I’ll get a new post up later tonight, possibly about artichokes or the dream I had last night in which I was a phone-in contestant on the NPR comedy/talk show, “What Do You Know?” In the meantime, for some of the newcomers, a few of my favorite posts.

A Family Secret
Rosemary
Pinch Pie
Break up pain, all over again
Election Day
The Umbrella of Good Wishes

To all of you who voted in the Philly Future Featured Blog Poll, a big thank you! As of right now I am the tentative winner, but final results have not been posted.

A few things I learned through this process:

My ability to stay on good terms with ex-boyfriends, former babysitting charges (and their mothers), cousins I haven’t seen in years and parental business associates is to my benefit.

When I ask my father for help in the future, I must be prepared for his competitive side to come out. God forbid I ever run for an elected office.

There are many more people with whom I share blood reading this blog today than there were three days ago.

I have an expansive network of people in the world who care about me and wish me well.

I don’t care about winning nearly as much as I do about the experience I have along the way.

Many thanks again to you all!

40 years ago this week, my grandfather Phil, my mother’s father, died of a massive heart attack. He was 57 years old. He had been a smoker since childhood, having grown up poor on the streets of Fishtown in the early years of the 20th century. He left behind a wife, three children and scores of family and friends who loved him dearly.

By all accounts, he was the nicest man anyone who knew him ever met. He loved babies in a time when it was unheard of for a man to change a diaper. He cared for my grandmother’s extended family, taking bags of groceries to nieces that were his only by marriage, when their father was unable to provide for them. He was a lawyer who never went to an undergraduate institution, and was terrified by the idea of appearing in court. He was a man without pretense, snobbery or great ambition. He wanted to live, to take naps on the davenport on the sunporch, to read Agatha Christie novels, to vacation in Florida once a year and to love his family.

My mother’s cousin Angie once told me that one of the reasons she married a lawyer was because she thought that all lawyers were as wonderful as her Uncle Phil. If only it were true.

At the time of his death, his oldest son was in the Army, having been among the first wave to be drafted to Vietnam. My mother remembers clearly that he said often, “I would trade my life for his to bring him home safely.” Although he never knew it, that’s exactly what he did. The night he died, my uncle had 89 more days to serve before his tour of duty was over. In those days (it may still be the same, I’m not exactly up on the inner workings of the military) Army policy was that if you had a death in the family and you still had 90 or more days to serve, you could go home for the funeral, but then you had to return to duty. If you had 89 days or less, you would be send home, your duty discharged. My uncle came home, grief-stricken, but safe, from Vietnam. The rest of his unit did not fair so well. The location where he had been stationed was bombed shortly after he left, and many were killed.

Obviously I never had the opportunity to meet my mother’s father, although I feel I know him well. He bought the apartment I now live in, never thinking that he was providing a home for a granddaughter who’s parents hadn’t even met. Forty years after his death, he is still loved, missed and remembered. And in that way, he still lives.

I was never on the Homecoming or Prom Court, I wasn’t elected May Fete Queen (although I have to admit, I was on the court that time) or Rose Princess. But today, I have another chance at being Philly Future’s featured blog. The weekend’s poll to determine the next featured blog resulted in a tie between me and the Green Bleeder. There is now a run-off poll up, that will close tomorrow (Tuesday) at 6 pm. So, if it isn’t too much trouble, I’m asking that you go and vote for me again. Thank you for helping making my dreams of finally winning a popularity contest come true.

My friend Anna is getting married next month, after years of swearing up and down that she was never, ever going to get hitched. Her first date with her fiancee lasted three days, and their second spanned the length of a work week. After that, he just moved in.

For this untraditional bride, nothing was more appropriate than the atypical shower her friend Renee threw for her yesterday. I got the invitation several weeks ago, with the location listed as the Paradise Restaurant, at Front and Girard. I was curious about this venue, until I remembered that Anna had told me that there was a diner near her house that they ate at all the time. Anna and Dave are currently remodeling their kitchen, and so trips to the Paradise are an almost daily occurrence, although Anna’s been a regular there since before Dave appeared on the scene. The owner Penny, and the rest of the restaurant staff treat Anna like an adopted sister or cousin, and were all shower guests, as well as hosts, yesterday afternoon. We played games, although not your standard shower activities. We all told Anna two truths and a lie about ourselves, and she had to guess which was the lie. The lies belonging to her Paradise family were the only ones she guessed correctly.

It started me thinking about the relationship my family used to have with the Little Pete’s that was on Chestnut Street, and closed last summer. In the last ten years of their lives, my grandparents ate there almost every night. Those evenings that they chose to stay home, they ordered in. The waitresses all knew my grandmother, and always greeted her with kisses and an iced tea. They would caress her cheek after depositing her chicken soup, and help her order when she couldn’t make up her mind. When she died, they cried and catered her memorial service.

Six months after her death and a year and a half after my grandfather had left us, we held a family brunch in the rear section of the restaurant, to gather and remember them. My cousins from Hawaii were in town that morning, and danced hula in the middle of the restaurant, while the whole room looked on. Whenever I was feeling sick, or just a little neglected, I would go into Little Pete’s for soup. I would be greeted with shouts of welcome, and would get admonitions to take care of myself and come in more often, along with my noodles and broth.

To take a look at the pictures of Anna’s shower, go here.

Today I did a assortment of things that brought me happiness, both in the doing of the individual tasks and in the wholeness of their collective.

I lay in bed until ten, stretching my body to take up all the space the bed had to offer. I made french toast, mixing the eggs and milk in the square metal bowl that is just like the one my mom has and uses for the same purpose. I talked to my plants and encouraged the lavender I’m growing from seed to thrive. I mopped my kitchen floor, deriving great satisfaction from turning dirty into clean. I mailed packages, bought grapefruits, artichokes, broccoli and pineapple. I remade my bed with newly clean sheets, fluffing the pillows in anticipation of crawling back into it tonight. I wrapped a gift and took pictures as it was opened, along with others. I had dinner with people I enjoy at the Asia Cafe, my new favorite restaurant. I celebrated a friend’s birthday, and left the party when I was tired.

My clean bed calls, and I must answer.

So I discovered a little while ago that I’ve been nominated to be Philly Future’s featured blog. Voting to select the next featured blog is open until Sunday afternoon. I feel a little funny telling people to vote for me, and yet, not quite funny enough to not to it. So go vote for me. If you want.

(You do have to sign up with Philly Future to vote, but it’s quick, easy and free).

My sister was born on February 3rd, 1982. Several weeks before she was born, my two and a half year old self suggested to my very pregnant mom that we paint the baby’s room black, despite the fact that there was no baby’s room, just the room that I would share with the impending sibling. It’s like I knew what was coming, that my perfect, only-child existence was about to change forever.

What was coming was an exuberant, loud, loving, mischievous, temperamental, talented, smart, creative, loyal, beautiful, curly-haired girl named Raina. She has made my life more difficult, but also deeply more joyful. I am grateful every day that she is in my world.

When she was turning three, she had angelic blond curls, and a speech impediment. She would tell everyone that she would be “Swee on da sword.” People made her repeat it over and over again, until she would be shouting, “I awrwedy towed you!”

These days, Raina is out there on the road, chasing her dream to become someone who makes their living making music. I am in awe of her talent and drive, and I love her very much.

Happy Birthday, Rainy!

It’s Friday again, which means it’s time for another Random Friday Ten. The rules are simple, set your iPod or other electronic music devise to shuffle and see what shows up. No omissions, deletions or exceptions allowed.

1. Stay Loose, Belle and Sebastian (Dear Catastrophe Waitress)
2. The Kind of Bedside Manor, Barenaked Ladies (Gordon)
3. Today, Jefferson Airplane (Live at the Fillmore East)
4. You Will Be My Ain True Love, Allison Krauss (Cold Mountain)
5. Fire and Rain, James Taylor (Greatest Hits)
6. Wayfaring Stranger, Mo Mack (New and Used Tunes)
7. Ballad of a Thin Man, Bob Dylan (Before the Flood)
8. The Hudsons, Dar Williams (My Better Self)
9. Happy New Year, Original Broadway Cast (Rent)
10. Mirage, Santana (The Essential Santana)

Favorite Song: Fire and Rain by the great James Taylor. I got a cd player for Christmas when I was in the 6th grade (it was 1990, I was one of the first kids to have one. My parents, well, actually my dad really, were always very good about providing us with good sound systems). My parents let me sign up for the fairly new Columbia House cd club, and I ordered my first ten cds. One was James Taylor’s Greatest Hits. I’ve loved it ever since.

Personal Connection: This one is easy. Mo Mack is my dad (I was the only kid in my elementary school to have a father with a stage name). He’s been playing music since he was 13 or 14, when his older brothers pushed a guitar into his hands and told him to learn, because they needed someone to play rhythm. Because of my dad, I was the only 3rd grader listening to the Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry, the Coasters, Buddy Holly and the Beatles. He gave an amazing gift from a young age, which was an appreciation for music and the roots from which our modern stuff springs.

If you need more Friday Random Tens, go check out:
Howard
Luna
Mac
Ben
Andrea
Brian

I got home from work tonight a little before six. I got onto the elevator and pushed my floor. It stopped on the 6th floor, and a man got on. I’d seen him around the building on prior occasions. He looked at the button panel, and seeing that the 20th floor was illuminated, looked at me and said, “Hi, my name is Thomas, you live on the 20th floor?” I said that I did. He proceed to say that he moved onto the floor a couple of months ago from the 10th, and that his wife won’t come into the building. The first time he said that, it didn’t really register. I welcomed him to the floor and offered some throwaway comment about how it was a good building. He said, “you should talk to my wife, because she just refuses to come into the building.” Not that she didn’t like the place, but that she absolutely refused to enter. With that, we arrived at the floor and headed our opposing directions to our apartments.

I walked into my apartment, feeling like there were about a hundred questions I should have asked. Why does he live in a building that his wife won’t enter? Why has he upgraded his apartment to another, if his wife isn’t willing to ever see it? Where is his wife? And why the hell is he telling someone he just met on the elevator that she is vehemently opposed to the place we both live?

It was an oddly placed admission of some serious marital issues in a tone of voice that would have been more appropriate discussing the weather. It felt like I’d been given a little unsolicited peek into a stranger’s storage closet, the one with all the discarded kitchen utensils, out-of-date coats, Halloween costumes, broken appliances and abandoned crafty projects.

I’m seriously considering asking him some of my questions, next time I see him.