The Bound Brook Memorial Library’s reopening ceremony celebrated two years’ worth of renovtions, including replacing the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system, the installation of an external water drainage system and the demolition and complete renovation of the children’s department.



I love red doors!



We took the opportunity to take some group shots of the library staff.



Hannah Kerwin, library director and good friend of mine.



The turnout for this event on a beautiful Sunday afternoon was amazing! The library was packed!



I love this shot.



The entertainment was provided by Voice Odyssey, a barbershop quartet from the Hunterdon Harmonizers.



I love his expressive face.



Now THAT’S the way to sing!



He looks like he’s having so much fun.



This boy is getting a lot of attention from the staff of the children’s department. (Actually, he wandered into our group shot, but we thought he was the perfect addition.)



The new library is beautiful! Congratulations!

Click here for the slide show. Enjoy!

Lexi’s parents are in Europe, so we’re cat sitting…



…and portrait-taking.



This is a great way to check up on your pet, assuming you have access to the blog.



We keep thinking that the Kaptain and Lexi should meet.



Lexi, take a look at this handsome fellow!



Aww, isn’t he sweet?



Ok, maybe a diet would be in order before the first date.



And perhaps a little exercise too.



Then again, much like the Kaptain and tigers, Lexi does have a ferocious side.



Look at those teeth!



Yeah, me and my camera were mere inches away from this.



Thank God for lens hoods.



Ok, not really. I was hiding kitty treats for her…



…which she was thoroughly enjoying finding and eating.



Likewise, Bradley and Gregory thoroughly enjoyed getting the gift certificate for the movies. And enough for popcorn too! (Lexi, you made two young men very happy.)



Now I’m just going to hang by the door and watch what Lexi does for a while, like a fly on the wall so that Matt and Alisa can see what their baby is up to while they’re away.



She’s watching cars and trucks and the mailman and…



…BIRDIES!



Lexi is very focused on the activity outside this window.



Have fun, Lex!

My Bradford Pear trees are annoying.

They smell bad in spring when the blossoms come.

Their branches are too tight.

They scare me on windy days.

There’s mold growing on the ground from the WINTER shade because of those dense branches.

I’ve got too many “bad” trees — Bradford pear, purple leaf plum, black cherry — I’ve got surface roots and girdling roots and not enough space to plant good trees, like my baby gingkoes and Kentucky coffeetrees.

But to take these Bradford pears down would make me a tree murderer. Again.

Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

If I call the tree guy today, I can probably have them down before the smell starts. Where’s that cheap tree guy’s number?

My photography clients will be interested to note that my dining room table is made of wood, stained a natural wood color. It’s really a gorgeous table! And you can actually SEE it now! (It’s been covered up with piles of photo stuff since June.) One of the things I found buried on the table is that old name badge we made to go with Bradley’s Halloween costume back in 2005. I totally forgot about it, and it didn’t make the Quotes and Thoughts book. What a bummer!

Bradley’s costume that year was Game Warden of Jurassic Park. He dressed in khaki with a game vest and Indiana Jones hat. At the last minute, I stood Bradley up in the garade with my black background and took a picture of his serious face for a mock name badge to complete his “Robert Muldoon” ensemble. We all agreed the name badge was the coolest thing since cool was invented! It now hangs in my room, next to plenty of other cool pictures of my boys, gathering dust and waiting for some other spring cleaning decades from now when I just might stick it in a drawer. But probably not.

With Bradley away at boyscout camp, Gregory had no one to play with except the Kaptain. Of course, Karl was only interested in Gregory’s toys as scratching post, so this little playdate didn’t last long at all.


Bradley’s return on Sunday put the universe back on track, though I have to admit my jaw dropped in utter astonishment when I overheard Bradley say to his brother, “I missed you, little buddy.”


He missed his little brother? Hmm, I’m not so sure about that. I would think for sure Bradley would be happy to have time away, time to hang with kids his own age, time to be pure pre-teen. I could see if GREGORY was the one constantly talking about missing his brother; he does that a lot when Bradley’s at school. But not this time. This time, Gregory seemed happy to bake a cake with me, happy to take care of me when I wasn’t feeling well, happy to have the house to himself while I slept late on Saturday morning. He even got himself dressed, brushed his teeth and made his bed! So I really wasn’t all that shocked by Gregory’s reply to Bradley’s “I missed you.”



“You going camping next weekend?”

Bradley’s monologue:

“You get to run everywhere and squeeze in tight places, roll around the floor next to the furnace, sleep in that kitty tower when everyone’s doing their own thing, play with mice when no one’s looking, stare out the window at the family of blue jays in the dogwood, or the turkey hawks in the black cherry. I like to follow Kaptain Karl around and pretend to be a cat.”

Me: “Do you want to eat the squirrels when you’re pretending to be a cat?”

“Karl doesn’t want to eat them, mom. He wants to BE them, to be FREE. Cats just want what we all want.”

Bradley has endured a lot from me over the last ten years. Writing down things he’s said, publishing them to all my friends and family. On occasion, I published something he wasn’t too crazy about me publishing resulting in me getting the serious cold shoulder before promising not to do it again. Eventually, all quotes involving Bradley needed prior approval before publishing, and eventually, when my camera and notepad were around, he turned the other way.

But then the book arrived. He spent hours looking at it, reading the stories and looking at the pictures. This is his life, too, documented nearly every day with some saying or event, seemingly minor at the time, but when read back over now, evokes memories of the day surrounding it.

A complete decade is there, except for that portion in the last year when Bradley would barely look at me. As he perused the book and saw the part that’s pretty much all-Gregory-all-the-time, he said, “Oh man, Gregory’s in here a lot, mom.”

“I know,” I said. “Remember? You didn’t want me taking your picture?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

After a pause, and flipping back through the pages when he was 3 and 5 and 7 and 9, Bradley looked up at me, smiling. “Thanks mom. Thanks for doing this. I really love you.”

And he added, “You can take my picture if you want.”

Everybody’s talking about 777. Just think: there won’t be another wedding date to come close to that lucky number for 70 more years! So, I just thought I’d let you know I’m not booked yet for that date. Pass it on to your friends!

It’s finally here!
“City of Nouns: Quotes and Thoughts From the Nightside, 1996-2006.”



I’m SO excited! This is a 600-page record of my life for the past 10 years!



It’s SO awesome!



That’s Bradley holding Gregory the day he was born in 2000, and the big picture is Gregory at 1 month old.



Many pages look like this, with a picture and a few short essays with dates at the end. I designed the book using Adobe InDesign, and printed it through Lulu.com.



Some spreads are photo compositions, with just pictures and captions. This comp is from our vacation last year. The top picture shows the hotel pool with an inset of the frog who sat by the pool and watched the swimmers. So funny.


This is Gregory’s 6th birthday. Not to let the younger child have fewer pictures than the older one, Gregory’s birthday pictures continue for three pages!



This is probably my favorite page. I like the design with my shoes in the middle of the essay, and I love the story too. It’s about a time when we were at Plainsboro Pond and I was lost in watching the geese. Gregory came up to me and I was rude to him; he had interrupted my alone time. But he said he just wanted to watch the geese with me. He put my arm around his shoulder and snuggled and said something really sweet and I just felt so comfortable and warm in that moment. I’m so glad I wrote it all down. I know I would have forgotten all about that by now if I hadn’t written it down.

My favorite aquarium picture is on the back of the book, with Bradley in the stereotypical “big fish” hand gesture. I even made a cute little logo — “jws press.” I love this book!

By the way, in case my brother, Bill, is reading this, I timed all this so that the one I sent to him would arrive on the 1-year anniversary of a very special day for us. (Thanks to UPS, I missed the actual anniversary by a day. Ugh.) So Bill — when you get yours, please turn to page 523 for the beginning of the story of our singing debut at Carnegie Hall! I love you, Bill, and I thank you SO much for encouraging me since I was a child to 1) love music and 2) get my stories into a book! Maybe one day I’ll edit down to the very best 200-or-so pages and send it to a publisher. Ahhh, someday. For now, I’m just THRILLED to be holding this book in my hands! YAY!

Here’s a good place to start for a few sample stories! Enjoy!

It was one year ago tonight that my church choir joined with several other choirs to sing a Mozart concert at Carnegie Hall. This was a very big deal for me — singing at Carnegie Hall — because, well, it just was!

(HUGE thanks to my choir director, Brenda!)

The entire experience of it, from learning the Latin words and difficult rhythms to the all-day rehearsals leading up to the big event, ranks with my grandest days. And it’s not just because I stood on that famous stage, but also because my brother was there with me. Bill and I share a love for music, always have, but unfortunately we don’t get to see each other very often. Now every time I think of Carnegie Hall, I think of Bill.

The only negative was that I wasn’t allowed to take my camera. I did anyway, being the rebel that I am, but of course, not during the performance. And none of my photographer friends in the audience brought cameras either. (They have rules about that.) And so, for the longest time, the story of our Carnegie debut was told using a fake picture — some other choir on some other night.

And then one day the picture above arrived in my e-mail. I don’t know who took it, but I am ever grateful for the rounds of forwarding it took to get to me. It’s actually not a bad print, considering all the photoshop work it took to render it a decent picture from a point-and-shoot that had seen 12-too-many rain drops on its lens. At normal resolution (not scaled down for the Web), I can spot everyone in my choir! That’s Brenda, 5th row, 3rd from the left, and Larrie, 1st row, 7th from the right. Bill’s on the back row next to that bass who could really sing, and that’s me, 2nd row center behind the bassoons.

So to that anonymous person who took this really special picture, Tuesday night, March 21, 2006, from about the 2nd tier, Carnegie Hall, just before the beginning of the Coronation Mass, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Sometimes it’s not the quality of a photograph that counts, but just the fact of its very existence.