twice. (It still wasn’t enough.)

A favorite Boston stop for delicious goodies.

Meet my old friends Harold and Maude, by way of Suzie.

Come to the hottest party of the winter season – get your tickets now!

Keeping things hot in the cold, were Hunks like Tom Brady, Duncan James, Colin Kaepernick, Daniel Garofali, Mitch Lawrence, Trevor Adams, Sir Jet, and our very own kitchen Hunk, Cristian.

Today is my Mom’s birthday, so if you happen to see Mrs. Ilagan strolling the streets of Boston (where I believe she’ll be later today) please do wish her a happy one. And if Mrs. Ilagan happens to see this post by her first-born son, Happy Birthday Mom!

When I was little, ‘Someone That I Used to Love’ was her favorite song that I could play on the piano, so when I wanted to please her I would play it. (I didn’t know until I looked it up on YouTube that Barbra Streisand recorded a version.)