the World of Webmistress Ming

How far will Creating Keepsakes Magazine go to hold onto a reluctant subscriber? Let the challenge begin! In the weeks that follow, we'll track the tone and tide of retention efforts aimed to persuade me to continue my membership in the Cult of CK.

Why not renew? This month's cover says it all: four of the seven cover-page come-ons relate to CK and the CK sorority, not to scrapbooking, the magazine's ostensible topic. Since I prefer to read about scrapbooking, not the self-created and self-reverential "CK Celebs", I won't be renewing this "aren't we WONDERFUL?" publication.

ck's insider offer

You say it's about THEM, not scrapbooking? Let's see.

She's a dear girl, but my daughter-in-law was worried, and it showed on her pretty, open face. She was ready to leave her two small sons in my care, in my hotel room, for a single night.

The question was, "Can Nana handle it?"

Oh, my dear one. By walking out of the room and leaving me with your darling boys, you gave me the most wonderful present.

Not to kid the world. I'm not the grandmother of the year. What with distance, career, health issues and just-plain-cussedness, my time with my grandsons has been unforgivably short.

whispering

In "take it on the chin" moods, I retreat to my roots: books, music and an appreciation for what was once known as "the finer things".

Which explains why this evening, after a long and disappointing day, I found myself dressed (to the sixes or sevens, but nonetheless, dressed) and seated in The Veranda: the lobby bar/music room of the Kahala Hotel.

It is a bastion of mid-last-century grace. I estimated the ceiling height at 19 feet, and admired the sweep of the floor-to-ceiling fabric panels that serve for drapes.

Having just survived an figurative earthquake/tsunami in my relationship to my extended family, I'm fertile soil for this book. Covering four generations of fathers/sons of the eccentric and literary Waugh clan, Alexander Waugh's acerbic and entertaining account of what we would term a "highly dysfunctional family" is spot on, on a number of fronts.

Given that I'm averaging one good laugh per page, this book is unexpectedly great beach reading--and it even got me attention from a most promising Cabana Boy candidate. A young and handsome haole, alas, working off his English degree as a waiter in a resort restaurant. Dry though the book jacket appears, he was sufficiently struck by it to strike up conversation with the literary loner in the corner. Bless him, he loved "Brideshead Revisited"--even if he did look far more likely to try his hand at modeling than at writing.

I am a shameless old woman.

Evelyn et alius would be so proud--and my own father's effete shade is reading over my shoulder.

There's nothing like it. Sunrise from the beach at the Kahala Hotel.

Kahala Sunrise

Perry's Bear Friend

To my dear daughter-in-law, I'm an unlikely grandmother. Or, to be more precise, I'm a neglectful one.

Boy. Does SHE have a surprise coming.

I understand. My dear DIL comes from a large, closely-knit family. She's a dear girl with a great heart, but she finds it hard to understand our WASP, hands-off, "I raised mine, you raised yours" ethos.

She is about to get a BIG surprise.

It's a truism: failing to decide is in itself a decision.

With a flawed business plan on my hands, time is running out, tempers are short, and I no longer have the luxury of days at the keyboard to make it all work.

Events keep pushing me toward a "decision", and my attempts to transform circumstances to produce a win-win look doomed, at this point.

Enter Parkinson's Law, which is going to force both a decision and a new way of life.

It can't be said that I'm a fan of Creating Keepsakes magazine. Between the over-fussy layouts (larded with "product") and the ego-fluffing cult of scrap personality (which leads to the Diva Dot phenomenon), CK really doesn't speak to me as a scrapbooker.

I've decided not to renew my subscription, and now for the fun.

One of the hard things about parenting a transgendered person: there are few role models. I don't know another parent of a gay person, much less a TG. (Show up at online support groups, and it's common to hear, "Oh, our first parent of a transgender!")

My most durable role models come from the movies.

Since my daughter came out, I've been grateful for a single movie scene as a guide to what NOT to do. In "To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar", the three main characters, in drag, pull up in a car in front of the home of Miss Vida, the character played by Patrick Swayze.