July 1st Miscel-lanie

A new month, it must be time for a blog entry. I think about entries quite often, but usually in the middle of the night when I can't sleep but don't want to get out of bed. When I do write an entry, I just can't remember all the great ideas I had at 2:00 am. Such is life ...

A few notes come to mind. One of my older brothers had two strokes recently. He is 61, a year older than my husband and he owns/drives a big rig. He happened to be on the road, but not driving, when it happened and fortunately, he is doing well now. His speech is impaired a bit and he has hired someone else to drive his truck while he rides shotgun, but overall, he seems okay. But I am not prepared for my parents, in their late eighties, to have strokes, let alone my siblings. We are all getting older, a fact that I know intellectually, but my inner child refuses to grow up and I don't feel like I'm as old as I truly am. Now, I hear some people making snide comments about my age, but I always thought 58 years old was a lot older than I am now that I am a month short of 58. I don't feel old, but Tim Russert died last month at 58 of a heart attack. My brother had two strokes. While I don't feel so old, I do feel vulnerable.

New topic. Tori seems to be settling in to her new environment. I am driving up to get her and bring her home for the 4th of July weekend on Thursday and we will see then how well she really is doing. But she has changed her nickname from Tori to Vicky. When I call and ask for Victoria, the girls yell out "Vicky." It sounds very strange to my ear. The summer I turned 16, I had the good fortune to attend a summer school program at the Mt. Herman and Northfield Schools in Massachusetts. Over that summer, I turned 16, had my first seriously returned infatuation, and changed my name from Mary Lane to Lane. I doubt that my mother had the same difficulty with the change that I am experiencing because she never called me Mary Lane until I went to Catholic school in the second grade. Up until then, I had been Lanie or Lane, but Sr. Theodosia, my second grade teacher, refused to call me Lane because it was not a saint's name. I refused to answer to Mary - honestly, I didn't recognize the name as belonging to me - and eventually my mother convinced the teacher to call me Mary Lane. Oh, how I hated that name, especially the way it slumped into one word that sounded like a drunk talking ... Marahlane ... Anyway, my mother told me often that she regretted including the Mary part of my name first and wished she had named me Lane Marie instead. So I believe she found it easy to switch back to Lane. Vicky is a little harder for me. It is a family name in both Michael's family and mine (a niece and a cousin respectively), but it has never been Tori's name. Oh, well. I will have to change with the times - eventually. I'm not ready yet.

My friends Marilyn and Ken had a meet and greet for Larry Joe Douherty, our Democratic candidate for Congress, at their home on Sunday. I enjoyed meeting Mr. Douherty. He is quite polished - not the country-bumpkin his Texan name and twang might suggest. This was my very first meet and greet and I must say it tickled me to be able to ask direct questions of the candidate and hear the answers up close and personal. Our congressional district is gerrymandered beyond belief, one of the abominations created by Tom Delay et al when they stole Texas Democratic seats a few years ago. (How the mighty have fallen. I hope Tom Delay gets every single thing he deserves. None of it will be pleasant.) My son used to live in Austin, Texas, 160 miles from Houston. He lived in the same congressional district as Michael and I because of the gerrymandering. Austin was too liberal, so the Republican stretched the district sideways all the way to Harris County (Houston area) to pull in the ultra-conservative, religious right voters we have to live with here. The Delay thugs got away with murder, but the tables are turning now and we have Shrub to thank for a lot of it. Life is funny when you least expect it!

I have much more on my plate, but it is 11:02 PM and I am trying to get to bed at a reasonable time these days, so I must sign off.

Ciao.